Galatians 1:1 Paul, an apostle, not of men.The inscription According to the custom of the age, the apostle begins with a short description of himself and his correspondents, connected with a wish for their happiness. Paul was above the affectation of singularity. In the form of his Epistles, he follows the ordinary custom of his country and age; and he thus teaches us that a Christian ought not to be unnecessarily singular. By readily complying with innocent customs, we are the more likely, when we conscientiously abstain from what we account sinful customs, to impress the minds of those around us that we have some other and better reason for our conduct than whim or humour. Yet the apostle contrives to give, even to the inscription of his letter, a decidedly Christian character; and shows us that, though we should not make an ostentatious display of our Christianity, yet, if we are truly religious, our religion will give a colour to the whole of our conduct: even what may seem most remote from direct religious employment will be tinged by it. The manner in which the apostle manages the inscription of this and his other letters, is a fine illustration of his own injunction, “ Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him” (Colossians 3:17). He shows his Christianity even in the mode of addressing his letters. (John Brown, D. D.)The opening salutation The two threads which run through this Epistle--the defence of the apostle’ s own authority, and the maintenance of the doctrine of grace--are knotted together in the opening salutation. By expanding his official title into statement of his direct commission from God (Galatians 1:1), St. Paul meets the personal attack of his opponents; by dwelling on the work of redemption in connection with the name of Christ (Galatians 1:4), he protests against their doctrinal errors. (Bishop Lightfoot.)The high significance of the apostolate 1. For the founding; 2. For the continuance of the Christian Church, which must perpetually rest upon the foundation of the apostolic doctrine. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Divine vocation 1. To have the Divine vocation is in all circumstances necessary. 2. To be certain of its possession is often important. 3. To appeal to it may often be right and proper. How independent of men, and at the same time how dependent on God, the minister of the gospel is, and knows himself to be I Even so the Christian generally is what he is, not from men, although through men, for neither natural descent nor outward fellowship makes him such--but through Jesus Christ and the Father. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Christian sense of personal worth 1. Its justification.2. Its limits. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Jesus Christ supreme All through Jesus Christ l1. Humbling truth; for then nothing is through us.2. Exalting truth; all is through no less an one than Christ, and thereby through the highest of all, viz., God. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)God the Instructor of the Church In the church we ought to listen to God alone, and to Jesus Christ whom He has appointed to be our teacher. Whoever assumes a right to instruct us, must speak in the name of God or of Christ. (Calvin.)Extraordinary gifts associated with extraordinary vocation Behold the peculiar prerogative of St. Paul above the rest of the apostles. They were called by Christ in the day of His humiliation, but he was called by Christ when sitting at His Father’ s right hand in heaven. As his call was thus very extraordinary, so his gifts were answerable to his call. (W. Burkitt.)The apostle’ s attitude The appearance of the apostle against the Galatians.1. In the full dignity of his office; at the same time, however, associating the brethren with himself. 2. With the full love of his heart, at the same time conceding nothing of the truth. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Certainty of Divine calling What means Paul by this boasting? I answer: This commonplace serves to this end, that every minister of God’ s Word should be sure of his calling, that before God and man he may with a bold conscience glory therein, that he preaches the gospel as one that is called and sent: even as the ambassador of a king glories and vaunts in this, that he comes not as a private person, but as the king’ s ambassador; and because of this dignity--that he is the king’ s ambassador--he is honoured and set in the highest place; which honour should not be given him if he came as a private person. Wherefore, let the preacher of the gospel be certain that his calling is from God. (Luther.)The name and office of an apostle The word ἀπόστολος in the first instance is an adjective signifying “ despatched” or “ sent forth.” Applied to a person, it denotes more than ἄγγελος. The “ apostle” is not only the messenger, but the delegate of the person who sends him. He is entrusted with a mission, has powers conferred upon him …. With the later Jews, the word was in common use. It was the title borne by those who were despatched from the mother city by the rulers of the race on any foreign mission, especially such as were charged with collecting the tribute paid to the temple service. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the “ apostles” formed a sort of council about the Jewish patriarch, assisting him in his deliberations at home, and executing his orders abroad. Thus in designating His immediate dud most favoured disciples “ apostles,” our Lord was not introducing a new term, but adopting one, which from its current usage would suggest to His hearers the idea of a highly responsible mission. At the first institution of the office, the apostles were twelve in number, but in the New Testament there is no hint that the number was intended to be limited to twelve--any more than there is that the number of deacons was intended to remain seven. The Twelve were primarily the Apostles of the Circumcision, the representatives of the twelve tribes. The extension of the Church to the Gentiles might be accompanied by an extension of the apostolate As a matter of fact, we do not find the term apostle restricted to the Twelve with only the exception of St. Paul. St. Paul himself seems in one passage to distinguish between “ the Twelve” and “ all the apostles,” as if the latter were the more comprehensive term (1 Corinthians 15:5; 1 Corinthians 15:7). It appears both there and in other places (Galatians 1:19; 1 Corinthians 9:5) that James the Lord’ s brother is styled an apostle. On the most natural interpretation of another passage (Romans 16:7), Andronicus and Junias, two Christians otherwise unknown to us, are called distinguished members of the apostolate, language which indirectly implies a very considerable extension of the term. In 1 Thessalonians 2:6, again, where in reference to his visit to Thessalonica, he speaks of the disinterested labours of himself and his colleagues, adding, “ though we might have been burdensome to you, being apostles of Christ,” it is probable that under this term he includes Sylvanus, who had laboured with him in Thessalonica, and whose name appears in the superscription of the letter. The apostleship of Barnabas, at any rate, is beyond question. St. Luke records his consecration to the office as taking place at the same time with, and in the same manner as, St. Paul’ s (Acts 13:2-3). In his account of their missionary labours again, he names them together as “ apostles,” even mentioning Barnabas first (Acts 14:4; Acts 14:14). St. Paul himself also in two different Epistles holds similar language (Galatians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 9:5). If, therefore, St. Paul has held a larger place than Barnabas, in the gratitude and veneration of the Church of all ages, this is due not to any superiority of rank or office, but to the ascendency of his personal gifts, a more intense energy and self-devotion, wider and deeper sympathies, a firmer intellectual grasp, a larger measure of the Spirit of Christ. It may be added also, that only by such an extension of the office could any footing be found for the pretensions of the false apostles (2 Corinthians 11:13; Revelation 2:2). Had the number been definitely restricted, the claims of these interlopers would have been self-condemned. But if the term is so extended, can we determine the limit to its extension? This will depend on the answer given to such questions as these:--What was the nature of the call? What were the necessary qualifications for the office? What were the duties attached to it? The facts gathered from the New Testament are insufficient to supply a decisive answer to these questions; but they enable us to draw roughly the line by which the apostolate was bounded.1. The rank of an apostle. The first order in the Church (1 Corinthians 12:28-29; Ephesians 4:11). 2. Tests of apostleship. (1) Having seen Christ after His resurrection (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8; Acts 1:21-22). This knowledge was supplied to St. Paul miraculously. (2) Possessing the powers of an apostle (1 Corinthians 9:1-2; 2 Corinthians 12:1-2). These “ signs” our modern conceptions would lead us to separate into two classes. The one of these includes moral and spiritual gifts--patience, self-denial, effective preaching; the other comprises such powers as we call supernatural. (Bishop Lightfoot.)Necessity of a Divine call Wert thou wiser than Solomon and Daniel, yet until thou art called, flee the sacred ministry, as thou would’ st hell and the devil; then wilt thou not spill the Word of God to no purpose. If God needs thee, He will know how to call thee. (Luther.)St. Paul’ s call to the apostleship There is something very grand in the conversion of a man who has been so fierce an enemy as St. Paul was; it makes us feel that the gospel is indeed the power of God unto salvation: for no other power would be equal to the task of taming so fierce a spirit, and yet of losing none of its power, but turning it to edification instead of destruction. I. Why was St. Paul called to be an apostle? St. Paul asserts his apostleship: for the reason that his call and commission were made after the ascension of our Lord, and after the number of the apostles would appear to have been completed. Judas proved unworthy of his sacred trust. The twelve felt that their body was incomplete. St. Peter urged the selection of another; Matthias was chosen. I venture to say that St. Peter was wrong in this instance. The assembled disciples had no power to elect such an apostle; and Matthias was not in the full sense an apostle of Jesus Christ. When he was chosen, the Holy Spirit was not yet poured out; the eleven were not yet endued with power from on high for the discharge of their sacred office. St. Peter might therefore be wrong in this instance, however unintentionally he might have erred. It did not belong to any human assembly to choose those who could only be chosen by Christ Himself. The peculiar characteristic of the apostolate was that each one was personally called by Christ Himself; this was their authority and glory. The body of the disciples had not this power; therefore Matthias was not duly called to the apostleship. Nothing is afterwards heard of him in the sacred writings. If it is objected that we hear little of the other apostles after this date, we have at any rate heard of them before, and have known that they were called by Christ. Hence St. Paul was the new twelfth apostle; and was not called of men as was Matthias. Nobly has he filled the trust betrayed by the Traitor. The dignity, and sanctity of the pastoral office: when the Blessed Trinity ordain and commission the minister, he will go forth with power; but if only of man little more will be heard of him. II. The manner in which he was called and instructed. Though the voice of Jesus addressed him, this was not the means used for directing his soul to peace. God sent a man to instruct him. To us men is committed the word of grace. To “ the Man Christ Jesus” was committed the glorious ministry of the gospel. (A. J. J. Cachemaille.)Apostolic salutation and vindication of apostolic teaching I. This salutation embraces a vindication of apostolic authority. The Church sometimes fails to understand and estimate the honour which Christ bestows upon His chosen servants. II. This salutation embraces a defence of apostolic doctrine. “ Who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.”1. Christ’ s work was voluntary. “ He gave Himself.” 2. Christ’ s work was vicarious. “ He gave Himself for our sins.” 3. Christ’ s work was redemptive. “ That He might deliver us from this present evil world.” The idea here expressed is that of rescuing from danger. 4. Christ’ s redemptive work is in harmony with the will of the Father. There is no separation, much less antagonism, between the will of the Father and of the Son in saving. 5. Christ’ s redemptive work secures the highest praise of God. “ To Him be glory for ever and ever.” III. This salutation embraces a profound desire for the bestowal of highest blessings. “ Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.” The greetings men offer each other are determined by the views they entertain of life. They wish each other health, long life, success, enjoyment. But Christians acknowledge another and a higher life. “ These two words comprehend whatever belongs to Christianity. Grace releaseth sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet.”--Luther.This desire for the highest welfare of the Galatians was the harmonious out-flow of the unselfish love of Paul and his fellow-labourers. “ And all the brethren which are,” etc. Lessons:1. It is sometimes necessary for God’ s servants to defend their office and teaching. 2. We learn the Spirit we should cherish toward men. We can desire for others no greater blessings than grace and peace. (Richard Nicholls.)The divinity of the gospel 1. Its ministers are divinely commissioned.2. Its blessings are divinely secured.3. Its end is the Divine glory. (J. Lyth.)Paul an apostle Observe-- I. That as Paul puts his call to the apostleship in the forefront of the Epistle, so every minister must have a good and lawful call. II. That as Paul says, “ Not of man,” etc., So every lawful call is from God.1. God only can call.2. The Church can only consent and approve. III. That as Paul proclaims his call, so the call of every minister must be manifest to his conscience and his hearers. Ministers--1. Are God’ s ambassadors.2. Need divine help.3. Require human obedience. IV. That Paul indicates three kinds of call.1. Human and not Divine--false teachers.2. Divine though human--ordinary ministers.3. Wholly Divine--apostles. V. That as the property of an apostle is to be called immediately by Christ, it follows that the apostolic office ceased with those who filled it. (W. Perkins.)Paul’ s insistance on his apostleship Who was Paul? Had he sat at the feet of the Master? Had he even seen Christ, or received his commission direct from Him? These questions were asked often and openly, as we gather from Paul’ s eagerness in all his Epistles to reply to them. More than once he goes thoroughly into the matter (1 Corinthians 9:1-27.; 2 Corinthians 11:1-33.; Ephesians 3:7; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Timothy 1:1-20.; Titus 1:3), and the superscriptions and subscription of his letters show how he felt the need of thus vindicating himself from false imputations. (E. Reuss, B. A.)Genuine and spurious apostles The true apostle is like the tree which grows out of the soil and brings forth out of its own inherent vitality living fruit and foliage. The false apostle resembles the artificial tree which is stuck in the soil, and can only bear such painted leaves and fruit as are affixed by the hand of man. Hence the anxiety of Paul to show that man had nothing to do with making him an apostle. The true apostolical succession Though you have a straight line of apostolical ancestors, if your work is poor, you are not in the line of the succession; and if your Church does not make full-grown men, it is not. I do not care about the pedigree of my grapes if my vineyard bears better fruit than yours. You may say that yours came from those which Noah planted--but “ by their fruits shall ye know them.” And the tests of all churches, doctrines, usages, governments, is this: What are their effects on the generations of men. (H. W. Beecher.)The apostles defined It was essential to their office that--1. They should have seen the Lord, and been ear and eye-witnesses of what they testified to the world. 2. They must have been immediately called and chosen to that office by Christ Himself. 3. Infallible inspiration was also essentially necessary to that office. 4. Another qualification was the power of working miracles. 5. To these qualifications may be added the universality of their commission. (J. McLean.)Christ the fountain of gospel teaching See what a plenty of wisdom is in Christ, who is the great doctor of His Church, and gives saving knowledge to all His people. The body of the sun must be needs full of brightness that enlightens the whole world. Christ is the great luminary; in Him are hid all the treasures of knowledge. We are apt to admire the learning of Aristotle and Plato. Alas l what is this poor spark of light to that which is in Christ from whose infinite wisdom both men and angels light their lamp. (T. Watson.) Galatians 1:2 And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia.Church unity Our religion is not designed to terminate upon ourselves, but to benefit those with whom we associate. As the touched needle has the power to impart something of its own magnetic virtue to kindred substances brought into contact with it, so true grace is always communicative, and delights to diffuse the moral impressions which it has received. The early Churches set a noble pattern, in this respect, to the men of succeeding times. I. Their unity of sentiment in the fundamental doctrines of Christian faith. Paul blends the testimony of his brethren in the ministry with his own to show that he stood not alone in his views of Christian doctrine; and they delight to bear their concurrent attestation in favour of the truths he proclaimed, and against the errors he condemned. II. Their unity of affection. “ All the brethren that are with me, to the Churches of Galatia.” Amidst some discrepancy of opinion, there was much love at heart, which yet did not prevent their bearing a faithful and energetic protest against the dangerous views newly entertained by their Galatian friends, upon the subject of the incorporation of the Jewish rites with the Christian faith. The truth of grace in others should be the most powerful loadstone to attract our regards towards them. For one man to love another, chiefly because he is of his own opinion and party, is little better than a refined species of selfishness, as he does but embrace his own shadow which he sees falling upon his brother’ s breast. III. Mark also their unity in prayer, for spiritual blessings to descend upon those to whom they wrote--“ Grace be to you and peace, from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” (The Evangelist.)A word to pastors and people I. To pastors.1. Don’ t lord it over your people: they are “ brethren.” 2. Take them into your confidence: not to confirm your authority, but because they have an interest in your work. 3. Secure their sympathy: it “ will be your solace when you are dealing with crafty Judaizers. 4. Carry them with you. You will need them (1) in bodily affliction;(2) in exceptional difficulties. II. To people,1. Your pastor is not your slave but your “ brother” : love and esteem him. 2. He is the servant of Christ and the Church, and you are his fellowservants: give him sympathy and co-operation. 3. He is your leader: follow him; let him speak not only in his own name but yours, because (1) you have common interests,(2) these interests can only be preserved by unanimity (Philippians 1:27). There is no relationship like that founded on the sanctity of religion. Between you and me that sanctity exists. I stood by your side when you awoke in the dark valley of conviction and owned yourselves lost. I led you by the hand out of the darkness. By your side I have prayed, and my tears have mingled with yours. I have bathed you in the crystal waters of a holy baptism; and when you sang the song of the ransomed captive it filled my heart with a joy as great as your own. Love beginning in such scenes and drawn from so sacred a fountain is not commercial, is not fluctuating. Amid severe toils and not a few anxieties it is a crown of rejoicing to a pastor. (H. W. Beecher.)The Churches of Galatia I. Their locality. Probably the seats of the most ancient bishoprics.1. Ancyra, the capital.2. Pessinus, the great emporium.3. Tavium, the junction of many roads.4. Juliopolis, in the centre of the land. Note Paul’ s sagacity in choosing such serviceable centres. II. Their members.1. The native Gaulo-Phrygians--an impulsive, inquisitive, imaginative, and superstitious race; worshippers of Cybele, whose cult involved wild ceremonial and horrible mutilations.2. Jews and proselytes.3. Roman colonists. III. Their planting.1. During second missionary tour (Acts 16:6).2. Under afflictive circumstances (Galatians 4:13).3. With warm enthusiasm (Galatians 4:15). Rapid growth, rapid decadence. IV. Their character.1. Their natural imaginativeness and impulsiveness moulded by grace.2. Many churches, but one Church.3. True churches, though in error. V. Their early history.1. Confirmed during third missionary tour (Acts 18:23).2. Corrupted by Judaizers.3. Rebuked and perhaps reclaimed by Paul (2 Timothy 4:10). 4. Strongholds of heresy during second and third centuries.5. Purged by the Diocletian persecution.6. Triumphant over Julian. What is a church? A band of faithful men Met for God’ s worship in some humble room, Or screened from foes by midnight’ s starlit gloom, On hillside or lone glen To hear the counsels of God’ s Holy Word Pledged to each other and their common Lord. These, few as they may be, Compose a Church, such as in pristine ages Defied the tyrant’ s steel, the bigot’ s rage. For, when but two or three, Whate’ er the place, in faith’ s communion meet, There, with Christ present, is a Church complete. The Galatian people When the vast tide of Aryan migration began to set to the westward the Celtic family was among the earliest to stream away. They gradually occupied a great part of the centre and west of Europe, and their various tribes were swept hither and thither by various currents. One of their Brennuses, four centuries b.c., inflicted on Rome its deepest humiliation. Another, 111 years later, ravaged Northern Greece, and when its hordes were driven back at Delphi they found another body under Leonnorius and Lutarius, and established themselves in the northern regions of Asia Minor. But their exactions soon roused an opposition which led to their confinement to the central region. Here we find them in three tribes: the Tolistobogii, with their capital Pessinus; the Tectosages, with their capital Ancyra; the Trocmi, with their capital Tavium. These tribes were, in b.c. 65, united under Deiotarus, tetrarch of the Tolistobogii. The Romans had conquered them in b.c. 189, but had left them nominally independent; and in b.c. 36 Mark Antony made Amyntas king. On his death, b.c. 25, Galatia was joined to Lycaonia and part of Pisidia, and made a Roman province. This was its political condition when Paul entered Pessinus. (F. W. Farrar.)Note-- I. The brotherhood of Christians; II. Their united action; III. Their interest in distant churches. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 1:3 Grace be to you and peace.St. Paul’ s salutation Here is the salutation, wherein he wishes them God’ s gracious favour and goodwill, whereby He is well-pleased with the elect, in and for Christ (Romans 3:24), and peace; i.e. 1. Peace of conscience, and with God (Romans 5:1). 2. Peace with the creatures, as with the angels (Colossians 1:20); with the godly (Isaiah 11:9); with ourselves, all within us being conformed to the rule of the renewed mind (Romans 8:1); and in some respects with our enemies (Proverbs 16:7); and with the beasts of the field (Hosea 2:18). 3. Prosperity and good success (Psalms 122:7). All which he seeks from God the Father as the fountain of grace, and from Jesus Christ as the conduit or pipe to convey grace from the Father unto us (John 1:16). (James Fergusson.)The manner of obtaining grace and peace 1. God’ s gracious favour and goodwill is to be sought by us in the first place, whether for ourselves (Psalms 4:6) or others. All things are mercy to the man who has obtained that mercy. 2. Peace also is to be sought--after grace, not before it. Peace without grace is no peace (Isaiah 57:21). 3. Grace and peace are such as we cannot acquire unto ourselves by our own industry or pains: they come from God, are to be sought from Him, and His blessing is more to be depended upon for attaining of anything which comes under the compass of grace and peace, than our own wisdom, industry, or diligence. 4. Whatever favour we seek from God, we are to seek it also from Jesus Christ as mediator; for He has purchased it (Ephesians 1:7). He is appointed Lord of His own purchase, and there is no coming to, or meeting with, the Father but in Him (John 14:6). 5. They to whom grace and peace belong, are such as acknowledge Jesus for their Lord to command and rule them, and do yield subjection to Him in their heart and life. Grace and peace Grace releases sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet. The two friends that torment us are sin and conscience. But Christ has vanquished these two monsters, and trodden them under foot, both in this world and in the world to come. This the world does not know, and therefore it can teach no certainty of the overcoming of sin, conscience, and death. Only Christians have this kind of doctrine, and are exercised and armed with it, to get victory against sin, despair, and everlasting death. And it is a kind of doctrine, neither proceeding of freewill, nor invented by the reason or wisdom of man, but given from above. Moreover, these two words, grace and peace, do contain in them the whole sum of Christianity. Grace contains the remission of sins; peace, a quiet and joyful conscience. But peace of conscience can never be had, unless sin be first forgiven. But sin is not forgiven for the fulfilling of the law: for no man is able to satisfy the law. But the law rather shows sin, accuses and terrifies the conscience, declares the wrath of God, and drives to desperation. Much less is sin taken away by the works and inventions of men, as wicked worshippings, strange religions, vows, and pilgrimages. Finally, there is no work that can take away sin, but sin is rather increased by works. For the justiciaries and meritmongers, the more they labour and sweat to bring themselves out of sin, the deeper they are plunged therein. For there is no means to take away sin, but grace alone. Therefore Paul, in all the greetings of his Epistle, sets grace and peace against sin and an evil conscience. (Luther.)Heavenly blessings alone avail The apostle fitly distinguishes this grace and peace from all other kinds of grace and peace whatsoever. He wishes to the Galatians grace and peace, not from the emperor or kings and princes, for those do commonly persecute the godly, and rise up against the Lord and Christ but from God our Father: which is as much as to say, he wished them a heavenly peace. The peace of the world grants nothing but the peace of our goods and bodies. So the grace or favour of the world gives us leave to enjoy our goods, and casts us not out of our possessions. But in affliction, and in the hour of death, the grace and favour of the world cannot help us; they cannot deliver us from affliction, despair, and death. But when the grace and peace of God are in the heart, then is man strong, so that he can neither be cast down with adversity, nor puffed up with prosperity, but walketh on plainly, and keepeth the highway. For he taketh heart and courage in the victory of Christ’ s death: and the confidence thereof beginneth to reign in his conscience over sin and death; because, through Him, he hath assured forgiveness of his sins: which, after he has once obtained, his conscience is at rest, and by the word of grace is comforted. (Luther.)Paul’ s customary greeting A Greek and Hebrew salutation, expressing the apostle’ s best wish. I. Grace. A Greek thought Christianized. Takes the conception of beauty of form, gesture, tone, into the spiritual realm. As here used--1. It is to be regarded as the attitude of God in Christ towards men. The Divine pity, gentleness, favour; the bearing of a condescending, forgiving, loving God. 2. It is to be possessed as the spirit of a Christian. “ Grace of life.” Moral beauty. The indwelling in Christian character of all that the Greeks conceived in their “ Three Graces.” II. Peace. May include--1. Freedom from persecution--a great desideratum. 2. Absence of internal dissention--main purpose of this letter. 3. Inward calm and quiet confidence in God--ideal peace. The wish of Paul the gift of Jesus. (U. R. Thomas.)I. The eternal love of God as it sends the Redeemer for man’ s salvation is Grace. II. The fruit of grace flowing from God through Christ is PEACE.1. Sometimes mercy is the channel through which grace becomes peace when the invocation is addressed to an individual (1 Timothy 1:16 cf. verse 2). 2. For the Church it is enough that grace in heaven has peace as its counterpart on earth. It is (1) reconciliation with God;(2) the tranquil harmony of all the faculties of the soul;(3) the fellowship of brotherly love;(4) victory in the conflict with evil;(5) the earnest of everlasting rest. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)I. A Formula. The heathen commenced their letters with “ Health!” The apostle wished his readers something higher than health or happiness, so he commences “ Grace and peace.” II. A benediction. But how in the case of those who rejected grace, or, by unbelief, forfeited peace? In the same way as the minister declares absolution, which is lost if a man rejects it. He has done what he could to show that in Christ there is full absolution for the sinner if he will take it. (F. W. Robertson.).Peace from God The child frightened in his play runs to seek his mother. She takes him upon her lap, and presses his head to her bosom; and, with tenderest words of love, she looks down upon him, and smoothes his hair, and kisses his cheek, and wipes away his tears. And then, in a low and gentle voice, she sings some sweet descant, some lullaby of love; and the fear fades out from his face, and a smile of satisfaction plays over it, and at length his eyes close, and he sleeps in the deep depths and delights of peace. God Almighty is the mother, and the soul is the tired child; and He folds it in His arms and dispels its fear, and lulls it to repose, saying, “ Sleep, my darling, sleep! It is I who watch thee.” “ He giveth His beloved sleep.” The mother’ s arms encircle but one; but God clasps every yearning soul to His bosom, and gives to it the peace which passeth understanding, beyond the reach of care or storm. (H. W. Beecher.)Peace through Christ The tree of peace strikes its roots into the crevices of the everlasting rock. It grows securely from that rock, and casts out its cool shadow in the sunshine, and makes sweet music in the storm; and is to the believer as the shadow of a great rock and fruit of refreshment in a weary and parched land. (Dr. Cumming.)Peace experienced I have read that a soldier, dying in the Crimea, requested to have the passage read to him, “ Peace I leave with you,” etc. When it was done, he said, “ I have that peace. I am going to that Saviour. God is with me: I want no more,” and expired. The pastor’ s prayer I. The blessings desired--their nature--connexion, grace may exist without peace, but not peace without grace; yet peace flows from grace. II. Their source--God the Father is the fountain of all grace--Christ is the medium of communication. III. Their supply--free--sufficient for all--constant--inexhaustible. (J. Lyth.). Galatians 1:4-5 Who gave Himself for our sins.Christ’ s giving Himself to death 1. Its occasion: our sins.2. Its purpose: our deliverance therefrom. Or--1. The strongest testimony against us.2. The mightiest consolation for us. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The atonement 1. Its great effect: to deliver us from this evil world.2. Whence it has this effect: as being a satisfying and bearing, and thereby a taking away of the Divine wrath.3. In whom it is thus effectual: only in those who are His in faith. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The appropriation of Christ’ s merits 1. Every one needs it on account of his sins.2. The sinner needs it precisely as sinner. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The Christian’ s surrender If Christ has for our sakes given His all, ah! should not we surrender ourselves, with all that in us is, to Him? Man! keep thyself from sin, on account of which Christ hath endured so much lest thou thyself bring to nought for Him this great work for which He came. (Starke.)The Christian’ s treatment of this world The character of this world is evil:1. Therefore the Christian in this world longs for the world to come.2. He must, however, be delivered from this present world, in order to enter the world to come. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Redemption through Christ rests upon the will of God 1. This is a rich consolation against all doubts. 2. At the same time it conveys an earnest admonition; for, whoever lightly esteems the redemption accomplished through Christ, sins thereby against the will of God Himself. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The power of the Cross Christ by His death introduced a new power into the world: a power by means of which man is rescued from the tyranny of sin, the captive is set free. I. The redemptive act of Christ.1. It was voluntary. He “ gave Himself.” No opposition of will between the Father and the Son. God’ s mercy is just, and His justice is merciful. 2. It was vicarious. He gave Himself “ for our sins.” His life was sacrificed in place of ours. Suffering was endured by Him which must otherwise have fallen upon us. II. The design of Christ in thus giving himself for our sins. To deliver us from this present evil world. To free us from the condemnation and from the power of sin.1. The Cross of Christ declares to man the will of a righteous and loving Father. It is at once a witness to His righteousness, and a pledge of His mercy. 2. The Cross reveals sin put away by the sacrifice of Christ. 3. The Cross reveals to man the love of Christ. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Particular application of Christ’ s merits Mark diligently the word “ our,” for therein lies all the virtue, viz., that all which is said concerning us in Holy Scriptures, in such passages as “ for me,” “ for us,” “ for our sin,” and the like, we should know how to take well in mind, and apply particularly to ourselves, and hold fast thereto by faith. (Luther.)Our Father’ s redemptive purposes I. The will of God concerning us.1. Distinguish between the desire of a (1) king concerning his subjects--to suppress their rebellion;(2) a master concerning his servants--to enforce their obedience;(3) a father concerning his children--to win their liberty, rectitude, and love. 2. So our heavenly Father desires to win us from the bondage of sin to Himself. (1) He only can estimate this bondage aright.(2) His purpose is to deliver us from it. II. The gracious way in which our Father works out His will.1. Jesus is the liberator.2. He has gained the liberating power.3. He uses this power in His self-sacrifice.4. He liberates by (1) training our trustful love;(2) gaining entrance into our lives. (R. Tuck, B. A.)The grand in Christianity I. In its history. The grand fact of Christianity, its corner stone, the key-note of all its melodies, is “ Who gave Himself” (1 Timothy 2:6; Titus 2:14; Galatians 2:20).1. The greatest gift of love.2. The model gift of love. Self-sacrifice should be (1) systematic;(2) spiritual. II. In its purpose. “ World,” not nature, but the carnal, selfish, and devilish ἀίων. Christ came to deliver us from sin.1. Its guilt.2. Its pollution.3. Its dominion. III. In its spring. The “ will of God” --1. Originated the mission of Christ.2. Met with the hearty concurrence of Christ (Hebrews 10:7-9). IV. In its issue (verse 5).1. This doxology is usual after the mention of God’ s wonderful love (Romans 11:6; Ephesians 3:21; 1 Timothy 1:17). 2. The great end of redemption is (1) the right,(2) the unceasing worship of the infinite Father. (D. Thomas, D. D.)The present evil world This is not the beautiful universe, not humanity with its burden of sorrows and capacities for greatness; but the spirit of the age as far as it is a thing apart from God. It is not a thing of yesterday: it is a tradition of many ages and civilizations, to which each generation adds something of force, refinement, intellectual or social power, and the world is protean in its capacity for taking new forms. Sometimes it is gross idol worship; sometimes military empire; sometimes a cynical school of philosophy; sometimes the indifference of a blase society. The Church conquered it in the form of the old pagan empire; but the world had a terrible revenge when it could point to such Popes as Julius II., Alexander VI., or Leo X., and to such courts as those of Louis XIV., and Charles II. It had thrown itself at the heart of the Church, and now between it and Christendom there is no hard and fast line of demarcation. The world is within the sanctuary, within the heart, as well as without, and sweeps around each soul like a torrent of hot air, and makes itself felt at every pore of the moral system. It penetrates like a subtle atmosphere in Christendom, while in heathendom it is organized into various systems; but it is the same thing at bottom. It is the essential spirit of corrupt human life, taking no serious account of God, either forgetting Him altogether or putting something in His place, or striking a balance between His claims and those of His antagonists: and thus it is at enmity with God, and thus Christ came to deliver us from it, and thus the first duty of His servants is to free themselves from its power. (Canon Liddon.)Paul’ s gospel A great statesman has no policy; he accepts a few leading principles, his wisdom being to show how these principles apply to the various occasions of human life. And, similarly, the leading rules of St. Paul’ s gospel were a few inductions, the application of which is universal. These are the redemption of man by the sacrifice of Christ, the four facts of which are of enormous extent and are exhibited under a multitude of phases,--redemption, the nature of man, sacrifice, the nature of Christ. Can any conception be more vast? Can any interest be more absorbing? (Paul of Tarsus.)Redemption by the life of Christ We are familiar with the expression that Christ gave His life for man, and I would not take away anything from the meaning and magnitude of the act of dying. But I should be glad to give more emphasis to the facts that Christ gave His life as much while He was living as when He was dying, and that to give life may mean either to use it or lay it down. He gave Himself--in dying indeed, but also in living. All His life was a giving. Although comprehensively viewed it was a single gift, yet it was also a continuous gift, developing in every direction, and for the redemption of lost souls. (H. W. Beecher.)Redemption by the substitutionary death of Christ In one of the back courts of Paris a fire broke out in the dead of night. The houses were built so that the higher stories overhung the foundation. A father, who was sleeping with his children in the top garret, was suddenly awakened by the flames and smoke. The man sprang out of bed and vaulted to the window of the opposite house. Then placing his feet firmly against the window sill, he launched his body forward and grasped the window of the burning house, and shouting to his eldest boy he said, “ Now, my boy, make haste; crawl over my body.” This was done. The second and third followed. The fourth, a little fellow, would only do so after much persuasion: but as he was passing on he heard his father say, “ Quick! quick! quick! I cannot hold out much longer,” and as the voices of friends were heard announcing his safety, the hold of the strong man relaxed, and with a heavy crash fell a lifeless corpse into the court below. So Jesus in His own sacred body provides a bridge whereby we may cross the chasm between us and God. The way home is through the rent veil, tile crucified flesh, of our Immanuel. (W. H. M. H. Aitken.)Love’ s delight Love delights in the contemplation of the glory of its object, in the recollection of benefits enjoyed, and in every fit opportunity of renewing the mention of the one beloved name. Our Lord is here presented: I. As the greatest of all benefactors. Christ “ gave.” II. As actually conferring the most precious and costly donation--“ He gave Himself.” In creation Christ gave the creatures to man; in redemption He gave Himself. III. As contemplating, in the gift, the highest moral object--“ For our sins.” IV. As securing the highest revenue of glory to the Divine character and administration. It was “ according to the will of God,” the love of the Father being the originating cause of salvation: “ to whom be glory for ever,” --a devout ascription in which all the redeemed family, and all assembled worlds, will unite. But these topics are not more impressive in themselves than they are applicable to the scope and bearing of the apostle’ s argument, which was designed to convict the Galatians, and especially the Hebrew converts among them, of criminal folly in undervaluing the truth and grace of the gospel dispensation. For if Christ, whom they owned us Messiah, gave Himself for them, then were they guilty of the deepest ingratitude in deserting the standard of such a benefactor. If Christ came to rescue them from sin, and from the rigid discipline of the legal ceremonies, and from the servitude of “ this present evil world,” then how ineffably absurd was it to go back again to the hard bondage whence they had been delivered! If this new and wonderful economy had been introduced “ according to the will of God and our Father,” then how inconsistent and unfilial a line of conduct must it be, for adopted sons thus to oppose the Divine designs. (The Evangelist.)Who gave Himself I. The gift conferred--“ He gave Himself.” The Lord Jesus Christ.1. Look at the relation He sustains to God. Compared with Christ all the angels are infinitely less, than to you is the minutest mote that floats in the sunbeam. 2. Though God He is also man--“ The man Christ Jesus.” 3. Although God, and although man, remember He was also incarnate God; God and man in one Person. 4. While He lived on earth He was emphatically the Holy One. This was the Being who gave Himself. II. The purpose for which he gave himself--“ For our sins.” This assertion throws light upon the doctrine of atonement. That doctrine is based upon two incontrovertable positions first, that God is a perfect Governor; second, that man is a rebel against God’ s perfect government. How shall the Governor, without departing from the inherent perfection of His administration for good, admit the rebel man to His favour? Jesus gave Himself to this end. (A. B. Jack.)Jesus Himself the redemptive gift For three and thirty years He bore the penalty of sin, an endurance which was consummated when He suffered for us on Calvary. And if you say His sufferings were temporary, and ours should have been eternal, I pray you to remember that His Godhead--and there is the power of His divinity, without which I believe no atonement could be made--that His Godhead gave these services and sufferings a value in the eye of justice far greater than all the services and all the sufferings of all God’ s creatures. And it is easy to understand this. Just as the death of the Prince Royal of England, the heir apparent to the British throne, the oldest son of Victoria, would more honour the law of England, were he to die to-morrow on the scaffold, than the deaths of all the felons imprisoned in her jails--and you can fancy such a things; it needs fancy, for it was never shown on earth, the court and the country mourning, the palace plunged in grief, every cottage pale with astonishment, the news of it travelling on the wings of lightning from city to city, and travelling on the wings of the wind across the wave, a mighty multitude assembled, women weeping, and men’ s hearts beating, every eye in that sea of heads suffused with tears, while he who was born for a palace, born for a throne, steps forth from the prison to the gallows, to die in the room of the guilty--I say, brethren, just- as the death of that Prince would more honour the law of England than the death of ten hundred victims drawn from the lowest and vilest haunts of society, so the death of Jesus Christ hath honoured the law of God, and now in virtue of what Christ did, and in virtue of what Christ suffered, God stands forth by the cross, not only just, but the justifier of every one who believeth in Jesus. (A. B. Jack.)Jesus giving Himself for our sins A friend of mine who, in the days of slavery, was accustomed to visit an old coloured man in his cabin, to read the Bible to him, and to converse with him about good things, mentioned a little circumstance to me, which can best be told in his own words. “ Upon such occasions, I would sometimes request him to say what part of the Bible I should read; but this he would never willingly do. ‘ Any part, master, for it’ s all good.’ His reason for this unwillingness he never gave. I divined, however, that he thought it irreverent to give a preference to any portion of the message, the whole of which was from God Himself. After coaxing him in vain, I would say, ‘ Well, if you can’ t tell me what you would like to hear, I may as well go back to the house.’ Then would come the ready answer, and unvarying: ‘ If it pleases you, sir, I’ d rather hear about the sufferings of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.’ From the moment the reading began, his whole being and consciousness seemed to be absorbed by it; and though no articulate word escaped him, the groans and sighs that accompanied the reading throughout, giving emphasis and expression to the words as they fell from my lips, bespoke unutterable fellowship of the sufferings of Jesus. Never before had I begun to enter into the unfathomable depths of that amazing tragedy as I then did. Never before or since have I heard anything from the pulpit that approached this in force and clearness of exposition. Such was the effect upon each of us that I was compelled to pause at intervals to recover a sufficient degree of composure to admit of my proceeding. There was preaching indeed; for the Holy Ghost Himself was the Preacher; preaching to my dear old friend through me, and to me through him, and to both of us through the written Word.” (J. H. Norton.)Deliverance through sacrifice On the 10th of June, 1770, the town of Port-au-Prince, in Hayti, was utterly overthrown by a dreadful earthquake. From one of the fallen houses the inmates had fled, except a negro woman, the nurse of her master’ s infant child. She would not desert her charge, though the walls were even then giving way. Rushing to its bed-side, she stretched forth her arms to enfold it. The building rocked to its foundation; the roof fell in. Did it crush the hapless pair? The heavy fragments fell indeed upon the woman, but the infant escaped unharmed: for its noble protectress extended her bended form across the body, and, at the sacrifice of her own life, preserved her charge from destruction. Christ gave Himself up for us When the Birkenhead, with five hundred soldiers on board, was sinking, the soldiers were drawn up in their ranks on the deck of the ship while the women and children were quietly put into one of the boats. Every one of them did as he was directed, and there was not a murmur or a cry among them till the vessel made her final plunge. Even so, silently and uncomplainingly, did Christ “ give Himself up” (Rev. Ver.) for our salvation. (R. Brewin.)What shall we do then for Christ Did Simon start from his couch, deeming it beneath his Master’ s dignity to stoop to a menial office, and wash his servant’ s feet? And can we contemplate the Son of God, not stooping to wash us with water, but dying to wash us with His own precious blood, without these words bursting from our lips, “ Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?” Nay rather, should not, and shall not this be our language, That Thou hast done for me, what shall I do for Thee? What? but fondly embrace Thee with all my affections, love Thee with all my heart, serve Thee with all my powers, and, denying myself, but never Thee, say, “ What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits? I will take the cup of salvation, and pay my vows to the Lord, now in the presence of all His people.” (Dr. Guthrie.)Here is-- I. A great fact. II. A glorious purpose. III. An adequate power. IV. A grand consummation. (J. Lyth.)The sacrifice of Christ is I. Voluntary. II. Vicarious. III. Worthy. IV. Divinely appointed. V. Efficient. (J. Lyth.)An evil world I. The principal fact of the gospel is, that Jesus Christ “ gave Himself for our sins.”1. “ For our sins” --there was the occasion for this act. Did you ever reflect, my brethren, on the peculiar nature of this property, which is here said to belong to us--“ our sins” ? They are the only thing which we can truly call our own. Everything else that we possess, is given--nay, it is but lent to us; it came, in many instances, without our seeking, and we must quickly part with it again. But “ our sins” are our own. The possession of them is of our own making and acquiring. We may, indeed, have had partners, prompters, assistants--each of whom has thereby added to his own accumulation of this property. But our share remains undiminished--there is none to divide it with us. And, what is worse, it is a property which, when once acquired, cannot be alienated or put away. Need I say, that it is a most worthless, most injurious, nay, ruinous possession? There is indeed good reason for all this anxiety: for our sins both deprive us of many present blessings, and entail upon us many future woes. 2. Our text, my brethren, while it names the great fact of the gospel, answers this difficult question. Christ “ gave Himself for our sins” --and that in such a manner, as to leave the fatal property just what it was, hateful, and condemned by God and man, while its owner is set free from its curse. “ Take Me,” He exclaimed, “ instead of those sins.” True, they are still “ our sins,” and we must be humbled for them, and repent of them; but, by faith casting them afresh on the atoning Saviour, we shall find that they can no more interrupt our intercourse with God as a friend, than if they had never been committed. II. Its intended effect. Christ gave Himself for our sins, “ that He might deliver us from this present evil world”1. “ This present world” is “ evil,” because it is a rebellious world. It has apostatized from the service of its true and rightful Master--of Him who made it. 2. “ This present world” is “ evil,” because it is a corrupting world. When sinners have been reclaimed from it, they are still liable to be “ again entangled therein and overcome.” 3. “ This present world,” is “ evil,” for it is a doomed world. It bears upon every part of it the sentence of condemnation. (J. Jowett, M. A.)Christ delivering believers from this present evil world Let us now look at this rescue or deliverance as the principal subject of thought in the verse of our text. The world spoken of is the present world; it is called evil, and so, if this word evil has any force, the deliverance is a moral and spiritual deliverance, A commentator of great name translates, instead of the present world, the impending world or age--that is, the age of apostasy and of the second coming of Christ as a Judge. But this is unnecessary and improbable. The word rendered present is the same which occurs in the passage, “ Things present and things to come;” it is used by the grammarians to denote the present tense as contrasted with the future; and it is a truly Christian idea, that escape from present sin and present corruption was offered by our Lord in His gospel and made possible for us by His death. But what is meant by the world, and in what sense is it an evil world? There are two words used in the New Testament where we find world in our translation. One (κόμος) makes prominent the order or system of things as it exists in space, the other (αἰών) the course or flow of events in time. The two words, as denoting men, the inhabitants of the earth or world, in their present condition of estrangement from God as to their feelings, habits, character, in the world and in the ages of time, are used indiscriminately. In one or two instances the word αἰών is made to signify the material creation; κόσμος, just as our word world, which at first denoted an age of men, has come steadily to have the signification of the material earth or universe. We see from this exposition how and why the world is called evil. If Christ or His apostles have taught that in the order of created things evil is inherent, that this visible world is essentially a vile and corrupt place, owing to its material elements, they would have given sanction to the Gnostic doctrine that God, the supreme and the pure, is not the maker of heaven and earth, but that some other being made them, who is essentially imperfect. Thus Christian morality would have coincided with that ascetical system that has done so much mischief in the world, by teaching that escape from evil consists in extinction of desire, in abstinence from all that gratifies the senses, seclusion from society and absorption in contemplation of the Godhead. In this way we should have had a Christianity which was unfit for the mass of mankind, and which had the seeds of death in itself. Certainly, this was not the view of the world which He took who said, “ I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from evil.” To the follower of Christ, then, the world, as continued by its Great Maker, in its structure, its sights and sounds, its influences on the soul, cannot appear to be evil. The present creation, though it may have fallen, with man, from a more perfect beauty that once belonged to it, is only good, just as it was at the first, “ when God saw everything that He had made and, behold, it was very good.” The sky and clouds are good, although sometimes monotonous rain-clouds cover the face of the heavens. Nor can I see what can possibly make a Christian look on the outer world without joy, when, besides having the same sources of pleasure in it which others find, he sees a God and a Father reflected from the whole universe. It has been sometimes said that the great seriousness which Christianity throws into life, the pressure upon the Christian mind of an unseen world and of the great thoughts of trial and of duty, ought naturally to call him away from things outward and visible. He may be compared to the soldier just before battle. What leisure has he for the music of the birds and the sweet forms of flowers, when victory and death are close at hand? Or he may be compared to the man just ready to embark on a vessel, whose thoughts are turned away from the beautiful outline of the coast, or the floating clouds, and fastened on the great, immeasurable ocean. And so it is said that the culture springing from the world and from life, the refinement of the taste and sensibility to things beautiful, are not encouraged by Christianity. Its influences are one-sidedly moral: it is imperfect, when alone, as a discipline for man. Some of the early Christians showed this defect; the stricter religionists since have shown it. They have looked on the world as evil. In my apprehension this charge has no true foundation. The gospel aims to cultivate our nature, not to turn it into another nature. And this it tries to effect by bringing the most inspiring, elevating motives to bear on our life and character. But, setting the differences of men aside, the gospel has often awakened the slumbering seeds of feeling, the love of beauty or power of thought which lay dormant before, and it puts the soul in the best position to receive all the good, all the softening influences which God appointed for it in its education in this present world. How unlike Christ’ s gospel is, in its view of the present evil world, to the religions which have swayed and pressed upon the souls of the great Hindoo race. To them the world was filled with illusions; personal existence was an evil; the soul was on an almost endless transit from one form of life to another; the great goal afar off was absorption in the supreme essence; and self-torture was a means to this consummation. So dreary did this religion of Brahminism become, that the atheism and extinction promised by Buddhism became a positive blessing. This present evil world, then, is such as man has made it, not such as God made it. The very essential doctrine of Christianity is, that God made His revelation and sent His Son to stem and abridge this evil. Here we may see two thoughts in the text. First, it is a present evil world as contrasted with a future and an unseen world. The presence of evil in a visible form, in a society of men whom we cannot avoid and from good whom we ought not to withdraw, if we would, gives to it its principal power. The which resists this evil, on the other hand, is spiritual and distant; there is a conflict between forces that draw their power from unseen realities and forces that have the senses and our temporal state and human opinion on their side. Let us next, for a moment, look at the nature of the evil of the world. It is, first, evil mixed with good, founded on desires and principles which, but for sin in the world, would lead only to good. Hence, it is insidious. We scarce know what excess is, where we must stop, how far we may venture. We have for all this no exact rules, and can have none. Herein lies a great part of our danger, that the judge within is blinded and misguided by the evil without, so that the decisions in the court of conscience are iniquitous. Again, there is an unrighteous sway, even a terror, over us, wielded by the evil or defective opinions of society. If the apostles opposed a false religion, they who wanted just that kind of religion which appeases the conscience and suits a feeble religious sense, became their enemies, Or it may he that a peculiarity of an age of the world consists in a decay of faith, an atmosphere of doubt which seems to act on the minds of men without their being conscious of it. In the light of Scripture this is, indeed, present evil, for it destroys the power of motives and deadens the religious nature. I will speak of but one other characteristic of the evil that may be in the world; it is the accumulation of objects to gratify the desires, and even those desires which may be called voluptuous. In a simple condition of society, where there is little wealth and little division of labour, this is not the predominant evil. Thus, early Rome--and the same is true of almost all simple societies--was outwardly virtuous, reverential, law-abiding, for some generations, only to fall into the grossest condition, at the decline of the Republic and through the Empire, when all the vices in a mingled stream seemed to be overflowing mankind. The apostle saw this; he saw the same decay of good habits in the Greek countries which he traversed; he might, if alive now, see it at Paris; he might see the inroads of thoroughly worldly enjoyment among us. Society ruins itself in such a decline, and needs frightful judgments, wide-sweeping changes, to make it endurable. All this enervating, voluptuous influence must act on every member of society, unless he fights against it and forms himself, by the conflict, into a heroic character. All this philosophers have felt, as well as Christians. There is a celebrated passage in one of Plato’ s works, where he uses language something like the apostle’ s: “ Evil,” says Socrates (in Theaetetus, 176, a.b.), “ can never perish; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Of necessity they hover around this mortal sphere and the earthly nature, having no place among the gods in heaven. Wherefore, also, we ought to fly away thither; and to fly thither is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy, just, and wise.” Plato saw the evil, and longed for a deliverance, and looked to wisdom and to the inspiration of moral beauty as the best means which he could offer. We look on him as one of the noblest of men, but we have a better guide--even Him who said, “ I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” His prayer was fulfilled. God has rescued many from the power of darkness and brought them into the kingdom of His dear Son. This rescue was accomplished by Christ, says the apostle, in His giving Himself for us. The first step is the offer of forgiveness of sins, which is procured, according to the uniform testimony of Scripture, by the death of Christ. Without this assurance of receiving pardon and help the sense of sin would be a paralysis of the soul’ s active powers; and there would be, after a few fruitless efforts, a despair of making progress toward a holy and a perfect life. Christ’ s disclosure of the evil of sin would then have been only a ministry of wrath and of death. Secondly, the soul is thus opened to all the genial motives which must act upon it in order that it may be delivered from the evil that is in the world. Once more, the evil of the world is, to a considerable extent, an excess of good. Desire may not be bad in itself, yet a large amount of the corruption in the world comes from inordinate desire, Finally, the closing words of our text assure us that all this which we have considered is no plan for the improvement of mankind as merely living on the earth, but for the renewal of the world and as an ultimate deliverance of men from sin, through Christ. And Christ’ s giving of Himself for our sins, and His purpose, in so doing, to deliver us from the present evil world, took place according to the will of God and our Father. We do not owe our salvation to an impulse, a temporary movement in the mind of Christ, or to circumstances which awoke in a benevolent heart an opposition to the hypocrisy and covetousness of His day. We are taught by this high example, that a life thought out beforehand, carried through to the end according to one plan, is a life nearest to the life of God. (T. D. Woolsey.)To whom be glory for ever. Ascription of praise to God The Hebrews are wont in their writings to intermingle praise and giving of thanks. This custom the apostles themselves observe. Which thing may be very often seen in Paul. For the name of the Lord ought to be had in great reverence, and never to be named without praise and thanksgiving. And thus to do, is a certain kind of worship and service to God. So in worldly matters, when we mention the names of kings or princes, we are wont to do it with some comely gesture, reverence, and bowing of the knee, much more ought we when we speak of God, and to name the name of God with thankfulness and great reverence. (Luther.)The duty of ascribing glory to God Here is the close of the salutation, in which, by holding forth His own practice for an example, He comprehends the duty of the redeemed. They are to ascribe lasting glory and praise to God the Father for His goodwill to this work of our redemption by Jesus Christ.1. As God, in this great work of our redemption, has made the glory of almost all His attributes, especially of His justice, mercy, and wisdom, to shine forth, so it is the duty of the redeemed to acknowledge that glory, and to wish that it may be set forth more and more both in ourselves and others. 2. This duty can never be sufficiently discharged. There is required the leisure of eternity to ascribe glory to God. 3. The glory of the Redeemer, and of God, who sent His son to do that work, shall be the long-lasting and never-ending song of the redeemed. 4. Our praise and thanksgiving must not be formal or verbal only, but fervent and serious, proceeding from the most intimate affection of the heart. (James Fergusson.)The honour which is due to God for the redemption in Christ The praise of God--1. A fruit of the redeemed state.2. A proof of the same. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The praise which the redeemed bring to God-- (1) begins in time;(2) continues into eternity. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Praise will go on for ever Praise is the only part of duty in which we at present engage, which is lasting. We pray; but there shall be a time when prayer shall offer its last litany: we believe; but there shall be a time when faith shall be lost in sight: we hope, and hope maketh not ashamed; but there shall be a time when hope lies down and dies, lost in the splendour of the fruition that God shall reveal. But praise goes singing into heaven, and is ready, without a teacher, to strike the harp that is waiting for it, to transmit along the echoes of eternity the song of the Lamb. (W. M. Punshon.)The praise of God 1. Its nature.2. Its source.3. Its duration.4. Its diffusion. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 1:6-7I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you.The errors of the good and the follies of the wise are painful subjects of contemplation, and we are never more conscious of a sensitive and distressing recoil than when we witness the disappointment of our hopes in reference to those who had once given promise of attaining to distinguished excellence. Some, however, it is to be feared, are comparative strangers to any vivid apprehensions of this kind. They seem to be always on the watch to detect the canker in the rose, or the flaw in the gem, and love the fault that gives them an equal more than the virtue which makes another their superior. But men of nobler temper always delight in beholding the development of exalted worth; and these, far from laying bare with an untrembling hand the infirmities and defects of our common nature, never fail to experience a corresponding depression and regret when the lustre of a great name is tarnished, and especially when religion itself is seen to suffer from the inconsistency of its professed friends. I. The early appearance of error and declension among the churches founded by the apostle. “ So soon removed.” Our attention also is particularly arrested by the prevalence of these evils in the very outset of the history of the Christian Church; and not in the province of Galatia only, but in various other directions. We wonder to see the stream corrupted so near the fountain, the tares springing up with the wheat in the most favoured soils, and the fine gold of the sanctuary so soon becoming dim. To the Church of Thessalonica, St. Paul writes, in one of the earliest of his Epistles, “ The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” St. Peter speaks of those “ who privily bring in damnable heresies.” St. Jude refers to those who “ denied the Lord that bought them,” and adds that these “ ungodly men crept in unawares,” like the wolf into the fold, or the muffled traitor into the palace of the king, implying that they ought by all means to have been kept out! II. The insidious manner in which the most dangerous corruptions are often introduced. “ ye are removed unto another gospel--which is not another.” The enemy of souls is never more dangerous than when he assumes the aspect of an angel of light; and injury is more frequently sustained by the artful intermixture of truth with error, than by any temptation to renounce Christianity altogether. We are rarely invited to receive broad, palpable, unmixed falsehood, for from this the mind might naturally recoil, as we should shrink from taking, with our eyes open, undiluted poisons. But the great deceiver goes more skilfully to work, and incorporates false doctrines with some modification of the true. He knows how to wrap up his most deadly poisons in some leaves of the tree of life; as he quoted Scripture to our Lord Himself, and prefaced his fatal temptation to Eve, by the smooth inquiry, “ Yea, hath God said?” All these should recollect that the perversion of evangelical truth is followed by melancholy consequences, and produces unhappiness in the mind. There be some that trouble you. “ Gospel perverters are soul-troublers.” Like the mystic star of the Apocalypse, which, falling on the waters, turned the peaceful element into turbulence and blood, their course may be traced by the calamities they occasion. III. The awful criminality and danger of perverting the gospel of Christ. From the greatness of the punishment denounced by the apostle, we learn his estimate of the aggravated guilt of the offence he condemns.1. The great Protestant principle of the right and duty of private judgment. Though St. Paul proves his apostleship, and demands to be heard as the servant of Christ, he is far from claiming unlimited authority over the consciences of men, but makes a direct appeal to their judgment. If they were not to receive, even from him, another gospel, of course they had to decide what was, and what was not, another gospel. And this they had the means of doing. 2. If such be the danger of perverting, how important is it that we should receive the gospel for the purpose of our salvation. To reject or pervert robs God of His glory, the Church of its comfort, and the world of its hope. 3. The intimate connexion between the purity of the Christian Church and the happiness of its individual members. God reveals this religion, not only as a means of safety, but as an element of blessedness. 4. We may well rejoice in the perpetuity of religion itself, notwithstanding all the attacks of its foes, and all the imperfection of its friends. The gospel partakes of the immortality of its author. (The Evangelist.)The wonder of a faithful apostle at the defection of faithless converts I. The apostle wondered that they should have turned from God and the Saviour. When men turn to God expectations are fulfilled; but when they forsake Him astonishment is excited, because of the mystery of iniquity (Jeremiah 2:12-13).1. To the Galatians the human agency was the ministry of Paul. 2. There is a reference to the Divine power in the call of God. “ Him that called you in the grace of Christ.” II. Paul wondered that they should have changed so suddenly. III. Paul marvelled that they should renounce the true for the false, the real for the unreal, the genuine for the sham. IV. Paul wondered that they had been seduced by men whose characters ought to have been understood. Lessons:1. The will of God in Christ Jesus concerning us should be the subject of our constant meditation. 2. We should beware of teaching that tends to withdraw Christ from our attention and confidence. 3. We should avoid the company of men who, under the pretence of doing us good, only seek to weaken our faith in the gospel. (R. Nicholls.)Apostasy is easy It is possible to begin in the Spirit, and to end in the flesh; it is possible to be seriously hindered; it is possible to come short of the promise of the grace of God. Clouds sometimes obscure the brightest evening and the sunniest morning. A slight atmospheric change may transform an Alpine ascent from a safe excitement into an imminent peril. It is thus in the natural world; and so is it in the realm of grace. There are numberless causes, arising from the circumstances of external things, or from the inbred and unsubdued corruption of our own traitorous hearts, which may endanger the constancy of the Christian, and cause his goodness to be even as the morning cloud and as the early dew, goodly and sparkling in promise, but, by the fierce heat of the sun, very speedily exhaled. (W. M. Punshon.)Fickle Christians Luther often, in his books, testified that he was much afraid lest, when he was dead, that sound doctrine of justification by faith alone would die also. It proved so in many places in Germany. Men fell to Popery as fast as leaves fall in autumn. The word here rendered “ removed” signifieth properly “ transported” or “ transplanted.” “ He alludes,” saith Jerome, “ to the word Galdi, ‘ to roll,’ as if he should say, ‘ You are Galatians, that is, rolling and changing from the gospel of Christ to the law of Moses.’“ (J. Trapp.)Different treatment for seducers and seduced Ye see here how Paul handleth his Galatians, which were fallen away and seduced by the false apostles. He doth not at the first set upon them with vehemence and rigorous words, but after a very fatherly sort, not only patiently bearing their fall, but also in a manner excusing it,. Furthermore, he showeth towards them a motherly affection, and speaketh them very fair; and yet in such sort that he reproveth them notwithstanding, howbeit with very fit words, and wisely framed to the purpose. Contrariwise, he is very hot and full of indignation against those false apostles, their seducers, upon whom he layeth the whole fault; and therefore forthwith, even in the entrance of his Epistle, he bursteth out into plain thunderings and lightnings against them.… So parents, when their child is hurt with the biting of a dog, are wont to pursue the dog only, but the weeping child they bemoan and speak fair unto it, comforting it with the most sweet words. (Luther.)The apostle’ s demeanour 1. Towards the misled. He makes a complaint and charge, but through it all the full tones of Compassion and love are heard. 2. Towards the misleaders. Unsparingly stern, even to denouncing a curse. To fall away from the gospel is bad, but to subvert the gospel is worse. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The earnestness with which St. Paul opposes the false teachers The apostle’ s earnestness is--1. Well-founded;2. Very significant for us. (1) It should withhold us from the reception of any unevangelical doctrine. (2) It should strengthen us in the certainty that the gospel which we have is the true one. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Lapsed Christians In the first years of a Church, its members are willing to endure hardships, and to make great exertions; but, when once it is prosperous, they desire to take their ease; as one who builds a ship is willing to work all the way from keel to deck until she is launched, thenceforward he expects the ocean to buoy him up, and the winds to bear him on. The youth-time of Churches produces enterprise; their age, indolence. But even this might be borne, did not these dead men sit in the door of their sepulchres, crying out against every living man who refuses to wear the livery of death. I am almost tempted to think that if, with the end of every pastorate, the Church itself were disbanded and destroyed, to be gathered again by the succeeding teacher, we should thus secure an immortality of youth. (H. W. Beecher.)Apostasy from the truth 1. How far apostasy is not to be wondered at.2. How far it is to be wondered at. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Inconstancy a common fault An apostatising tendency, or inconstancy, is a radical fault of the human heart.1. Sluggish and immovable, where it is of moment that it should move and apply itself. 2. So moveable and unsteady, where it should abide firm. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Apostasy of believers 1. The apostasy of believers is, alas, sometimes a fact.2. From what does it proceed?3. How far is it to be remedied? (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The Galatian revolt I. The revolt. Different kinds of religious revolt.1. Particular: dissent from some principal doctrines; the ten tribes; the Roman Church. 2. General: renunciation of the name and faith of Christ; Jews; Mahommedans. 3. Under strong pressure; when men compromise the faith from fear of persecution. 4. From obstinacy; as atheists. The Galatian revolt was of the first and third class. They were “ carried away” from the doctrine of “ grace.” II. The time it occupied.1. A brief period.2. Showing man’ s inconstancy in the matter of religion (Hosea 6:4; John 5:35).3. Pointing a warning to the most privileged. III. From what they revolted.1. From Paul.2. From the grace of God. IV. To what they revolted.1. To false teachers. 2. To another gospel compounded of grace and law. (1) Men are discontented with the pure gifts of God. The Jews, beside the books of Moses, must have the Cabbala; the Papists, beside the written Word, must have tradition; hearers, beside the simple gospel, must have the skill of art and tongue. (2) The other gospel is no gospel at all. There is only one way of salvation. News of another way, therefore, is bud news. V. The authors of the revolt.1. They are troublers, because (1) they make divisions; (2) disturb consciences at rest in Christ. Here is the touchstone of heresy. Justification by works is an unbearable yoke (Acts 15:10). So is the teaching that assurance is impossible; so is the dogma of purgatory. The gospel, on the contrary, ends trouble and brings peace and joy (John 15:11; Romans 15:14). 2. They overthrow the gospel of Christ. They did not contest its truth, but, by adding to it, they turned it upside down. (W. Perkins.)A group of marvels 1. That men should disbelieve the true and believe the false. 2. That men should forsake the proved and follow the speculative. 3. That men should refuse the possible salvation by faith in favour of earning an impossible salvation by works. 4. That men should reject the balm for a wounded conscience, and accept what can only trouble the conscience. 5. That men should turn away from the ambassador of the gospel, and attach themselves to perverters of the gospel. Yet these marvels are to be witnessed every day. The religious instability of the Galatians It was the too quick springing of the good seed on poor and shallow soil; the sudden flaming of fire among natures as light, brittle, and inflammable as straw. The modification of an old religion, the hearty adoption of a new, the combination of an antique worship with one recent and unlike, had already been illustrated in Galatian history As Celts, they had brought with them their old Druidism; yet they had already incorporated with this the wild nature worship of Cybele. But while this Phrygian cult was flourishing at Pessinus, and commanding the services of hosts of mutilated priests, and while at Tavium the main object of worship was a colossal bronze Zeus of the Greek type, at Ancyra was established the Roman deification of the Emperor Augustus. In passing through these capitals, Paul would see the epitome of their history and character, and as he ]had bitter cause to learn, the religious views of the Gauls were more or less a reflex of the impressions of the moment, and their favourite sentiments the echo of the language used by the last comer. (F. W. Farrar.)The Judaizing antagonists of St. Paul They asserted the exclusive authority of the apostles in Judea (2. Corinthians 11:5; Galatians 2:6, etc.), a pretension which they would have repudiated, and which Paul makes bold to deny them (comp. 1 Corinthians 9:5). They claimed themselves further to be the only true disciples of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12; 2 Corinthians 10:7), and in His name imposed, as a condition of salvation, circumcision and all the rites of the law (Galatians 2:3; Galatians 3:3; Galatians 4:10-11; Galatians 5:2, etc.; Romans 14:1, etc.; Philippians 3:2; Colossians 2:21, etc.), and they abruptly broke off all intercourse with uncircumcised Christians (Galatians 2:2), whom Paul had welcomed, and the other apostles recognized, as brethren. Their hatred to Paul was not at all appeased by his heroic sufferings and sublime self-devotion. When the populace of Jerusalem laid homicidal hands upon him, not one of the many myriads of Christians lifted a finger in his defence. Carried to Rome during his two years’ anxious imprisonment, he has still reason to complain of those who preach Christ only of contention, thinking to add affliction to his bonds. (E. Reuss, D. D.)The real question at issue If the Judaizers had really believed in the divinity of Jesus, they could not have returned to systems which had died away before the glories of His advent, for that faith would have proved an insurmountable barrier to reactionary yearnings. Their attempt to re-introduce circumcision was a reflection on Christ’ s finished work, and so, ultimately, on the dignity of His person. They knew not, or heeded not, that they were members of a kingdom in which circumcision and uncircumcision were insignificant accidents, and in which the new creation of the soul was the one matter of vital import. Although they had not denied Christ in terms; He had become of no effect unto them. They had practically rejected the plenary efficacy of Christ’ s grace, and had implicitly denied that He was greater than Moses; and in opposing them, Paul is the apostolic representative of the cause and work of Athanasius. (Canon Liddon.)The early Churches not pattern Churches They had apostolic teaching; but beyond that they seem to have been in no respect above, and in many respects below, the level of subsequent ages. If we may judge of their morality by the exhortations they received, Corinth and Thessalonica were but beginners in holiness. If we may judge of their intelligence by the errors into which they fell, they had indeed need that one should teach them which were the first principles of the oracles of God. It could not be otherwise. They were but just rescued from heathenism, and bore the marks of their former bondage. They were like the communities fostered by modern missionaries. The same infantile simplicity, partial apprehensions of truth, danger of being lead astray by the low morality of their kindred, openness to strange heresy, and peril of blending the old with the new in opinion and practice, beset both. The history of the first theological difference in the early Churches is a striking confutation of the dream that they were perfect, and a striking illustration of the dangers to which they were exposed from the attempt, so natural to us all, to put new wine into old bottles. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The grace of Christ It is not man climbing to heaven; it is God putting down His hand from heaven and raising him up. It is not man paying God for heaven; heaven is God’ s free gift to man through Christ. The word “ grace” is inscribed on the temple of salvation from the foundation to the top-stone. (Thomas Jones.)Another gospel We hear much of moving with the age. But the gospel is not to be changed to answer the opinions of any age. The pulpit is to lead the age, and not the age the pulpit. Let ministers, then, preach the gospel, whether men will bear or forbear. The gospel, in all its glorious doctrines, pure morality, and sweet promises, is the one power to save. (Thomas Jones.)Rapid declension Ha is the interjection of laughter; ah, the interjection of sorrow. The difference betwixt them is but small; the transposition of what is no substantial letter, but a bare aspirate. How quickly, in the age of a minute, in the very turning of a breath, is our mirth changed into mourning. (Thos. Fuller.)Movement not progress Rowland Hill, in a friend’ s house, saw a child on a rocking-horse. “ Dear me,” said the good man, “ how wondrously like some Christians; motion, motion, motion, but no progress.” Covering sin with fair names:--Here we may learn to espy the crafty sleights and subtleties of the devil. No heretic cometh under the title of errors and of the devil, neither doth the devil himself come as a devil in his own likeness, but when he forceth men to manifest wickedness, maketh a cloak for them to cover that sin which they commit or purpose to commit. The murderer, in his rage, seeth not that murder is so great and horrible a sin as it is indeed, for that he hath a cloak to cover the same. Whoremongers, thieves, covetous persons, drunkards, and such other, have wherewith to flatter themselves, and cover their sins. So the devil also cometh out disguised and counterfeit in all his works and devices. In spiritual matter, where Satan cometh forth not black, but white, in the likeness of an angel, or of God Himself, there he passeth himself with most crafty dissimulation, and wonderful sleights, and is wont to set forth to sale his most deadly poison for the doctrine of grace, for the Word of God, for the gospel of Christ. For this cause, Paul calleth the doctrine of the false apostles, Satan’ s ministers, a “ gospel” also, saying, unto another gospel;” but in derision, as though he would say, Ye Galatians have now other evangelists, and another gospel; my gospel is now despised of you; it is now no more in estimation among you. (Luther.)A doctored gospel In “ Babbage’ s Economy of Manufactures,” we are told that some years ago a mode of preparing old clover and trefoil seeds, by a process called “ doctoring,” became so prevalent as to attract the attention of the House of Commons. By this process old and worthless seed was rendered in appearance equal to the best. One witness tried some “ doctored” seed, and found that not above one grain in a hundred grew. Is it not to be feared that a “ doctored” gospel is becoming very common among us; and if so, it is no wonder that conversions are but few. Only pure truth is living seed. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The dilettante gospel The dilettante gospel has most attractions, of course, for people of a literary and aesthetic turn of mind. What they seek in the sermons they go to hear is not religion, but (as they are fond of styling it) “ the poetry and philosophy of religion.” They would be the last to suspect that such a hearing of God’ s word is superficial; but superficial it certainly is. It is a craving for an external thing which brings them to the church at all. They give to the accidental and unessential the respect which should only be accorded to the message of God. And the hurt to the cause of Christ, in yielding to such cravings, is that it dethrones the fact that God is speaking through the gospel to human souls. Christ is not in all the thoughts of such hearers. The outward construction of the word, its literary or artistic features, its pathos, simplicity, or force--these are canvassed and accepted or refused; but God’ s message and meaning under all is left standing without. It is hardly possible to overstate the evil to which preaching which panders to this class must lead. For those who indulge in it, the Bible inevitably dwindles down into an uninspired book--at best, a book only more interesting than other books that could be named. The gospel which is proclaimed from its pages--the blessed gospel of the grace of God--passes utterly out of view; and hearers will listen to what is presented to them for a whole lifetime, and yet fail to receive one right-hearted impulse towards the work for which God is sustaining a Church in the world. (A. Macleod, D. D.)No truce with heretics They had, in fact, only introduced one or two commandments, circumcision and the observance of days, but he says that the gospel was perverted, in order to show that a slight adulteration vitiates the whole. For as he who but partially pares away the image on a royal coin renders the whole spurious, so he who swerves ever so little from the pure faith soon proceeds from this to graver errors, and becomes entirely corrupted. Let those who charge us with being contentious in separating from heretics, and say that there is no real difference between us except what arises from our ambition, hear Paul’ s assertion, that those who had but slightly innovated, subverted the gospel. Not that to say that the Son of God is a crested being [as the Aryans did] is a small matter. Know you not that even under the elder covenant, a man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and transgressed a single commandment, and that not a great one, was punished with death? and that Uzzah, who supported the ark, when on the point of being overturned, was struck suddenly dead, because he had intruded upon an office which did not pertain to him! Wherefore if to transgress the Sabbath, and to touch the falling ark, drew down the wrath of God so signally as to deprive the offender of even a momentary respite, shall he who corrupts unutterably awful doctrines find excuse and pardon! Assuredly not. A want of zeal in small matters is the cause of all our calamities; because slight errors escape fitting correction, greater ones creep in. As in the body a neglect of wounds generates fever, mortification, and death; so in the soul, slight evils overlooked open the door to graver ones. It is accounted a trivial fault that one man should neglect fasting; that another, who is established in the pure faith, should shrink from its bold profession, and be led by circumstances to dissemble; that a third should be irritated, and threaten to depart from the true faith, is excused on the plea of passion and resentment. Thus a thousand similar errors are daily introduced into the Church, which is divided into as many parties, and we are become a laughing-stock to Jews and Greeks. But if a proper rebuke had at first been given to those who attempted slight perversions, and a deflection from the Divine oracles, such a pestilence would not have been generated, nor such a storm have shaken the Church. You will now understand why Paul calls circumcision a perversion of the gospel. There are many of us now who fast on the same day as the Jews, and keep the Sabbaths in the same manner; and what shall I call our tolerance of this, noble or miserable? Again, many Gentile customs are observed by some among us; omens, auguries, presages, distinctions of days, a curious attention to the circumstances of their children’ s birth, and, as soon as they are born, tablets with impious inscriptions placed upon their unhappy heads, thereby teaching them from the first to lay aside virtuous endeavours, and drawing them as much as possible under the false domination of fate. But if Christ profits nothing those that are circumcised, how shall faith hereafter avail to the salvation of those who have introduced such corruptions? (Chrysostom.)The risks of revelation not such as to invalidate its accuracy But as to the possibility of the mind of man being brought into practical working relations with external certainty, even at some distance in time and place, without claiming infallibility for the interpreter, we may refer to familiar facts, on a much lower plane, for a decisive illustration. At Greenwich Observatory there is an exact and absolutely certain knowledge of the true time of day. This certain knowledge of the time of day is made the basis of the safety and direction of the whole internal traffic of England, and of the direction of our whole navy, and vast commercial marine, on every sea. In the one case the time is transmitted from the infallible clock at Greenwich by telegraph, in the twinkling of an eye, to the extremities of the country, and all the railways sufficiently well set their time by that standard. In the other, the “ Nautical Almanac,” a book-revelation, notwithstanding all the risks of printing, carries the results of the infallible science of Greenwich to sea in every craft that leaves our shores. There may be occasional and infinitesimal defects in the transmission of the time to London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. There may be occasional errors in the printing of the “ Nautical Almanac,” and occasionally much ignorance and obtuseness in captains and lieutenants in taking observations of the sun and moon; whence errors in the working of the longitude and latitude, and awful catastrophes at sea. But surely no one would hence argue that the endeavour to enforce the infallible rule of Greenwich time upon railways and ship-masters was an interference with the liberties of modern intelligence, or in fact an endeavour which must needs practically fail, through the fallibility, or bad eyesight or arithmetic, of stationmasters and captains. No one would think of telling each such functionary that on the whole, since the use of an infallible authority would involve a claim to infallibility in the nautical observer, it was best for every one to make of the facts of nature what he could, and to guess the hour, each man according to his several ability. And if any of these people set up for rejectors of the message from Greenwich, or said that it required a commentary to make it a safe guide, they would be reckoned somewhat too intelligent for their situations. Now in this parable the Greenwich Observatory corresponds with the apostolic certainty in doctrinal teaching. There may be some risks in the transmission of its message. There may be errors in the attempt to interpret a book-revelation. But on the whole it is true that the apostolic certainty is effectually present, close at hand amongst us, and may be most correctly apprehended, no doubt in different degrees, by those who most simply and intelligently desire to receive its directions The difficulties resemble those which hinder the attainment of scientific certainty in nature. There are some risks in both cases. There are personal equations, as the astronomers say of each observer’ s eye, to be eliminated; and the abstract difficulty might be made to appear enormous. But the parallel is complete between the laws of sound interpretation of nature and those of the sound interpretation of recorded revelation. And in neither case is it safe to throw overboard the standard of certainty, or to set up for free and independent investigators simply because of minor risks attending the effort to receive the Divine communications. The misfortune is, perhaps, that in religion there are so many more persons whose worldly interests, or intellectual twist, incline them not to see what the apostles wrote, than there are of station-masters and captains who do not desire to know the Greenwich time. (E. White.)The unchangeable gospel I take it that the gospel cannot be a changeable, variable, shifting gospel, a sort of sliding-scale gospel, because--1. It is certain that man has not changed. Just to-day man is what he was in the days of Christ and the apostles. 2. I think nobody would have the hardihood to deny it--that truth in the very essence of it must always be the same. A fact, though it happened ten thousand years ago, is as much a fact as if it happened yesterday. Truth must be always the same. “ But there is a great advance made,” says one. How? In the principles of things--in mathematical science, for instance. Certainly there are great masters of mathematics, and great advances have been made, but upon the principle that two and two are four, and twice three makes six, there has been no advance. A proposal for a new multiplication table would scarcely be entertained even in a board school. No; these fundamental principles stand the same, and so must the fundamental truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which are to all good men’ s thinking what these tables, these fixed facts in mathematics, are in all calculations. Truth must be the same. It cannot be altered; it is impossible. 3. The gospel is the same, because it was, and is, sufficient for all the purposes for which God sent it. What I mean is this, we want to give the people the gospel more by itself. There is a good story told of Caesar Malan. I should never forget my vision of that grave, reverend man, whom many at thief platform still remember. He was a man of strong idiosyncrasies, and of somewhat singular habits. Going once from Boulogne to Paris, he got into a coach; and he was no sooner seated, than he began reading out a chapter from the Bible. A Frenchman opposite strongly objected, and I think with some reason, as persons in public conveyances should remember that there are other people there. Caesar Malan, however, did not think of that, and he continued to read the chapter, and the Frenchman continued to object. He said he did not believe in the authority of the Bible, and that it was offensive to him to hear it read. At last Caesar Malan’ s French deacon said, “ I think, dear pastor, that I differ from you about your doing this: this gentleman does not believe in the authority of the book, and you ought to prove to him its authority and then read it.” Said he, “ If I was going out to fight and I bad my sword, and I met somebody on the other side, would you say, ‘ First prove that you have a sword before you fight?’ No; I will prove it is a sword.” So he went on reading. He and his deacon supped together, and the waiter came in, and asked whether they were going on the next morning in the coach to Paris, because, he said, that the French gentleman who had ridden with them on the previous day was anxious to ride with Mr. Malan again. He afterwards became a communicant at Caesar Malan’ s church, and was one of his best friends. It is the Word of God that does it--not our talking about God’ s Word; it is the Word itself. Quote plenty of Scripture; put plenty of Divine words in. It is God’ s Word, not man’ s comments on God’ s Word, that saves souls. Furthermore, dear friends, we want no improved gospel, because there is nothing that requires that the gospel should be amended. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The mixture of truth and error dangerous A friend of mine some time ago bought some coals; and as is natural to coals, having to deal with the earth, being earthy, there were some slates in them, and sitting in the drawing-room, the slates now and then exploded, somewhat to damage a person’ s eyes. Therefore he said to the coal merchant, “ My dear sir, the next lot of coals you sell me, would you mind selling me coals? I know, of course, that some bits of slate will get among them, and I am willing to take a fair proportion; but I should like to have the coals by themselves and the slates by themselves.” That is precisely what I would have done with Holy Scripture. We will have so many books inspired--the coals--and so much marked off as being slates. It is a serious thing if you get a bit of slate into your common teaching, and your faith and daily life; you do not know what damage may be done by it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Steadfast in the truth There is a story told of Waterloo, that a certain regiment had been so set upon by the French that one of their officers wrote to the Duke and said they would be cut in pieces unless help was sent. All that the Duke said was “ Stand firm!” and the officer galloped back with the order. Again the soldier said: “ It is all up with us, and we shall be destroyed; there are very few of us left even now.” Again the officer went to the Duke, and again his order was “ Stand firm.” They did stand finn and left their bodies on the place; but England was rid of the despot. Oh, sirs, the order to-day is, “ Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)The work of deception I. Is easy. II. Proceeds from a perversion of the truth. III. Cannot escape punishment. IV. Must be unsparingly exposed and condemned. (J. Lyth.)The instability of many is I. Matter of fact--they are easily swayed by false opinions and drawn away from God--through ignorance, pride, natural tendency to error. II. Matter of surprise--we expect better things of those who have received the truth, because it is its own witness--it exposes and condemns error. III. Matter of regret--it is to grieve God, who has called them; to forfeit the grace of Christ; to trust in another gospel which is not another. (J. Lyth.)Another gospel I. The pretensions of error. II. The folly of them. (J. Lyth.)Observe-- I. There is but one gospel; all others are delusions. II. The gospel may be perverted by adding to, or taking from it; falsifying its meaning and application; converting it into a system of works or an occasion of license. III. To pervert the gospel is to destroy it; it is no longer gospel--brings no salvation. IV. Such perversion brings trouble--to the Church, to the individual. (J. Lyth.)The perversion of the gospel is I. Common. II. Mischievous. III. Foolish, because wicked; fatal. (J. Lyth.)Soul troublers Religious errors are soul troublers. Like the mystic star of the Apocalypse, which, falling into the waters, turned the peaceful element into turbulence and blood, they stir up the Church into distressing agitations. (D. Thomas, D. D.)The gospel of Christ What is meant by this?(1) The gospel which speaks of Christ;(2) the gospel which was delivered by Christ; or (3) the gospel that belongs to Christ?(4) Does it not combine all these meanings? (Bishop Lightfoot.)The gospel is the Word of God: Christ is the Word of God. He is the Word containing all words. You need not go to a theologian to learn that religion should be called a gospel: go into the streets; do you not see in wretched faces that a gospel is wanted--good news from God? (T. T. Lynch.)Perverting the gospel If, at the tent door, the Arab offers to the thirsty passer-by a cup of water, clear, cool, and sparkling in the cup, but in which he has cleverly concealed a painful and deadly poison, he would deserve and receive the anathema of all honest men. Much more terrible shall be the doom of him who, pretending friendship with the souls of men, and offering them in their need, instead of the pure water of life the deadly, poison of false doctrine, shall bring down upon himself the righteous and unerring anathema of God. (R. Brewin.) Galatians 1:8-9 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you.St. Paul’ s protestation against seducers I. The miscarriage supposed--“ Though we, or an angel,” etc.1. Not persons of the greatest interest. “ We,” who have this relation to you as Pastors and Teachers; “ we,” whom at present you esteem; let neither our relation to you, nor your affection to us, prevail in this particular. Friends are no friends when they go about to divide us from the great Friend of all. “ We” --for our number--“ Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil” ; nor to think evil. In which good counsel of the apostle take notice of his sincerity and ingenuity of disposition, in that he would not have so much as himself to be taken into consideration to the prejudice or disadvantage of the gospel. 2. Not persons of the greatest perfections--“ Or an angel from heaven.” Three kinds of perfection are here expressed.1. The perfection of parts and understanding, and natural abilities. The greatest learning is not to be heard to the disparagement of truth. 2. The perfection of grace and spiritual endowments. The greatest holiness is not to be made a patron of error. Satan takes advantage of reputed goodness to wind others into labyrinths of opinion and practice. 3. The perfection of employment or manner of dispensation. An angel from heaven. The highest revelations are not to be heard against Scripture. And for these cases in which some indulgence and freedom is to be granted, as in smaller matters, yet respect is to be had to the principles whereupon this is granted.1. That it be not out of an indifferency and neutrality in religion. 2. That it proceed not from corruption and carnal policy. “ Bear with me; let alone my errors; I will pardon yours” ; which people cry up charity in such matters that they may better hide their own unsoundness. In this passage there are divers gradations.1. That the apostle lays this grievous and heavy censure not so much upon the opinion simply considered, or privately enjoyed, but upon the vent and communication of it in preaching (1 Timothy 6:3; Titus 1:10-11; Matthew 5:19). 2. It is not preaching at large, but to you; there is an emphasis upon his hearers. Of all false teachers there are none like seducers. 3. There is an emphasis also upon the doctrine. There is a caution against false doctrine; also against new doctrine. II. The caution or denunciation of punishment inferred upon it--“ Let him be accursed.” There are two things which require to be unfolded.1. The apostle’ s authority. 2. The apostle’ s charity. This does not give allowance to others lightly and from a private spirit to be full of imprecations. Observe in this emphasis his confidence and firm persuasion of the truth which he had taught and delivered. Preachers have need to be well assured of the truth of that which they teach.1. Because they deal in matters of great importance. They speak on matters of life and death. 2. There are many more whose judgments do depend upon it. 3. For the better enforcing of the truth itself. The confidence of the preacher stirs up belief in the hearer. But sometimes the more confident are the most ignorant. It is not a confidence of presumption but of well-grounded knowledge; not of fancy but of assurance.1. The apostle’ s zeal in the cause of Christ. There is great earnestness expressed in this simple proposition of the text. 2. His impartiality. 3. His constancy. “ As we said before” (Galatians 1:9). How far this was not the same in the ninth verse which he said in the eighth. To take notice of the difference, how far it was not the same; for this there is a double alteration, the one in the expression of the preacher, and the other in the expression of the doctrine: for the preacher, that is signified in the eighth verse--“ We, or an angel from heaven;” but in the ninth indefinitely--“ If any one.” Then as to the doctrine in the eighth verse it is laid down under this phrase--“ which we have preached.” That “ which ye have received” is more than what we have preached. 1. His constancy as to his doctrine. (1) The same for matter.(2) The same as to the quality of it. 2. The constancy to the censure which he imposed. This threefold. (1) The inflexibility and unvariableness of the gospel and doctrine of Christ.(2) The duties of the hearers of it. Not to receive all we hear without consideration.(3) The heresy of false teachers. (T. Horton, D. D.)Orthodoxy relates to the matter of preaching more than to the manner There are divers improvements and modifications of the same truth, according to the various gifts and abilities which God communicates to His servants, some in one kind, and some in another. Ye shall have some kind of persons who would confine all kind of preachers to one and the same kind of way and method of preaching. This is a business which is not to be expected, neither does the apostle urge it in this Scripture, but in the allowing to every one that gift and manner of preaching which is most agreeable to himself (so it be grave and sober, and proper, and becoming the majesty of the gospel), he does limit them only for matter to the doctrine of the Scripture; that there be nothing delivered but ‘ what does consist with that, and which either directly or by consequent is to be found in it. (T. Horton, D. D.)The gospel unchangeable First, we have here set before us the inflexibility and unvariableness of the gospel and doctrine of Christ; that it is a thing which does not change with times, or persons, or conditions, but is still one and the same, otherwise the apostle could not have been thus absolute and peremptory about it. What was religion formerly, is religion still; and what is now religion, was religion many years ago in the genera-lions which are past, and will be, and must be likewise to the end of the world. We speak now in regard of the things themselves in their own nature. Indeed men’ s opinions alter and vary about them, but the points themselves are still the same: we can have no new gospel, nor new Jesus, nor new Spirit of God, as the apostle seems to imply in the Scripture before alleged. All these things are unalterable, and inviolable, and indispensable; there’ s no changing, nor bartering of them. Look as the principles of nature are immutable, so likewise the principles of grace. That the principles of nature are so is very clear; reason is the same in all men, and in all nations, and in all ages, and the same common principles of it are scattered and dispersed, and communicated to the whole world. This holds also (by a proportion) as to the principles of religion and Christianity; though so many have not these principles in them, as have the principles of nature: yet so many as have them, they have them as immutably and unchangeably, one as the other; and ye may as soon rase out these, as ye may rase out them. The ground hereof is this: Because these things are laid in the nature of God Himself, who alters not; as God Himself is unchangeable, so is His truth which issues and proceeds from Himself. And such a kind of thing is the gospel, it is an extract and emanation from God; it was hid in Him, and it does spring out, and flow forth from Him. (T. Horton, D. D.)The receiver of false doctrine as bad as the preacher of it And therefore ye may again take notice of it, that it is not only said, “ Besides what we have preached,” but “ What ye have received.” The receiver is as bad as the thief in this particular: and as it is a cursed thing to scatter error, so it is as cursed a thing to take it up, and carry it home, and keep it by us, or nourish it with us; which therefore we should now all be persuaded (in the fear of God) to avoid and shun what we can. (T. Horton, D. D.)The danger of adding to the doctrine of the gospel The occasion of these words. The Sadducees urged the necessity of circumcision, and keeping the law of Moses; thus altering the terms and conditions of religion they made it quite another thing from what our Saviour intended. I. That the addition of anything to the Christian religion as necessary to be believed or practised in order to salvation, is a perverting of the gospel of Christ, and preaching another gospel. II. No pretence of infallibility is sufficient to authorize and warrant the addition of anything to the Christian doctrine, as necessary to be believed or practised, in order to salvation. III. Christians may judge and discern when another gospel is preached, when new articles of faith, or points of practice not enjoined by the gospel, are imposed upon Christians. IV. I proceed to the fourth observation, which is plainly consequent from those laid down before; namely, that since the declaration of the gospel, and the confirmation given to it, there is no authority in the Christian Church to impose upon Christians anything, as of necessity to salvation, which the gospel hath not made so. V. It follows likewise from the foregoing observations, that there is no visible judge (how much soever he may pretend to infallibility), to whose determination and decision, in matters of faith and practice necessary to salvation, Christians are bound to submit, without examination, whether those things be agreeable to the doctrine of the gospel, or not. VI. and last observation from the text; that whosoever teacheth anything, as of necessity to salvation to be believed or practised, besides what the gospel of Christ hath made necessary, does fall under the anathema here in the text; because they that do so, do, according to the mind of St. Paul, pervert the gospel of Christ, and preach another gospel. (J. Tillotson, D. D.)The preaching of a false gospel a great evil I. There is a true gospel.1. He was convinced of the truth of the gospel, because it had been made known to him by Divine revelation. 2. He was convinced of the truth of the gospel, because of the change if had wrought in him. 3. He was assured of the truth of the gospel by the manifestations of its power in others. II. There is a false gospel.1. It was a false gospel to teach that there was any other plan by which a sinner could be justified than by believing upon Jesus Christ. 2. It was a false gospel to teach that believers ought to obey the ceremonial law. III. The publication of a false gospel is a great evil.1. The publication of a false gospel is ruinous to man. 2. The publication of a false gospel is dishonouring to God. Lessons:1. Amid the various methods by which the truth of the gospel is established, there is some one in particular that suits the condition of every man. 2. On the part of those who labour in the gospel, there should be the deepest and most solemn conviction concerning the truth they declare. 3. Faith in the true gospel is essential to salvation; without it, the soul is accursed. (Richard Nicholls.)False teachers cursed As he is a traitor to his prince who taketh upon him to coin money out of a base metal, yea, although in the stamp he putteth for a show the image of the prince, so he that shall broach any doctrine that cometh not from God, whatsoever he say for it, or whatsoever gloss he set on it, he is a traitor unto God, yea, in truth, a cursed traitor, though he were an angel from heaven. (T. Boston.)False teaching ruinous to souls In the war on the Rhine, in 1794, the French got possession of the village of Rhinthal by a very curious ruse de guerre of one Joseph Werck, a trumpeter. This village was maintained by an Austrian party of six hundred hussars. Two companies of foot were ordered to make an attack on it at ten o’ clock at night. The Austrians had been apprised of the intended attack, and were drawn up ready to charge on the assailing party. On perceiving this, Werck detached himself from his own party, and contrived, by favour of the darkness, to slip into the midst of the enemy; when, taking his trumpet, he first sounded the rally in the Austrian manner, and, next moment, the retreat. The Austrians, deceived by the signal, were off in an instant at fall gallop; and the French became masters of the village without striking a blow. (Percy.)False teachers useless A Universalist preached to a chance audience, and, at its close, offered to preach again at a future day; when an old Friend arose, and said, “ If thou hast told the truth this time, we do not need thee any more; and, if thou hast told us a lie, we do not want thee any more.” The gospel according to Paul To exercise candour and forbearance towards those who differ from us, is a Christian duty. Yet there are bounds beyond which candour is indifference, and forbearance treason. In things nonessential various opinions may be tolerated; in essentials we must be firm and unwavering. St. Paul sees that in Galatia the very foundations of Christianity are shaking. He therefore reasserts with great force the gospel he had preached there. I. What was the gospel Paul preached? The great doctrine he insisted on, was justification by faith without the works of the law. Now consider--1. His line of argument. The law curses and condemns. By faith alone are we justified, and made partakers of the benefits of the gospel. The prophets preached this. The covenant with Abraham was one of promise. 2. The objections he anticipates. No ground for saying the gospel tends to licentiousness. Works are needful, though not to be taken into account. 3. The perversions of which he complains. The addition of legal observance to performance of duties enjoined by the gospel, under the impression that thus they could render themselves more acceptable to God. This was mongrel--neither law nor gospel; so practically a rejection of the gospel. II. Why did Paul manifest such zeal in maintaining, this gospel?1. To maintain the purity of the gospel, the fountain of life to the world. 2. To maintain the importance of the gospel, the only source of salvation. 3. To maintain the sufficiency of the gospel to justify and sanctify. Application--If this gospel be true, it is of importance (a) to be received by you, and (b) to be diffused by you over the world. There was nothing that Paul would not do and suffer, in order to propagate the gospel of God. Shall not we emulate his zeal? (Charles Simeon, M. A.)The else gospel The gospel must be preached in its(1) oneness;(2) fulness;(3) symmetry;(4) purity;(5) sufficiency. (W. Cadman, M. A.)Only one gospel Strong words; to many, offensive words. The doctrine of “ only one gospel” is not popular. Men are impatient of dogma, opposed to all exclusiveness in religion; they like to think there are many gospels, many avenues leading to salvation. The question, however, is, not whether the doctrine of “ only one gospel” is popular, but whether it is true. There are various considerations which serve to prove its truth. I. The nature and condition of man. The nature of man is one Varying greatly in outward form and expression, but still essentially one. And as his nature is one, so is the moral disease under which it labours. Sin, although manifold in its modes of action, is essentially one in principle, it is the assertion of independence, rebellion against God’ s authority, the setting up of the human will in opposition to the Divine; and being thus one and the same disease, one and only one remedy is required to heal it. II. The nature and character of god. Oneness His essential attribute, and we should expect a manifestation of that quality in any scheme for the salvation of man emanating from God. III. The express teaching of the Word of God. One, and only one, plan of salvation is revealed in the Bible (Acts 4:12).1. The terms of the one salvation are broad, in that they propose to us the entire Person and work of Christ as the basis upon which we may build. 2. They are narrow, in that they rigorously exclude every other scheme and means of salvation. It is really a question of supremacy. One must reign, either God or man. In claiming supremacy, God claims His right; man must submit, or perish. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The complete gospel The apostle obviously means to state, not only that his gospel was true, but complete--nothing needed to be added to it. The Jewish teachers might have said: “ We do not contradict, we only modify, add to, and so improve the gospel as preached by Paul.” The grand subject of the gospel of Christ is the way in which a sinner may be restored to the Divine favour, and obtain the pardon of his sin and the salvation of his soul. It is because the gospel of Christ contains the only true account of the only way of justification, and that a way exactly suited to our wretched circumstances, that it receives its name of “ gospel” --glad tidings of great joy. “ Another gospel” means, then, a system of doctrine teaching a way of obtaining the Divine favour different from that laid down in Christ’ s gospel. The leading principles of Christ’ s gospel are two: (a) that men are restored to the Divine favour entirely on account of the doings and sufferings of Jesus Christ; and (b) that men are interested in these doings and sufferings entirely by believing. Every plan of restoring men to God’ s favour, which does not embrace these two principles, or which embraces what is inconsistent with either of them, is another gospel. Every plan, for example, which, like that of the Judaising teachers, leads men to depend on their own obedience to any law to any extent; in any degree, either as the ground of their justification or the means of their justification, is another gospel. It is a most momentous consideration, that “ the avowed atheist does not more effectually reject the record of God concerning His Son, than the nominal Christian who believes something else than this under the name of a gospel, and trusts in some other Christ than this Christ under the name of a Saviour.” (John Brown, D. D.)Religious teaching to be tested by the Bible Too much to blame are our over-credulous multitude, who, hand over head, admit and receive for orthodox whatsoever is propounded unto them by their teachers; and think this a sufficient warrant for any point they hold. Our ministers said it, or such a preacher delivered it in a pulpit,--as if there were not some who run before they are sent, and publish the visions of their own brain, prophesying that which God never spake. In matters civil we are more cautious and wary; no gold, almost, do we take before we have tried it by the touch, or weighed it in the balance; and what is the reason? because there is much of it light and naught; yea, hardly we will take a groat without bowing, bending, rubbing it, and the like, being therein oftentimes over-curious; but in religious matters, which concern our faith and soul’ s salvation, we are over-careless, albeit we are forewarned of many false prophets that are gone into the world, and therefore willed not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they be of God. This is a great yet common fault among us. Were he an angel from heaven that preaches to thee, yet art thou bound to look into his doctrine, and examine it, and not to take it upon credit without he bring sufficient proof and warrant for it. Like good Bereans, see you search the Scriptures, whether these things be so. (N. Rogers.)Preaching I. It seems to have been ordered by Divine wisdom that the gospel should, as much as possible, avail itself of the ordinary channels of communication and influence in spreading through the world. II. the secret of the power of preaching.1. It conveys far better than any other vehicle the affirmation of the whole man--his whole nature, his whole experience--to the matter which he desires to communicate. 2. It brings into play all the affinities, sympathies, and affections of the being, and is therefore a most powerful instrument in arriving at the truth. 3. So much is true of all preaching. But in the preaching of the gospel there is a source of special power--the principle of representation--the power and right to Speak to men in the name of God. III. The special preaching of the apostolic age. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)Change of gospel King James II. sat for his portrait to Verelst, the great flower painter. So completely was the canvas filled with elegant garlands of flowers, that the king himself was quite hidden out of sight. May we not in preaching and teaching attract so much attention to human wisdom, words and flowers, that Christ shall take quite an unimportant part in our instruction? And what is that but bringing in a different gospel, which yet is not another? The true gospel:-- I. The true gospel exists. Paul got his assurance of this--1. By the manner in which it came to him. (1) Not by intuition, learning, or traditions,(2) but by direct revelation from heaven (Acts 26:14-27). 2. By its revolutionary influence over him. II. The true gospel is pervertible. It was perverted.1. In apostolic times (see almost all the Epistles), which exposes the folly of going to antiquity for a standard in theology or morals. 2. In modern times, by rationalism, sectarianism, and intolerance. III. The perversion of the true gospel is a tremendous evil; greater than the anathema of angels or apostles. Why? Because--1. It misrepresents the Divine character.2. Neutralizes the Divine power to save. Conclusion:1. A lesson to preachers. How great their responsibility.2. A lesson to hearers. “ Take heed how ye hear.” (D. Thomas.)The intolerance of the gospel I. The nature of the gospel shows it to be uncompromising.1. It is founded on the Divine unity, and can never make a truce with Polytheism, Pantheism, or Materialism. 2. It displays the atonement of Christ, and consequently antagonizes every system which places salvation in any other. 3. It is revealed by one Spirit through inspired men, and therefore opposes (1) rationalism,(2) priestcraft. II. This intolerance is adapted to the needs of the human mind.1. The heart craves for one allsufficient Redeemer. 2. The intellect, for an infallible revelation of Divine love. 3. The moral nature, for an authoritative lawgiver in the midst of the tangled perplexities of life. III. This intolerance is compatible with diversity in the manifestations of spiritual life. (S. Pearson, M. A.)An angelic evangel I. Its advantages and disadvantages.1. It would carry a weight and conviction which no human ministry can impart. 2. But (1) then our probation would be at an end, for there would be no choice between believing and disbelieving.(2) We should lose the equality and sympathy between preacher and hearer based on a common nature and experience. II. Its criterion. Supposing such to be possible, how are we to test its truth?1. Not by the rank, genius, and holiness of the preacher. 2. But by comparing it with revealed truth. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The anathema The most dreaded Jewish punishment. Three degrees. I. Nidui. Casting out of the synagogue and separation from society, which might last thirty days. II. Cherem. The sentence of devotion to death. III. Shammatha or Maranatha, which purported that the criminal had nothing to expect but the final infliction of the Day of Judgment. He was loaded with execrations, excluded from temple and synagogue, his goods were confiscated, his sons debarred from circumcision and his daughters from marriage, and he solemnly remitted to the judgment of heaven. This was the curse the apostle invoked on himself or any one who preached another gospel. (D. Thomas.)The old gospel and the new Plenty of people come to a mission to hear a new gospel. I have seen the old gospel do many wonderful things. I have seen it transform character. I have seen it raise men from the lowest dregs of society and make them earnest and useful members of it. But I have never seen a new gospel do anything for any man. (W. H. M. H. Aitken.)Christ the preacher’ s great theme There was a shield in which the maker wrought his name, so that it could be effaced only by the destruction of his work; and so should the name of our glorious Immanuel be inwrought through the texture of our instructions, that their very consistency shall be dependent on the diffusion of that one blessed name throughout their length and breadth. On entering the cathedral-towns of England, the towers, or the spire, of the mother-church, or minster, are seen shooting up into the sky, far above all the other buildings, public or private, secular or sacred, and so let Jesus, the Church’ s Lord, King, and Saviour, have the pre-eminence above “ the whole city of topics and themes, Divine and human, which may be meetly grouped around His name; He casting His sanctifying shadow over all. (Evangelical Magazine.)The desert of traitors Benedict Arnold once asked a loyal captain what the Americans would do with him if they caught him. He replied, “ I believe they would first cut off your lame leg, which was wounded in the cause of freedom and virtue at Quebec, and bury it with the honours of war, and afterwards hang the remainder of your body on a gibbet.” (Foster.)The anathema What did the apostle mean by this strong asseveration? They are scathing words, and if true for his time, are true for ours also. What could he mean but this, that if any misunderstood and misrepresented the gospel--God’ s grandest and simplest revelation of Himself--it would show such a perverted mind, heart, and conscience, that he could be no other than accursed. He might conceivably be an angel coming from the undenied splendours of heaven; and if he failed to see God’ s glory in Bethlehem, or could not feel God’ s love at Calvary, or could not behold Divine hope for man at the resurrection, then, though his mind was angelic in its powers, it would be darker than the midnight sky, when the clouds return after the rain. Such moral gloom has fallen on many men; such callousness to the Cross; such indifference to the splendours of the Ascension; such utter scepticism about the completeness of Christ’ s work, and the Divinity of Christ’ s person. And if they have thus wilfully rejected the revelation of the first century, if they are not moved by love to a living Christ, God is their judge, and the gospel itself has become their accuser. In such a case this inspired sentence is a warning sent beforehand, that they may, shaking off their delusion, find blessing and life for evermore. (S. Pearson, M. A.)A curse upon him who preaches a false doctrine 1. A fearfully earnest utterance.2. Yet pressingly needful.3. Instructive for all who are wavering. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)The curse of the apostle against the false apostles I. Whom it strikes.1. Necessarily every one, without exception, who changes the blessing of the gospel into mischief, and so out of good prepares for himself death. 2. Those also who have deep insight, or other high qualifications for serving the kingdom of God, and yet do nut preach it purely. 3. Even an angel himself, if he could preach another gospel. II. Why must it be uttered.1. He who preaches the gospel must have a will to serve, not men, but God. 2. Through a false gospel men may indeed be attracted, but God views it as blasphemy. 3. Therefore he is placed under the curse, who will serve the gospel, and yet doing so as a man-pleaser, is found an unfruitful servant of Christ. (Lisco.)St. Paul’ s curse on teachers of false doctrine How weak is that reason which would argue from the holiness of a teacher to the truth of what is taught. It must never be taken for granted that the doctrine is sound, because the preacher seems righteous. There are certain standards to which doctrines must be referred, and by their agreement with these--not by the character of their supporters--are we bound to decide upon their truth or falseness. I. Revelation must in all its parts be consistent with itself. Fresh disclosures of His will God may make from time to time, but they must always be in harmony with what has gone before. In reading the Bible we always look, as it were, on the same landscape; the only difference being, as we take in more of its statements, that more and more of the mist is rolled away from the horizon, so that the eye can include a broader sweep of beauty. The later writers turn towards us a larger portion of the illuminated hemisphere than the earlier; but as the mighty globe turns majestically on its axis, we feel that the oceans and lands which come successively into view, are but constituent parts of the same glorious world. There is the discovery of now territories, but as fast as discovered the territories combine to make up one planet. In like manner, it is no fresh system of religion, which is made known to succeeding generations of men, as the brief notices given to patriarchs expand in the institutions of the law, under the teachings of prophecy, till at length in the days of Christ and His apostles they burst into magnificence and fill a world with redemption. From beginning to end it is the same system--a system for the rescue of men through the interference of a Surety; and revelation has been only the gradual development of this system--the drawing up another fold of the veil from the landscape, the adding another stripe of light to the crescent; so that the early fathers of the race, and ourselves, on whom have fallen the ends of the world, look on the same arrangements for human deliverance, though to them there was nothing but a cloudy expanse, with here and there a prominent landmark, while to us, though the horizon loses itself in the far-off eternity, every object of personal interest is exhibited in beauty and distinctness. Nothing, therefore, is to be believed, which contradicts any portion of what is thus revealed. No matter what other credentials a teacher brings, if there be not this evidence in his favour his doctrine is to be rejected. II. How are men to know that propounded doctrines are not according to truth? Evidently by comparison.1. The duty of determining why you believe. The hope of believers is in no sense a baseless or indefinite thing, but rests upon grounds capable of demonstration. It is of paramount importance that you know thoroughly the claims of that gospel which is to expel every other. 2. The duty of examining what you believe. God has furnished the Christian with a rule by which to try doctrines, and commanded him to reject, without regard to the authority of the teacher, whatever that rule determines to be error. 3. The duty of thorough acquaintance with the Scriptures. What can be the worth of your decision, if you know but little of the criterion? (H. Melvill, B. D.)Let him be accursed.--The sentence on false teachers The Greek word is “ anathema,” which properly means “ a person or thing which has been devoted to God; and especially something which he who devoted it has solemnly pledged himself to God to destroy” (Leviticus 27:28-29; Numbers 21:2-3; John 6:16-17; John 6:21). But it is also used without any reference to an offerer or to a vow, and signifies “ a person or thing which is accursed” (Deuteronomy 7:26). What did St. Paul mean by the expression, “ let him be accursed,” as applied to the false teachers? He cannot mean that he would have them wish for the curse of God to come down on them. He would rather have prayed that these unhappy men might be converted and saved; as he himself, once a persecutor and blasphemer, and as the Galatians, once gross and wicked idolaters, had been. His meaning appears to be simply this, “ let him be regarded by you as one accursed of God.” There is only one other place in which we find this expression in this exact form, viz., 1 Corinthians 16:22 --“ If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema, maranatha.” Can we imagine that Paul wished all professing Christians who did not love the Lord to be accursed? It is impossible to suppose such a thing. He can only mean, surely, that if any one proved that he had no real love for Christ, then--whatever his profession and his knowledge and his gifts might be--the Corinthians were to regard him as an unconverted man, and therefore as one who had no personal interest in the salvation of Christ, but was still under the curse of the law. And if this be his meaning, then there will be nothing in it but what will be in perfect harmony with all Paul’ s teaching and with all Paul’ s love for souls. (John Venn, M. A.) Galatians 1:10 For do I now persuade men, or God?or do I seek to please men?I. That the governing principle and motive of the religious life, is a practical concern not for the favour of man, but for that of god. “ Do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” The particle “ now” seems to contrast his present line of conduct as a Christian with his former procedure as a Pharisee. Here we perceive, therefore, the high standard of moral action which Christianity enabled St. Paul to propose to himself. His object was “ not to please men, but God.” Conventional utility is the standard of the world; and to please each other, so far as mutual interests can be advanced by the process, has been, time out of mind, the highest object contemplated in the codes of worldly men. But the Christian standard is far higher; and its results upon society, wherever it is acted upon, are invaluable. In every inquiry as to practical duty, Christianity brings the idea of the Supreme Being immediately before the mind--the great originator of human obligations--the infallible arbiter of human conduct--the final judge of human actions. The gospel is pre-eminently the religion of motives, and takes especial cognizance not only of what we do, but why we do it; and teaches us to inquire, not merely into the correctness of the action itself, but into the views and feelings whence it originated. In asserting his own freedom from selfish considerations, St. Paul incidentally taxes the false apostles with being governed by these debasing characteristics, their motives being notoriously too corrupt to bear the light. A supreme concern for the favour and friendship of God, as it is the governing principle of the religious life, has always distinguished the favoured servants of Christ. It was this principle of love and loyalty to heaven that induced Moses to relinquish the fleeting honours of a court, and to set at nought alike the treasures of Egypt and the frown of kings; for he endured at seeing Him who is invisible. This led the fathers of the Reformation, the Waldenses of the Continent, and the Puritans of a succeeding age, to endure obloquy, persecution, and martyrdom itself, rather than surrender the claims of conscience, or renounce their allegiance to the King of kings. And as the same causes must produce the same effects, this principle will induce us to take a decided part in the contest always going on. II. The source whence all true knowledge of the gospel is to be derived, whether as a matter of doctrine or as a matter of experience. “ I certify to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me was not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The religion we profess is not of man, but of God. This conviction is necessary.1. To satisfy our reason as men.2. To relieve our fears as sinners.3. To promote our usefulness as Christians. Improvement:1. A broad line of distinction between the Christian and the hypocrite. The one seeks to commend himself to man, the other to God. The nominal Christian may say, “ I received my religion as an heirloom from my ancestors,” or through the medium of educational bias and conviction; or from the lip of some eloquent expounder of evangelical doctrine; but the genuine disciple may, with unpresuming eye, look upwards and say, “ I received it, ‘ not of man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’” Again. It teaches us to distinguish between the varieties of character which obtain within the precincts of the Church itself, between Christian and Christian, between those who give token of advanced spirituality and ripeness for heaven, and those of inferior attainments and of less vigorous piety. “ One star differeth from another star in glory.” Some attain an early maturity, and some continue “ children in understanding” to a late period in life. Some run with patience the race set before them; others halt in their mid-way course, and long to unclasp their armour, if they do not surrender their shield. Some, like the children of Israel at Horeb, are satisfied to skirt the base of the Mount; whilst others, like Moses, ascend its summit, converse with God face to face, an& bear about them much of the brightness and blessedness of the region in which they had found their happiness and their home. Some, like the Galatians, give ear to something very much like “ another gospel;” others, like the apostle, amidst lamented infirmities, firmly abide by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Finally, Our subject reads aH impressive lesson to the ministers of religion. “ They must not,” as Perkins judiciously remarks, “ content themselves with that teaching which they find in the schools; but they must learn Christ as Paul learned Him. They that would convert others must be effectually converted. John must first eat the book, and then prophesy.” (The Evangelist.)Men-pleasing condemned I. The humour of desiring to be pleased, and the danger of it. A parasite is more welcome to us than a prophet. He is our apostle who will bring familiar and beloved arguments to persuade us to that to which we have persuaded ourselves already, and further our motion to that to which we are flying. Men would rather be cozened with a pleasing lie, than saved with a frowning and threatening truth. The causes from which this desire to be pleased proceedeth, and its hitter effects. 1.(1) And, first, it hath no better original than defect, than a wilful and negligent failing in those duties to which nature and religion have obliged us, a leanness and emptiness of the soul, which, not willing to fill itself with righteousness, filleth itself with air, with false counsels and false attestations, with miserable comforts. “ It is a thing soon done, and requireth no labour nor study, to be pleased.” We desire it as sick men do health, as prisoners do liberty, as men on the rack do ease: for a troubled spirit is an ill disease; not to have our will is the worst imprisonment; and to “ condemn a man’ s self in that which he alloweth” and maketh his choice (Romans 14:22), is to put himself upon the rack. We may see it in our civil affairs and matters of lesser alloy: when anything lieth upon us as a burden, how willing are we to cast it off! When we are poor, we dream of riches, and make up “ that which is not” with that which may be (Proverbs 23:5). When we have no house to hide our heads, we build a palace in the air. We are unwilling to suffer, but we are willing, nay, desirous, to be eased. And so it falleth out in the managing of our spiritual estate: we do as the apostle exhorteth (though not to this end), “ cast away everything that presseth down” (Hebrews 12:1); but so cast it away as to leave it heavier than before; prefer a momentary ease, which we beg or borrow or force from things without us, before that peace which nothing can bring in but that grief and serious repentance which we put off with hands and words as a thing irksome and unpleasing. (2) And thus, in the second place, proceedeth even from the force and power of conscience within us, which, ii we will not hearken to it as a friend, will turn Fury, and pursue and lash us; and if we will not obey her dictates, will make us feel her whip. This is our judge and our executioner. 2. Let us now see the danger of this humour, and the bitter effects it doth produce. (1) And, first, this desire to be pleased placeth us out of all hope of succour, leaveth us like an army besieged when the enemy hath cut off all relief. It is a curse itself, and carrieth a train of curses with it. It maketh us blind to ourselves, and not fit to make use of other men’ s eyes. (2) For, in the second place, this humour, this desire to be pleased, doth not make up our defects, but maketh them greater; doth not make vice a virtue,but sin more sinful. For he is a villain indeed that will be a villain, and yet be thought a saint; such a one as God will spew out of His mouth. (3) For, in the third place, this humour, this desire to be pleased, doth not take the whip from conscience, but enrageth her; layeth her asleep, to awake with more terror. For conscience may be “ seared” indeed (1 Timothy 4:2), but cannot be abolished; may sleep, but cannot die, but is as immortal as the soul itself. Conscience followeth our knowledge; and it is impossible to chase that away, impossible to be ignorant of that which I cannot but know. It is not conscience but our lusts that make the music. II. We proceed now to lay open the other evil humour, of pleasing men, Which is more visible and eminent in the text. And indeed to desire to be pleased and to be ready to please, saith Isidore Pelusiot, “ to flatter and to be flattered,” bear that near relation the one to the other that we never meet them asunder. It is the devil’ s net, in which he catcheth two at once. If there be an itching ear, you cannot miss but you shall find a flattering tongue. If the king of Sicily delight in geometry, the whole court shall swarm with mathematicians. If Nero be lascivious, his palace shall be turned into a stew or brothelhouse, or worse. And, first, we must not imagine that St. Paul doth bring in here a cynical morosity or a Nabal-like churlishness; that none may speak to us, and we speak nothing but words; that we should “ make a noise like a dog, and so go round about the city” (Psalms 59:6-14); that we should be as thorns in our brethren’ s sides, ever pricking and galling them. What, then, is that which here St. Paul condemneth? Look into the text, and you shall see Christ and men as it were two opposite terms. If the man be in error, I must not please him in his error; for Christ is truth: if the man be in sin, I must not please him; for Christ is righteousness. So when men stand in opposition to Christ, when men will neither hear His voice nor follow Him in His ways, but delight themselves in their own, and rest and please themselves in error as in truth, to awake them out of this pleasant dream, we must trouble them, we must thunder to them, we must disquiet and displease them. For who would give an opiate pill to these lethargies? To please men, then, is to tell a sick man that he is well; a weak man, that he is strong; an erring man, that he is orthodox; instead of purging out the noxious humour, to nourish and increase it; to smooth and strew the ways of error with roses, that men may walk with ease and delight, and even dance to their destruction; to find out their palate, and to fit it; to envenom that more which they affect, as Agrippina gave Claudius the emperor poison in a mushroom. What a seditious flatterer is in a commonwealth, that a false apostle is in the Church. They are as loud for the truth as the best champions she hath; but either subtract from it, or add to it, or pervert and corrupt it, that so the truth itself may help to usher in a lie. When the truth itself doth not please us, any lie will please us; but then it must carry with it something of the truth. For instance: to acknowledge Christ, but with the law, is a dangerous mixture: it was the error of the Galatians here. III. You see now what it is to please men, and from whence it proceedeth, from whence it springeth, even from that bitter root, the root of all evil, the love of the world. Let us now behold that huge distance and inconsistency which is between these two, the pleasing of men, and the service of Christ: “ If I yet please men, I am not the servant of Christ.”1. And, first, we cannot do both, not serve men and Christ, no more than you can draw the same straight line to two points, to touch them both (Matthew 6:24). 2. Secondly. The servant must have his eye upon his master; and as he seeth him do, must do likewise. Power cannot flatter; and mercy is so intent on its work that it thinketh of nothing else. To work wonders to please men were the greatest wonder of all. Application:1. For conclusion, then: Let them who are set apart to lead others in the way of truth and righteousness take heed. 2. And of the person by His doctrine. 3. And therefore, in the last place, let us all, both teachers and hearers, purge out this evil humour of pleasing and being pleased: and “ let us,” as the apostle exhorteth, “ consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Let us “ speak truth every one to his neighbour; for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25). (A. Faringdon.)Applause of conscience best One applause of conscience is worth all the triumphs in the world. (A. Faringdon.)Truth better than flattery Thou shalt not see thy brother sin; but “ thou shalt rebuke” and save thy brother (Leviticus 19:17). Common charity requireth thus much at thy hand: and to make question of it is as if thou shouldst ask with Cain, “ Am I my brother’ s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). This is the true and surest method of pleasing one another. For flattery, like the bee, carrieth honey in its mouth, but hath a sting in its tail; but truth is sharp and bitter at first, but at last more pleasant than manna. He that would seal up thy lips for the truth which thou speakest, will at last kiss those lips, and bless God in the day of His visitation. And this if we do, we shall “ please one another to edification” (Romans 15:2), and not unto ruin. And thus all shall be pleased; the Physician, that he hath his intent, and the patient in his health: the strong shall be pleased in the weak, and the weak in the strong; the wise in the ignorant, and the ignorant in the wise: and Christ shall be well pleased to see brethren thus walk together in unity, strengthening and inciting one another in the ways of righteousness; and when we have thus walked hand-in-hand together to our journey’ s end, He shall admit us into His presence, where there “ is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore” (Psalms 16:11). (A. Faringdon.)Sinners not to be flattered We should not mould and fit our best part to their worst, our reason to their lust; nor make our fancy the elaboratory to work out such essays as may please and destroy them. We should not foment the anger of the revenger to consume him, nor help the covetous to bury himself alive, nor the ambitious to break his neck, nor the schismatic to rend the seamless coat of Christ, nor the seditious to swim to hell in a river of blood: but we should bind the revenger’ s hands, break the miser’ s idols, bring down the ambitious to the dust, make up those rents which faction hath made, and confine the seditious to his own sphere and place. When the world pleaseth us, we are as willing to please the world, and we make it our stage, and act our parts; we call ourselves “ friends,” and are but parasites; we call ourselves “ prophets,” and are but wizards and jugglers; we call ourselves “ apostles,” and are seducers; we call ourselves “ brethren,” though it be in evil, and, like Hippocrates’ twins, we live and die together. We flatter, and are flattered; we are blind, and leaders of the blind, and fall together with them into the ditch. (A. Faringdon.)Apostolic unpopularity The gospel is unpopular(1) Because of its holiness. It is the expression of the will of the All-holy, and demands submission and conformity to that will. Issuing from the fountain of purity, it calls for purity in every part. Only those who have the love of God in their hearts can appreciate and welcome it. To all others it must always be hateful. (2) Because of its mysteriousness. Christ can only be apprehended by those who receive Him in faith; to others He is an enigma, and His salvation a thing beyond understanding; and men love not that which they are unable to comprehend. Pride of intellect protests against the gospel’ s admitted mysteriousness. (3) Because of its exclusiveness. It claims to be the one true system, and that all others are false; a claim which makes enemies of every other religion’ s votaries, and of those who--caring for no religion themselves--would tolerate all. (4) Because of its freeness. Men would prefer if the gospel asked for something at their hands, recognized that there was such a thing as human merit. A free gospel deals a blow to their self.conceit and self-satisfaction. (5) Because of its aggressiveness. It is not content to leave men to themselves; and they resent every attempt at interference with them. The gospel offers no terms of compromise. In the name of God it demands unconditional submission. It aims at universal conquest. Hence its unpopularity with the world. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Christian firmness I. Christian firmness is not self-willed indifference to human opinion. On the contrary, the Christian is anxious to please and yield to others wherever his own interests alone are concerned. Many things he might rightly claim, he will shrink from pressing; many things that he may suffer, he will quietly submit to, rather than irritate the minds of men against the piety that he professes, or close the door against the future possibility of being the instrument of their conversion. Self-renunciation for the honour of God, or for the good of man, is the special spirit of a Christian. Nay, more; he will spare the feelings and humours of men whenever he lawfully can, doing things in their way rather than his own, being careful of appearances as well as realities. (Romans 12:17-18; 2 Corinthians 8:21; 1 Timothy 3:7; etc.) II. Nor is it selfish inattention to human welfare. Salvation is not to be achieved in isolated effort, but is wrought out in the very nourishment and growth of those affections, occupations, and energies, which our duties in the world produce. There cannot be a genuine desire to save our own soul, a true Christian spirit of personal piety, which will not, from its very nature, expand beyond the confines of our own bosom, and overflow in copious streams towards all with whom we have to do. III. It is simply paramount obedience to Divine authority. Pleasing men must always be subordinate to pleasing God. Every concession must be with a reservation of our Master’ s rights and privileges, honour and authority; every treaty must be so, for it is only good as it may be acknowledged and ratified by Him. All things may be tried for Him; hut nothing listened to against Him. (Prebendary Griffith.)Right and wrong men-pleasing We are not to please men, be they never so many or great, out of flatness of spirit, so as, for the pleasing of them, either go to neglect any part of our duty towards God and Christ; or(2) to go against our own conscience, by doing any dishonest or unlawful thing; or, (3) to do them harm whom we would please, by confirming them in their sins, humouring them in their peevishness, or but even cherishing their weakness; for weakness, though it may be borne with, yet it must not be cherished. (4) But then, by yielding to their infirmities for a time, in hope to win them, by patiently expecting their conversion, or strengthening, by restoring them with the spirit of meekness, with meekness instructing them that oppose themselves, should we seek to please all men. (Bishop Christopher Wordsworth.)Two earnest questions 1. Which seekest thou most--man’ s favour, or God’ s favour?2. Which is weightier--man’ s favour, or God’ s favour? (J. P. Lange, D. D.)Ministerial faithfulness and discretion The love of popularity is a temptation from which few of us probably are free. The conscientious minister is constantly reminded of the fact that “ the fear of man bringeth a snare.” In our public and private ministrations we often have to advocate truths which are uncongenial and unwelcome to many of those to whom we minister. A clear, decided, pointed application of God’ s Word, must be unwelcome to the worldly, the careless, the self-indulgent, and the self-righteous. But we are naturally reluctant to forfeit the good opinion of others. Hence the temptation to modify, if not to hold back, offensive truths; to present our message, not in its naked simplicity, but in such a manner as shall disarm opposition; to avoid anything like close dealing with the conscience; to busy ourselves only with pointless generalities; to seek rather to please the imagination and gratify the taste, than to awaken conscience, to convince of sin, and to urge the surrender of heart and life to Christ. It is easy enough, by a little contrivance, to make our gospel popular. It is possible to teach truth, and nothing but truth, and yet to give no offence. We have only to modify our statements, or to generalize our applications, and the thing is done. We have but to omit an unpalatable truth, or so to state it as that none need apply it to themselves, and no objection will be raised. Men will tolerate, nay, approve of, a modified system of evangelical truth, to whom the entire presentment of such truth would be unacceptable. Four times, in a single verse, is the prophet warned against this temptation: “ And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words;… be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks” (Ezekiel 2:6). And the Apostle Paul was fully conscious of the danger when he said, “ I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). At the same time; we must be careful that our unpopularity springs from legitimate causes: from the unreasonable opposition of the world to the truth of God, not from the just dislike of men to offensive peculiarities or positive faults. A Christian may be unpopular because he is vain, conceited, selfish, ungenial, narrow-minded, dogmatic, or the like. He may impute his unpopularity to his religion; whereas it comes rather from his want of religion: it originates not in the doctrine which he professes, but in his failure “ to adorn” that doctrine in his daily life. Want of tact, again, in Christians often provokes opposition. The attempt to press the claims of religion upon others at unseasonable times, the employment of technical religious phraseology, the use of theological words and expressions not commonly heard in society, the thrusting of religious idiosyncrasies upon the unwilling and unsympathizing, are causes which frequently operate to the detriment of the principles which we have at heart. Christians should beware of mistaking forwardness for fidelity, and an obtrusive familiarity with sacred things for the honest outflowings of the heart full of love to God and man. Christian prudence is as needful, as worldly compromise is dangerous and wrong. In a word, we must not court unpopularity, or provoke it needlessly, or think that it never arises from any fault of our own. But, on the other hand, we must not dread it, lest we place ourselves among those who “ love the praise of men more than the praise of God.” Ministers must ask, not how they may best please their congregations, but how they may save souls; not how they may stand well with the world, but how they may best serve their Master. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Men-pleasing Theodoric, an Arian king, did exceedingly affect a certain deacon, although orthodox. The deacon, thinking to please him better, and get preferment, became an Arian, which, when the king understood he changed his love into hatred, and caused his head to be struck from his shoulders. (Trapp.)Pleasing men or serving Christ A railway-gate keeper who, one cold night required every passenger to show his ticket before passing through to the train, and was rewarded with considerable grumbling and protesting, was told, “ You are a very unpopular man to-night.” “ I only care to be popular with one man,” was the reply, “ and that is the superintendent.” He might have pleased the passengers, disobeyed orders, and lost his position. He was too wise for that; his business was to please one man--the man who hired him, gave him his orders, and rewarded him for faithfulness, and who would discharge him for disobedience. The servant of Christ has many opportunities to make himself unpopular. There are multitudes who would be glad to have him relax the strictness of his rules. If he is their servant they demand that he should consult their wishes. But if he serves them, he cannot serve the Lord. “ No man can serve two masters.” He who tries to be popular with the world, will lose his popularity with the Lord. He will make friends, but he will lose the one Friend who is above all others. He will win plaudits, but he will not hear the gracious word, “ Well done!” A faithful servant:--Not the least interesting of the monuments I saw amid the venerable ruins of Rome was one which held within its broken urn some half-burned bones. They were the ashes of one, who, as appeared from the inscription on the tablet, had belonged to Caesar’ s household, and to the memory of whose virtues as a faithful, honest, and devoted servant, the emperor himself had ordered that marble to be raised. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)A ministerial alternative I. To please men by--1. Watering down the doctrines of the gospel until they mean whatever hearers like to make them. 2. Toning down the precepts of the gospel until they are undistinguishable from the maxims of worldly policy. 3. Introducing secular expedients to attract audiences over whom an attenuated gospel has host its power. 4. Sinking the stern preacher of righteousness in the bland mover-about in society. II. To serve Christ by--1. The proclamation of unalterable trust. 2. The insistence of, and personal conformity to, a high moral standard. 3. The disdain of mere clap-trap and popular arts. 4. The imitation of the self-denying example of the Master. The one may please men; the other will save them. Bondage to man or to Christ:--I. The necessity to please men represents in a very typical manner the non-freedom of the unredeemed man. This is a real slavery because-- 1. It disturbs the development of an independent plan of life.2. It is a part of the bondage of sin.3. It involves servitude to the customs and fashions of the world. II. Freedom from this yoke is only gained by entering the service of Christ. Just as the servant of a king boasts of his office as the highest liberty, so can we when we serve the Lord Christ. III. Deliverance from the fear of man and the necessity of pleasing him, and servitude to Christ and pleasing Him, may be taken as a general description of Christian liberty. In conclusion--1. Has the desire to have the good opinion of my neighbours any part in my profession of religion? 2. Even if my religious service is not done to be seen of men, is it a thing of form or principle? 3. Have I courage to dissent from the usages of society if my conscience protests? Do I always set before me, “ What does Christ demand?” and not, “ What will men say?” (Professor Robertson Smith.)The servant of Christ I. The servant.1. He realizes the most perfect ideal of life. Others live for pleasure, wealth, fame; he for Christ.2. He has the best Master.3. He yields to the most valid claims--property, protection, redemption. 4. He has the strongest warrants--reason, conscience, love.5. He is promised and enjoys the noblest reward--his Master’ s smile, his Sovereign’ s throne. II. His service.1. It is dignified in its sphere.2. Grand in its motive--“ pleasing God.”3. Splendid in its instrument--the gospel.4. Glorious in the freedom of its consecration.5. Beneficent in the uses which it serves. Persuading God What the apostle means is making sure that God is with him. This can only be done by taking God’ s way as ours, and not by hoping to get Him to, take ours as His. This much Paul says in vindication of his severity, whose office was that of a persuader of men. “ Nay,” he says, “ the question is not of gaining over men, but of standing right with God, and that even at the expense of an absolute breach with men. At such a time as this, when deceitful men are striving to undo all my work for Christ, so far from being called to conciliate them, were I to do so I should not be a servant of Christ.” (Professor Robertson Smith.)Man-pleasing a vice in a moral reformer Watch the author of a first poem or novel. What eagerness to see all the reviews; what anxiety till they come out; what manoeuvring to ascertain what people have said! And how many persons are there that, even after their apprenticeship in literature or art is over, can honestly affirm that the feeling has quite left them? Raphael must have liked to hear his pictures praised: nor was the approbation of the public a matter of indifference to the octogenarian Goethe, But though the artist or the literateur may so far make a merit of popularity it is quite different with the moral teacher or agent in great social changes. Popularity may happen to flow toward such a man, but it should not be treated as a reward or incentive, but rather as a means of deciding what proportion of society has been moved in the direction of his own spirit, and how much yet remains to be brought into subjection. In certain cases, indeed, it might be proper to lay it down as a maxim that he cannot honestly or efficiently accomplish his office without exciting opposition at every step he takes. (North British Review.)Men-pleasing--its danger The wise Phocion was so sensible how dangerous it was to be touched with what the multitude approved, that upon a general acclamation made when he was making an oration he turned to an intelligent friend and asked in a surprised manner, “ What slip have I made?” (Steele.)Men-pleasing the source of unfaithfulness The soul that cannot entirely trust God, whether man be pleased or displeased, can never long be true to Him for while you are eyeing men you are losing God and stabbing religion at the very heart. (T. Manton.)Men-pleasing--its cure When one has learned to seek the honour that cometh from God only, he will take the withholding of the honour that cometh by man very lightly indeed. (Geo. Macdonald.)The alternative to men-pleasing Do not preach so much to please as to profit. Choose rather to discover men’ s sins than to show your own eloquence. That is the best looking-glass, not which is most gilded but which shows the truest face. (T. Watson.)The servant of Christ The title which the apostle gives himself, “ the servant, or the slave, of Christ,” expresses, we may be sure, no mere acquiescence in some current fashion of Eastern speech, but the aspect of his life and conduct which he desires to keep before himself and others. St. Paul belonged to two worlds, the Jewish and the Greek, and in this title he has both worlds in view. In the language of the Psalter, and of the Hebrew prophets, every Israelite is, as such, a servant of the Lord, and to the collective people, viewed in its separate and its consecrated life, it is said, “ Thou, Israel, art My servant, thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, thou art My servant, I have chosen thee.” But besides this general and ethical meaning, the title had a technical, official force. Any man who was marked out from among his fellows as having a special work to do for the Lord, was regarded as taken into the service of the invisible King, whose livery he thus wore by the force of events, and by his acts, and by the tenour of his life, in the eyes of his countrymen. In this sense, too, every member of the prophetic order came in time to be termed a “ servant of the Lord;” and the title reached its highest significance when, in the later group of Isaiah’ s writings, it was used of the King Messiah, whose future humiliation and glory there mingled indistinctly with the nearer, although still distant, suffering and deliverance of the martyred people in Babylon. When, then, St. Peter and St. Jude, writing to Churches mainly or entirely of Jewish origin, styled themselves servants of Jesus Christ, they probably understood the title, chiefly if not exclusively, in the traditional and narrower Hebrew sense. But when St. Paul, writing to the Roman or Philippian Church, calls himself a servant of Christ, it is difficult to suppose that he does not read into the title the meaning which his readers would naturally find there, In these Churches, consisting altogether or predominantly of converts from heathendom, the phrase would rather suggest the ordinary slave of the GreekRoman world, than an inspired or distinguished servant of the Hebrew theocracy. That unseen, that immense population of human beings which worked, which suffered in silence, which tilled the fields, which manned the fleets, which constructed the palaces and the bridges of the world, which supplied to those who had property and power their cooks, their carpenters, their painters, their astronomers, their doctors, their poets, their copyists, their gladiators, their buffoons; which ministered to the refinement, intelligence, luxury, passions of the wealthy; which by its ceaseless and almost unnoticed waste of unregarded life satisfied the requirements, and helped to fill the coffers of the State. The slave class was almost the most prominent, as it was certainly the most mournful feature in “ the ancient society.” In the view of antiquity, the slave was but an animated instrument, a mere body which chanced to be endowed with certain mental capacities. In the eye of the law, the slave was not a person: he was classed by the jurists with goods and with animals; he was sold, he was bequeathed by will, he was lent to a friend, he was shut up, he was banished, until the day of the later legislation he was killed--quite at the discretion of his owner. And St. Paul calls himself this--the slave of Jesus Christ! He was not merely a servant holding an honourable post in the kingdom of heaven, which he might relinquish at pleasure; he was consciously a slave. And in this abandonment of all human liberty at the feet of the Redeemer rain this utter surrender of the right to his intelligence, his affections, the employment of his time and his property, his movements from place to place, except as his Master might command, St. Paul found the true dignity and happiness of his being as a man. He belonged to Jesus Christ not by any original or solitary act of his own, but because, as he could not but acknowledge, Jesus Christ had paid for him, had bought him at an incalculable cost, out of slavery which was misery and degradation, into a service, which was freedom indeed. (Canon Liddon.)Our duty with respect to public opinion Public opinion is that common stock of thought and sentiment which is created by human society, or by a particular section of it; and it in turn keeps its authors under strict control. It is a natural product, it is a deposit which cannot but result from human intercourse. No sooner do men associate with one another, than a public opinion of some kind comes to be. And as civilization advances, and man multiplies the channels whereby he ascertains and governs the thought of his fellow-men, public opinion grows in strength, in area, and men voluntarily, or rather instinctively, abandon an increasing district of their understandings and conduct to its undisputed control. It varies in definiteness and in exigency with the number of human beings which it happens to represent. There is public opinion proper to each village and town, to each society and profession, to each country, to each civilization, to the world; but between the most general and the narrowest forms of this common body of thought and sentiment, there are bands and joints which weld the whole into a substantial unit; and in modern times public opinion has taken a concrete body and form, such as two centuries ago was undreamt of. It lives, it works in the daily press. In the press we see visibly embodied before our eyes this empire of opinion, with its countless varieties and sub-divisions, with its strong, corporate, and substantial unities. And so, face to face with the press, every man who hopes to keep his own conscience in moderately good order knows that in public opinion he encounters a force with which, sooner or later, on a large scale or a small, before the world or in the recesses of his own conscience, he must of necessity reckon; and that, whether he bears like St. Paul a commission from heaven, or endeavours to be loyal to such truth as he knows of chiefly or altogether among the concerns of earth. What is the duty of the Christian towards this ubiquitous, this penetrating agency? Is he to shut himself up and despise it, as might some Stoic of the earlier Stoic school? Assuredly not. St. Paul did not do that. He was respectful, even towards heathen opinion … Are we, then, to place ourselves trustfully under public opinion, to defer to and obey it, at least in a Christian country; and is it to furnish us in the last resort with the rule of conduct and criterion of moral, even religious, truth? Again, most assuredly not; for it is, in fact, a compromise between the many elements which go to make up human society; and the lower and selfish elements of thought and feeling are apt upon the whole to preponderate. Public opinion is too wanting in patience, in penetration, in delicacy, to deal successfully with religious questions. It cannot be right to cry “ Hosanna” now; to-morrow, “ Crucify” ; to applaud in Galilee what you condemn in Jerusalem; to sanction in this generation what was denounced in that; to adore what you have burned, to burn what you have adored with conspicuous versatility, merely because a large body of human beings--the majority of them, it may be, quite without particular information on the subject in hand--love to have it so. To attempt to please men in this sense is, most assuredly, incompatible with the service of Christ. The Christian has, or ought to have, upon his heart and upon his conscience, the revelation of truth which in these great crises of life sets him above the exigencies of public opinion. He that is spiritual judgeth all things, but he himself is judged of no man. He will not, indeed, break with it lightly or wantonly; he will look ones and again, aye and a third time, to be sure that he is not himself deceived, if not in his principle yet in its application. But when this point is once clear, he will resolutely go forward. (Canon Liddon.)Uncomfortable preaching I remember one of my parishioners telling me that “ he thought a person should not go to church to be made uncomfortable.” I replied that I thought so too; but whether it should be the sermon or the man’ s life that should be altered, so as to avoid the discomfort, must depend on whether the doctrine was right or wrong. (Archbishop Whately.)Reward of men-pleasing-- One Sunday afternoon a well-known minister, fatigued after his labours in church, retired to his room to rest. He had not long lain down, before he fell asleep and began to dream. He dreamed, that on walking into his garden, he entered a bower that had been erected in it, where he sat down to read and meditate. While thus employed, he thought he heard some person enter the garden.; and, leaving his bower, he immediately hastened towards the spot whence the sound seemed to come, in order to discover who it was that had entered. He had not proceeded far before he discovered a particular friend of his, a minister of considerable talents and popularity. On approaching his friend, he was surprised to find on his countenance a gloom which it had not been wont to bear, indicating violent agitation of mind which seemed to arise from conscious remorse. After the usual salutations had passed, his friend asked the relater the time of the day. To which he replied, “ Twenty.five minutes after four.” On hearing this the stranger said, “ It is only one hour since I died, and now” --(here his countenance spoke unutterable horrors.) “ Why so troubled?” inquired the dreaming minister. “ It is not,” said he, “ because I have not preached the gospel; nor is it because I have not been rendered useful, for I have now many seals to my ministry that can bear testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, which they have received from my lips’ ; but it is because I have been accumulating to myself the praise of men, more than the honour which cometh from above; and, verily, I have my reward.” Having thus said, he disappeared, and was seen no more. The minister awoke, and soon learned of the death of the popular preacher at the precise time indicated in the dream. Attempts at men-pleasing not always successful Dr. Dodd’ s besetting sin seems to have been an excessive anxiety to give satisfaction to all, to “ please men” of every shade of opinion. Having to preach one Sunday at a country town, where were two different meeting-houses, the one Calvinistic and the other Arminian, the doctor provided himself with two sermons as opposite in their doctrine as were the congregations he was to preach to. When he arrived at the place he mounted the Calvinistic pulpit in the morning, gave out his text, and began his sermon; but he had not proceeded far when he perceived that he had pulled out the wrong sermon. However, it was now too late to repair the mischief, so he was obliged to go through with it, much to his own discomfiture, and to the dissatisfaction of the people. Having but two sermons with him, and knowing that many of his morning hearers would follow him to the other meeting in the afternoon, he was under the necessity of preaching his Calvinistic discourse in the Arminian place of worship, and of course gave as much discontent to his second congregation as he had done to the first. The doctor mentioning his mistake shortly afterwards to an intimate friend, received sorry comfort from the reply: “ Never mind, sir; you only happened to put your hand into the wrong pocket!” Godless ministers It is true that a man may impart light to others, who does not himself see the light. It is true that, like a concave speculum, cut from a block of ice, which by its power of concentrating the rays of the sun, kindles touchwood or explodes gunpowder, a preacher may set others on fire, when his own heart is cold as frost. It is true that he may stand like a lifeless finger-post, pointing the way on a road where he neither leads nor follows. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Galatians 1:11-12 That the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.The inspiration of St. Paul The greater part of our knowledge must always rest on the authority of others. No single man is able to ascertain for himself the innumerable facts, in all the various fields of human investigation, out of which alone a personal conviction can grow. Nor can we always reason out the conclusions that we accept on others’ testimony. We must take them on faith. False teachers in Galatia attempted to weaken Paul’ s authority by asserting that he, having never been a personal disciple of Jesus, and not therefore included in the original commission, was to be looked on as no more than a self-appointed proclaimer of a self-invented doctrine, or as the agent only of other persons who employed his zeal and talents to diffuse their error, or perhaps as the ignorant perverter of the truths which he had at first been taught by the apostles at Jerusalem, and from which he had gone aside. St. Paul here refutes these accusations and insinuations. I. His principles of Christianity were not derived from human authority. He was not the retailer of other men’ s notions, and proclaimer of what others had invented for him and enjoined on him. He had not been drilled in any human school, and then sent forth to talk--to distribute the materials which had been put into his hands, and to hawk about the goods which others had manufactured for him. Far higher than this was his authority; far deeper his knowledge and convictions. II. Nor through human instruction. Not merely conviction arrived at by self-study of others’ opinions. III. But from divine disclosure. God unveiled His hidden things to the mental vision of the apostle. His inspiration is a revelation, disclosure, communication from God. Therefore he speaks with authority. (Prebendary Griffith.)The nature of revelation Revelation is distinguished from ordinary moral and spiritual influences by its suddenness. It shows us in an instant, what, under ordinary circumstances, would grow up gradually and insensibly. In the individual it is accompanied by a sudden transition from darkness to light; in the world at large it is an anticipation of moral truth and of the course of human experience. Reducible to no natural laws, it is to our ordinary moral and spiritual nature what peculiar cataleptic conditions are to our bodily, constitution. It seems to come from without, and is not; to be confounded with any inward emotion, any more than a dream or the sight of a painting. As compared with prophecy, it is nearer to us, representing as in a picture the things that shall shortly come to pass, and yet embracing a wider range; not, like the prophets of old, describing the fortunes of an individual nation, as it may have crossed the path of the Jewish people, but lifting up the veil from the whole invisible world. In all its different senses it retains this external, present, immediate character. Whether it be the future kingdom of Christ, or the fall of Jerusalem or of Rome, or the world lying in wickedness, that is described, all is displayed immediately before us as on some mount of transfiguration--the figures near to us, and the colours bright. (B. Jowett, M. A.)The gospel no work of man 1. As a word of doctrine, it did not spring from men, nor was it taught by men, but by Christ Himself, who brought it Himself, and through whom alone His people have it. 2. As a word of comfort, only through Him can we commit ourselves to it. 3. As a word of power, in which there should be no change, from which no departure. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)A solemn avowal concerning the gospel I. The gospel that Paul preached. The purport of his ministry and the faith he proclaimed are given in Acts 26:22-23. II. The gospel which Paul preached was not of man.1. His gospel was not after man. It did not originate with man. Human schemes of salvation have ever been imperfect in theory and worthless in practice. 2. Paul’ s gospel was not communicated by man. “ I neither received it of man.” 3. The gospel which Paul preached was not explained to him by man. “ Neither was I taught it.” III. The gospel that Paul preached was revealed to him. IV. Paul’ s testimony in relation to the gospel was delivered with great impressiveness and solemnity. “ I declare unto you, brethren.” Lessons:1. Paul and the other apostles preached what had been revealed to them; there cannot, therefore, be in the true sense, any successors to the apostles now. 2. The gospel being a revelation, should be received with reverent trust. (Richard Nicholls.)I certify you Observe-- I. That men may be certified that the gospel is not of man but of God, by--1. The evidences of God’ s Spirit imprinted on and expressed in it.2. The testimony of its promulgators who were neither knaves nor fools.3. The assurance of obedience and experience (John 7:17). II. That Christ is the great teacher of this gospel.1. He is the Revealer of the will of the Father touching the redemption of mankind (John 1:18; John 8:26).2. He calls and sends the preachers of this gospel (John 20:21; Ephesians 4:11).3. He gives the Spirit who illuminates the mind and guides into all truth. III. That Christ teaches the teachers of this gospel.1. By immediate revelation,2. By ordinary instruction in the schools. IV. That those who are teachers must be first taught, and must then teach what they have learned. (2 Timothy 3:14). (W. Perkins.)Preaching the gospel To preach is to announce by heralding. We have to reiterate as new and happy tidings in the ear of a stranger that God’ s kingdom is come, is to come, and that we can help it to come, I ask any man, if this be true and not romance, is it not an honour to proclaim it, although it be with us as with Paul, against difficulties and calumnies. (T. T. Lynch.)The inspiration of St. Paul In an important sense the inspiration of St. Paul is the highest in Holy Scripture; for while Moses laid a foundation, and prophets brought together the Divine materials, and evangelists built up the walls of the glorious temple of God’ s truth, it was reserved for Paul to complete the structure and bring out its beauties to be seen of the whole earth. There are magnificent temples in Bible lands that have served for quarries for the structures the Turks have built under their shadow. Yet even in ruin their greatness is more conspicuous from the contrast. So the ablest theologians have gone to Paul for the choicest stones of their goodly structures, and still the temple he was commissioned to complete looks down on them all, not a ruin but perfect as at the first. His Epistles form the crowning glory of that Word of God that abideth for ever. (M. Laurie, D. D.)Certification of Divine revelation Can a revelation be certified? The answer may be divided into three parts.1. The method of the revelation, by individual men, and by writings handed down from age to age, is not unreasonable. 2. The anterior probability of such a revelation as is given in Scripture is undoubtedly strong. 3. The test of time being applied to the revelation actually given, sufficiently approves the Divine authority which is claimed for it. (R. A. Redford.)Divine revelation from above I. It occupies a higher region than that which is physical, mental, or moral. II. It comes down upon the intellect, not out of it.1. It is sublimely authoritative.2. By the side of it the most advanced knowledge is halting and immature. III. Paul insisted on his apostleship because this revelation was committed to him. (S. Pearson, M. A.)It is an historical fact that human nature is always below revelation Great discoveries are usually the product of preceding ages of thought. One mind developes the idea; but it is the fruitage of the ages ripened in that mind. A pearl is found; but the location has been indicated by previous researches. But revealed religion is something different from this. It is separate from and superior to the thought of the age. It calls the wisdom of the world foolishness, and introduces a new standpoint and starting-point around which it gathers what was valuable in the old, and destroys the remainder. Hence it will always be found true that a struggle is necessary to bring up the human mind and keep it up to the level of revealed religion, anti that revealed religion produces the struggle. Even those who profess to be its friends retrograde as soon as its power abates, and new applications of that power have to be made to bring them up again. (J. B. Walker, M. A.)Revelation by Christ Revelation seems usually to be ascribed to the Son of God in consistency with His character as the Word, the declarer of God’ s will who has manifested God in the flesh (see also 1 Corinthians 11:23; Revelation 1:1; Revelation 5:9). Whereas Inspiration is usually connected with the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21; Acts 1:16; Hebrews 7:8). But Luke 2:26 is an exception to the rule. And, doubtless as on the one hand it is from the Son that the Spirit proceeds, being indeed the water which flows out of the rock of our salvation: so, on the other, no revelation can be made without the Spirit who opens the inward eye to what is outwardly communicated. (Dean Goulburn.) Galatians 1:13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past.My conversation in time past I. An humbling and painful recollection. We should study the true uses of the past. The past is rightly used when it--1. Deepens our sense of guilt.2. Illustrates the greatness of Divine mercy.3. Inspires us with courage in relation to the future. II. An humbling and painful recollection relieved by the highest consideration.1. Not a self-recovery or development,2. but the inward revelation of Christ. III. An humbling and painful recollection succeeded by a holy and sublime vocation. The fact that God calls converted sinners to preach His gospel. 1. Pats the minister into moral sympathy with his hearers.2. Exemplifies the power of God to execute His purposes.3. Stimulates the study of Divine things. Application: The text--1. Appeals to the worst of men.2. Explains the vehemence and urgency of an earnest ministry.3. Exalts and illustrates the gospel of Christ. (J. Parker, D. D.)Paul’ s former life I. As a persecutor. Consider-- 1. The wasting. (1) How can the Church be wasted? Not in its inward estate, which stands in election, faith, justification; glory; but in respect of men’ s bodies, public assemblies, religious exercises.(2) Why does God suffer it to be wasted? Judgment begins at the house of God. Painful operations are often needful to health. 2. The waster. (1) Sin, when it takes place, gives a man no rest till it has brought him to a height of wickedness.(2) Therefore avoid the beginning of evil. II. As a religionist.1. He profited exceedingly. Observe (1) that there should be holy emulation in religion,(2) but modest pretensions an excellence. 2. He was exceedingly jealous (1) about the law and unwritten traditions,(2) but not according to knowledge. III. Whence learn--1. To addict and set ourselves earnestly to maintain the truth.2. To be angry when God is dishonoured and His Word disobeyed.3. Not to give liberty to the best of our natural affections, as zeal, but to rule them.4. To estimate unwritten traditions at their proper worth. (W. Perkins.)Persecutor and minister A minister once preaching a charity sermon in the west of England, began as follows: “ Many years have elapsed since I was within these walls. On that occasion there came three young men with the intention not only of scoffing at the minister, but with stones in their pockets for the purpose of assaulting him. After a few words one of them said with an oath, ‘ Let us be at him now;’ but the second replied, ‘ No; stop till we hear what he makes of this point.’ The minister went on, when the second said, ‘ We have heard enough; now throw,’ But the third interfered, remarking, ‘ He is not so foolish as I expected; let us hear him out.’ The preacher concluded without having been interrupted. Now mark me--of these three young men one was executed for forgery; the second lies under sentence of death for murder; the third, through the infinite mercy of God, now addresses you. Listen to him.” The value in controversy of practical experience of the opposite side Paul knew the joints in his opponents’ armour, and shows at the outset that he knew not only the opinions of the Judaisers, but the spiritual atmosphere in which they had been educated. Such a controversialist the enemy cannot afford to despise, for the battle is half won before it has commenced. It is often very annoying to a young man to be told by a mature Christian, “ I thought as sceptically as you do, and spoke as rashly, believing that I was going to turn the orthodox world upside down; but I have got beyond those days, and am now a wiser man, as I trust you will be.” Yet this is frequently the only way of meeting the case. The young man retires within himself, looks at rash utterances in the light of cool reflection, finds that truth and novelty are not synonymous, and is at least silent, which is a great gain to himself and to those around him. (S. Pearson, M. A.)Paul’ s antecedents a qualification for his work It has often happened that the destroyer of a creed or system has been bred and trained in the bosom of the system which he was destined to shake or destroy. Sakya Mouni had been brought up in Brahminism; Luther had taken the vows of an Augustinian; Pascal had been trained as a Jesuit; Spinoza was a Jew; Wesley and Whitefield were clergymen of the Church of England. It was not otherwise with St. Paul. The victorious enemy of heathen philosophy and worship had passed his boyhood amid the heathen surroundings of a philosophic city. The deadly antagonist of Judaic exclusiveness was by birth a Hebrew of the Hebrews. The dealer of the death-wound to the spirit of Pharisaism was a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, a scholar of Gamaliel, had been taught according to the perfect manner of the law of his fathers, and had lived “ after the most straightest sect” of the Jewish service. (F. W. Farrar.)Early persecution of Christians “ Oh!” said Caesar, “ we will soon root up this Christianity. Off with their heads!” The different governors hastened one after another of the disciples to death; but, the more they persecuted them, the more they multiplied. The pro-consuls had orders to destroy Christians; the more they hunted them, the more Christians there were, until, at last, men pressed to the judgment-seat, and asked to be permitted to die for Christ. They invented torments; they dragged saints at the heels of wild horses; they laid them upon red-hot gridirons; they pulled off the skin from their flesh piece by piece; they were sawn asunder; they were wrapped up in skins, and daubed with pitch, and set in Nero’ s gardens at night to burn; they were left to rot in dungeons; they were made a spectacle to all men in the amphitheatre; the bears hugged them to death; the lions tore them to pieces; the wild bulls tossed them upon their horns: and yet Christianity spread. All the swords of the legionaries which had put to rout the armies of all nations, and had overcome the invincible Gaul and the savage Briton, could not withstand the feebleness of Christianity; for the weakness of God is mightier than men. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The two parts of St. Paul’ s life There are questions which it is interesting to suggest, even when they can never receive a perfect and satisfactory answer. One of these questions may be asked respecting St. Paul: What was the relation in which his former life stood to the great fact of his conversion? He himself, in looking back upon the times in which he persecuted the Church of God, thought of them chiefly as an increasing evidence of the mercy of God, which was afterwards extended to him. It Seemed so strange to have been what he had been, and to be what he was. Nor does our own conception of him, in relation to his former self, commonly reach beyond this contrast of the old and new man; the persecutor and the preacher of the gospel; the young man at whose feet the witnesses against Stephen laid down their clothes; and the same Paul disputing against the Grecians, full of visions and revelations of the Lord, on whom in later life came daily the care of all the Churches. Yet we cannot but admit also the possibility, or rather the probable truth, of another point of view. If there were any among the contemporaries of St. Paul who had known him in youth and in age, they would have seen similarities such as escape us in the character of the apostle at different periods of his life. The zealot against the gospel might have seemed to them transfigured into the opponent of the law; they would have found something in common in the Pharisee of the Pharisees, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and the man who had a vow on his last journey to Jerusalem. And when they heard the narrative of his conversion from his own lips, they might have remarked that to one of his temperament only could such an event have happened, and would have noted many superficial resemblances which showed him to be the same man, while the great inward change which had overflowed upon the world was hid from their eyes. The gifts of God to man have ever some reference to natural disposition. He who becomes the servant of God does not thereby cease to be himself. Often the transition is greater in appearance than in reality, from its very suddenness. There is a kind of rebellion against self and nature and God, which, through the mercy of God to the soul, seems almost necessarily to lead to reaction. Persons have been worse than their fellow-men in outward appearance, and yet there was within them the spirit of a child waiting to return home to their father’ s house. A change passes over them which we may figure to ourselves, not only as the new man taking the place of the old, but as the inner man taking the place of the outer. So fearfully and wonderfully are we made, that the very contrast to what we are has often an inexpressible power over us. It seems sometimes as if the same religious education had tended to contrary results; in one case to a devout life, in another to a reaction against it; sometimes to one form of faith, at other times to another … Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in concluding, that those who have undergone great religious changes have been of a fervid, imaginative cast of mind; looking for more in this world than it was capable of yielding; easily touched by the remembrance of the past, or inspired by some ideal of the future. When with this has been combined a zeal for the good of their fellow-men, they have become the heralds and champions of the religious movements of the world. The change has begun within, but has overflowed without them, “ When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren,” is the order of nature and of grace. In secret they brood over their own state; weary and profitless, their soul fainteth within them. The religion they profess is a religion not of life to them, but of death; they lose their interest in the world, and are cut off from the communion of their fellow-men. While they are musing, the fire kindles, and at the last--“ they speak with their tongue.” Then pours forth irrepressibly the pent-up stream--“ unto all and upon all” their fellow-men; the intense flame of inward enthusiasm warms and lights up the world. First, they are the evidence to others; then, again, others are the evidence to them. All religious leaders cannot be reduced to a single type of character; yet in all, perhaps, two characteristics may be observed;(1) great self-reflection;(2) intense sympathy with other men. Such men have generally appeared at favourable conjunctures of circumstances, when the old was about to vanish away, and the new to appear. The world has yearned towards them, and they towards the world. They have uttered what all men were feeling; they have interpreted the age to itself. Often such men have been brought up in the faith which they afterwards oppose, and a part of their power has consisted in their acquaintance with the enemy. They see other men like themselves formerly, wandering out of the way in the idol’ s temple, amid a burdensome ceremonial, with prayers and sacrifices unable to free the soul. They lead them by the way themselves came to the home of Christ … Great men are sometimes said to possess the power of command, but not the power of entering into the feelings of others. They have no fear of their fellows, but neither are they always capable of immediately impressing them or of perceiving the impression which their words or actions make upon them. Often they live in a kind of solitude on which other men do not venture to intrude; putting forth their strength on particular occasions, careless or abstracted about the daily concerns of life. Such was not the greatness of St. Paul; not only in the sense in which he says that “ he could do all things through Christ,” but in a more earthly and human one was it true, that his strength was his weakness, and his weakness his strength. His dependence on others was in part, also, the source of his influence over them. His natural character was the type of that communion of the Spirit which he preached; the meanness of appearance which he attributes to himself, the image of that contrast which the gospel presents to human greatness. Glorying and humiliation, life and death, a vision of angels strengthening him, the “ thorn in the flesh” rebuking him, the greatest tenderness not without sternness, sorrows above measure, consolations above measure, are some of the contradictions which were reconciled in the same man. The centre in which things so strange met and moved was the Cross of Christ, whose marks in his body he bore; what was behind of whose afflictions he rejoiced to fill up. Let us look once more, a little closer, at that visage marred in his Master’ s service. A poor decrepit being, afflicted, perhaps, with palsy, certainly with some bodily defect,--led out of prison between Roman soldiers, probably at times faltering in his speech, the creature, as he seemed to spectators, of nervous sensibility; yearning, almost with a sort of fondness, to save the souls of those whom he saw around him,--spoke a few eloquent words in the cause of Christian truth, at which kings were awed, telling the tale of his own conversion with such simple pathos, that after ages have hardly heard the like. (B. Jowett, M. A.)Early life of St. Paul The Apostle Paul was probably born in the later years of Herod, or early in the short reign of Archelaus, when, under the sway of the emperor Augustus, the Roman world was at peace, and when the wickedness of the imperial despotism had not yet fully developed itself. The pirates who had infested the Eastern Mediterranean had been sternly suppressed. The Jewish people were still enjoying everywhere ample toleration under the Roman rule, and a Jewish family like St. Paul’ s, settled at Tarsus in Cilicia, would have been in sufficiently comfortable circumstances. For Tarsus was a free city of the Empire; that is to say, it was governed by its own magistrates, and was exempted from the annoyance of a Roman garrison; but it was not a colony like Philippi in Macedonia, and the freedom of Rome, which St. Paul says he had at his birth, would probably have been earned by some services rendered by his father during the civil wars to some one of the contending parties in the State. It is at least probable from the expression, “ a Hebrew of the Hebrews,” which he applies ¢o himself, that his parents were originally emigrants from Palestine. We know that they were of the tribe of Benjamin, and that they were strict members of the Pharisee sect. Probably his father was engaged in the Mediterranean trade. To his mother, it is a remarkable circumstance, there is not one reference in his writings, He had a sister whose son lived in later years at Jerusalem, and who would have been his playmate at Tarsus. The Talmud says that s father’ s duty toward his boy is to circumcise him, to teach him the law, and to teach him a trade. We know from the Epistle to the Philippians that the first of these precepts was accurately complied with on the eighth day after the child’ s birth. The second would probably have been obeyed by sending the boy, not to one of the Greek schools in which Tarsus abounded, but to a Jewish school attached to one of the synagogues, where, after the age of five, he would have learnt the Hebrew Scriptures,--at ten those floating maxims of the great Jewish doctors which were afterwards collected in the Mishna, so as, at thirteen, to become what was called a “ Subject of the Precept,” after a ceremony which was a kind of shadow of Christian confirmation. The third requirement was complied with by setting him to make tents out of the hair-cloth supplied by the goats which abounded on the slopes of the neighbouring mountains of the Taurus, and which was a chief article in the trade of the port--tents which to this day, according to Beaufort, are used largely by the peasantry of south-eastern Asia Minor during the harvesttime. At or soon after thirteen the little Saul would have been sent from home, probably in a trading vessel bound from the port of Tarsus for Caesarea, on his way to Jerusalem. Already, as a boy, the Holy City must have possessed for him an interest surpassing any which could be raised by any other place on earth. Every great festival would have been followed by the return of one or more of his countrymen to Tarsus, full of the inspiration of the sacred sights, full of the splendour of the new temple, full of the fame and learning of the great doctors of the law. Especially he would have heard much of the two rival schools of Hillel and Shammai, of which the former exalted tradition above the letter of the law, while the latter preferred the law to tradition when they clashed. Of these the school of Hillel was much the more influential, and when St. Paul was a boy or a young man its one great ornament was Gamaliel, who was evidently one of those men whose candour, wisdom, and consistent elevation of character would have secured him influence in any society, or in any age of the world. It was at the feet of Gamaliel, St. Paul tells us, he was brought up; and this expression “ at the feet of Gamaliel” exactly recalls to us the manner in which the Rabbinical Assemblies of the Wise, as they were termed, were held. The teacher sat on a raised platform,--the pupils on low seats, or on the floor beneath. At this period of St. Paul’ s life we are, to a certain extent, in the region of conjecture; but it is, upon the whole, scarcely doubtful that he would have returned to Tarsus in the prime of manhood, before he reappeared in Jerusalem as a member of the synagogue which was connected with, or maintained by, the Jews in Cilicia. This visit would have completed his acquaintance with the language, and to a certain limited extent with the literature, of Greece. At this time in his life, too, St. Paul would probably have become familiar with that large section of the Jews of the dispersion whose centre was Alexandria, who in everything but religion were nearly Greeks, whose religion was taking more and more of the Greek dress every day This education was moulding and developing a character which may be described by one single word--intensity. There was much besides. There was sensitiveness; there was impetuosity; there was courage; there was independence; but, in all that he did, Paul of Tarsus, before his conversion as well as after it, threw his whole energy, whether of thought or resolution, into his work. (Canon Liddon.)Confession of former wrongdoing I man may make his past sins known out of pride, but also out of humility. Whoever does not boast himself of the same, but humbles himself therefore before God, and willingly bears the shame of them before men, not relying upon himself, makes a good confession, but one not needful to be uttered before every man, as sometimes it would bring more scandal than benefit. (Quesnel.) Galatians 1:14 And profited in the Jews’ religion above many.Paul’ s prospects in the Jewish religion He might, no doubt, have been the head of the Pharisaic faction in the last expiring struggles of his nation; he might have rallied round him the nobler spirits of his countrymen, and by his courage and prudence have caused Jerusalem to hold out a few months or years more against the army of Titus. Still at best he would have been a Maccabeus or a Gamaliel, and what a difference to the whole subsequent fortunes of the world between a Maccabeus and a Paul, between the Jewish Rabbi and the Apostle to the Gentiles. (Dean Stanley.)Paul’ s zeal His natural faculties were by his conversion “ not unclothed, but clothed upon” ; the glory of Divine grace was shown here as always, not by repressing and weakening the human character, but by bringing it out for the first time in its full vigour. He was still a Jew; the zeal of his ancestral tribe (Genesis 49:27), which had caused him “ to ravin as a wolf in the morning” of his life, still glowed in his veins when he “ returned in the evening to divide the spoil” of the mightier enemy whom he had defeated and bound; and in the unwearied energy and self.devotion, no less than the peculiar intensity of natural feeling, which mark his whole life and writings, we discern the qualities which the Jewish people alone of all the nations then existing on the earth could have furnished. (Dean Stanley.)The traditions of the fathers There are two large divisions of Rabbinic lore which may be classed under the heads of Hagadoth, or unrecorded legends; and Halachoth, or rules and precedents in explanation of dubious or undefined points of legal observance. It is natural that there should be but few traces of the latter in the writings of one whose express object was to deliver the Gentiles from the intolerable burden of legal Judaism. But though there is little trace of them he tells us that he had once been enthusiastic in their observance. And there are abundant signs that with the Hagadoth he was extremely familiar--e.g., Jannes and Jambres (2 Timothy 3:8), the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52), the giving of the law by angels (Galatians 3:19), Satan as god of this world and prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), celestial and infernal hierarchies (Ephesians 1:21; Ephesians 3:10; Ephesians 6:12), are all recurrent in Talmudic writings. 1 Corinthians 11:10 refers to the Rabbinic interpretation of Gen 6:2, which avers that angels fell because of their guilty love of women. The following rock of 1 Corinthians 10:4 is also a tradition. (F. W. Farrar.)False zeal A false zeal in religion is always, in some respect or other, a misdirected zeal, or a zeal not according to knowledge; a zeal seeking some false end, or, while proposing to itself a good end, seeking its promotion in some unauthorized way. Jehu had a good zeal, which he called zeal for the Lord of Hosts. His fault was not that he was too zealous, but that his zeal was really directed to his own advancement. The Jews, in the days of Christ, had a zeal for God; but it was so misdirected as to fire them with a frenzy to destroy the Son of God, and extinguish the Light of the world. There are countless forms of false zeal now at work; but, in all cases, they sin not by excess, but by misdirection. Some are flaming with a zeal to spread some of the corruption of Christianity, and to carry men away from its great and cardinal truths. Some are equally zealous to build up a sect or a party on other foundations than those which God has laid in Zion; and that which taints their zeal is the purpose to which they employ it, and not any excessive fervour of their zeal itself. (Dr. Bonar.)Ministerial zeal The most remarkable examples of zeal are found in the records of the early itinerant ministers. Richard Nolley, one of these, came upon the fresh trail of an emigrant in the wilderness, and followed it till he overtook the family. When the emigrant saw him, he said, “ What, a methodist preacher! I quit Virginia to be out of the way of them; but in my settlement in Georgia I thought I should be beyond their reach. There they were; and they got my wife and daughter to join them. Then I come here to Chocktaw Corner, find a piece of land, feel sure that I shall have some peace from the preachers; and here is one before I have unloaded my waggon!” The preacher exhorted him to make his peace with God, that he might not be troubled by the everywhere-present methodist preachers. Remarkable zeal During the battle of Gettysburg, Chaplain Eastman was so badly injured by a fall of his horse as to be compelled to lie down on the field for the night. As he lay in the darkness, he heard a voice say, “ Oh my God!” and thought, “ How can I get at him?” Unable to walk, he started to roll to the sufferer, and rolled through blood, among the dead bodies, till he came to the dying man, to whom he preached Christ. This service done, he was sent for to attend a dying officer, to whom he had to be carried by two soldiers. Thus he passed the long night; the soldiers carrying him from one dying man to another, to whom he preached Christ, and with whom he prayed, while compelled to lie on his back beside them. Suspicious zeal The purity of that zeal for religion by which we gain worldly wealth is open to suspicion. Well fare their hearts who will not only wear out their shoes, but also their feet, in God’ s service, even if they should not gain a shoe-latchet thereby. True zeal True zeal is a sweet, heavenly, and gentle flame, which makes us active for God, but always within the sphere of love. It never calls for “ fire from heaven,” to censure those who differ a little from us in their apprehensions. It is like that kind of lightning which melts the sword within, but singes not the scabbard; it strives to save the soul without hurting the body: (R. Cudworth.)Good objects not to be unduly esteemed Human nature is prone to extremes, sometimes in that which is good. St. Paul did not deem it necessary to underrate Judaism in order to justify his adherence to Christianity, But it is not to undervalue an institution to place it in its true light, and to regard it according to its intrinsic worth. It is not to undervalue a stream, to say of it that it is not the fountain, nor the blossom that it is not fruit, nor a shadow that it is not the substance, nor a taper that it is not the sun. St. Paul knew well that the Jewish ceremonies were valuable not for their own sake merely, but as so many moral conductors to Christ; and that that end being accomplished, their virtue ceased. And he was not the man to tolerate for a moment the egregious absurdity of those who, for sinister purposes, would depose Christ from his high supremacy, and substitute the ancient ritual of Moses for the atonement of the cross, and go back to the dim twilight of the law, while living under the meridian brightness of the gospel day. But it is only when viewed in contrast with the inherent efficacy of the better sacrifice, the better covenant, and the better promises, introduced by the Son of God Himself, that he ever speaks with anything like disparagement of the abrogated institutions of Judaism; which, like the waning orbs of night when the sun is nigh, “ have no glory by reason of the glory that excelleth.” “ Ye have heard of my conversation in times past in the Jews’ religion; being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.” The general instruction to be derived from this reference to his own past history, and to the errors of the Galatian people, is, that great care is requisite lest objects, good in themselves, be perverted to lead the mind away from Christ. (The Evangelist.)Paul’ s Jewish life I. The religion of Paul before his conversion was distinguished by hatred and cruelty. “ He persecuted the Church of God and wasted it.” II. The religion of Paul before his conversion was distinguished by great proficiency in Jewish rites and ceremonies. “ He profited in the Jews’ religion above many his equals in his own nation.” III. Paul’ s religion before his conversion was distinguished by zeal for the traditions of the fathers. “ Being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.” Lessons:1. Paul exhibited a character in which the desire to excel was ever prominent. His persecution was above measure, his proficiency and zeal in the Jewish religion, were superior to his contemporaries. The same feature of character was observed in Christian work. 2. Paul’ s history teaches that sincerity is no proof of righteousness. He “ thought that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” (R. Nicholls.)Sectarian zeal I. Is founded on the human in religion; II. Is bitter and persecuting in its spirit; III Indicates not true religion but the want of it. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 1:15-16 But when it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.Prevenient grace Although Paul was suddenly converted, yet God had had thoughts of mercy towards him from his very birth. God did not begin to work with him when he was on the road to Damascus. That was not the first occasion on which eyes of love had darted upon this chief of sinners. I. The purpose of God preceding saving grace, as it may clearly be seen developing itself in human history. The life of men before conversion is really a working of them in the clay. You may perceive God’ s purpose in St. Paul, when you think of(1) the singular gifts with which he was endowed;(2) his education;(3) the spiritual struggles through which he passed;(4) the singular formation of his mind. Even as a sinner, Paul was great. A man full of energy and determination. His conversion only lifted him into a higher life, but left him unchanged as to temperament, nature, and force of character. He seems to have been constituted naturally a thorough-going, thorough-hearted man, in order that when grace did come to him he might be just as earnest, dauntless, fearless, in defence of the right. Such a man was wanted to lead the vanguard in the great crusade against the god of this world, and from his very birth God was fitting him for this position; before he was converted, prevenient grace was thus engaged, fashioning, moulding, and preparing the man, in order that by-and-by there might be put into his nostrils the breath of life. II. Grace preceding calling in another sense. It is impossible to say, concerning the elect, when the grace of God begins to deal with them. You can tell when the quickening grace comes, but not when the grace itself comes.1. Formative grace. This is to be born of Christian parents, in a Christian country, and nurtured in piety. 2. Preventive grace. Saved from sins that others fall into. 3. Restraining grace. Debarred by circumstances from sins to which we are inclined. 4. Preparatory work of grace. Before casting in the seed, God is pleased to give to some (a) an attentive ear. Willingness to listen to the Word when it is brought to him; (b) an ingenuousness of heart; (c) a tender conscience; (d) dissatisfaction with their present state. Apples of Sodom, at one time fair and sweet to their taste, God turns to ashes and bitterness in their mouth. Thus it was with Augustine, wandering wearily hither and thither with a death-thirst in his soul, that no fount of philosophy, or scholastic argument, or heretical teaching could ever assuage. He was aware of his unhappy estate, and turned his eye round the circle of the universe looking for peace, not fully conscious of what he wanted, though feeling an aching void the world could never fill. He had not found the centre, fixed and steadfast, around which all else revolved in ceaseless change. All this appetite, this hunger and thirst, is not of the devil, or of the human heart alone, but of God. III. Paul’ s actual calling by Divine grace. All preparatory work of which we have spoken, was not the source or origin of the vital godliness which afterwards distinguished him; that came to him on a sudden. In a moment he saw everything in a different light; and from a foe he was changed into a staunch and loyal friend of Jesus. He was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Providential dealings Some of the good fathers amongst us are mourning very bitterly just now over their sons. Your children do not turn out as you wish they would; they are getting sceptical, some of them, and they are also falling into sin. Well, dear friends, it is yours to mourn; it is enough to make you weep bitterly; but let me whisper a word into your ear. Do not sorrow as those who are without hope, for God may have very great designs to be answered, even by these very young men who seem to be running so altogether in the wrong direction. I do not think I could go so far as John Bunyan did, when he said he was sure God would have some eminent saints in the next generation, because the young men in his day were such gross sinners, that he thought they would make fine saints; and when the Lord came and saved them by His mercy, they would love much because they had had so much forgiven. I would hardly like to say so much as that, but I do believe that sometimes in the inscrutable wisdom of God, when some of those who have been sceptical come to see the truth, they are the very best men that could possibly be found to do battle against the- enemy. Some of those who have fallen into error, after having passed through it, and happily come up from its deep ditch, are just the men to stand and warn others against it. I cannot conceive that Luther would ever have been so mighty a preacher of the faith, if he had not himself struggled up and down Pilate’ s staircase on his knees, when trying to get to heaven by his penances and his good works. O let us have hope. We do not know but that God may be intending yet to call them and bless them. Who can tell, there may be a young man here to-night who will one day be the herald of the Cross in China, in Hindostan, in Africa, and in the islands of the sea? Remember John Williams wishing to keep an appointment with another young man who committed a certain sin. He wanted to know what time it was, and so just stepped into Moorfields Chapel; some one saw him, and he did not like to go out, and the word preached by Mr. Timothy East fell on his ears, and the young sinner was made a saint; and you all know how he afterwards perished as a martyr on the shores of Erromanga. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Apostolic credentials St. Paul here claims to be an apostle, an inspired apostle, one qualified to speak with authority, and to teach infallible truth. I. A Divine communication of light and knowledge was made to him. He had been blind, now he saw. II. The subject of this Divine communication was the Lord Jesus Christ.1. In Christ was seen the glory of the Divine nature. 2. In Christ was seen the glory of the Divine attributes. As the wax bears the perfect image of the seal, so were all the perfections of the Divine character reflected in him. 3. In Christ was seen the glory of the Divine purposes. Redemption is the masterpiece of Divine wisdom; in redemption Christ is the central figure. III. The sphere in which this Divine communication had place was the soul of the apostle. “ In me.” He saw, believed, and loved. His intellect was more than satisfied; his heart was at peace. Judaism was superseded, and like a dissolving view, passed rapidly away; heathenism was seen more clearly to be a lie and an imposture. To know Christ, to win Christ, to preach Christ, to love Christ, to be with Christ, was all he desired. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Personal conviction What we need is the revelation of Christ within us; not the communication of truths yet unrevealed, as was necessary in the case of the founders of our religion, but the communication of truths already made known; the removal of the veil from our hearts, and the giving of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Each of us must for himself discover the hid treasure; whether the light flashes upon us in an instant, as with the woman at the well of Jacob, or comes to us as the result of long search and patient inquiry, as in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch, we must find the Messiah, we must hear Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. It will not suffice, in this day at least, to take religion upon trust, to accept the popular faith, just because it is popular. Such belief will not stand in the day of trial; it certainly will exercise no constraining influence upon our hearts and lives. Whether for our peace or for our usefulness, Christ must live within us; the reasonable mind must apprehend Him, the heart must cleave to Him. Thus our lives will tell upon the world around us. There will be a living power within, full of holy joy, and peace, and comfort; whilst a living power will go forth from us, and act silently, it may be, but effectually, upon the world without. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)God’ s call and Paul’ s reply The Christian religion is emphatically one. It may differ and does differ, in its development; but the foundation must be belief in Deity--an intelligent, devout recognition of the Almighty in His varied relationships to the world. Hence a perfect belief in a perfect Deity means this: That you believe in and regard that Deity as the Creator and Controller of the universe; as the Saviour of the world; as the appliancer of the redemptive scheme--in other words, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Unless this is recognized, there can be no true Christianity. I. Christian Life Is Identified With A Knowledge Of Christ.1. To know Christ is to know the great centre to which all other doctrines converge. 2. Knowing Christ as a Saviour, you realize the damnable nature of sin. II. Christ Is Known Only As He Is Divinely Revealed.1. Ordinary means. Bible reading. Church going. Conversation. Sunday Schools, etc. 2. Extraordinary. St. Paul’ s conversion. III. The knowledge of Christ is given in pursuance of a divine purpose. IV. Knowledge of Christ is preparatory for the highest usefulness. (A. F. Barfield.)Doctrine of predestination I look upon this earth in which I live. I find it grasped and girded by God’ s all-embracing laws, as of gravitation, of the ebb and flow of the tides, of light, of the procession of the seasons--all utterly and absolutely beyond my control. They reach above, beneath, around, within me; I cannot touch them. There they are; unalterable, unswerving, necessitated--in its profoundest sense, predestinated. And what is the issue of obedience to these laws? Happiness, in the measure of such obedience. Is that no revelation of the character of the God of the universe. No revelation! I could shut my Bible, and from creation--from the meanest flower that blows, up to the stars that hang like lamps before the great white throne--find infinite proofs that my God is also my Father. Exactly so, I cannot tell how free will, choice, contingency, accord with predestination, election, foreordination, substitution. I do not feel that I am called upon to do so. But as we have seen, our own consciousness attests the former, while the Word of God recognizes and addresses them--recognizes and addresses man as free to think, feel, will, choose, reject. Equally does the Word of God affirm the latter. I therefore accept them also, and can defer knowing how the All-wise harmonizes them, until He pleases to reveal them to me. Nay, more, I have deepest belief that even as the physical world is grasped and girded by its great laws, so must the other and grander world of mind have underneath it, like the granite base of the everlasting hills, above it, like the dome of the sky, kindred laws. These laws I recognize and accept in predestination, election, foreordination, substitution. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.)The threefold revelation of Christ I. To him. When he was “ called” on the way to Damascus, and so to every one who becomes His servant Christ appears to arrest and claim him. II. In him. The Lord is revealed in His servant’ s heart as his life and strength. III. Through him. The new life of Christ’ s servant is a perpetual(1) reflection;(2) proclamation of His Redeemer. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)Distinguishing grace I. Is the foundation of all doctrinal and ethical truth. II. Tends to personal edification, deep emotion, and dutiful submission to the Divine will. III. Determines the tone and strength of our life. IV. Is a means to consciousness of direct personal relationship to God. (T. Goadby.)The personal history and public purpose of the conversion I. Its personal history.1. The inner revelation of Christ to the soul, which is something more than His revelation to (1) the senses,(2) the understanding,(3) the conscience. 2. The inner revelation of Christ to the soul through God. (1) By predetermination.(2) By sovereignty. II. Its public purpose.1. Not his own good. 2. But to preach. (1) Paul felt the duty of preaching to be paramount.(2) He employed the best means for its effective discharge. (D. Thomas.)Ministers are separated to their own work I. A soldier who went to the war took with him some of the small instruments of his craft--he was a watchmaker and repairer--thinking to make some extra shillings now and then while in camp. He did so. He found plenty of watches to mend, and almost forgot that he was a soldier. One day, when ordered off on some duty, he exclaimed, “ Why, how can I go? I’ ve got ten watches to mend!” Some ministers are so absorbed in self-seeking that they are ready to say to the Master’ s call, “ I pray Thee have me excused!” They are nominally ministers of Christ, but really only watch-menders. Mr. Moody says:--I remember when I was in Chicago before the fire, I was on some ten or twelve committees. My hands were full. If a man came to me to talk about his soul I would say, “ I haven’ t time; got a committee to attend to.” But now I have turned my back on everything--turned my attention to saving souls, and God has blessed me and made me an instrument to save more souls during the last four or five years than during all my previous life. And so if a minister will devote himself to this undivided work, God will bless him. Take that motto of Paul’ s: “ One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Divine calling A river flowing with rapid and majestic current to the sea would defy the efforts of the whole world to turn it back again to its source; yet, by the returning tide it is not only arrested in its course but driven up again with great rapidity towards its fountain head. It is thus that a sinner is stopped in his career of sin, and turned towards high and heavenly things. (C. Simeon.)The inward revelation of Christ Now, there is nothing mysterious about this. Have we not all felt this inward revelation of Christ?--a discovery larger, sweeter and more and more luminous, of this nature and work, which enters and is woven like a thread of gold into the fabric of thought and character. The disciples doubtless had a conception at first of the Saviour as a general benefactor to the race and His teachings as generally helpful to men, but after their characters began to mature they came to understand the personal, individual and vital relationship between Him and them. A keen sense of personal sinfulness must precede any vivid conception of the grace of Christ as shown to burdened and aspiring souls. Again, in the silent government of the soul’ s activities we recognize Christ revealed in us. We recognize inward impulsions that are not born of us, but of a resident and daily more regnant power that is working through our own volitions. In labour and worship, in acts of beneficence and in all the service of life, we feel the silent government of the indwelling Master. With these inward revelations and spiritual intuitions we are guided in duty. Truth is verified in our vision, because it is illuminated by Him who is the light of the world. Christ finds a home in our affectional nature. At first we feel that we ought to love Christ more than all else--parents, friends, or treasure; but it is hard to do this, and our obedience is apt to be mechanical until the inward grace and subtle sense of the indwelling Helper comes to be recognized. It is as indefinable a sense as the odour of the lily and rose that perfumes our dwelling, yet we know it to be a reality. We see bane changed to blessing and a spirit of nobleness begotten in us, so that we come naturally, that is, reasonably and by the tutelage of His grace, to love Him better than all things else. This love toward Christ as He is within us testifies of the Divine indwelling, and it is a love which He will crown and glorify. In the joyful assurance of the future we find evidence of this revelation of Christ in us. He satisfies and gratifies us every hour by these revelations to us. Men of the world wonder at us. They call our confidence credulity and superstition. Nay, it is the dictate of our assurance of Christ in us. The text illumines other utterances of Paul. The life he lived was the life of Christ in him: “ I, yet not I.” Thus was fulfilled the promise, “ We will make our abode with him.” We see from this subject how progressive Christian experience is. One may say, “ Would that I could at once step into the fulness of the knowledge of God!” Do you expect to step at once into the fulness of earthly knowledge? Shall not this more august revelation be continuous and progressive? Begin now in obedience to Christ, go on step by step till Christ’ s life is enthroned within you, and then it will be manifested by you. We have here a suggestion as to how the world influences us and crowds out Christ. Work for Christ wears a new significance when the fact and propulsive power of this indwelling are thus revealed. (R. S. Storrs.)Paul’ s account of his conversion I. Conversion described. Paul writes of the change through which he had passed in brief but forcible terms. “ It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.”1. The change in Paul was a spiritual one. 2. God’ s great work is done in the soul, because the fountain of evil is there. 3. Conversion is a clear, definite recognition of Christ as the Saviour. He was revealed in Paul, so that he had no doubt of His Divinity or of His Messiahship. He believed Him to be the Christ, the Son of God. II. Conversion explained.1. Conversion is an act of God’ s grace. It pleased God to reveal His Son in Paul. 2. Conversion is preceded by means which are altogether of God’ s arrangement. Paul here refers to plans, remote and immediate, and both are of God. “ He separated him from his mother’ s womb.” III. Conversion manifested.1. By his renouncing that which he had formerly sought after. 2. His voluntary exile and solitude was a further manifestation of his conversion. 3. His conversion was manifest by his return to Damascus, and engaging in active service. Lessons:1. The methods by which men are brought to Christ vary, but conversion is in every instance the same, the revealing of the Son of God to the heart. 2. All who have been renewed by the power of God, manifest in themselves the reality of the change. Conversion is regeneration realized in the heart and life. (R. Nicholls.)The inward realization by St. Paul himself of the gospel “ It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” He needed not to go to the traditions of the life of our Saviour. Christ was known to him in a more immediate way. He found in his own heart the living oracle, and needed not to travel further. One of his remarkable words is this:--Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven, etc. But, more closely, what was this process? It was the translation of the historical Christ into the present Christ; of the Christ according to the flesh into the Christ of spiritual consciousness. What is translation? It is was the extracting a thought from its visible, or representative envelope, and then(2) it is the recasting of this thought into another form of our own intelligent selection. By this process, faithfully carried out, you make the thought your own. You bring it out of its mere external relation to the mind as an object, and you make it a part of your mind, as subject. It is no longer now something that you contemplate merely with the mind’ s eye, and which passes from memory when your attention is withdrawn, but it is now bound up with your mind, and must remain a part of your conscious being. We are always performing this process upon some matter or other. In this way the student gathers the thought of a foreign author, throws it out again into the best form in which he can recognize it in his own language, and now it is his possession. The artist gazes for hours at a picture of which we see little more than the surface, and throws out the sense of it on the canvas of his brain, or in visible studies of his own. The friend watches the face of his friend, quickly seizes the thought that is playing in living expression on his brow and eye and mouth, and projects the meaning again into some image or some verbal expression. In whatever interests us we separate the form from the contents; we grasp these contents, we pass them through our mind in deep reflection, until of themselves they flow into a new shape, which is a form of our consciousness, and may be a permanent stamp of it. So St. Paul gazed at the cross and the resurrection of Christ, extracted a marvellous fund of Divine meaning from them, which in turn he threw out into forms of thought which are so mighty in their power over us because they were first so mightily realized in himself. Thus the significance of the cross, translated into his own consciousness, became a personal experience: death unto sin, because Christ died; or, a revelation of Divine love: “ the Son of God who loved me.” The resurrection in like manner, “ raised up together with Christ,” “ alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” There was something deeper even than this process of translation; there was an identification of himself with Christ (no other word will hardly express this deeper process). He felt that he was included in Christ. In the Sonship of Christ he saw his own sonship to God realized. As in Christ the Holy Spirit dwelt in a human body, so St. Paul realized the indwelling of God in himself. He saw a contrast of weakness with power in the crucifixion--he realized that contrast in himself. It seems no strain of language to say that in the consciousness of Paul, Christ was inseparable from himself. He could not abstract the ego, as metaphysicians would say, from a non-ego. He could not think of himself without thinking of Christ. “ I am crucified with Christ,” etc. He applies the same mode of thought to his converts and disciples. (E. Johnson, M. A.)Christ manifested to the soul The co-essential, co-eternal Son of God, was revealed in the Apostle Paul. Were we possessed of all the knowledge Adam had in innocence, or which Solomon acquired by labour and industry, or which the prophets and apostles obtained by Divine inspiration--yet, without this internal revelation of Christ, we should be as remote from happiness as the devils in hell. Now observe-- I. How the revelation of Christ IN a man differs from the mere external revelation of Christ TO a man.1. They differ in their original source and spring. Both proceed from God; but the one is the fruit of His general favour, the other of His special grace. 2. In the means by which they are wrought. The one, by outward means; the other by the internal agency of the Divine spirit. Moral suasion and human instruction may reveal Christ to a man; but it is the peculiar office of the Spirit to reveal Christ in us, to take of His things and show them to us so convincingly that we shall have no doubt of their truth and reality. 3. The subject of this knowledge is different, as well as the manner of conveyance. The external revelation of Christ affects only the head; that which is internal, the heart. The one reaches only to the understanding; the other influences the practical judgment, directs the will, and gives law to the affections. The necessity and excellency of Christ, in all His characters and offices, is now so clearly discerned, that the soul goes out after Him, and rests in Him, as its supreme good and everlasting portion. 4. In their nature and essential properties. The one dark and confused; the other clear and distinct. The one is seeing things in our own light; the other, in God’ s light. The one is distant, and therefore undelightful; the other, appropriative and satisfying,--not equally so in every saint, but in a greater or less degree in all. 5. In their continuance. The revelation of Christ to a man may be lost, eclipsed, or destroyed; but the revelation of the text is permanent and abiding. God is the Author of it, and His gifts are without repentance; the Spirit is the efficient cause, and He never wholly withdraws His influence. II. The necessity and excellence of an internal revelation of Christ.1. It is the beginning of all Christian experience, the first blessed fruit of the Spirit’ s influence on a sinner’ s heart. Without it, no grace here, and no hope of salvation hereafter. The meritorious sufferings of Christ will not save us without the spiritual knowledge of Him. 2. The foundation of all spiritual comfort. When Christ enters, light, peace, glory enter, applying what He has done, bringing home to us what He has purchased. 3. The grand spring of holiness and obedience. The more we know of Christ, the more we shall love Him; and the more we love Him, the more conscientious, universal, and unwearied will be our obedience; subjection a delight and pleasure, instead of a task or burden. Knowledge which reaches the heart, will regulate the life and conversation. 4. This revelation is especially necessary to form the ministerial character. A faithful minister must be a good man, as well as bring good tidings. 5. This revelation is connected with eternal life, and a certain pledge of, as well as necessary preparation for, a future state of happiness and glory. If ignorant of Christ, we cannot believe on Him, or be saved by Him. Closing inferences: (a) No wonder so many men of great ability arc enemies to the gospel and its doctrine of salvation. God has never yet revealed His Son in them. (b) How should we pity those destitute of this revelation! Other wants may be afflicting: this is damning. (c) What reason for thankfulness have those who are blessed with the spiritual saving knowledge of Christ. (B. Beddome, M. A.)Conversion a revelation in the soul Conversion is a revelation, i.e., not a discovery of something new, but the unveiling of what has been hidden. No explanation for such a change as followed this revelation, save in the region of the supernatural.1. This revelation was to St. Paul a vindication of Christ’ s character. St. Paul had thought Jesus an impostor; God removes the veil from his heart, and he sees Him to be the Christ, the only begotten Son of the Divine Father. 2. It was a revelation to him of his own position He not only saw who Christ was, but what he himself had been. 3. A revelation of the Divine long-suffering. When the light of that day of mercy dawned, what was the message? It might have been a message of doom; and Paul felt that. It might have been a voice of wrath, proclaiming wrath for his countless sins. But no; the voice comes with the old message of entreaty, “ Why persecutest thou Me?” The voice comes with the Divine pathos and the Divine hope: “ Saul, Saul, arise and stand upon thy feet, for I have appeared to thee not to hurl the bolts of judgment, not to rehearse the catalogue of thy transgressions, not to ring the knell of thy doom, but to announce the true advent of thy noblest life, to make thee a minister of My gospel, to send thee to men.” What wonder, then, that Paul counts himself an example of God’ s long-suffering? What wonder that he speaks in such terms of redeeming love, of the riches--the unfathomed and unfathomable riches--of grace? 4. A revelation of a glorious destiny. No higher honour than to preach Christ, to be the minister of reconciliation to thousands. 5. This revelation was all-inclusive, In this Divine light, all things looked Divine. Henceforth, Jesus Christ was stamped on everything. The world was His; life was His; labour was His; love was His. 6. This revelation was ever increasing. The horizon widened. Every hour the light grew clearer, and spread to wider stretches. Even after thirty years acquaintance with Christ, Paul only feels there is so much to be known, that what he does know is as nothing to what he has yet to learn (Philippians 3:8-14). Is our conversion like his? (T. W. Handford.)The inner revelation of Christ The object of this Divine revelation was “ His Son” ; not the truth about Him, or His work, or His death, or His glory, but Himself--Himself including all. His person is the sum of the gospel. This revelation may have been in some sense subsequent to the direct call, or it may refer also to the appearance of the Redeemer near Damascus qualifying him for the apostleship (1 Corinthians 9:1). It gave him full and glowing views of the Redeemer’ s person, including His various relations to God and to man,--such views as fixed the apostle’ s faith upon Him, centred his love in Him, and enabled him to hold Him out in his preaching as the one living and glorified Saviour. It was by no process of reasoning that he came to such conclusions, by no elaborate and sustained series of demonstrations that he wrought out his Christology. Gad revealed His Son in him, Divine light was flashed in upon him, so that he saw what he had not seen before, fully, suddenly, and by a higher than intuitive suggestion. He had not been taught, and he did not need to be taught by any of the apostles. (John Eadie, D. D.)Revelation unlike reasoning Revelation is opposed to knowledge gained by prolonged and patient thought. It is unlike the common process by which an intellectual conclusion is reached, the inference of one syllogism forming but the premiss of another, till by a series of connected links, primary or abstract truth is reached. For it is sudden and perfect illumination, lifting the receptive power into intensest susceptibility, and so lighting up the whole theme disclosed, that it is immediately and fully apprehended in its evidence and reality. We know not, indeed, what the process is, what the waking up of the higher intuition is, or what the ecstasy which throws into momentary abeyance all the lower faculties. It may resemble that new sphere of vision in which genius enjoys gleams of unutterable beauty, or that “ demonstration of the Spirit” which gives the truth new aspects of richness and grandeur to the sanctified soul in some mood of rapt meditation. But still it is different and higher far both in matter and purpose. It was God’ s revelation of His Son,--not glimpses of the truth about Him, but Himself; not merely summoning His attention to His paramount claims, so as to elicit an acknowledgment of them,--not simply presenting Him to his intellectual perception to be studied and comprehended,--nor even shrining an image of Him in his heart to be loved and cherished,--but His Son unveiled in living reality; and in him--in his inner self, not in any distinct and separate realm of his being--with the conscious possession of all this infallible and communicable knowledge which was given, perhaps, first in clear and vivid outline, and then filled in surely and gradually. (John Eadie, D. D.)Conversion of St. Paul The vision which St. Paul saw on the way to Damascus, followed him through his whole life. There was one image which hovered over him, one thought which urged him onward, one spirit which he breathed, one life which he lived--the image, the thought, the spirit, the life of Christ. In the ruder times of Christianity we have heard of saints whose eyes were ever fixed on the material image of the crucified Redeemer, who bore in their body the marks of the Lord Jesus. What is true of them in a grosser and more literal sense, is true of St. Paul figuratively and spiritually: he felt himself and all other Christians to be crucified with Christ. In all His affliction they are afflicted, even as they are the partakers of His glory, dying with Him in sin and to sin, buried in baptism, filling up in their body the measure of His suffering, partaking of His hidden life in the grave, that with Him also they may rise again. If the apostle rejoices, he is as one risen with Christ; if he suffers, he is crucified with Him; if at one and the same instant he suffers, and triumphs, and is a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men, he is but as Christ was, Who was lifted up from the earth that he might draw all men after Him. He is as one stricken to the earth, at the same time that he partakes of the vision of the Divine glory. It is this thought and image of Christ, not freedom or faith, or any form of the subjective principle, which is the primary idea of the gospel in the mind of the apostle, Neither is it the belief in Christ as an object without him, to whom he is to transfer all his sins, but the ever-present consciousness of Christ within him, Who is one and inseparable from him, that is the support and anchor of his soul. As it is to the apostle more than any other human teacher we trace back the great doctrine of righteousness by faith, so to this event in his life we must refer that impression of Divine truth, which opened the kingdom of heaven to all mankind by the sight of Christ Himself. St. Paul was the human medium through which it was conveyed; an apostle not of man, neither by man, but of Jesus Christ, in whom it pleased God to reveal His Son. As it was necessary for the other apostles that Christ should go away, or otherwise the Comforter would net come unto them, so also it was in a certain sense a preeminence that he possessed over them, that as one born out of due time he had not known Christ according to the flesh, but only in a heavenly and spiritual manner. (B. Jowett, M. A.)Life in the revelation of Christ A man often passes through many stages before he becomes truly converted to God. When he is first awakened to serious impressions, and sees the folly of intently pursuing worldly things, to the neglect of the more durable riches, he resembles a boy emerging from childhood, who throws aside his trifles and playthings for amusements of a higher and more intellectual kind. He now sets himself with all diligence to working out his own salvation in his own strength; multiplies his religious duties, and reforms his bad habits; yet all this while he is like one who has been employed in new painting and varnishing a wooden statue--it has no life within. But when the Holy Spirit influences his heart, and reveals Christ in him, he is in the state of one who has awakened from a dream, in which he has been acting a fictitious part, to live and move and use all his faculties in reality, and enter on the great business of life. (H. G. Salter.)Readiness for service Brutus visiting Ligarius found him ill, and said, “ What! sick, Ligarius?” “ No, Brutus,” said he; if thou hast any noble enterprise in hand I am well.” So should the believer say of Christ; what might excuse us from other labour shall never prevent our engaging in His service. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Personal responsibility as entrusted with a revelation “ To reveal His Son in me,” might seem to imply some internal revelation; doubtless there was, but St. Paul more immediately referred to the fact that God intended to reveal His Son to mankind by and through him; he was to be the instrument of the revelation; God had revealed Christ to him, that he might reveal Him to others. For God can never make a revelation of His Son through a man, until He has first made the revelation within him; the lamp cannot illuminate until the light has been lighted within it; the light shines without because it shines within; and if St. Paul could speak confidently of God having been pleased to call him by His grace, and to reveal Christ through him to the heathen, it was because he could speak confidently of that revelation of Christ to his own soul, which had so thoroughly converted his mind and changed the purpose of his life. Let us leave St. Paul, however, for a few moments, and let me remind you how that God has from the beginning revealed Himself to man, and that the spiritual condition of man before God has depended upon the way in which he has received the revelation. To be able to receive a revelation from God, this is one mark of humanity; and to be able to reject the revelation, this is another. Next observe that the whole course of sacred history, since the days of Adam, has been a history of revelations. God has revealed, unveiled, discovered Himself to this man and to that, in order that he to whom God has been revealed may reveal Him to ethers; the process of which St. Paul speaks when he says, “ to reveal His Son in me,” is the very process which has been going on from the beginning. Look at Noah. Look at Abraham. “ The Lord had said unto Abraham.” That is the very beginning of his history. Once more, look at Moses. You see precisely the same characteristics of conduct. He, too, received a revelation from God; and the pressure of the responsibility which that revelation brought with it is made all the more conspicuous by the fact that Moses shrank from it, and tried to evade it. We wish to regard ourselves as laid under a pressure of responsibility by the fact of our having received a revelation from God. (The Dean of Ely.)The duty imposed by revelation Let us then take the Holy Scriptures in our hands, or press them to our hearts, and say, Here is the record of the way in which God has at sundry times and in divers manners spoken to our fathers by the prophets, and has in these latter days spoken to us by His Son; and having done this, then let us go on to ask ourselves what ought to be the practical consequences of having such a possession? It is a common saying in these days that property has its duties as well as its privileges, and so the possession of the Word of God, compared with which all other possessions must be poor and trifling, must bring with it very great duties: what are they? These, at least; to honour it, to love it, to strive if necessary, or even to die, for it; but besides these, there is the more common and perhaps the more important duty, of exhibiting in our own lives the ideal which Holy Scripture sets before us, the duty of living like Christ, and becoming (as it were) a living practical commentary upon the contents of God’ s book. This is just the difference between this book and others; other books you may read and forget, this you must not forget; others you may have on your shelves and not read unless you like, this you must read if you can; upon others you may pronounce any opinion you please, but this must govern your opinions, and you must take it as the light of your feet and the lamp to your paths. Yes, this is the way in which you must treat the Scriptures, not only for your own sakes, but for the sake of others. I said just now that you must strive, if necessary, for the Holy Scriptures, but undoubtedly the most effective way of defending them from assaults, and making men honour them, is to act them out in your conduct, and let Christ be revealed to men in your lives. St. Paul speaks in the text of Christ being revealed in him. I have spoken of the force of that phrase; and now, finally, I would ask you to compare it with a similar phrase with which the apostle closes the chapter from which I have taken my text; he says, “ they glorified God in me;” they saw his life, they saw the change made by God’ s revelation, and they glorified God in him when they saw Christ revealed in him; and so, Christian brethren, if we have received a revelation from God, and if a deep responsibility is laid upon us by the reception of that revelation, then the best mode of discharging our responsibility is to lead a holy and godly life. That will show forth Christ. (The Dean of Ely.)St. Paul’ s call to the apostolic office I. The source whence his religious impressions were derived. What does Paul mean to teach us when he says that he was called? He means that it was not he who first came to the Master, but that having been called to Him, he obeyed; that he did not spontaneously seek and find, but that he was found when he was wandering; that it was not he who first looked up to the light, but the light which sent its rays upon his vision, and having closed his outward, opened his inward eyes. II. His destination to the apostolic office.1. That this commission was co-incident with his conversion, and he became a successful advocate of the truth he once opposed. The suddenness of his preparation for the office strikes us as much as the suddenness of his call to it; and his history teaches us that Christ is at no loss for instruments in the advancement of His cause. If the interests of religion require some distinguished champion, He reverses the ordinary laws of procedure, and goes down to the camp of the enemy, and fixing His eye upon the hope and pride of all their hosts, converts him from a foe into a friend, and presents him to the world as a trophy of His power, and a successful herald of His praise. Christ rules “ in the midst of His enemies,” and from the very stones that threaten to impede his triumphal march, “ can raise up children to Abraham.” Luther was educated as a monk in the University of Wirtemburg, and was so eager an upholder of the existing system, that he publicly defended, in a thesis, the martyrdom of John Huss. He was, even after his conversion, long reluctant to throw off the authority of the Pope; yet this man was the instrument of the emancipation of Europe, and, once engaged, as Atterbury has observed, against the united forces of the papal world, stood the shock with bravery and success. “ I was,” says Latimer, “ as obstinate a papist as any in England, and when made Bachelor of Divinity, my whole oration went against Philip Melancthon and his opinions.” Soame Jenyns was for many years a deist, yet, after emerging from a labyrinth of scepticism, he wrote an ingenious work on the internal evidences of the Christian religion, the success of which gave him much joy on his death-bed. The late Mr. Biddulph, in his work on the Liturgy, states of Gilbert West, and his friend Lord Lyttleton, that they were both men of acknowledged talents, and had imbibed the principles of infidelity from a superficial view of the Scriptures. Fully persuaded that the system was an imposture, they were determined to expose the cheat. Mr. West chose the Resurrection of Christ, and Lord Lyttleton the Conversion of St. Paul, for the subject of hostile criticism, Both sat down to their respective tasks, full of prejudice and contempt for Christianity, but the result of their separate attempts was truly extraordinary. They were both converted by their efforts to overthrow the truth, and came together, not as they anticipated, to exult over an imposture turned to ridicule, but to lament their own folly, and felicitate each other upon their joint conviction that the Bible was the Word of God. And their inquiries have furnished two most valuable treatises in favour of revelation: one entitled, “ Observations on the Resurrection of Christ,” and the other, “ Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul.” “ This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.” 2. That the decision and energy he displayed in the service of Christ are worthy of universal imitation. “ Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” In the concerns of salvation flesh and blood are very bad counsellors. Flesh and blood would have kept the three Hebrew youths from the fiery furnace; Abraham from offering the child of promise, etc. (The Evangelist.).The inward revelation of Christ I. The sum of experience in conversion. II. The chief essential qualification of the preacher. III. The great religious want of the world. (T. Goadby.)The inner revelation of Christ Education refines and elevates but does not save and sanctify the soul; law civilizes but cannot change the heart and the will; science and philosophy give power and endless resources to enlarge the faculties of the mind, but they leave the problems of sin and pardon unsolved. The revelation of Christ fills the soul with light, and life, and joy; is the only solution of the problems of our moral being; the only deliverer from the law of sin and death; the only pledge of everlasting life, and indeed the beginning of a Divine education which ennobles and saves, and the dawn of a heavenly day which brings wisdom, and righteousness, and peace. (T. Goadby.)Regeneration is the calm exercise of omnipotent power like that which commanded the light to shine out of darkness: it commands the light of the glory of God to shine on the soul from the face of God internally revealed. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)Conversion is the personal interview of each conscience with God the Judge of all. (W. J. Irons, D. D.)The conversion of St. Paul a witness to the truth of Christianity He was not separated from the events, as we are, by centuries of time. He was not liable to be blinded by the dazzling glamour of a victorious Christendom. He had mingled daily with men who had watched from Bethlehem to Golgotha the life of the Crucified. He had talked with the priests who had consigned Him to the cross; he had put to death the followers who had wept beside His tomb. He had to face the horror of a Messiah who “ had hung upon a tree.” He had heard again and again the:proofs which had satisfied an Annas and a Gamaliel that Jesus was a deceiver. The events on which the apostle relied as proof of His Divinity had taken place in the full blaze of contemporary knowledge. He had not to deal with the uncertainties of criticism or assaults on authenticity. He could question not ancient documents hut living men. He had thousands of means close at hand whereby to test truths which up to this time he had so passionately and contemptuously disbelieved. In accepting this half-crushed and wholly execrated faith he had everything in the world to lose--he had nothing conceivable to gain; and yet, in spite of all--over-whelmed by a conviction which he felt to be irresistible--Saul the Pharisee became a witness of the resurrection, a preacher of the Cross. (F. W. Farrar.)Preach Him among the heathen. Paul’ s mission I. His great motive. To preach Christ. II. His prompt surrender.1. Personal.2. Decisive.3. Final. (A. F. Barfield.)The very theory of Christianity, not merely its finest enthusiasm, is that when once Christ is in the heart the whole life must be entirely His. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)Paul was not like the missionary of later times, whose great work is accomplished if he can add to the number of his converts; he was this, but he was much more than this; it was not the actual conversions themselves, but the principle which every conversion involved, that constitutes the enduring interest of that life-long struggle. It was not merely that he reclaimed from Paganism the Grecian cities of Asia Minor, but that at every step which he took westward he tore up the prejudice of ages. It was not merely that he cast out the false spirit from the damsel at Philippi, hut that here religion ceased to be Asiatic and became European. It was not merely that at Athens he converted Dionysius and Damaris, but that there was seen a Jew standing in the court of the Areopagus, and appealing to an Athenian audience as children of the same Father, and worshippers, though unconsciously, of the same God. It was not that at Rome he made some impression on the slaves of the Imperial palace, but that a descendant of Abraham recognized in that corrupt metropolis a field for his exertions as sacred as the courts of the Temple at Jerusalem. (Dean Stanley.)The work of a missionary I. By whom sent. II. Whither sent. III. To Whom sent. IV. For what sent. A missionary’ s work is not that of--1. Science.2. Politics.3. Civilization.4. But that of preaching to the heathen. V. With what encouragement. God’ s command: that is enough. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)The missionary an enthusiast Whom shall the Lord send? The passive neutral? The respectable indolent selfist? The tame, dull, average religionist? The mere doctrinist, whose faiths, instead of being alive and part of himself, are like dry botanical preparations, classified and kept in a book? The man who studies how little he can give, or be, or do, or suffer for Christ, and yet be safe? The sluggard who, when a shadow shakes or a leaf rustles, says, “ a lion is in the way” ? The coward who makes his profession under shelter, and creeps along with slow cautious steps? No I all these must be cleared out of the way. Lord Lansdowne asked Dr. Price the Unitarian what was to be done to reform the profligate people of Calne? “ Send them an enthusiast,” was the reply. And only an enthusiast is likely to be a divinely successful missionary to the heathen, whether at home or abroad. (C. Stanford, D. D.)Religious impulses I. God’ s way of working in the hearts of His people is to start and quicken religious impulses.1. By preaching.2. Bible study.3. Prayer.4. Religious biography. But5. there are impulses for which we cannot account at all. II. God carries on His work in us by settling impulses into life principles. This is sanctification. The leaping mountain spring that bounds from rock to rock, and rushes over hindrances, gathers strength and becomes presently the noiseless quiet river that flows smoothly along, breathing out refreshment as it flows, and singing to its own quieter music the same song to God. III. Sin checks these impulses by suggesting delay in acting them out. IV. The Divine origin of these impulses may be tested by their tendency to--1. Devotion.2. Work.3. Holiness.4. Beneficence. V. Such impulses may be safely followed. VI. Divine impulses are checked by the cool calculations of selfishness. Application:1. Some of you are not naturally impulsive. There is a side of your nature which needs cultivation. 2. Some of you are naturally very impulsive. Don’ t lay violent hands upon them, but strengthen your other faculties. (R. Tuck, B. A.)I conferred not with flesh and blood. Apostolic independence It is difficult for us, at this distance of time, to feel, as St. Paul did, the importance of his apostolic independence. That the point was, in his opinion, a vital one, is evident from the fact that he devotes nearly a third part of this Epistle to the proof of it. It was important in two ways.1. If it could be shown that for some considerable period after his conversion the apostle held little or no intercourse with the twelve, that he sought not their teaching, but maintained an independent course, and acted solely upon his own responsibility, it would go far to prove that he occupied no subordinate position, but possessed an authority which was equal in all respects to theirs. 2. Whilst if it could be further shown that, although deriving no instruction from the twelve, he yet taught a system of Divine truth which was recognized by them as identical with their own, it would be a strong argument in favour of his position that he had received his gospel, not of man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For these reasons St. Paul asserts strongly, and argues out at length, the fact of his independence. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Divine teaching for all No man must rest satisfied with merely human teaching. In its proper place such teaching is most valuable. But it is not all that is required. There is a sense in which each Christian ought to be able to say, “ I conferred not with flesh and blood” --“ I felt the necessity of higher teaching than that of man; I knew that there were endowments which flesh and blood could not bestow upon me; I sought them directly from God.” There is doubtless a spirit of independence which is a spirit of pride; but there is an independence of man which is the independence of humility--an independence which is so conscious of the inadequacy of everything human to satisfy the longings of the soul, that it can only carry its great need to a source which is Divine. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The duty of obedience Implicit obedience is our first duty to God, and one for which nothing else will compensate. If a lad at school is bidden to cipher, and chooses to write a copy instead, the goodness of the writing will not save him from censure. We must obey, whether we see the reason or not; for God knows best. A guide through an unknown country must be followed without demur. A captain, in coming up the Humber or Southampton Water, yields complete authority to the pilot. A soldier in battle must fight when and where he is ordered; when the conflict is over, he may reflect upon and perceive the wisdom of his commander in movements that at the time of their execution were perplexing. The farmer must obey God’ s natural laws of the seasons, if he would win a harvest; and we must all obey God’ s spiritual laws if we would reap happiness here and hereafter. (Anon.)Nature of obedience Obedience is-- 1. Active; not only avoiding what is prohibited, but performing what is commanded (Colossians 3:8; Colossians 3:10).2. Personal; for though Christ has obeyed the law for us as a covenant of works, yet He has not abrogated it as a rule of life (Romans 7:22; Romans 3:31).3. Sincere (Psalms 51:6; 1 Timothy 1:5).4. Affectionate; springing from love, not from terror (1 John 5:19; 1 John 2:5; 2 Corinthians 5:14).5. Diligent; as St. Paul’ s at this time.6. Conspicuous (Philippians 2:15; Matthew 5:16).7. Universal; not one duty, but all must be performed.8. Perpetual; at all times, places, occasions. (C. Buck.)Obligation to obedience We are bound in all to obey God:1. From the relation in which we stand to Him as His creatures.2. From the law He has revealed to us in His Word.3. From the blessings of His providence which we are constantly receiving.4. From His love and goodness in the grand work of redemption. (C. Buck.)Advantages of obedience 1. It adorns the gospel (Titus 2:10).2. It evidences grace (2 Corinthians 5:17).3. It rejoices the hearts of the ministers and people of God (3 John 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:19-20).4. It silences gainsayers (2 Peter 1:11-12).5. It encourages the saints, while it reproves the lukewarm (Matthew 5:16).6. It affords peace to the subjects of it (Psalms 25:12-13; Acts 24:16).7. It powerfully recommends religion, as that which is both delightful and practicable (Colossians 1:10).8. It is the forerunner and evidence of eternal glory (Romans 6:22; Revelation 22:14). (C. Buck.)Actual obedience is the practice and exercise of the several graces and duties of Christianity. (C. Buck.)Obedience is the performance of the commands of a superior. (C. Buck.)Perfect obedience is the exact conformity of our hearts and lives to the law of God, without the least imperfection. (C. Buck.)Virtual obedience consists in a belief of the gospel, of the holiness and equity of its precepts, of the truth of its promises, and a true repentance of all our sins. (C. Buck.)Thorough obedience A soul sincerely obedient will not pick and choose what commands to obey and what to reject, as hypocrites do. An obedient soul is like a crystal glass with a light in the midst, which shines forth through every part thereof. A man sincerely obedient lays such a charge upon his whole man; as Mary the mother of Christ did upon all the servants at the feast, “ Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.” Eyes, ears, hands, heart, lips, legs, body, and soul, do you all seriously and affectionately observe whatever Jesus Christ says unto you, and do it. (T. Brooks.)Prompt obedience A story is told of a great captain who, after a battle, was talking over the events of the day with his officers. He asked them who had done the best that day. Some spoke of one man who had fought very bravely, and some or another. “ No,” he said, “ you are all mistaken. The best man in the field to-day was a soldier who was just lifting up his arm to strike an enemy, but, when he heard the trumpet sound a retreat, checked himself, and dropped his arm without striking the blow. That perfect and ready obedience to the will of his general is the noblest thing that has been done to-day.” Paul’ s promptitude I. There was no pause, for he says “ immediately.” II. There was no giving opportunity for any counter influence. He “ conferred not,” etc. He neither took counsel with himself nor with others. III. It is as though he felt the danger of a moment’ s delay: fearful lest his convictions should be weakened if they did not at once produce great energy of conduct. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Promptness discriminated In matters of prudence second thoughts are best; in matters of conscience first thoughts are the best. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Promptness: its importance Act “ immediately” on your impressions of what is right. Stay not to debate when conscience has decided. Turn feelings into principles by forthwith employing them in practice. Do as Paul did. He was like the mariner who, if he can get a glimpse of the sun, seizes an observation and shifts the rudder. Get you but a glance of God’ s will, and instantaneously shape your course by it. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Promptness: the danger of a want of it in religion You felt a conviction as to duty, but you determined to take time for consideration, and the conviction cooled. It was a golden moment, but in your prudence--the prudence when a leak is found out in the ship of waiting till to-morrow before trying to stop it--you determined to do nothing hastily, but to wait and see whether the conviction was aught else but a transient feeling. Of course it proved a transient feeling. The first touches of God’ s Spirit are meant to be transient unless attended to. The Spirit is likened to the wind, and the soul is breathed upon rather than struck. It is your business to prevent the impression being transient. If you would keep the dew on the grass you must keep the sun from it. If you would keep the impression of the heart you must keep the world from the heart. But because you have paused to confer with flesh and blood, you have given the world time to rally its forces, and therefore by the next day the impression is gone, and you have perhaps secretly felt pleased that second thoughts were so different from the first. Second thoughts tie men to the world where first thoughts would have devoted them to God. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Promptness: its blessedness Happy he who has learned this one thing--to do the plain duty of the moment quickly and cheerfully, whatever it may be, and whatever may be the consequences, Non-conference with flesh and blood The subject-- I. Awakens reflection as to the sphere and limits of religious organization. II. Enforces the necessity of individual culture and the importance of individual action. III. Suggests hopeful anticipations as to the progress of the Kingdom of God. (T. Goadby.)Individuality There is not a spider hanging on the King’ s wall but hath its errand; there is not a nettle that groweth in the corner of the churchyard but hath its purpose; there is not a single insect fluttering in the breeze but accomplisheth some Divine decree; and I will never have it that God created any man, especially any Christian man, to be a blank, a nothing. He made you for an cud; find out what that end is; find.out your niche and fill it. If it be ever so little, do something in this great battle for God and truth. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Conferring with flesh and blood Invading armies always endeavour to leave their ships riding in a safe and sheltered anchorage. In the event of their enterprise proving unsuccessful, they thus secure the means of retreat; and to provide for such an emergency is regarded as a good stroke of generalship. Wellington fought Waterloo with the Forest of Soigny at his back; and the fleet which carried our soldiers to fight the Russians before Sebastopol waited the issue in the Bay of Balaclava. The brave old Romans, whom Caesar led, invaded our country after a different fashion. The first thing they did on disembarking, was to burn their ships; doing so in sight of thousands who were bravely mustering on the heights of England, to defend their homes, their wives and little ones, their freedom and native land. Not leaving the enemy to cut off their retreat, they cut it off themselves. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 1:17 Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me.Aspects of the new life I. Negative. He did not report himself.1. The apostles were stiffly conservative, and (1) might have suspected his conversion;(2) would probably have questioned his Divine commission;(3) would certainly have repudiated his apostleship. 2. Paul wanted nothing of them, and they could give him nothing.3. He wished his life rather than his lips to speak. Let others see the reality of your conversion;they will then need no verbal proof of it. II. Passive. In Arabia Paul--1. Lived a life of quiet meditation.2. Equipped himself for his great work.3. Calmly waited for indications from God. After conversion (1) don’ t rush into office, but(2) think, read, pray, weigh the responsibility of Christian work, fit yourself by Divine grace, wait till God says, “ Go.” III. Active. “ To Damascus” (see Acts 9:22).1. The hour had struck, and the man was ready for it. (1) Paul now knew not only what to say, but how to say it and defend it.(2) The seed sown at conversion had produced a body of experience. 2. Once at it he grew strong in the work.3. He was rewarded with striking success. IV. Suffering (Acts 9:23-24).1. Persecution tests depth of conviction and reality of work.2. Look for it, but don’ t fear it. V. Independence. Living movements do not come of committees, they come of individuals. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)Quiet places Just as an eagle, which has been drenched and battered by some fierce storm, will alight to plume its ruffled wings, so, when a great soul has “ passed through fire and through water,” it needs some safe and quiet place in which to rest … Like almost every great soul in ancient or modern times, to whom has been entrusted the task of swaying the destinies by moulding the convictions of mankind--like Sakya Mouni, like Mahomet in the cave of Hira, like St. Francis of Assisi in his sickness, like Luther in the monastery of Erfurt, Paul would need a quiet period in which to elevate his thoughts, to still the tumult of his emotions, to commune in secrecy and in silence with his own soul. (F. W. Farrar.)The significance of this episode for us In the busy mart, amid life’ s dusky lanes and accumulating cares, we lose and forget our God. Our books are too much with us; friends and social life make the hours busy with what is human; and the claims of business are of increasing urgency. We must find for ourselves a desert place, where, occasionally for prolonged seasons, and daily for a short season, we may receive the Lord’ s anointing. (S. Pearson, M. A.)Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the outcome of meditation, honour is the reward of action. So meditate that thou mayest do; so do that thou mayest be honoured; so accept honour as to give God the glory. The inner life of St. Paul The world and the Church have ever shown a curiosity as to the inner life of great men, as to what they were, not when the eye of man was upon them, but when they were alone--what they were in the secret recesses of their hearts; and this curiosity has made biographies and autobiographies, and private journals and letters, very popular. It has led, moreover, to the publication of documents which were never meant for the public eye, and which had better have remained unperused. But God has seen fit in the ease of St. Paul to gratify, not indeed a mere morbid curiosity, but the devout desire on the part of His Church to know something of the great apostle’ s secret feelings and sternest conflicts for its own edification and for His own glory. (Canon Miller.)St. Paul’ s solitude His main object we may assume to have been to seclude himself for a while from the outer world, to commune with God and his own soul in stillness, and to seek for grace for his future labours. It was a pause in his career, which he might legitimately crave after; a moment of calm between the stormy passions of his past life, and the tumultuous scenes which lay before him; a half-hour of heavenly silence in which, alone with God, he might learn more perfectly his Master’ s will, and gather strength to do his Master’ s work. We may follow the apostle into Arabia, and safely infer that his retirement was made use of for the following purposes.1. Thought. On reviewing his past life--his former antagonism to Christ, his ignorance and self-will, his unbelief and active enmity; and the forbearance, love, and mercy of God--what food for reflection had St. Paul! Thought concerning God, the gospel of Christ, the soul, sin, death, salvation, life, heaven, is essential to salvation; there can be no real, intelligent living unto God without it. 2. Selfabasement. Bitter mourning for sin. The manifestation of God’ s love deepens the sense of ingratitude and unworthiness in the truly penitent. 3. Prayer. He who is most fully conscious of his own utter helplessness, will cling with tightest grasp to the only Giver of all good. 4. Self-dedication. The life given to God. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)St. Paul’ s sojourn in Arabia 1. Obscurity of the incident. A veil of thick darkness hangs over St. Paul’ s visit to Arabia. Of the scenes among which he moved, of the thoughts and occupations which engaged him while there, of all the circumstances of a crisis which must have shaped the whole tenour of his after life, absolutely nothing is known. “ Immediately,” says St. Paul, “ I went away into Arabia.” The historian passes over the incident without a mention. It is a mysterious pause, a moment of suspense in the apostle’ s history, a breathless calm which ushers in the tumultuous storm of his active missionary life. 2. The place. If we suppose that the apostle at this critical moment betook himself to the Sinaitic peninsula, the scene of the giving of the law, then his visit to Arabia becomes full of meaning. He was attracted thither by a spirit akin to that which formerly had driven Elijah to the same region (1 Kings 19:8-18). Standing on the threshold of the new covenant, he was anxious to look upon the birth-place of the old: that dwelling for a while in seclusion in the presence of “ the mount that burned with fire,” he might ponder over the transient glories of the “ ministration of death,” and apprehend its real purpose in relation to the more glorious covenant which was now to supplant it. Here, surrounded by the children of the desert, the descendants of Hagar the bondwoman, he read the true meaning and power of the law. In the rugged and barren region whence it issued, he saw a fit type of that bleak desolation, which it created, and was intended to create, in the soul of man. In the midst of such scenes and associations, his spirit was attuned to harmony with his Divine mission, and fitted to receive fresh visions and revelations. 3. Its duration. What was the length of this sojourn we can only conjecture. The interval between his conversion and his first visit to Jerusalem, St. Paul here states to have been three years. The notices of time in the narrative of the Acts are vague, but not contradictory to this statement. From Damascus, St. Paul tells us, he went away into Arabia, whence he returned to Damascus. St. Luke represents him as preaching actively in this city after his conversion, not mentioning, and apparently not aware of any interruption, though his narrative is not inconsistent with such. It seems probable, then, that St. Paul’ s visit to Arabia took place early in this period, before he commenced his active labours. “ Immediately,” he says, “ instead of conferring with flesh and blood, I went into Arabia.” The silence of the historian is best accounted for on the supposition that the sojourn there was short; but as St. Luke’ s companionship with the apostle commenced at a much later date, no great stress must be laid on the omission. Yet, on the other hand, there is no reason for supposing it of long duration. It was probably brief--brief enough not to occupy any considerable space in the apostle’ s history, and yet not too brief to serve the purpose it was intended to serve. 4. Its purpose. Can we doubt that by this journey he sought seclusion from the outer world, that his desire was to commune with God and his own soul amid these hallowed scenes, and thus to gather strength in solitude for his active labours? His own language implies this--“ I conferred not with flesh and blood, but departed into Arabia.” The fathers for the most part take a different view of this incident. They imagine the apostle hurrying forth into the wilds of Arabia, burning to impart to others the glad tidings which had so suddenly burst upon himself. “ See how fervent was his soul,” exclaims Chrysostom; “ he was eager to occupy lands yet untilled; he forthwith attacked a barbarous and savage people, choosing a life of conflict and much toil.” This comment strikes a false note. Far different at such a crisis must have been the spirit of him, whose life henceforth was at least as conspicuous for patient wisdom and large sympathies as for intense self-devotion. He retired for a while, we may suppose, that, “ separate from the world, his heart might deeply take, and strongly keep, the print of heaven.” And what place more fit for this retirement than that holy ground, “ where all around, On mountains, sand, and sky, God’ s chariot wheels have left distinctest trace.” (Bishop Lightfoot.)St Paul’ s seclusion After a great change of conviction, nature, as well as something higher than nature, tells us that a long period of retirement and silence is fitting, if not necessary. The three days in the house of Judas were not enough in which to sound the heights and depths of newly recognized truth, or the strength and weakness of the soul which was to own and to proclaim it. They were to be followed by three years passed in the desert of Arabia. It is, indeed, thought that this retirement was dictated by a wish to preach the gospel to the wandering Bedouin tribes, or to the settled Arabs at Petrea. And there is no doubt that “ Arabia” among the ancients was a very wide and inclusive geographical term. It might have included Damascus itself; it might have even taken in regions far to the north, extending to the very borders of Cilicia. But these are less usual uses of the word; nor can it be supposed that emphasis would have been laid on this retirement if all that had been meant was a journey of a few miles into the desert beyond the walls of Damascus. Something may be said for a retreat to Petra, the ancient capital of Edom, which had its own synagogue in Jerusalem; but the probabilities are that, under the profound and awful inspirations of the hour, Paul sought to tread in the very footsteps of Moses and Elijah at the base of Sinai. The spiritual attractions of such a course must have been, to a man of his character and antecedents, not less than overwhelming. There, where the Jewish law had been given, he wag led to ask what it really meant--what were its sanctions, what its obligations, what the limit of its moral capacity, what the criterion of its weakness. There he must have felt the inspiration of a life like Elijah’ s, the great representative of a persecuted religious minority, the preacher of an unpopular truth against vulgar but intolerant error. Would not the still small voice which had there spoken to the prophet--or rather, did it not--again and again speak to him? They were precious years, depend upon it, for a man whose later life was to be passed, wholly passed, in action. (Canon Liddon.)Value of seclusion The value of such retirement, if circumstances admit of it or suggest it, before entering on the decisive work of life, can hardly be exaggerated. Many a young man, whose education is complete (as the phrase goes), and who knows, or thinks that he knows, what to do for himself or his fellow-creatures, is often painfully disappointed when his plans for immediate action suddenly break down, and he has to remain for a while in comparative obscurity and inaction. It seems to him to be a loss of time, with little or nothing to redeem the disadvantage. He is wasting, he thinks, his best years in idleness. He may, of course, so act as to make that phrase justifiable. It need not be so. A prudent, no less than a religious man, will thankfully, if he can, avail himself of such an opportunity for consolidating his acquirements, for reviewing the bearing of his governing convictions, for estimating more accurately the resources at his disposal for extending or contracting his plans, at least for reconsidering them. A religious man will, above all, seize such an opportunity for testing and strengthening his motives, and for cultivating an increased intimacy with those means and sources of effective strength which he will need so much hereafter. (Canon Liddon.)Observe-- I. God sometimes raises up and qualifies His agents without human intervention. II. Such agents are duly qualified and may be tested by their fruits. III. As a rule, they have assigned them some new department of labour. (J. Lyth.)Residence in Arabia The point thus suggested is the interval between the choice of a profession or calling in life and the entrance on the public duties of that profession or calling. I. The first point relates to the professions or callings which may be properly regarded as presenting themselves to one who is about to embark on life.1. The first thing which strikes us on this point is the great variety of things to be done in the world, during any one generation; or the variety of the fields for exertion and employment. 2. The next point, under this head, relates to the variety of endowments among men, as adapted to these various occupations--endowments such that these various ends are in fact secured, and such that at the same time they are secured voluntarily, or so that men enter on their different pursuits not by force or compulsion, but of preference and choice. 3. A third remark under this head; the ends of life may be secured, the purposes of society advanced, and God may be honoured, in any one of these occupations and employments. II. In the next place, we have to inquire on what principles should such a profession or calling be chosen?1. The first is, that the profession or calling should be selected in which the most can be made of life for its proper purposes; or, in which life can be turned to the best account. Life, though transitory, short, uncertain, has its purpose. 2. The second principle which I mention is, that, consequently, when there is a fitness for either of two or more courses of life, that should be chosen which under the circumstances will be most adapted to secure the ends of life. 3. A third rule would be that the profession or calling should be chosen which will be best adapted to develop the peculiar endowments of the mind, or which will be in the line of those endowments. 4. A fourth thing which is vital to any just views of life, to a proper choice of a profession, is, that that only should be chosen which is just and honourable; which is itself right, and is consistent with the highest standard of morality; and which can be pursued in all its ramifications, and always, and in all respects, on the principles of honesty, truth, justice, and fairness. 5. A fifth principle is that that course should be chosen in which there are the fewest temptations to evil. 6. A sixth principle is, that a young man should choose that which while it will conduce to his own individual interest and to the purpose of his life, will, at the same time, promote the general good of society, and contribute to the advancement of the race. 7. A seventh principle may be added. It is, that that calling should be selected which will not interfere with, but which will best aid the preparation for another world. III. These remarks and suggestions will enable us, in the third place, to answer the main inquiry with which we started--in what way shall the interval between the choosing of a profession and the entrance on its active duties be employed?1. The first is, that time enough should be taken to prepare for the profession or calling which has been selected. 2. Secondly, the studies should obviously have reference to the future calling. 3. One thought only remains: It is, that the preparation for that profession should be--as the choice of the profession, and the profession itself should be--subordinate to the life to come--to the preparation for eternity. (A. Barnes.) Galatians 1:18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem.St. Paul’ s return to Jerusalem He returned from a spiritual as Ezra had from a bodily captivity, and to his renewed mind all things appeared new. What an emotion smote his heart at the first distant view of the Temple, that house of sacrifice, that edifice of prophecy. Its sacrifices had been realized; its prophecies fulfilled. As he approached the gates, he might have trodden the very spot where he had assisted in the death of Stephen, and he entered them perfectly content, were it God’ s will, to be dragged to the same fate. When he entered the city, what deep thoughts were suggested by the haunts of his youth, and by the sight of those spots where he had so eagerly sought that knowledge which he had now so eagerly abandoned. What an intolerable burden he had cast off. He felt as a glorified spirit may be supposed to feel on revisiting the scenes of its fleshly sojourn. (Archdeacon Evans.)The abode with Peter The fifteen days were doubtless spent in conversation about the mission and life of Christ; and it seems certain--though St. Paul repudiates the presumption that he derived any part of his authority, or of the exposition which he gave of the gospel, from any person whatsoever--that he must have heard during this fortnight many of those facts of the private life of Christ, which were so well known to the chief of the Twelve, and many of those discourses which Peter so clearly remembered. (Paul of Tarsus.)Christian friendship I. The visit to peter.1. After three years’ seclusion Paul would yearn for fellowship with such a heart as Peter’ s. 2. The visit shows us that (1) he was not primarily in quest of knowledge, nor(2) to secure an ecclesiastical status. 3. It was a visit of pure friendship. II. The lessons it suggests. That Christian friendship is--1. All-embracing. It includes differences of rank, gifts, culture, temperament. 2. No men could be more diverse than Peter and Paul, and yet neither disparaged or envied the other. II. Equalizing. Paul could now meet on equal terms the most distinguished men of his day: Peter the premier apostle, James the Lord’ s brother. “ One is your Master, etc.” III. Hospitable. Paul, once a dreaded persecutor, now found a welcome and a home from the chief of the persecuted. Peter a married man. Fraternal intercourse and fellowship:-- I. The nature of Christian fellowship.1. A fellowship in Christ.2. A fellowship of love.3. A fellowship in which individual interests are advanced by mutual help. II. The advantages of Christian fellowship.1. Their fellowship would be profitable, because each would contribute towards a clearer apprehension of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. 2. The fellowship would be profitable, because it would assure each that the Christian life is one of great trial. 3. The fellowship would be profitable, because each of the apostles would see that the Christian life is one of certain comfort. III. To secure Christian fellowship often requires personal sacrifice. To see Peter and the others, Paul undertook a considerable journey, and exposed himself on the one hand to the scorn and enmity of his former friends, and on the other to the coldness and suspicion of the disciples in Jerusalem. Lessons:1. That the opportunities for Christian fellowship are usually brief; they should therefore, when presented, be diligently improved. Paul could only remain fifteen days at Jerusalem: the persecutions of his enemies compelled him to leave. 2. Such opportunities being made the most of, lead to glorious results in time and eternity. Who can tell how much the Christian world is indebted to the harmonious fellowship of Peter, James, and Paul at Jerusalem? (R. Nicholls.) Galatians 1:19 Save James the Lord’s brother.James appears, to whatever source we may turn for information, as the one authoritative ruler, the one undoubted representative of the Christian society. But whatever the influence he exercised, or the authority be maintained, it was due not to his apostleship, but to those relations which are brought before us by the epithets affixed to his name, “ James the brother of our Lord,” “ James the Just.” If we open the contemporary Christian records it is to his decision (Acts 15:13) that the council of Jerusalem bows; and to him, taking precedence even of Cephas and John, that Paul communicates the revelation that had been entrusted to him (Galatians 2:9). If we turn to later traditions preserved in Hegessipus, or in the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, he appears before us as the one mysterious bulwark of the chosen people; invested with a priestly sanctity before which the pontificate of Aaron fades into insignificance--as the one universal bishop of the Christian Church. If we look to the impression produced on the mind of the Jewish people, we find that he alone of all the apostles has obtained a place in their national records, whether in the simple narrative of Josephus, or in the wild legends of the Talmud. He was emphatically “ the Just” ; the predictions of the “ Just one” were regarded as fulfilled in his person; the people vied with each other to touch the hem of his garment; after the manner of Elijah he was reported in the droughts of Palestine to have called down rain; and with the austere features, linen ephod, bare feet, long locks and unshorn beard of the Nazarite, he was believed to have gathered round him the admiring populace to ask: “ What is the gate of salvation?” And in that striking scene, when at the close of a long life he is described as standing on the front of the temple and bearing witness to the coming judgment of the Son of man, it was with a feeling of bitter disappointment that the Scribes and Pharisees are represented as rushing upon him with the cry, “ Woe, Woe, the Just one also is deceived” ; and in his cruel death, the Jewish historian, no less than the Christian martyrologist, saw the filling up of the cup of guilt which was to hasten on the final catastrophe of the apostate nation. His chair was preserved as a relic till the fourth century, and the pillar which marked the spot where he fell long remained in the valley of Jehoshaphat, under the precipice from which he was thrown. (Dean Stanley.) Galatians 1:20I lie not.Truthfulness; its violation Untruthfulness is something more than direct and deliberate misstatement, e.g., by the practice of making excuses for faults in conduct which do not fairly admit of them; by exaggeration, which from carelessness or vanity overstates the case; by equivocation, in which the words may be true, but the impression conveyed false; by dissimulation, which by silence or some assumed attitude allows a false impression of our position to go abroad; by the breaking of promises, whether from inability to fulfil a promise rashly made, or from neglect to fulfil one to which we have the power of giving effect; and by falsehood in act, such as is exemplified in schools in “ copying” or “ prompting.” To inspire even a moderate love of this virtue, it is necessary to set the highest value of it before the child; the teacher must therefore be on the alert to check all its violations. Truthfulness excites trust Talent is by no means rare in the world; nor is even genius. But can talent be trusted, or even genius? Not unless based on truthfulness. It is this quality more than any other that commands the esteem and respect, and secures the confidence of others. Truthfulness is at the foundation of all personal excellence. (S. Smiles, LL. D.)The truth-teller--his reward and work Honour to the truthful man! Hail to the people with whom veracity prevails! Joy to mankind, when this daughter of light wins the victory over falsehood, and thrusts her back to that kingdom of darkness whence she sprang. (De Wette.)A solemn declaration of the truth I. Paul asseverates the truth of definite statements. II. His declaration of truth was comprehensive. III. His truthfulness commended itself to the judgment of men, and to the approval of God.1. Men were invited to witness it. “ Behold.” 2. God was the witness of the truth. It had been spoken, and acted in His sight. “ All things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Lessons:1. The best of men are sometimes suspected of wrong-doing, and are liable to misrepresentation. 2. Every Christian man should speak and act as in the presence of God. 3. Very solemn avowals, as oaths, ought to be used only under constraint. (R. Nicholls.)Perfect truthfulness necessary Concave mirrors magnify the features nearest to them into undue and monstrous propertions; and in common mirrors that are ill cast, and of uneven surface, the most beautiful face is distorted into deformity. So there are many minds of this description: they distort or magnify, diminish or discolour, almost every gospel truth which they reflect. (Dr. Guthrie.)Galeazius, a gentleman of great wealth, who suffered martyrdom at St. Angelo in Italy, being much entreated by his friends to recant, replied, “ Death is much sweeter to me with the testimony of truth than life with its least denial.” Lying scorned The minister of the seminary at Clermont, France, having been siezed at Autun by the populace, the mayor, who wished to save him, advised him not to take the oath, but to allow him to tell the people that he had taken it. “ I would myself make known your falsehood to the people” replied the clergyman: “ it is not permitted me to ransom my life by a lie. The God who prohibits my taking this oath will not allow me to make it believed that I have taken it.” The mayor was silent, and the minister was martyred. (Foster.) Galatians 1:21I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.Christian service I. Its sphere.1. Among strangers--“ Syria.”2. Friends--“ Cilicia.” II. Its nature.1. Not (1) the propagation of philosophic dogmas;(2) the practice of mere philanthropy;(3) the gathering of a personal following. 2. But preaching the faith once destroyed. (1) The unconverted destroy the faith by opposition or neglect--“ He that is not for Me, etc.”(2) It is the duty of the converted to repair the injuries they have inflicted on the faith. III. Its fame. Strangers hear of it.1. Not trumpeted by self or interested friends.2. Not secured by unworthy arts.3. But by words which, like light, cannot be hid. This is true popularity, and has been won by Carey, Judson, Hunt, Moffat, Ellis, etc. IV. Its Result: God’ s glory.1. This was what Paul wished.2. His apostleship was not of man but of God. God, therefore, deserved the praise. All ministerial and Church gifts from Him, therefore to Him the glory. Apostolic labours I. The work to which Paul was devoted was preaching the faith. The preaching of the faith signified--1. The declaration of the whole gospel. He had been subdued by the gospel, and what he had felt of the word of life that he declared unto others. II. Paul’ s labours were exercised in different places. In Damascus and Jerusalem, and now in various parts of Cilicia as well as Syria, Paul preached the gospel. His message was the same in substance in every place, be-cause--1. All men needed salvation; and,2. A salvation was provided for all. III. Paul’ s labours were extensive in their influence. Even those who had not seen his face heard of him, and of the grace of God which was manifested by him. Many of them in Judaea who once dreaded his name were now cheered and blessed, and their faith was strengthened by what they heard of him. IV. Paul’ s labours exalted the glory of God. “ It is of God’ s grace when, from a persecutor and misleader, a man becomes a true teacher and confessor. O wonder! Is not that as much as if a dead man were raised to life? And it serves to the praise of the Divine confession that the Lord does not destroy His enemies, but wins them over, and converts them to His service.” Lessons:1. The religion of Jesus Christ inspires a man to active service. His love constrains every believer to do something in His cause. 2. A holy and zealous life is a confirmation of the truth. Hence Paul introduced the text as an argument to show that the mission entrusted to him was of God. (Richard Nicholls.) Galatians 1:22 Which were in Christ.Relation of Churches to Christ: I. They are founded on Christ (Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 1:2). II. They are built by Christ (Ephesians 4:16). III. They are the body of Christ (Ephesians 1:23; Ephesians 4:12). IV. They are redeemed through Christ (Acts 20:28; Ephesians 5:25). V. They are consecrated to Christ (Ephesians 5:26). VI. They will be glorified in Christ (Ephesians 5:27). We are reminded of the beautiful symbol of the prophet, as he saw in the Messianic age flecks of doves, varied it may be in their plumage, speeding with fleet wings to the windows of the true ark, safe in Christ “ from the windy storm and tempest” (Isaiah 9:8); or the still more apposite figure employed by the Redeemer Himself when not only does He speak of the individual members of His flock, calling His own separate sheep by name, and one by one leading them out; but also refers to them in the aggregate. They constitute, though with divers folds and many under-shepherds, one great flock--reposing in green pastures, and by “ the waters of comfort” under Himself, the chief Shepherd and Bishop of souls. (J. R. Macduff, D. D.) Galatians 1:23 But they had heard.True fame True glory takes root and spreads! All false pretences, like perishing flowers, fall to the ground: nor can any counterfeit last long. (Cicero.)The widening success of missionary toil The immediate influence of the labours of a missionary will, in all probability, be less than he anticipates: he will perhaps go down to the grave as one disappointed of his hope. But, like Abraham, he must against hope believe in hope. He has planted a seed, which will push itself forth on all sides. He has excited a spark, which will raise a flame through a kingdom. The flame once excited shall spread from breast to breast, from family to family, from village to village; in time from kingdoms to empires, and at length from empires to continents. But the flame must first be lighted from the fire that burns on the altar of God. How will the faithful missionary rejoice when by and by he shall meet not a straggling individual or two whom he has turned to God, but perhaps a nation of converts to whom he had been the original means of bringing salvation. (Professor Farish.)Persecutor and preacher Paul had the spirit of his ancestor, who sought to slay the Gibeonites in his zeal for the children of Israel; and when he was converted, he retained not only the recollection of Stephen’ s death, but of the multiplied murders which he had ordered or encouraged, when, during the wild anarchy of Caligula’ s reign, he obtained authority from the chief priests to bind and slay. His resolution and strength of purpose were the traits of his youth, his manhood, and his age. Thus when the real work of Paul was understood the old fear of him vanished, and those who knew of him only by that work glorified God in him. Thus early in his career was the blessing of Jacob fulfilled in the greatest of the descendents of his youngest son--“ Benjamin shall devour in the morning as a ravenous wolf, and in the evening give nurture.” (Paul of Tarsus.)Conversion reverses men’ s lives There was a man, while Messrs. Moody and Sankey were in London, who got out a little paper called “ The Moody and Sankey Humbug.” He used to have it to sell to the people coming into the meeting. After he had sold a great many thousand copies of that number, he wanted to get out another number; so he went into the meeting to get something to put into the paper; but the power of the Lord was present, and the arrow of conviction went down deep into his heart. He went out, not to write a paper, but to destroy his paper that he had written, and to tell what the Holy Ghost had done for him. (Nye.)The scoffer turned preacher One evening a young man who had been educated for a barrister was seated with some gay companions in a London tavern, when his companions, knowing he was a clever mimic, requested him to go and hear Mr. Wesley preach, and then come and mimic the whole affair for their amusement. He went. The text, “ Prepare to meet thy God,” frightened him like a bursting shell, and conviction deepened during the sermon. On his return to his friends they inquired, “ Well, have you taken him off?” He replied, “ No, gentlemen; but he has taken me off.” He left his companions, gave his heart to God, and became one of Mr. Wesley’ s most useful preachers. Hard to forgive self There are some sins which, even if forgiven by others, cannot easily be pardoned by the penitent mind. Dr. Bates tells us that the excellent Richard Baxter cherished such self-condemnation on account of his own sinfulness, that he was in the habit of saying, “ I can more easily believe that God will forgive me, than that I can forgive myself.” Sin promises much in the outset, but dreadfully disappoints in the issue. “ What fruit had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” On the other hand, it becomes an irrefragable argument in favour of an early devotedness to the religious life, that whilst it bestows infinite blessings hereafter, it saves from incalculable misery here; and is at once favourable to a grateful retrospect of the past, and a happy anticipation of the future. (The Evangelist.)Observe-- I. A man’ s character goes before him. II. Greatly influences the reception he meets with. III. Should be diligently taken care of. (J. Lyth.)Paul-- I. The persecutor--full of pride--false zeal--bitterness--destroying the faith. II. The preacher--full of humility--devotedness--love--glorying in the crucified Jesus. (J. Lyth.)The conversion of St. Paul As Gentiles by birth, we have peculiar interest in all that relates to St. Paul, not only in his conversion, as on this day commemorated by the Church, but generally, as sinners, we may often recur to this conversion, and derive from it instruction and encouragement. If there were such longsuffering on the part of the Redeemer, that He bore with a man who thirsted for the blood of the saints, and in place of visiting him with vengeance, constrained him by His grace to accept salvation through His death; who can ever have right to think his own case hopeless, and suppose himself beyond the reach of forgiveness? Now, we know of St. Paul that he sinned in ignorance, and that whilst persecuting the Church of God, and endeavouring to exterminate Christianity, he evidently thought that he was doing God service. He had been educated in the strictest forms of the Jewish religion; and felt a zeal for the law of Moses, whose authority he thought attacked by the followers of Jesus; and he regarded it as a most solemn duty to strive by every means to eradicate the rising superstition. Hence, it becomes a grave question how far this ignorance was an excuse for his crime--how far, that is, it can be taken as a palliation of doing wrong that a man suppose himself doing right. We certainly cannot admit that St. Paul was not to blame, because he all along obeyed the dictates of his conscience. It is clear that the apostle did not regard himself as, on this account, innocent, for he speaks of himself in the days of his unbelief, in terms which strongly mark a sense of the guiltiness of his conduct. St. Paul was answerable for cherishing such a blind and bigoted attachment to the law as prevented his admitting the pretensions of the gospel. He was answerable for that misguided and uncalculating zeal which allowed him not to see that the law was but fulfilled, in place of being destroyed, by the gospel. He was answerable for the rejection of all the evidence from miracle and prophecy, which we know to have been sufficient, and by which, therefore, he ought to have been convinced. We think it of great importance that men should rightly understand that they are to the full as answerable for their principles as for their practices--for the rule of conduct adopted as well as for their adherence to it when once it has been adopted. For we often hear of men acting up to their belief, and the assertion is made as conveying the opinion that a man is responsible for his conduct, but not for his creed. And what is done in ignorance is represented as necessarily done excusably; and thus the simple principle is overlooked, that there may be a sin of the understanding as well as a sin of the flesh, and that it may be just as easy to offend by closing the mind against truth, as by putting forth the hand to do wrong. All that can be said is just this--If a man sin in ignorance, obeying the dictates of a misinformed conscience, and if he die in his ignorance, and therefore without repentance, we have no right to think he will be pardoned at the judgment, unless his ignorance were unavoidable, so that it could not have been removed by any carefulness of his own. St. Paul indeed obtained mercy, but the form which mercy took was not immediately that of full forgiveness, but that of greater instruction, so that the persecutor might retract his error and turn his zeal to the right channel. Let us now consider the conversion of St. Paul as furnishing evidence to the truth of Christianity. You will all admit that the change which had been made in Saul was of the most extraordinary kind, and not to be accounted for by any of those sudden transitions which one sometimes sees in unstable and vacillating characters. He was a man whose whole prejudices, feelings, and interests were enlisted against Christianity. He could become a Christian only by the sacrifice of position, of property, and perhaps even of life. He must have thought Christianity attested by supernatural evidence, whether that evidence were real, or whether it was the product of his own excited feelings. And, accordingly, the scriptural account assigns a miraculous manifestation as the cause of Saul’ s conversion. The only man who would be likely to imagine a miracle on the side of Christianity would be a man pre-disposed to that side--anxious to embrace the religion if he can but prove it true. Such a man might possibly take that for miraculous which was only natural, and he persuaded by certain sounds that he was holding a dialogue, though he himself were the only speaker. But that a man in Saul’ s circumstances should have done this--indeed, it seems to us that it would have been a greater miracle than that which is said to have overcome the apostle. Besides, how could St. Paul have been altogether deceived? Perhaps he only fancied the great light; perhaps he only fancied the voice; but could he fancy his own blindness? He must have been sure that he could not see. This was not a point upon which he could deceive himself. And whence came the blindness? If you say from the great light, then it is almost saying that the light was supernatural; and, therefore, there was miracle. Or, if you think the apostle might have been struck blind by a common flash of lightning, what shall be said of the recovery of sight? Is this, also, natural? You may think it was. Observe what pains are taken to prove the recovery miraculous. St. Paul sees, in a vision, a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hands on him that he might receive his sight. A corresponding vision is granted to this Ananias. He is sent to visit Paul, and lay his hands on him that his blindness may be removed. And how came the two visions to tally with such precision? Ananias, left to himself, would never have thought of visiting Paul. The disciple would not have put himself in the hands of the persecutor; and so indisposed was he to go, that, even when directed by God, he remonstrated on the danger. We are sure, therefore, that Ananias really thought he saw a vision; and we may be equally sure that St. Paul really thought he saw a vision. But then men may easily fancy visions, and little dependence is to be placed on dreams. Admitted. But how will you account for the precise coincidence between the visions? for the thorough accuracy with which they fitted into each other? Will you call this accident? You may account for anything by such reasoning; but candid men will not go along with you in such theories as these. Paul’ s vision by itself might have proved nothing. Ananias’ vision by itself might have proved nothing. But when the two are precisely coincident, the correspondence demands authority for each. It is too surprising to be referred to accident, and if not to accident, it must be referred to Divine ordering; so that we unhesitatingly maintain the circumstances of the whole transaction to have been such, that Saul, who certainly could have had no interest in deceiving himself, could not himself have been deceived. And, this being established, we can point to the conversion of this apostle as irrefragable evidence of the truth of Christianity. The brightness which struck down Saul of Tarsus lights up the moral firmament of every after generation. The voice by which he was arrested sends its echoes to the remotest lands and the remotest times. Yea, even those “ unto whom the ends of the world are come,” have derived their religion through the preaching of Paul, and may prove its divinity by his conversion. These, my brethren, are the chief points of view under which it is most interesting and instructive, to survey that great event which the Church this day commemorates. It may indeed moreover be, that the whole history we have been reviewing is typical, for it has been assumed by many learned men that St. Paul was throughout a type of the Jewish nation--a type in his opposition--a type in his conversion--a type in his preaching Christianity. You may easily trace the types if you remember that the Jews, after centuries of fierce and unrelenting hostility to Christianity, had been banished from the land of their fathers, and that after their conversion to the faith of Jesus, they became preachers to the heathen, and carried Christianity to the earth’ s remotest families. We rather wish to guard you against an opinion, which has been often entertained and supported by such instances as that of St. Paul. The opinion is that if conversion be genuine, its period must be strongly marked, so that a man shall be able to fix the precise time of its occurrence, and the exact process by which it was wrought. Now we are sure that a rule such as this would decide against the genuineness of the religion of a great body of professing Christians. The operations of God’ s Spirit are various. To profess to reduce them under a single description were to betray ignorance of their nature and effect. If the renovating process be in some eases rapid and vehement, in others it is gradual and silent, and is not to be discovered except by its results. One man may be converted by a sudden flash from heaven, and another through successive applications of the common means of grace. We know of no proof of conversion except the fruits by which it will be followed. (H. Melvill, B. D.)How to welcome new converts How often, too, when some one who has been prominently connected with a denomination that is not generally considered evangelical comes out and declares himself for that which is counted orthodox, he is met with freezing suspicion, and kept at a distance by the picket-guard that is always peering out for spies; or if some, like Barnabas, should put themselves beside him, they will be suspected along with him, and draw down upon themselves abundant expostulation. “ Wait,” say these cautious ones, “ until he has been duly quarantined; let him prove his steadfastness, and then we will receive him;” not seeing that their cold reserve is just the thing most calculated to send him back. So, again, in dealing with young converts, how slow some are to believe in the thoroughness and genuineness of God’ s own work. It was not so with Barnabas, and it ought not to be so with us. We knew a good Christian lady who went to her pastor for the addresses of those who were received from time to time into the Church, that she might personally call upon them, and congratulate them on the stand which they had made. There was a deaconess without the name!--a true daughter of consolation! and after her visits the friends to whom she had spoken began to discover that there was more in Church fellowship than the mere sitting down together at the communion-table. If there were more like her in all our Churches, these spiritual societies would become more like “ households of the faith,” and the coming in of each new member would create a joy like that which hails the advent of a new-born babe into every rightly-constituted home. Where are ye, oh ye Barnabases? Look around, and see if there be not field enough to-night for beginning operations. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Galatians 1:24 And they glorified God in me.God’ s glory in the soul I. In the act of conversion God is glorified. It is strange how many misapplications of this word “ conversion” prevail in the world and the Churches. It is used to express the change from one civilization to another; the Chinaman is converted when he becomes an American. It is employed to tell the story of a change of philosophical thought, when one begins to believe in the existence of spirits after having all his days supposed that God had nothing in this universe like unto Himself, but all was dead, inert matter. It is introduced, again, as the explanation of a person’ s change of ecclesiastical relations. One passes from your church into the church opposite to yours, and he is “ converted,” according to the usage of many. He has changed the mere form of his profession, whilst he holds to the same great essential truths. Yet not one nor all of these are here meant by the words in the sacred Scriptures. It tells the story of a Divine impulse upon our affections, to turn them from the things they have loved before; upon our will, to entirely change the purposes and desires which have prevailed before; upon our life, to make perfect the contrast of that it had been theretofore. It is the impulse of God upon man, turning him away from the things that tempt him further from God unto the things that attract him into nearer associations and relationship. And every part of the act of conversion is Divine. This act of conversion includes several facts.1. The sense of estrangement from God is its first feature. Now you will admit that this is not a common experience among men. God produces this sense of estrangement. All conversions begin here, and no power but that which is Divine can make a man realize that great truth. 2. Instantly the desire for reconciliation springs up in the heart of him whom God is converting. This has God wrought. No human being can pump up such a desire out of his estranged heart. It is like the spring in the soil which God feeds from the clouds--it would run dry if He did not give the early and the latter rain and the morning and the evening dew. 3. Now comes the determination to return. It may have occupied only minutes, but what a journey it is of soul! II. But I want to speak, secondly, of the influence of conversion. This is the glory of God. Both our conscious and unconscious influence as converted men and women is continually crying, “ Let God be glorified.”1. In this influence of a converted soul, the first fact is the withdrawal from dishonouring associations. “ Conversion to God,” says one of the old seventeenth century divines, “ begins with aversion from sin.” 2. A second fact in this influence is the attachment of one’ s self to God’ s people. “ Let God be glorified,” is the desire and the expression of the soul. There is a ministry to which this influence impels him. The convert seeks his brother to save him. III. Now, lastly, I want to point out some aspects of God’ s glory that converted lives do testify. God does it all, and it takes all that there is in God to do it. It is no light work, Wherever you see a converted man, brother, there has been an Omnipresent God, there has been an Omniscient God, there has been the exercise of the omnipotence of God. Every natural perfection of God is engaged in the conversion of a soul. Now, it is very difficult to conceive of God in our times of thought, still less in our times of devotion. The eye is made for taking in the things of beauty in this world; the reason is adapted to comprehend principles. But the eye cannot look at the full meridian sun, and the reason is blinded when it searches the depths of God’ s glory. Yet, when He manifests Himself in the works of His hands; when He brings the soul out of darkness into light; when He transforms a backsliding infidel into a true and accepted and faithful child of His; we testify, “ God has been here.” The Arab was asked how he knew that there was a God; and he answered, “ When I look out of my door in the morning, how do I know it was a man, and not a camel, that passed my tent?” We know Him from the marks of His presence. A converted soul glorifies all the natural perfections of God. The moral attributes are equally engaged in a soul’ s conversion. Justice, mercy, love, fidelity, holiness; all these are rays of His glory. Take that prism, to-morrow, and let the sun shine through it, and you will see marvels. The white, pure light is divided into many colours. Even so this gospel of God’ s grace analyzes the glory of God, and shows how justice and mercy have met together; how righteousness and peace have kissed each other. At Bethlehem! see God condescending; in Galilee I see God obeying; in Gethsemane I see God struggling and agonizing; on Golgotha I see God bowing his head in the substitution for man’ s sin. What glorious rays of beauty! But when, with Peter and James and John, we stand on Mount Hermon to view a transfigured Christ, whose face did shine as the sun, we behold the glory of God in marvellous combination. Each ray may be contemplated in itself, but all blend in the glory of God a Saviour. All that each event of life testifies is there, and far, far more than the mind of man can ever conceive. But then, more than that, the covenant relations of God are glorified. The converted man finds a Father--meets a Saviour--is welcomed by a Friend. Now, it is sometimes the experience of children in this world, who never go away from home, that they find their parents in a new and better sense than they had ever met them before. If they have doubted them, if they have been disobedient to them, if they have suspected them, and if, at length, the dark cloud between child and parent passes away, the little one comes with new confidence to bury his head in his father’ s bosom, or on his mother’ s neck, to say, “ I never knew you until now; I never understood you till now. The love has been deep down in my heart, but now I have found my father, I know the one with whom I have so long been living.” Even so is it here, dear friends. The converted man finds the fatherhood of God, who has been his father in Jesus Christ, ever since he was born; realizes the Saviourhood of God, who bought him with a price before his first returnings were ever experienced; and rests in the friendship of God, who is his abiding, faithful supporter and strength. This is my subject--the glory of God in the conversion of a soul. Now, dear brother, let us bring it down to one single point. Has any one glorified God on your behalf? (S. H. Tyng; D. D.)God’ s glory incapable of addition The God whose glory is in the heavens, revealed in the history of earth, and declared by the experience of every sincere and trusting soul, has perfections impossible of addition as they are evasive of all analysis. He is the standard of holiness, the source of life, the saviour from wrong. His glory belongeth unto Him; He will not give it to another; yet every soul, every life, every home, every Church, dwelling in the brightness of the beauty of God, declares, extends, exalts His glory. Before the eye and in the ear of rational creatures, theology cannot make God either more or less than He is. The panegyric does not add one virtue to the person about whom it is told; the picture that is true cannot make the portrait more beautiful than the face; the window, translucent, does not create, but lets in, the light; even so our relation to God in His glory. It belongs unto us to declare--it does not belong unto us either to diminish or increase the majesty of God. All our consecration cannot add one ray, all our scorning cannot detract aught from Him. (S. H. Tyng; D. D.)They glorified God in me I. THE OF GOD IN MAN. God is manifested--1. In nature. 2. But this is surpassed by His manifestation in man. (1) Physically;(2) mentally;(3) morally; and because this latter is based on the manifestation of God in Christ-- (a) in the New Testament; (b) in the believer; (c) in ministerial gifts and fruit. II. The glorification of God for this manifestation. In the way of--1. Gratitude.2. Imitation.3. Trust that God will maintain the succession. (J. Stoughton, D. D.)He does not say they marvelled at me, they praised me, they were struck with admiration of me, but they glorified God in me. (Chrysostom.)They praised God, and took courage to believe the more in the mercy of God for that He had mercy on such a great sinner as he. “ In me.” They wondered that grace should be so rich as to take hold of such a wretch as I was, and for my sake believed in Christ the more. (Bunyan.)Christ glorified in Paul’ s conversion I am sure there was never a man who had more hurtful thoughts of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, than Paul had, for he could not endure to hear of His name, nor to hear of any that professed His name, but persecuted them all most cruelly. And yet our Lord, He did no more but speak a word or two to him, and with these same few words He cast him off his high horse, whereupon he rode so triumphantly, and lays him down upon his back and under his feet, to make him say, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” That is a cast of the power of our Lord’ s right arm. (S. Rutherford.)Divine grace seen in the life Can I see the dew of heaven as it falls on a summer evening? I cannot. It comes down softly and gently, noiselessly and imperceptibly. But when I go forth in the morning, after a cloudless night, and see every leaf sparkling with moisture, and feel every blade of grass damp and wet, I say at once, “ There has been a dew.” Just so it is with the presence of the Spirit in the soul. (Bishop Ryle.)That the conversion of an immortal soul is cause of great joy and thanksgiving to the God of grace I. This will appear if we consider the nature of the human soul, and the misery from which it is rescued. II. If we contemplate the felicity to which a saved soul is exalted. III. It will further appear if we consider the price paid for the salvation of the soul. IV. This is evinced by the perfect nature of salvation. (The Pulpit.)They glorified God in-- I. The subjection of the persecutor. II. The conversion of the sinner. III. The zeal and success of the preacher. IV. The dignity of his office. (J. Lyth.)God glorified in Paul I. In his conversion--a persecutor and a Pharisee--yet called by special grace (verses 13-15). II. In his call to the ministry--Divinely qualified (verse 16)--and instructed (verses 11, 12, 17). III. In his labours--incessant--widely distributed--unsupported by human influence--yet abundant to the glory of God. (J. Lyth.)God glorified in Christians It should ever be the end of the Christian man, not only to promote the glory of God by his works, but to illustrate the glory of God in his character; in this, as in nothing else, are the goodness and power of God seen most strikingly. An architect rears a building. It is admired for its beauty in detail, and its grandeur as a whole; but the praise belongs not to the building, but to the builder. A tutor takes a youth under his care, and sends him forth to attain eminence and distinction in the early struggles and in the highest positions of life, but the tutor is glorified in the pupil. So the creation is the result of the Almighty hand, and He is glorified in it. Impressions of His glory are left upon the largest and upon the least; upon the stars in their courses discovered to the telescope; and on the minutest specimens of organized life which the microscope opens to our startled eye. And shall my God be less glorified in the new creation than He is in the old? Shall He not be glorified by the humblest Christian, just as He was glorified by the great apostle? All stars shine by His will, and one star differs from another star in glory, for this is His will; but each renders to Him its measure of praise. God, who is glorified in Saul of Tarsus pre-eminently, must be glorified in each of us, as Christians, according to our position and opportunity. If we have a Christian’ s hope, it is to the glory of His name; if we have a Christian’ s life, it is to the glory of His cross; if we have performed a duty, it is to the glory of His grace; if we have borne a trial, it is to the glory of His support; if we have overcome a sinful habit, or the lust which led to it, it is to the glory of His power which gave us self-mastery. (C. J. P. Eyre, M. A.) Galatians 2:1I went up to Jerusalem. The journey to Jerusalem I. Which? The third (Acts 15:2), the first being that of the previous chapter (Acts 9:26), the second that of Act 11:30, both the purpose and time of which forbid its being confounded with them. Both Galatians 2:1-21. and Acts 15:1-41. agree in time, geography, persons, intent, and subsequent events. II. When? Fourteen years after, when by experiences, trials, and achievements, Paul had earned the right to take the position he had assumed. Let young Christians learn from this to wait until experience and service give them the right to assert their equality with their elders. III. What for? To fight and win the battle of Christian liberty, equality, and fraternity. IV. With whom? Titus, a representative of the cause he was fighting; Barnabas, an unexceptionable witness of the justice of his cause. The reason of the visit Not to submit, as to a supreme tribunal, the question as to whether he might be permitted to go on receiving uncircumcised Gentiles into the Church: the idea of a human hierarchy to regulate the faith of some by that of others was altogether alien to his spirit. The fact is he had no fear whatever of being gainsaid by the heads of the mother Church. Had it been otherwise he would certainly not have taken a course which in such a case could not but make the rupture open and the evil incurable. The event proved that Paul was not mistaken in the hope that his colleagues would stand by him; and by their timely help Paul’ s fear was removed that the labour he had spent in founding a truly universal Church might be lost in the creation of two rival Churches. (E. Reuss, D. D.)Barnabas and Paul Barnabas may be said, in a certain sense, to have made Paul what he afterwards became. He brought him out of obscurity. He put him in the forefront, though he must have been well aware that he was likely to become more distinguished and powerful than himself. This is that peculiar mark of a generous disposition, the absence of anxiety for personal credit, the readiness for friendly combination in useful undertakings without any selfish end in view. There are some men who have no heart for any enterprise unless they can have the first place in it. This is perhaps a prevalent temptation with most energetic characters. But this habit of mind is not according to Christ (Matthew 20:27), and Barnabas is a good example to show us how such temptation can be overcome. (Dean Howson.)A memorable journey I. The time when it was undertaken. “ Fourteen years after I went up to Jerusalem.” II. The companions of his journey. Barnabas was appointed to go to Jerusalem with Paul, and the latter took with him Titus also. Christian companionship should therefore include--1. Unity of purpose in the chief aims of life. There may be differences as to inferior things, but in regard to the highest endeavours of the heart and life there should be unity. 2. Christian companionship ought to be the friendship of men governed by the same spirit, and that spirit should be the Spirit of Christ. 3. Christian companionship should be formed with a view to mutual edification. III. The reason for Paul’ s journey--“ And I went up by revelation.” In Acts 15:1-41. there is given the history of the events which apparently led to this journey being undertaken. Lesson: In the life of every good man there are epochs which show the progress of God’ s plan in reference to him. (R. Nicholls.)The council of Jerusalem But now, finally, we are confronted with the question, What may we learn from this whole subject that may be of service in our modern Church life? To this I answer, that for one thing we are taught to be on our guard against introducing division into Churches which are zealously doing God’ s work. Never, surely, were men more intent on carrying forward the triumphs of the gospel than these Christians at Antioch. Yet strangers from Jerusalem, more anxious about a matter of ritual observance than for spiritual progress, did not hesitate to interrupt their activity and introduce controversy among them by raising the question of circumcision. It was an unjustifiable, if not also a malicious, proceeding. Missionary work was for the time suspended; and Paul and Barnabas, who might have been earnestly labouring in some new field, were sent to Jerusalem, all because these Judaizers insisted on the essential importance of that which was really indifferent. But how often have similar things been done in our existing Churches? A foolish question has been started by some one-ideaed enthusiast, who has pertinaciously kept it before the minds of the brethren, and those who should have presented an unbroken phalanx to the enemies of religion have turned their weapons against each other. Let us set our faces against all discussion upon such microscopic matters as have no essential importance. The progress of the Church as a whole is infinitely more to be considered than the airing of the pet crotchet of any individual, or even the advancement of that which we may reckon the best form of worship. Nor does this lesson hold only in the intercourse between members of the same Church or congregation. It is of force also in the dealings of denominations with each other. Another thing which we ought to learn from this history is, that our Christian liberty should be regulated by love. We may have a right to do many things which yet, in present circumstances, and out of regard to our brethren, we should not do. Finally, we may learn from this whole narrative to be very zealous for the free grace of the gospel. Paul would not allow that anything was necessary to salvation but faith in Christ. (W. M. Taylor.) Galatians 2:2 And I went up by revelation.I went up by revelation I. A fact.1. Paul was not summoned by the apostles, who, by taking no action, must virtually have endorsed his conduct. 2. Paul was sent by the Spirit of God. (1) He was no stranger to these revelations (Ephesians 3:3). (2) He had them at every crisis in his career--through inner promptings and prohibitions (Acts 16:6-7); through dreams and visions (Acts 16:9-10; Acts 18:9; Acts 22:18-21; Acts 27:23); and through inspired men (Acts 13:2; Acts 21:11). 3. Paul was sent to strengthen his inspired mission by securing a co-operation of the apostles. II. The explanation of a seeming discrepancy. Acts 15:2 describes Paul as sent by the Church. But revelation may have--1. Governed the action of the Church. 2. Confirmed the desire of the Church. 3. Occurred concurrently to the mind of Paul and the Church. Paul was dismissed from Jerusalem (Acts 9:35) by his anxious brethren; but not without urgent directions from Christ (Acts 22:17; Acts 22:21). The historian looks at these events from the outside, the autobiographer from within. Learn:1. Not to follow the wisest counsels until Christ has spoken (Proverbs 3:6). The course will thus be (1) clear;(2) safe;(3) successful. 2. When Christ has spoken obey (1) promptly;(2) courageously;(3) with the best powers of the mind. Paul’ s consummate tact here to be noted. 3. Leave the responsibility with the great Commissioner. 4. Look for His approbation and reward. The private conference I. Its members.1. Paul. 2. Those of reputation; i.e., the supreme court of appeal in the opinion of his adversaries. In disputes appeal to the fountain-head, otherwise time and effort are wasted. II. Its business. To discuss Paul’ s gospel.1. Paul professed to receive it by revelation from Christ. 2. The apostles received it from Christ’ s tips. 3. Both were found to be in harmony. We have scriptural warrant for frank explanations in religious matters. III. Its purpose. “ Lest I should run.” Paul wanted the hearty sympathy of his brethren, and--1. Adopted measures calculated to secure it. (1) Paid them proper deference,(2) but relied on the merits of his cause. 2. Because if he gained the leaders he would secure the following. 3. Because a schism between the Jewish and Gentile Churches was imminent, and the cause of Catholicity in danger. Learn:1. The value of conciliatory measures.2. The importance of tact even in religion. The conciliatory character of St. Paul You have heard the fable of the Traveller, the Wind, and the Sun. The Traveller was enveloped in a thick cloud. The Wind and Sun contended which could most easily induce him to lay the cloak aside. The Wind made the attempt first; but the Traveller drew his cloak more closely to him. The Sun’ s turn came, and as the warmth of his rays increased, the Traveller gradually relaxed his hold. Each step made him feel that the cloak was more and more a burden; he laid it aside. The Sun had succeeded where the Wind had failed. What can never be done by violent attack may often be easily accomplished by gentle persuasion. (Dean Howson.)Paul’ s tact and tolerance Such men as St. Paul, who have seen much of the world, and made human nature and character their careful study, and who know how much is due to education, association, habit, are inevitably tolerant and invariably indifferent to mere varieties of feeling and peculiarities of manner. When men of St. Paul’ s intelligence are animated by a desire to do good, they easily accommodate themselves to idiosyncrasies of race and disposition. In a word they possess tact, and an earnest, conscientious, self-denying, active, generous nature, which is also gifted with discretion, and wields an irresistible influence. And, on the other hand, they who live in a little world of their own, be they apostles or ordinary men, contract a narrow and exclusive temper, set great store by trifles, are conservative and tenacious on minor points, insist on literal obedience, are passionately fond of conformity, are jealous for the letter, are slow to understand the spirit. (Paul of Tarsus.)A noble example I made it a rule that I would not let a day pass without speaking to some one about their soul’ s salvation; and if they do not hear the gospel from the lips of others, there will be three hundred and sixty-five in a year who shall hear the gospel from my lips. There are five thousand Christians here to-night; cannot they say, “ We will not let a day pass without speaking a word to some one about salvation.” (D. L. Moody.)Private effort neglected The well-known Rev. Alex. R. C. Dallas was an officer in Wellington’ s Peninsular wars before he became a clergyman, and at Cadiz, in Spain, he used to be much in the company of another officer named Cumming, who was always considered steady. Their meeting again in their old age was thus described by Mr. Dallas: “ Many years after it had pleased God to enlighten my mind, and to impart to me the knowledge of His salvation in Christ Jesus, I was walking in the Strand, and met Cumming near Temple Bar. He was aged and limped, having suffered from a paralytic stroke; but we knew each other immediately. I gave him my arm, and walked back with him nearly to Charing Cross. My great anxiety was to speak to him of Christ. We began to speak about old times, and especially our eventful march in Spain together. At length I came to the great subject that was upon my heart; he listened to me attentively, and at last he said, ‘ My dear Dallas, I knew all that long before I knew you, and many times I prayed God to convert you when you were in the world. I often put Spanish tracts under your pillow: I looked at him,” Dallas continues, “ with great surprise, and I told him that I did not know whether to be grateful to him for his prayers or angry with him for his silence to myself. Why did he not tell me of Christ’ s salvation, if he knew it so well? What a lesson is this for those who shrink from confessing Christ before the worldly!” An important mission I. The communication of the gospel was made with great faithfulness. From the account given in the Acts it is evident that an assembly of the whole Church was called together, and that the question submitted to them was, whether the keeping of the law was necessary to justification or no. Paul’ s testimony was unequivocal. II. This communication was made with signal prudence. Previous to, or independent of, Paul’ s teaching before the whole assembly, he sought out the most prominent members of the Church, and carefully made known to them what God had done by him. In this Paul displayed great wisdom. III. In this communication Paul was most anxious that the gospel should triumph. It was not of himself he was thinking when he spoke of “ running in vain.” Lessons:1. Members of Churches should endeavour to promote the unity of the whole body. 2. Much may be done in the interests of peace without any sacrifice of principle. Paul declared the gospel faithfully; and yet he disarmed the opposition of many of his antagonists. (R. Nicholls.)How to succeed in questions of great delicacy and importance I. Seek Divine direction. II. Proceed cautiously. III. Secure by private appeal the influence of the wise and good. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 2:3 But neither Titus, who was with me. But neither Titus 1. This incident is introduced by way of evidence, not by way of apology. 2. The circumcision of Titus is inconsistent with individual expressions in the passage. 3. For such a concession, both the time and the person were most inopportune. St. Paul is here indirectly meeting a charge brought against him on the ground of his circumcision of Timothy. I. Not even Titus, who as my fellow-labourer would be constantly brought in contact with the Jews, and therefore might well have adopted a conciliatory attitude. II. Not even Titus, although the pressure exerted in his case was great. III. Why? because he was a Greek; Timothy was a Jew. (Bishop Lightfoot.)Soul liberty Paul circumcised Timothy, but would not allow Titus to be, to show that Christianity(1) is independent of ceremonies,(2) can exist without them. Soul liberty is-- I. Essentially identified with christ. II. Is opposed to a ritualistic ministry. III. Is to be defended with uncompromising determination. (D. Thomas, D. D.)The gravity of the crisis Judaism was the cradle of Christianity, and very nearly became its grave. (Paul of Tarsus.)Narrowness and breadth In our own country people very often attempt to coerce the minority by calumniating its objects, and one of the commonest words used for this purpose is the term un-English. Now, the nationalist party among the Jews might have called the converts un-Jewish. Heated by a narrow patriotism, they were ready to join the cry of the depraved rabble in the heathen cities, and stigmatise the Christian as the enemy of the human race, because his sympathies were comprehensive. (Paul of Tarsus.) Galatians 2:4 And that because of false brethren.False brethren I. The Church of God when at its best has wicked men and hypocrites in it. In Adam’ s family there was Cain; in Christ’ s family, Judas; in the earliest Church, false brethren. The sheep may be sometimes without the fold; the wolves therein. A perfect Church is an impossible dream. II. False brethren creep into the Church. Christ is the door of the Church, and His true sheep enter by Him-false brethren climb in another way. They “ creep in.”1. Hence they maintain a certain resemblance to the true. 2. Hence the precise origin of error cannot be detected. The time when the ship sinks we often observe, but the time when it first drew water we do not. (W. Perkins.)Paul and the false brethren I. A fierce opposition made by some erroneous Christians against a great apostle and a prime authority in the Church. II. The cause of this opposition; the violent and unreasonable demands made to him to confirm the practice of a thing as necessary which in itself was not so. III. The methods taken in this opposition: slandering Paul’ s doctrine, and detracting from his authority for withstanding their demands. IV. The wholesome method of the apostle: not to give place in the least. V. The end and design of the apostle: the preservation of the gospel in truth and purity. (R. South, D. D.)The conference interrupted by false brethren:-- The interview took place, but not as Paul had desired and expected He could not come to an understanding with the principal personages without the interference of others, whose presence could have been well dispensed with, and who came to “ spy out.” They were suspicious; some plot was In process; they must be on their guard against novelties, and prevent any resolution being earned by which the Church might be compromised. The debate waxed warm, for these intruders made peremptory demands; the contest was protracted, tOT Paul hints that he had to withstand long and steadily; he boasts that he did not yield for an instant, which proves that the struggle was not over in a moment, and was not confined to an objection modestly made and easily removed. (E. Reuss, D. D.)Spying I. Hypocrites spy into the persons and lives of men that they may find some fault to disgrace them (Matthew 7:4). II. Sceptics pry into the Scriptures that they may discover discrepancies. III. Hearers often spy out sermon and worship that they may find something to cavil at. IV. Enemies spy out religion to find the easiest means of overthrowing it. Application: Devote the eye of your mind to a better use.1. To your sins (Lamentations 3:40).2. To your spiritual enemies. (W. Perkins.)Moral Jesuits I. Their character. False brethren. II. Their methods.1. Surreptitious invasion of privacy.2. Indefatigable espionage. III. Their objects.1. To circumscribe Christian liberty.2. To gain spiritual ascendency over the conscience.3. To reduce to ritualistic bondage. False brethren I. Their character--they have the name and the form--but not the spirit of Christ--the spirit of liberty. II. Their craft--they creep into the Church--by the wrong door--unawares, because disguised. III. Their object--to spy out what they can--to do mischief. (J. Lyth.)Liberty in Christ Jesus Christianity is no provincialism; it is the world’ s highway. (Jeremy Taylor.)Christian liberty Spiritual liberty consists in freedom from the curse of the moral law; from me servitude of the ritual; from the love, power, and guilt of sin; from the dominion of Satan; from the corruption of the world; from the fear of death and the wrath to come. (C. Buck.)Liberty in Christ Jesus In those ill times when there were slaves across the Atlantic, a lady went down to one of the ships, accompanied by her negro servant. The lady remarked to the captain that if she were to go to England and take this black woman with her, she would be free as soon as she landed. The captain replied, “ Madam, she is free already. The moment she came on board a British vessel she was free.” When the negro woman knew this, do you think she went on shore with her mistress? By no means. She chose to keep her liberty. She was free on board and a slave on land. How slight the change of place; but how great the difference involved; marvel not that faith involves such great things. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christian liberty I. Our liberty, which is in Christ Jesus, includes our freedom from the exactions and impositions of men in religion. Now observe, we say, “ in religion;” because we do not here refer to civil things. No, my brethren, where religion is concerned, Jesus is the King in Zion. He is our Lawgiver. II. We observe, “ Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus,” includes a freedom from the bondage of corruption. I was thinking, in my retirement this morning, what a number of tyrants does every sinner serve! What a tyrant is Satan! What a tyrant is the world!--they who have faith indeed “ overcome the world” ; but all others are overcome by it. What a tyrant is sin! “ He that committeth sin,” says the apostle, “ is the servant of sin.” Is he free who is under the dominion of pride and revenge and envy and malice? We are upholden by His free Spirit, and we can say with David, “ We will walk at liberty, for we seek Thy precepts.” III. We said, “ Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus,” includes a freedom from the condemnation of the law. “ The soul that sinneth it shall die.” IV. We said, “ Our liberty, which is in Christ Jesus,” includes a freedom of access to God. He is the greatest and the best of Beings. In His presence is “ fulness of joy” ; at His right hand are” pleasures for evermore.” V. We said, “ Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus,” is a freedom to partake Of and enjoy the good things of nature and Providence. We have thus endeavoured to exemplify “ our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus.” How shall we improve it? The improvement will include four admonitions.1. “ Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not again entangled with the yoke of bondage.” 2. Do not abuse your liberty. There is nothing too good to he abused. Beware of the Antinomian scheme--Oh, he is freed from the law; therefore he has nothing to do with it. But Paul had to do with it. Paul said, “ I delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man.” Though he turned away from it as a covenant of works, he viewed it as a rule of life. Remember, your liberty is not a liberty to sin. There is another abuse of this liberty, that is, of placing all who profess Christianity upon the same level in society, as if, because we are all one in Christ Jesus (for so we are), that the rich and the poor, the master and the servant, the ruler and the ruled, were all the same, in a civil condition. God Himself maintains the gradations and distinctions of life, and the duties and obligations resulting from them; and I never knew any violation of these distinctions but it was attended with injury, not only with regard to those above, but even to those below their level. 3. Improve this liberty. In one sense you cannot; its provisions surpass all expression and conception. “ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” But we mean we should make use of it and improve it. 4. Recommend this liberty to others; only see that you exemplify yourselves what you recommend, otherwise you may be more injurious than beneficial, as some are by their talking on religious subjects--otherwise you may draw forth the proverb, “ Physician, heal thyself;” or the retort, “ Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?” (W. Jay.)Courage in defiance of Christian liberty I. The liberty assailed. It was a liberty in Christ. This liberty meant being exempt from the requirements of the ceremonial law. II. This liberty was threatened by false brethren. They were traitors. III. This attempt upon the liberty of the Church was firmly and courageously resisted.1. Paul firmly adhered to the truth of the gospel. “ Truth precise, unaccommodating, abandons nothing that belongs to itself, admits nothing that is inconsistent with it.” --Bengel.2. The refusal to submit was absolute. He would not give way by subjection, no, not for an hour. “ In things indifferent we may well, out of love, yield something of our liberty to the good of the weak. But where men would press these upon us as necessary to salvation, and our yielding would have the appearance of bringing the truth of the gospel into jeopardy, we should never yield.” --Starke.We may renounce our liberty for love’ s sake, but we must not let ourselves be robbed of it for the truth of the gospel’ s sake. We must cling to that which is abiding. “ The law is something transient, the gospel is permanent.” Lessons:1. In the best state of the Christian Church, false brethren may creep in. 2. “ False brethren are the most dangerous enemies to liberty. Weak brethren disturb it; false brethren undermine and destroy it.” 3. To preserve the truth should be the first duty of Christians. (R. Nicholls.)False brethren A Scotch Churchman was once reproached by a member of a small sect with the blots in the lives of many of his brethren of past days. He answered, “ When your chimney has smoked as long as ours there will be some soot in it.” (Anthony Bathe.) Galatians 2:5 To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour. The truth in the Church I. The truth of the gospel is essentially embodied in the doctrinal articles, and the devotional services, of the Church of England. Her basis is the Word of God. There is no one truth contained in the Bible which does not appear interwoven in her services; and, what is of vast importance, those truths are every one of them brought forward throughout her ecclesiastical year with a distinctness, and yet with a beautiful consistency and harmony, according to the analogy of the faith. II. The reformers, both in their lives and by their deaths, evinced a deep anxiety that the truth of the gospel, by means of a scriptural Church, might continue with us. III. It becomes us their children, blessed with such privileges, to be alive to the importance of maintaining the truth of the gospel, and handing it down unimpaired to posterity. Gratitude demands this at our hands; the mercy of God in the bestowment of these blessings, and the salvation of souls which is so closely bound up in them, enforce this duty upon us. If religion be anything, it is everything. And surely, if men be anxious and persevering and brave in securing temporal freedom and national liberty, oh! shall the Christian, actuated by the love of Christ, the most constraining principle, be afraid, or unwilling, or indifferent, to perpetuate the truth which sets free the immortal spirit, and obtain, so far as human instrumentality can, the blessings of salvation to children yet unborn?1. If we would effectually promote the interests of Divine truth, we must take care, first of all, that we ourselves embrace it. 2. And then, having embraced the truth, I would say, “ Contend earnestly for the truth” --not in the spirit of party, not in the pride of reason, not with any secular motives, but because of its vitality and importance to the present and eternal well-being of man. And as the truth itself is but a modification of love, let your contention be in the spirit of love, seeking to reclaim those who are in error, in meekness and affection. 3. And see to it, that it is “ the truth” you are contending for. In essentials let not false charity or a spurious liberality lead you astray; there ought to be, there can be, no compromise of the one saving truth. IV. The education of the young in the principles of Divine truth, as embodied and taught in the formularies of the Church, must commend itself as a means at once simple and efficient. (Joseph Haslegrave, M. A.)Paul’ s fearless independence No characteristic of the apostle is more marked than this. He went on his way unmoved alike by prejudiced and narrow-minded bigotry within the Church, or by armed and persecuting hostility without. Whether he is confronted with the worse than heathen libertinism that threatened to corrupt the Churches of Greece, or by the half-converted Pharisees who would have offered up the universality of the gospel to the prejudices of a sect; whether he stands before a Roman officer or before an infuriated mob; whether he is exposed to the sneers of a scoffer like Agrippa, or the sordid venality of an unjust judge like Felix--in all circumstances and under every temptation to make concessions to the prejudice or passions of those around him, Paul maintained an undaunted fearlessness of bearing, and stands forth with vigorous self-reliance, refusing to submit to the control of others his conviction of duty, refusing to swerve a hairsbreadth from the path his conscience marks out for him. (Prof. Robertson Smith.)The reasons and consequences of Paul’ s resistance There are some who may see in this resolute attitude the inevitable egotism of a strong will and a clear purpose; but it is more reasonable to discover in such a temper an unshaken conviction in the reality of his mission, and a distinct persuasion that this mission was to be fulfilled in one way on!y, and by those specific means which he had been already adopting. And to us, who can understand the effect of this uncompromising temper upon the history of Christianity, it is manifest that the apostle’ s persistency is the reason why Christianity did not become a mere Jewish School, which might have had a faint existence in the Ana of some Talmud or Cabbala; or would, more probably, have been completely lost in the general havoc of the Jewish war. As it is, the teaching of the Pharisee of Tarsus has given method to modern civilization, has erected Christianity into a social system, and has constituted a standard by which the Christian system has been measured and reformed. (Paul of Tarsus.)Prompt opposition to error Some years ago I was amused with the sentiment of a witty fellow who said, “ A lie will travel from Maine to Georgia while truth is putting on his boots. In that case,” he added, “ truth should not stop to put on his boots.” The difficulty lies in allowing the lie to run so far ahead; let them start abreast, and truth will gain the field. It may be distanced at the first heat, but on the long run it is sure to secure the prize. (Cangray.)Strict faithfulness The other day I received a communication from a lawyer, who says that a very large owner has discovered that a very small piece of property belongs to him, and not to the small proprietor in whose possession it has for a very long time remained. The matter seemed a trifling one. We had a conference, and there came the steward with the lawyers, and he was furnished with maps, and putting on his spectacles, examined them with great care. Why? It was a small matter to him, but because he was a steward he was expected to be faithful. And when he found that this small piece of ground belonged to his lord he was determined to have it. So let me say--as stewards of the gospel of God--never give up one verse, one doctrine, one word of the truth of God. Let us be faithful to that committed to us, it is not ours to alter. We have but to declare that which we have received. (S. Cook, D. D.)No terms with error During the Spartan war against Xerxes, the Athenians were entreated not to abandon their natural allies, and leave Greece to be enslaved. Pointing to the sun, Aristides replied, “ While that sun holds his course, we will come to no terms with Xerxes. For you, Spartans, our character might have raised us above your fears. The earth contains not the gold, nor does the sun shine upon the land that could move our purpose.” Even with such unshaken courage and faithfulness must Christians fight against the enemies of the gospel of Christ. (R. Brewin.)No surrender To authorize generals, or other officers, to lay down their arms in virtue of a capitulation … affords a dangerous latitude (except when they compose the garrison of a fortress). It is destructive of all military character in a nation to open such a door to the cowardly, the weak, or even the misdirected brave. Great extremities require extraordinary resolution. The more obstinate the resistance of an army, the greater the chances of assistance or success. How many seeming impossibilities have been accomplished by men whose only resource was death! (Maxim LXVII.)In the campaign of 1759 Frederick directed General Pink, with 18,000 men, upon Maxen, for the purpose of cutting off the Austrian army from the defiles of Bohemia. Surrounded by twice his numbers, Pink capitulated after a sharp action, and 14,000 men laid down their arms. This conduct was the more disgraceful, because General Winch, who commanded the cavalry, cut his way through the enemy. The whole blame of the surrender fell, therefore, upon Pink, who was afterwards tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to be cashiered and imprisoned for two years. Galatians 2:6 But of those who seemed to be somewhat. Authority and trust I. A man who has truth on his side can be indifferent to mere authority. Because--1. Mere authority has no weight with the Author of truth.2. The man of truth can gain nothing from the sanction of mere authority. II. Authoritative decisions derive what value they possess from the truth. The apostles pronounced on what “ they saw.”1. That the gospel of the uncircumcision and the circumcision was committed respectively to Paul and Peter.2. That God wrought equally by both.3. That both alike had Divine grace for their work. God no accepter of persons I. Spiritual excellence and not the accidents of external condition alone avails with God. Take some illustrations.1. From Scripture: the choice of Abraham and Moses. 2. From providence. (1) Wealth and power are administered impartially.(2) Health on the whole is equally shared by rich and poor.(3) Genius is confined to no class.(4) So with the blessings of happiness, life, and age. 3. From the administration of redemption. Wilberforce in parliament, Bunyan in his cottage. 4. From the day of judgment and its results. II. Why God has no respect of persons except in relation to moral goodness.1. Accidents in condition, seemingly great to us, bear no such relation to Him. 2. They are not the essential and true elements of our being. III. Why does God supremely value spiritual excellence?1. It is the true basis of worth in every intelligent creature. (1) Angels;(2) man as man. 2. It is God’ s own spiritual reflection, and therefore the true basis of friendship with Him. (J. Foster, B. A.)Paul’ s non-indebtedness to the apostles Paul wished to show that his apostolate, both in its origin and by the tenor of the facts which preceded this visit, was independent of the Twelve, and derived no authority from Jerusalem. He could not brook rival, still less superior, in the work that was before him, nor submit to any control whatsoever on the part of any man, however eminent he might be. This had been his constant determination from the first day of his Christianity, and he was not likely to forego it after so many years of missionary labour, and in the case of persons who owed all their knowledge of the gospel to him, till such time as these meddling emissaries had striven to misrepresent him, had repudiated his authority, and called in question the completeness of the gospel he preached. (Paul of Tarsus.)Usefulness better than mere capacity A monstrous vat, certainly, is the great tun of Heidelberg. It might hold eight hundred hogsheads of wine at the least; but what is the use of such wasted capacity, since, for nearly a hundred years, there has not been a drop of liquor in it! Hollow and sounding, empty and void and waste; vintages come and go, and find it perishing of dry rot. An empty cask is not so great a spectacle after all, let its size be what it may, though old travellers called this monster one of the wonders of the world. What a thousand pities it is that many men of genius and of learning are, in respect of usefulness, no better than this huge but empty tun of Heidelberg! Very capacious are their minds, but very unpractical. Better be a poor household kilderkin, and give forth one’ s little freely, than exist as a useless prodigy, capable of much and available for nothing. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Having a right estimate of one’ s self A great deal of misery would be prevented, if ministers would endeavour to form an honest estimate of their qualifications, and, as a consequence, seek appointments for which they are specially qualified. If one might teach unpleasant doctrines through the medium of a figure, one can imagine how inconvenient it would be in the event of a great cathedral clock wearing out, for a neat Geneva watch to put itself forward as a candidate for the vacancy. The Geneva might be a beautiful little thing, and might keep the most exact time, and might be called endearing names by ladies and little children; yet, to speak the language of charity, it might hardly be adapted to be set a hundred and fifty feet above the ground, in a circular vacancy at least ten feet in diameter. In such a case its very elevation would become its obscurity. On the other hand, it would be quite as inconvenient ii a great cathedral clock, weary of city work, should ask to be carried about as a private timekeeper. There is amoral in the figure. That moral points towards the law of proportion and adaptation. One can imagine the petted Geneva looking up from a lady’ s hand, and calling the cathedral clock a great, coarse thing, with a loud and vulgar voice, which indicated the most offensive presumption; and we can imagine the cathedral clock looking down, with somewhat of disdain, upon the little timekeeping toy. Oh, that some sensible chronometer would say to the rivals, “ Cease your contention; you are both useful in your places.” The one as a private chaplain, the other as a city orator, may tell the world to redeem its flying time. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)Seeming Christians not always real ones A servant girl once said she should not have known her master and mistress were religious had she not heard that they took the sacrament. It was a pity they took it. If a man rolled on a bed of spices you would soon know where he had been, and if a man went with Jesus he must be perfumed with the spirit of Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.)God accepteth no man’ s person With God there is no free man but His servant, though in the galleys; no slave but the sinner, though in a palace; none noble but the virtuous, if never so basely descended; none rich but he that possesseth God, even in rags; none wise but he that is a feel to himself and the world; none happy but he whom the world pities. Let me be free, noble, rich, wise, happy, to God. (Bp. Hall.)God accepteth no man’ s person A North German periodical gives the following story as told by a Bible colporteur: “ In one of my journeys I came to Varzin while the Imperial Chancellor was residing there. After I had done a long day’ s work, I went to the inn. I was there asked if I would go to evening prayers at Bismarck’ s house, as the daughter of the host was going. I accepted the invitation, and when I got there I found myself in a spacious and very suitable room which had been built for the purpose. It was well filled with servants, farm labourers, and villagers, some of whom, having seen me before, greeted me kindly. Soon afterwards Prince Bismarck made his appearance, nodding kindly right and left as he passed. He then said--‘ I hear we have a Bible-man among us,’ and he looked me straight in the face in his kindly way. ‘ You will be so kind as to conduct service for us this evening: I rose up and answered--‘ It would be displacing your highness for me to’ when the prince interrupted me with, ‘ Ah, my good man, what does highness signify? Here in God’ s sight we are all poor sinners; so come here and take my place this evening, and conduct the service for us: So of course I accepted his invitation, the prince taking his place amongst the audience; and when it was over he shook me warmly by the hand, and wished me God’ s richest blessing on my way.” Galatians 2:7-8 To the apostleship of the circumcision. The results of the conference Barnabas must have been struck with the coincidence between his own conduct towards the newly-enfranchised converts at Antioch (Acts 11:22-23) and that of the apostles towards the delegates of these converts. I. What the apostles saw--1. In Paul and Barnabas personally. The closest scrutiny of speech, deportment, aim, could create but one impression. 2. In their work; the conversion of the Gentles and the uprising of so many Christian Churches could be due only to Divine grace. II. What they felt.1. That the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to Paul. The conclusion was irresistible. 2. That Paul was as worthy of his commission as was Peter. III. What they did.1. Gave the delegates the right hand of fellowship. (1) Spontaneously. Paul did not ask for it.(2) Heartily.(3) Irrevocably. 2. Assigned to Paul and Peter-- (1) the spheres which each could best work;(2) the honours to which each was entitled. Learn:1. That God’ s grace when experienced should be employed in work for Him.2. That true worth is determined not by rank, but by work.3. That honest work ultimately confers the highest rank.4. That harmonious and effective working is best promoted by a division of labour. The gospel commission I. The gospel is not ours but God’ s. II. The gospel is committed to human trust.1. What an honour.2. What a responsibility. III. The minister’ s duty with reference to the gospel is--1. To keep it.2. To maintain the truth of it.3. To apply it to the best use. IV. Only God can make the gospel effective (1 Corinthians 3:7). V. The believer’ s duty is--1. To hear it humbly.2. To receive it thankfully.3. To obey it diligently.4. To propagate it earnestly. (W. Perkins.)The gospel of the uncircumcision St. Paul’ s attitude towards circumcision. The great controversy in which St. Paul was engaged within the Church turned upon the question whether the Jewish observances, and circumcision in particular, were necessary for Christians. A large party of Christians whose centre was Jerusalem, who were probably influenced by the current opinions in the school of Shammai, and who made free use of the names of the apostles Peter, James, and John, maintained that these observances were necessary. To these men St. Paul’ s work appeared to be radically revolutionary; and where they could they went over the ground which St. Paul had evangelized. They insisted that if the Gentile converts would be really good Christians, they too must be circumcised. St. Paul maintained that while if a man happened to be circumcised it did him no sort of harm, to insist upon circumcision as necessary for a Christian was to deny fundamental truth, for there were two points of the gravest importance which really were involved in this apparent trifle.1. Was the work of Christ, as the Restorer of man to a state of righteousness before God, complete in itself; or was it merely a supplement to the Jewish creed? Was the system of the Jewish law, after all, able to make men righteous; and, if it was, where was the need of the work of Christ? If this was the case, moreover, was it even conceivable that Christ was greater than Moses and the prophets--greater in His essential nature? [[he Judaising theory that the law in its entirety was still obligatory meant, at bottom, that Christ’ s work was not nearly complete, and so that His Person was really only human. 2. Was Christianity meant to be the religion of mankind, or only of a small sub-division of the Jewish world? Was it to be merely national, or to be catholic? If Christianity was serious in its claim to be the true, the absolute religion, it could not but also claim to be universal. (Canon Liddon.)Diversity of gifts We discover a diversity of gifts by a reference to Whitfield and Handel. The one was in eloquence what the other was in sacred song; the one appealing, through the understanding, to the heart and conscience, calling on men everywhere to repent and turn to God; the other drawing out, and bearing upward, as a sweet incense before the altar of the upper sanctuary, the devout aspirations of the new-born soul. There was “ an air, a soul, a movement,” in the oratory of Whitfield which created indescribable emotions in his vast assemblies. Handel equally electrified the multitudes in Westminster Abbey. His power of song, while he performed the Messiah, raised them to their feet; and yet greater wonders did Whitfield when preaching the Messiah to the scores of thousands in Moorfields. (H. Read.)Power of grace in saints Longfellow in his Hiawatha sings of-- “ The pleasant watercourses, You could trace them through the valley, By the rushing in the Spring-time, By the alders in the Summer, By the white fog in the Autumn, By the black line in the Winter.” So traceable are the lives of really gracious men and women. They are not solicitous to be observed, but the gracious “ signs following” are sure to reveal them. Like their Master they cannot be hid. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Galatians 2:9 And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars.Ministers, pillars I. As founded on Christ. II. As supporting believers by--1. Sympathy.2. Prayer.3. Preaching. III. As presenting an example of stability. IV. As Adorning The Edifice Of The Church. John and Paul This is the only meeting between the two recorded in Scripture. It is, moreover, the last notice that we find there of St. John, until the time of the Apocalypse. For both these reasons the mind seizes on this incident. Like other casual Scriptural notices it is Very suggestive. St. John had been silent during the discussion, but at the close he expressed his cordial union with St. Paul. That union has been made visible to all the ages by the juxtaposition of their Epistles in the same sacred volume. They stand among the pillars of the Holy Temple; and the Church of God is thankful to learn how contemplation may be united with action, and faith with love in the spiritual life. (Conybeare and Howson.)The unity of apostolic doctrine It might seem to these Galatians, as it seems to some acute critics now, that several gospels were being preached. But Paul shows that this could not be. Of course Christian truth is presented in different phases by Paul, James, Cephas, and John respectively, but only as each facet of a diamond differs from the rest, each displaying its own brilliance, reflecting the light in its own way, but all belonging to one jewel. (S. Pearson, M. A.)The significance of the apostolic decision Henceforward the Church and the world become coextensive; other evils may hinder the diffusion of Christianity, but not the limits of a local and national worship; other restrictions may be imposed on the freedom of the human race, but the yoke of Judaism never; other forms may be assumed by the spirit of bigotry and superstition, but from its earlier province it is utterly expelled; the most exclusive zealot will never again venture to confine the privileges of the true religion to a single nation; the most ardent admirer of ancient usages and external forms will never again dare to insist on the necessity of circumcision. (Dean Stanley.)The division of apostolic labour The apostles were to continue to devote themselves to evangelization with the understanding that Paul and Barnabas should go to the Gentiles, and Peter and John to the Jews. This arrangement, however, was not made on geographical considerations (see James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1; Revelation 1:9). The one party were to evangelize the Gentiles, the other the Jews, without distinction of place (see verse 11, etc.). (E. Reuss, D. D.)Not indeed that Paul would object to any association with the special ministry of Peter--on the contrary, he frequently addressed the Jews--but, the rule was a general one, and in effect most important, because it was a formal acknowledgment of Paul’ s mission, and of its total independence. Henceforth the two Churches were to be one in faith and mutual goodwill, but different in their ritual, ceremonies, and government. The Church which Peter was to construct was national, that which was put under Paul’ s guidance was oecumenical. The story that Peter ruled the Church of Rome for a quarter of a century is of course contradicted by the facts stated in this Epistle, and is plainly a baseless, though ancient, fable, which has been maintained and amplified in order to serve particular ends, and to justify ecclesiastical caesarism. (Paul of Tarsus.)Paul’ s common-sense He knew that the best way to obviate quarrels was to recognize differences. He was well aware that men may work for a common purpose, even though their several methods of procedure may be so various as to seem incongruous, and that, provided the means be just and honourable, identity of end is a sufficient bond of unity. The wisdom of the statesman consists in effecting a harmony of interests, that of a religious reformer in enlisting all action on behalf of one grand purpose. Both wreck their reputation when they ally themselves to party cries and narrow rules. (Paul of Tarsus.)Christian unity consistent with diversity Ours is not a unity like that of the waters of a stagnant pool, over which the purifying breath of heaven sweeps in vain. Ours is not the unity of darkness, like the cloud-covered midnight sky, where neither moon nor star appears. Ours is not the unity of a forced conformity, such as is found in polar seas, where eternal winter has locked up the waves; but rather like the fountain flowing ever fresh and free; like the rainbow that combines the seven prismatic colours into one glorious arch of promise; like old ocean’ s unfettered flow as its waves rush in all their majesty and might, distinct as the billows, but one as a sea. (S. Weir.)Four pillars of the Church These four pillars of the Church stand before us for our contemplation.1. For example, we see that the widest diversity of gifts can be employed to advantage in winning souls to Christ. It would hardly be possible to sketch four characters differing more in essential particulars than these apostles. Paul was the theologian of the early Church. Peter had an undeniable headship in organization. But James brought his cool temperament into service in decisions involving difficult points of casuistry, while John was of all the best calculated to labour for spiritual eminence in the converts. Now when results are before us, no one could venture to pronounce which was the most useful in the grand work Christ gave them all to do. Each was the best for his own work. 2. So this would suggest a second lesson: failure in one particular field or sphere of action does not preclude great after-success in another for the same man. As a home missionary he was a failure. The Lord had other work for him to do. 3. Then once more: we might learn that the individualities of personal character are in no wise destroyed by the new life under the gospel. Paul, after his conversion, was just as earnest and driving as before. James carried his carefulness as a Pharisee into his demeanour as a Christian. Peter left his boats and tackle to become a skilful fisher of men, with the same adroitness and patient business absorption put into his fresh profession. So John was affectionate to Jesus’ mother, because he had grown up affectionate to his own. Naturalness is one of the best evidences of grace, for it excludes assumption and hypocrisy. No one will ever succeed in making himself better by making himself over into another man’ s likeness. 4. In the fourth place, we see that true religion in the heart is a powerful helper in intellectual advancement. The history of all these four men affords an illustration of the Scripture text: “ The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” We all know how Simon Peter was reared. How is it possible that he could reach literary attainments sufficient to enable him to write two such Epistles as those which bear his name? 5. Again, we can learn from these men’ s biographies and writings that the very best Christian excellences may be, unfortunately, marred by personal weaknesses. For every one of them was faulty enough to make some notable mistake, which has been handed down to us in the imperishable record. Paul quarrelled sadly with Barnabas about Mark. James refused to welcome Paul at Jerusalem. 6. Just a suggestion now, which may or may not be called a lesson. Perhaps the ideal Christian might be made up of the best excellences in all. Put Paul’ s orthodoxy in doctrine alongside of James’ s morality in behaviour; put Peter’ s activity in impulse with John’ s extensive experience; join all these into one man. 7. Finally, we cannot fail to learn, as the sweetest and best lesson of all, that the truest Christians are those who are most like their Leader, and most loyal to Him as supreme. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)Pillars in the Church Christians are frequently called “ God’ s building,” and the temple of the Holy Ghost; and said to be “ built up.a spiritual house” : and as some occupy more important places in this spiritual house than others, so they may properly be called pillars, or the main supports of the building in comparison with others. But it is one thing to seem to be pillars, and another to be really such, as were James, Cephas, and John.1. Pillars should be formed of solid materials. In modern architecture, it is too common to decorate the front of buildings, with what seem to be pillars, and are not. The form of a large pillar is often built up with broken tiles, cement, and stucco: it seems to bear a great pressure of responsibility, which is deceptive like the whited sepulchres of old, for, in fact, the burden is borne by some modern supports, that are concealed from view. Now, God’ s building does not need the help of such pillars. Those who would seem to be pillars, merely for show, who have no solidity, and can bear no burden, had better take a mote humble position. These imitation pillars are good for nothing but show. They are always porous, and absorb the rain; often retain the damp, generate dry rot, and disgrace what they were intended to adorn. 2. Pillars should be upright. Pillars that incline to one side are painful to 1ook at, and dangerous to the building. When the pillars in the church lose their erect position, the whole building is on the point of falling. 3. Pillars that are designed for use arid ornament should be straight, and not crooked. A bending pillar can bear but little pressure, and is very offensive to the eye. Crooked materials can be used to greater advantage in almost any other position in the building. 4. Pillars should be placed under, and not on the top of the building. They should bear the building, and not compel the building to bear them. 5. Pillars are fixtures, and must always be found in the same position. A weathercock at the top of the edifice may turn with the wind, but a pillar that supports it should remain unmoved by wind and storm. A window or a blind may be adjusted here or there, to the season or the weather, but the pillar can never shift its position without danger to the edifice of which it forms a part. 6. The pillars need a sure foundation, or they will yield to the pressure that is upon them. “ The Rock of Ages” is recommended as their best support. Inferences:1. We infer, that it requires at least ordinary qualities of Christian character, to fit a man to be a pillar. He must have solidity, uprightness, humility, steadfastness, and true faith. These are indispensable. 2. Many, who seem to be pillars in these days, are far from what they seem; they show a painted surface and a florid capital, but they are of little use, and easily marred and broken. 3. Many whose unassuming dispositions will not allow them to be pillars, have, notwithstanding, the best qualifications for it. 4. Let all who aspire to be pillars, seek to combine those qualities which will fit them for the station they would occupy, and the burden they will have to bear. (Essex Remembrancer.)The apostle’ s recognition by the Church in Jerusalem I. The recognition which Paul received from the Church was discerning.1. They saw that to him was entrusted the gospel which was to be preached to the Gentiles. The gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to Paul. The gospel is a Divine deposit or treasure. 2. The Church saw that the power which contributed to the success of the one apostle was effectual also in the other. In Paul as well as Peter God had wrought effectually. They discerned the triumphs of the gospel in both instances. 3. The Church recognized the religion of Paul to be a religion of love. They perceived the grace given unto him. II. The recognition Paul received was given in spite of certain differences that had separated him from the Church in Jeruselem in the past.1. Many of them had been familiar with the Lord Jesus Christ when He was on earth. Paul had not. Yet they now saw that God was no respecter of persons, “ but in every nation, he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness, is accepted of Him.” 2. There was a difference between them in respect to gifts. 3. There was also a difference as to position. Many of them were of acknowledged reputation. Paul was not regarded as an authority in the Churches of Judaea. Yet in spite of these differences there was a full recognition of his apostolic character and office. III. The recognition was complete and hearty.1. There was no reservation as to its extent. They admitted the whole truth Paul declared. They addressed no communication to him, but fully embraced the doctrines he enunciated. 2. It was cordial. They gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship. “ What a moment must that have been! What a blessed working of the Holy Ghost!” IV. In receiving this recognition, Paul was anxious to manifest his high estimate of their brotherly kindness. They had nothing new to communicate concerning doctrine, but they desired him to remember the poor, and this request he gladly complied with. He here shows his fraternal co-operation with the other apostles, and his love for Jewish Christians. He could not comply with the demands of the false brethren, but it was from no lack of charity. Immediately after writing this Epistle, he made a tour, gathering the alms of the Greek Churches for the saints at Jerusalem. Lessons:1. Unity in the Christian Church has its foundation in Christ.2. Christian unity is the product of the Holy Spirit.3. Its genuineness is manifest by acts of beneficence. (R. Nicholls.)The right hands of fellowship. St. Paul and the elder apostles The three apostles here referred to, whatever their prepossessions, yield to the force of Paul’ s statements. Peter also at the council called the imposition of the law on Gentile converts an intolerable yoke, for the Gentile was saved by the same grace as the Jew. Peter appealed only to the great facts which had met him unexpectedly in his own experience; but James, in the old theocratic spirit, connected the outburst of Christianity with ancient prophecy as its fulfilment. In his thought, God takes out of the Gentiles a people for His name, and by an election as real as when He separated Israel of old from all the nations. The prophecy quoted by him describes the rebuilding of the tabernacle of David, not by restoring his throne in Jerusalem over Jews, and over heathen who, as a test of their loyalty, became proselytes, but by the reconstitution of the theocracy in a more spiritual form, and over myriads of new subjects--“ all the Gentiles” --without a hint of their conformity to any element of the Mosaic ritual. This expansion of the old economy had been foreseen; it was no outgrowth unexpected or unprovided for. Believers were not to be surprised at it, or to grudge that their national supremacy should disappear amidst the Gentile crowds, who in doing homage to David’ s son, their Messiah, should raise “ the tabernacle of David” to a grandeur which it had never attained, and could never attain so long as it was confined to the territory of Judaea. The Jewish mind must have been impressed by this reasoning- this application of their own oracles to the present crisis. So far from being perplexed by it, they ought to have been prepared for it; so far from being repelled by it, they ought to have anticipated it, prayed for it, and welcomed its faintest foregleams, as in the ‘ preaching of Philip in Samaria, and of Peter to Cornelius. Paul and Barnabas, in addressing the multitude--“ the Church, the apostles, and elders” --did not launch into a discussion of the general question, or attempt to demonstrate abstract principles. First, in passing through Phoenice and Samaria, they “ declared the conversion of the Gentiles;” and secondly, at the convention, theirs was a simple tale which they allowed to work its own impression--they “ declared what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.” The logic of their facts was irresistible, for they could not be gainsaid. Let their audience account for it as they chose, and endeavour to square it with their own opinions and beliefs as best they might, God was working numerous and undeniable conversions among the Gentiles as visibly and gloriously as among themselves. The haughty exclusiveness of the later Judaism made it impossible for the Church to extend without some rupture and misunderstanding of this nature. That exclusiveness was nursed by many associations. For them, and them alone, was the temple built, the hierarchy consecrated, and the victim slain. Their history had enshrined the legislation of Moses, the priesthood of Aaron, the throne of David, and the glory of Solomon. The manna had been rained upon their fathers, and the bright Presence had led them. Waters had been divided and enemies subdued. Sinai had been lighted up, and had trembled under the majesty and voice of Jehovah. Their land was hallowed by the only Church of God on earth, and each of them was a member of it by birth. His one temple was on Mount Moriah, and they gloried in the pride of being its sole possessors. The archives of their nation were at the same time the records of their faith. Nothing was so opposed to their daily prepossessions as the idea of a universal religion. Or if the boundaries of the covenanted territory were to be widened, Zion was still to be the centre. Foreign peoples were to have no separate and independent worship; all nations were to flow to the “ mountain of the Lord’ s house, established in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills.” It is impossible for us to realize the intensity of Jewish feeling on these points, as it was ever influencing Hebrew believers to relapse into their former creed, and leading others into the self-deceptive and pernicious middle course of Judaizers. In such circumstances, the work of St. Paul naturally excited uneasiness and suspicion in the best of them, for it was so unlike their own sphere of service. But the elder apostles were at this period brought to acquiesce in it, and they virtually sanctioned it, though there might not be entire appreciation of it in all its extent and certain consequences There is no ground, therefore, for supposing that there was any hostility between Paul and these eider apostles, or any decided theological difference, as many strenuously contend for. They all held the same cardinal truths, as is manifest from the Gospel and Epistles of John, and from the Epistles of Peter. There are varying types of thought arising from mental peculiarity and spiritual temperament--accidental differences showing more strongly the close inner unity. Nor is the Epistle of James in conflict with the Pauline theology. It was in all probability written before these Judaistic disputes arose; for, though addressed to Jews, it makes no mention of them. Its object among other things was to prove that a justifying faith must be in its nature a sanctifying faith; that a dead faith is no faith, and is without all power to save; and that from this point of view a man is justified by works--the products of faith being identified with itself, their one living source. Nor can we say that there were, even after the convention, no misunderstandings between Paul and the other apostles. While they were at one with him in thought, they seem not to have had the same freedom to act out their convictions. There was no opposition on any points of vital doctrine; but though they held that his success justified him, they did not feel at liberty, or had not sufficient intrepidity, to follow his example. Though their earlier exclusiveness was broken, their nationality still remained--their conservatism had become an instinct--“ they to the circumcision.” The mere separation of sphere might not give rise to division, but these pharisaic Judaists, who were nat so enlightened and considerate as their leaders, were the forefathers of that Ebionitism which grew and fought so soon after that period, having its extreme antagonism in Marcion and his adherents. How the other, apostles who had left Jerusalem at the Herodian persecution, and may have been in different parts of the world, acted as to these debated matters, we know not. It is storied, indeed, that John, living amidst the Hellenic population of Ephesus, kept the paschal feast on the fourteenth day of the month, in accordance with the Jewish reckoning; and that he wore in his older years one special badge of a priest … The power of early association, which grows with one’ s growth, is very difficult to subdue; for it may suddenly reassert its supremacy at some unguarded moment, and expose inherent weakness and indecision. (John Eadie, D. D.)Grace seen in God’ s choice of workmen God would build for Himself a palace in heaven of living stones. Where did He get them? Did He go to the quarries of Paros? Hath He brought forth the richest and the purest marble from the quarries of perfection? No, ye saints: look to “ the hole of the pit whence ye were digged, and to the rock whence ye were hewn!” Ye were full of sin: so far from being stones that were white with purity, ye were black with defilement, seemingly utterly unfit to be stones in the spiritual temple, which should be the dwelling-place of the Most High. Goldsmiths make exquisite forms from precious material; they fashion the bracelet and the ring from gold: God maketh His precious things out of base material; and from the black pebbles of the defiling brooks he hath taken up stones, which He hath set in the golden ring of His immutable love, to make them gems to sparkle on His finger for ever. He hath not selected the best, but apparently the worst of men to be the monuments of His grace; and, when He would have a choir in heaven, He sent Mercy to earth to find out the dumb, and teach them to sing. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The right hand of fellowship I. To whom should we give it--to all who hold the truth--to all by whom God is pleased to work--to all in whom God exhibits His grace. II. How must we give it--not by forsaking our own position or encouraging them to leave theirs--but by the maintenance of brotherly esteem and love, by provoking them to love and good works. (J. Lyth.)The right hand of fellowship should be given I. To all to whom God has given grace. II. By the pillars of the Church, as an example to others. III. Heartily, without reserve. (J. Lyth.)Division of labour in the Church is I. Expedient--it prevents collision--economises labour. II. Advantageous--it provokes emulation--develops effort--accomplishes more. III. Necessary--there is room--and need for all. (J. Lyth.)Pillars I. Some seem to be pillars and are not. II. Some are pillars and do not seem to be. III. Some both seem to be and are really such. (J. Lyth.)Unity in the gospel I. One gospel yet different views. II. One Master yet different spheres of labour. III. One source of power yet different instrumentalities. IV. One heart yet different modes of procedure. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 2:10 That we should remember the poor.A plea for the poor Good men do not always think alike. When they differ, it is commonly from ignorance and a want of mutual explanation; and therefore when their understandings are informed, as their hearts were right before, they are like so many drops of water on a table--when they touch they run into one. Besides, while differing in some things, they agree in others--and these by fro the most important: and after awhile are generally led to see and acknowledge this. Such the case here. A difference among the brethren in Jerusalem concerning the missions of Peter and Paul; but none about the duty of remembering the poor. On that all agree. I. Who are to be remembered? The poor. Found in every age and land.1. Distinguish between the vagrant poor and the resident poor. Vagrants are generally the least entitled to succour, being lazy, and not disposed to work when the opportunity is offered them. The resident poor have these claims; (1) they are neighbours;(2) their cases can be searched out, and impositions detected;(3) regarding them your bounty is known, and it ought to be known--not to extol you, but to honour your religion, recommend the gospel, and glorify God. 2. Distinguish between God’ s poor and the devil’ s poor. In helping the latter while they continue what they are, you are aiding the beer-house, the gin-shop, licentiousness, and every evil. We should try to save them from their suffering by saving them first from their sin. 3. Distinguish between the strong and healthy poor, and the sick and disabled. The latter deserve sympathy and help. II. Why should you remember the poor?1. In doing so, you keep the best company, and conform to the noblest examples. 2. You are bound by Divine authority. 3. The poor are your brethren. 4. You ire under great obligations to the poor. You are more dependent on them, than they on you. They cultivate your lands, manage your capital, prepare your food, furnish you with fuel; they man your ships, fill your armies, fight your battles, etc., etc. 5. In remembering them you will remember yourselves. By God’ s eternal law, doing good is the way to gain good; giving is the way to thrive (Psalms 41:1-3). III. How are we to remember the poor?1. Compassion. 2. Readiness to relieve. All might do much by exercising self-denial, and influencing others. IV. When should we remember the poor?1. When you die. 2. When you prosper. 3. When you are unthankful. It will remind you of how many blessings you daily receive, and so stir up your heart to praise. 4. When you are peevish, fretful, discontented, and miserable. Go, then, and see real misery; and consider how much more others have to suffer than you; and then do your best to relieve that suffering. In the act of giving consolation, you shall receive it. 5. When you fast. Let your own abstinence for your soul’ s health benefit the bodies of those whose life is a perpetual involuntary fast (Isaiah 58:6-8). 6. Every Lord’ s Day (1 Corinthians 16:2). 7. Now. Give liberally to the charity work in aid of which your alms are to-day solicited. If the Saviour were here now as a Man, how would He give? He could not give much. He would then give--what many hero (and the best givers too, perhaps) will give--coppers; not from want of inclination, but from want of ability. He was a poor Man, had not where to lay His head. But suppose He was possessed of the fortunes some of you possess, what would He give then? Think of it, and go and do likewise. (William Jay.)The duty of remembering the poor Poverty no virtue; wealth no sin. Nor yet is wealth morally good, poverty morally evil. Virtue is a plant which depends not on the atmosphere surrounding it, but on the hand that waters and the grace that sustains it. Grace must be sustained by Divine power. Yet, as a fact, God has been pleased for the most part to plant His grace in the soil of poverty. A very large multitude of His family are destitute, afflicted, tormented, and are kept leaning day by day upon the daily provisions of God, and trusting Him from meal to meal, believing that He will supply their wants out of the riches of His fulness. I. The fact, that the Lord has a poor people. A word from Him, and they might all be rich. Yet He does not speak that word. Why?1. To teach us how grateful we should be for all the comforts He bestows on many of us. 2. To display His sovereignty in all He does. 3. To manifest the power of His comforting promises, and the supports of the gospel. The master.works of God are those that stand in the midst of difficulties--when all things oppose them, yet maintain their stand; these are His all-glorious works; and so His best children, those who honour Him most, are those who have grace to sustain them amidst the heaviest load of tribulations and trials. 4. To plague the devil, e.g., Job. 5. To give us some living glimpse of Christ. A poor saint is a better picture of Jesus than a rich one. 6. To give us opportunities of showing our love to Him. Take away the poor, and one channel wherein our love delights to flow is withdrawn at once. II. The duty, that we should remember the poor.1. In prayers.2. In conversation.3. In providing for their necessities. IV. Why we should remember the poor.1. They are the Lord’ s brethren. This is surely reason enough. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Remembrance of the poor recommended I. Examine the nature of the assertion. No need to describe the poor; they describe themselves. You daily witness the scantiness and poverty of their apparel, their pale and emaciated forms; you hear their piteous plaints, and the tale of their complicated woes. But we should remember--1. The work of the poor. (1) It is irksome and laborious;(2) often destructive to health;(3) of more benefit to others than to themselves. 2. The deprivations of the poor. (1) Scanty means of instruction;(2) little opportunity of improving their minds;(3) uncomfortable homes;(4) degrading surroundings;(5) insufficient clothing and food. 3. Our remembrance of the poor should be founded on personal observation. 4. It should be accompanied by relief. The best form of relief is employment. II. State the obligations we are under to comply with it.1. The dictates of humanity require it. The poor are our brethren. 2. The demands of duty require it. The laws of God have made this imperative upon us (Deuteronomy 15:7-9; Daniel 4:27; Luke 6:36-38; Matthew 7:12; 1 John 3:17). 3. The rights of justice require it. To the poor we owe far more than to rich drones who merely live on the labours of others. Who erect our houses? Who make our clothes? Who procure our food? Do not the poor? therefore remember them. 4. The claims of interest require it. God remembers the poor; is it not our interest to imitate Him? (Psalms 41:1-2; Proverbs 3:9; Proverbs 19:17; Isaiah 63:10-11). III. Answer objections.1. My circumstances are straitened, I have nothing to spare. What! Nothing? (1 Kings 17:11-12; Luke 21:2-4). 2. Charity must begin at home. True; but it should not end there. 3. I have a right to do what I will with my own. But what is your own? Are you not a steward merely of God’ s goods? Will He not call you to account? 4. The poor do not deserve to be remembered. God thinks they do; that is enough. What if He dealt with us according to our deserts? (Theological Sketch-book.)Care of the poor When Fox, the author of the “ Book of Martyrs,” was once leaving the palace of Aylmer, the Bishop of London, a company of poor people begged him to relieve their wants with great importunity. Fox, having no money, returned to the bishop, and asked the loan of five pounds, which was readily granted. He immediately distributed it among the poor by whom he was surrounded. Some months after, Aylmer asked Fox for the money he had borrowed. “ I have laid it out for you,” was the answer, “ and paid it where you owed it--to the poor people who lay at your gate.” Far from being offended, Aylmer thanked Fox for thus being his steward. A plea for the poor Some one was expressing surprise to Eveillon, canon and archdeacon of Angers, that none of his rooms were carpeted. He answered: “ When I enter my house in the winter-time, the floors do not tell me that they are cold; but the poor, who are shivering at my gate, tell me they want clothes.” Paul’ s care for the poor I. Paul, who had beggared the Church, is now ready to beg for it. II. Paul sets us as example of care for the poor (Romans 15:25; Romans 15:28). He gave more than good words and wishes.1. The charge was very great to maintain the altar in the Old Testament. In the New Testament the poor come in place of the altar. 2. Mercy to the poor is a condition of Divine mercy. III. Paul being warned was diligent to do that of which he was warned. It is a common fault to hear much and do little. (W. Perkins.)True beneficence: its thoughtfulness How difficult it is to be wisely charitable; to do good without multiplying the sources of evil! To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also. It is written, not “ blessed is he that feedeth the poor,” but “ blessed is he that considereth the poor.” A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a deal of money. (Ruskin.)Beneficence: its reward During the retreat of Alfred the Great at Athelney, a beggar came to him and requested alms; when his queen informed him that they had only one small loaf left, which was insufficient for themselves and their friends who had gone abroad in quest of food, though with little hope of success, “ Give the poor Christian one-half of the loaf,” said the king; “ He who could feed five thousand men with five loaves and two small fishes can certainly make that half of the loaf suffice for our necessities.” The poor man was relieved accordingly, and this noble act of charity was soon recompensed by a providential store of fresh provisions, with which his people returned. Remember the poor I was very much pleased with the conduct of a brother who is here present. A short time ago there stood in the aisle near his pew, a gentleman and a poor fellow in a smock frock! thought to myself “ He will let one in, I know; I wonder which it will be?” I did not wait long before out he came and in went the smock frock. He thought very rightly that the poor man was the most tired, for he had no doubt had a hard week’ s work, and probably a long walk, for there are not many smock frocks near London. I say again, “ Remember the poor.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)Remember the orphans Puddings and potatoes form important articles of diet, and I shall be glad if farmers will remember our orphans in seedtime and harvest. Much more help could be rendered in kind if doners would only think of it. We need not mention things which an orphanage cannot consume; it would take space to mention things we could not use, such as alcoholic liquors, rattlesnakes, gunpowder, dynamite, or books of modern theology. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christian forwardness And now, when the standard of Christ is unfurled, have Christians become cowardly? Are there none among them who can step forward and say, “ Here am I: send me.” I do not believe there is such a cowardly spirit among us. But there is what is generally called a retiring disposition. I am scarcely able to make nice distinctions. In the day of battle if the commanding officer found one of his men in the rear rank on account of his modest and retiring disposition, I think he would tingle it out of him with a few lashes on his back. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Galatians 2:11-12I withstood him to the face. Paul and Peter I. Character is growth. The most zealous is not always the most steadfast. Fires slumber within which circumstances may fan into a terrible flame. We bring our evil tendencies with us into the Kingdom of God to be gradually curbed, restrained, overcome by higher and Divine tendencies. Let every man keep sentinel over himself; let him beware of old sins; let him guard his soul by prayer against attacks on his weak points; let him cast aside every weight if he would run the true race, whose goal is perfection. II. Fear of man deteriorates the character. How many barter their birthright for the world’ s empty applause! A little courage would save them a world of shame; a decisive step or a bold word would put to silence their adversaries; but they dare not make a stand, and so their independence is lost and their character lowered. III. Observe the influence of character on others. Peter did not sin alone. The other Jews dissembled, and even Barnabas was led away. So it is always. Evil companionships and examples corrupt good characters. IV. Bear in mind the supreme necessity of honesty. The truth must at all hazards be defended, faithfully, courteously, lovingly. V. Paul’ s appeal was successful. Truth always prevails in the end. A little firmness at the right time, and in the right way, may save a brother’ s soul. VI. This was no mere personal dispute, but involved vital issues. The antagenism was between law on the one hand and grace on the other. (S. Pearson, M. A.)Paul rebukes Peter One of the most remarkable events in sacred history. Tradition tells us St. Paul was a man of small stature, bearing the marked features of the Jew, yet not without some of the finer lines indicative of Greek thought. His head bald, his beard long and thin; a bright gray eye, overhung by somewhat contracted eyebrows; whilst a cheerful and winning expression of countenance invited the approach and inspired the confidence of strangers. St. Peter is represented as a man of larger form and stronger build, with dark eye, pale and sallow complexion, and short hair curled black and thick round his temples. At the meeting here mentioned Judaism and Christianity were brought face to face. In Galatians 2:14-16 we have the case of Gospel versus Law. I. The conduct of St. Peter on this occasion may be regarded as--1. An example of temptation arising from the fear of man. Peter was by nature timid; prompt to act, yet apt to vacillate; afraid of opposition. 2. An instance of an apostle’ s departure from the straight path of gospel truth, and of the ease with which such departure may take place. No divergence from God’ s truth, however slight, is unimportant. We never know what (to all appearance) the slightest error may result in. Our only safety lies in holding fast the whole truth. 3. Not inconsistent with his integrity as a Christian, or with his inspiration as a writer. His writings were under the direction of the Holy Spirit. He nobly redeemed this error by a faithful and consistent after-life. II. The conduct of St. Paul was--1. An example of moral courage in administering reproof. No easy thing, at any time, to rebuke a friend. It is painful to oppose one whom we love, or whose good opinion we value. 2. A noble vindication of gospel truth. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Peter’ s inconsistent conduct The conduct of Peter is not easy to understand. Already, at the council or concordat of the apostles, he had agreed to impose no burdens on the Gentile Christians; and, at a much earlier period in the history of the apostles, he had not only been charged with going in unto men uncircumcised and eating with them, but had taught others that they were to “ call nothing common or unclean.” And now, not of his own free will, but under the influence of certain who came from Jerusalem, from a fear of the very same charge, “ Thou wentest in unto men uncircumcised and eatest with them,” he held back, and seemed to view his Christian brethren with the feelings with which he would have regarded men who sat at meat in an idol’ s temple. It is remarkable, and may be considered as a proof of the truth of the history, that this conduct, however unintelligible, is in keeping with Peter’ s character. We recognize in it the lineaments of him who confessed Christ first, and first denied Him; who began by refusing that Christ should wash his feet, and then said, “ Not my feet only, but my hands and my head;” who cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest when they came to take Jesus, and then forsook Him and fled. Boldness and timidity--first boldness, then timidity--were the characteristics of his nature. It was natural for such a one, though no longer strictly a Jew himself, to desire that others should conform to the prejudices of Jews; such conduct agreed with the bent of his own mind, though he formally disowned it. There is, we may observe, in many men a sort of tenderness to what they once were themselves; as there is another class of men who learn a lesson, but only to apply it under given circumstances. Something of this kind there may have been in St. Peter; a narrowness of perception, or secret sympathy with the Judaizing converts, which prevented his seeing the wider truth which presented itself to St. Paul. At any rate, his was a disposition on which ancient habits and feelings were ever liable to return; whose heart could scarcely avoid lingering around the weak and beggarly elements of the law; on whom in age the lessons of youth were too prone to come back, “ carrying him whither he would not.” The charge which St. Paul brings against him was, inconsistency with himself; he was half a Gentile, and wanted to make the Gentiles altogether Jews. (B. Jowett, M. A.)Force of example What a constraining power there is in the example of eminent persons. He is said to compel, in Scripture, not only who doth violently force, but who, being of authority, doth provoke by his example. (Burkitt.)The errors of those that do rule become rulers of error. Men sin through a kind of authority, through the sins of those who are in authority. (Burkitt.)Open reproof for open sin Such as sin openly must be reproved openly. No bands of friendship must keep the ministers of God from reproving sin. A notorious fault must be reproved with much boldness and resolution. If such as are eminent in the Church fall, they fall not alone; many fall with them. Protestant popery How many rejoice at Paul’ s defence of the liberty of the gospel against Peter’ s weakness, who themselves will not receive rebuke as Peter did--nay, are very popes at heart. For there are popes in pews as well as in pulpits, besides the pope who openly claims to be such; Christian liberty suffers from them all. (M. B. Riddle, D. D.)False doctrine It is a good and a pleasant thing for brethren to dwell together in unity. But in a world like this such enjoyment cannot be universal or permanent. No Christian vigilance can prevent differences of opinion. They existed even among the apostles, and even upon fundamental truths. We may learn from this fact a twofold lesson.1. When differences affect only the circumstantials of religion, however interesting, and in their place important, those matters which are in themselves of human origin and rest on human authority may be, the differences respecting them are calculated to teach us a lesson of charity (Romans 14:5-6). 2. When they extend to the fundamental portions of revealed truth, they are equally calculated to teach us a lesson of fidelity (Galatians 1:8). The matter to which the text refers, considered in itself, might have been enumerated among those questions which teach charity; but, considered in its bearing upon the gospel, considered in the aspect which it gave to the gospel among the Gentiles, it compromised the freeness of the gospel, and marred the simplicity of God’ s message in Christ. And therefore St. Paul withstood the error of St. Peter “ to the face, because he was to be blamed.” Barnabas was carried away also with the dissimulation. St. Paul was left alone. It was a critical moment for the primitive Church. Who can estimate the amount of the disaster that would have followed had St. Paul fallen as St. Peter fell? Who can estimate the damage which would have been sustained had the gospel, from the very outset, been presented in a corrupt form? How could we now have traced its purity had St. Paul sunk with St. Peter? As far as man can judge, the world would then never have had the gospel in its simplicity with the clear authority of Scriptural truth. But, through the mercy and grace of God, St. Paul stood fast. (H. McNeile, D. D.)Good men are not perfect men A gentleman of the Perfectionist school of thought called to see an old Christian of his neighbourhood, and began enlarging upon that interesting topic. “ Can you point to a single perfect man or woman in the Bible?” inquired the aged saint. “ Yes,” readily answered the other; “ turn to Luke 1:6, you will there read of two--Elizabeth and Zacharias walked ‘ in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless.’” “ Then you consider yourself a believer like Zacharias?” “ Certainly I do,” said the visitor. “ Ah,” replied the old man, “ I thought you might be; and we read a few verses further on that he was struck dumb for his unbelief.” (Nye.)Robert Hall’ s temper It is said that in the earlier part of Robert Hall’ s ministry, he was impetuous and sometimes overbearing in argument; but if he lost his temper he was deeply humbled, and would often acknowledge himself to blame. On one of these occasions, when a discussion had become warm, and he had evinced unusual agitation, he suddenly closed the debate, quitted his seat, and, retiring to a remote part of the room, was overheard to ejaculate, with deep feeling, “ Lamb of God, Lamb of God, calm my perturbed spirit!” The fear of man illustrated Burgomeister Guericke constructed a gigantic barometer with a tube thirty feet in height, part of which projected above the roof of his house at Magdeburg. The index was the figure of a man, who, in fair weather, was seen standing full size above the roof; but, when a storm was brewing, he cautiously withdrew for security and shelter. Antitype of religionists and politicians I When the sun shines brightly, and the breezes scarcely breathe across the landscape, how erect and bold they look! But let the clouds gather, and the thunders mutter, and what a drawing-in of diminished heads! O rare, satirical Burgomeister! you must have had an alderman’ s experience. (Dr. W. F. Warren.)Brotherly reproof I. What is reproof.1. An act of charity and mercy, not of pride and vain-glory (2 Thessalonians 3:15; James 3:17. 2. Using fit discourse, not chastisement, and, in general, from God’ s Word (Colossians 3:16-17. 3. Having as its end not our brother’ s shame, but his reclamation from sin to duty (Galatians 6:1). II. The kind of reproof it is our duty to give.1. Authoritative. By way of office (2 Timothy 4:2). 2. In the way of general duty, which lieth on all men (1 Thessalonians 5:14). III. The manner in which to discharge this duty.1. Faithfully (Titus 1:13). 2. With lenity and Christian meekness (Galatians 6:1). 3. Prudently. Well weighing all the circumstances of person, time, place, occasion, provocation, that all things may be proportioned to the design (Proverbs 25:12-17). IV. The arguments which enforce this duty.1. The law of nature, which teaches us to love our neighbour. 2. The law of God (Proverbs 25:8-10; Matthew 18:15; 1 Thessalonians 3:15; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Jude 1:22-23). 3. Giving reproof is commended (Proverbs 24:25; James 5:19-20), and taking reproof (Proverbs 13:18; Proverbs 15:31-32; Ecclesiastes 7:5). 4. The maintenance of society and the improvements of human relations depend upon it. V. When and to what this duty binds.1. Not unless the fault is certainly known; not, therefore, on mere suspicion (1 Corinthians 13:5), uncertain hearsay (Isaiah 11:3), flying reports, or slander. 2. Not if our brother has repented. 3. Not if a good result is unlikely, and a bad result probable (Matthew 7:6). In conclusion:1. If we are to reprove others, let us take care that we are blameless (Matthew 6:3-5; Romans 3:21). 2. If others are bound to reprove, we are bound to take reproof. (T. Manton.)The end of St. Peter’ s error Though St. Paul’ s narrative stops short of the last scene in this drama, it would not be rash to conclude that it ended as that other had ended, that the revulsion of feeling was as sudden and complete, and that again he went out and wept bitterly, having denied his Lord in the person of these Gentile converts. (Bishop Lightfoot.)Differences among the apostles Nothing can be more false and delusive than to imagine that the first teachers were men whose harmony of opinion and action was complete, who had neither debate, difference, or quarrel. They were not unconscious mouthpieces of a supernatural inspiration, automata of some uncontrollable enthusiasm, unanimous machines, but men of like passions with ourselves, men with characters, impulses, affections, fears, dislikes--men human in the mistakes they made and in the truths they embraced and enunciated. It is sheer superstition to treat them as more than men, as other than men, however highly we may esteem them and their work. If we make them unreal and transcendental personages we do them a great injustice, and ourselves a certain mischief, because all free inquiry into their motives and feelings is suspected as a challenge of their authority, and every other form of commentary becomes mere verbiage around a foregone conclusion. They ace not stars fixed round the great central Light, and differing only in glory and goodness from Him who is the centre of their system; but they have what light they possess from reflection, and feel themselves immeasurably distant from the Power which illumines them. (Paul of Tarsus.)The dissension a witness to the truth of the Bible The Bible is of great worth for its natural, fresh, and honest expressions of human thought and feeling. The faith, hope, love, reverence, wonder; the doubts, sorrows, fears, temptations, and sins of the writers are recorded for our instruction, as well as the Divine doctrine they teach. In this spiritual portrait gallery we behold the work of truthful artists. No vanity, no pride, no desire to deceive, prevented them from pourtraying themselves just as they appeared. We value the Scriptures because their truths make us wise unto salvation; but we value them also as a record of what the good and wise thought and felt during their life-struggle on this earth. The Bible is not only a revelation of God, but also a revelation of man--the most Divine and the most human book ever written. (Thomas Jones.)Blemishes in Christians There are MSS. which are called palimpsests--MSS, written over again. The original inscription, which was fair and full of Divine wisdom, has been defaced, and in its place may now be seen letters and words and sentences in contrast to what was contained before. And so the character of men--these great men, men born of the Spirit--over their better natures you may see scratched in ugly scrawls, obvious imperfections and failures. But, thank God, Divine grace, through discipline of various kinds, rubs out the evil and brings back the good, and causes the soul at last to reveal again most distinctly what had been only dimmed and not destroyed, even as there has been discovered a method by which the palimpsests can be made to exhibit once more what seemed for ever spoiled. (J. Stoughton, D. D.)Truth-telling: an act of friendship There cannot more worthy improvement of friendship than in a fervent opposition to the sins of those whom we love. (Bishop Hall.)The truth-tellers’ reward Years after this encounter Peter took his revenge. Having to write to the strangers scattered through “ Galatia,” who through a celebrated Epistle knew of his humiliation, what does he do? Vindicate himself? State the other side? No; he calls his reprover a brother beloved, and testifies that in all his Epistles he wrote according to the wisdom given him of God. The weakness and dissimulation of Peter The act of which he was guilty was dissimulation; it was not what he believed to be right, but an expediency adopted in a moment of weakness. It is described-- I. As a violation of his convictions. He had commenced upon equal terms with Gentile believers, and he bad done this according to the express will of God revealed to him (Acts 10:28). These convictions had been further deepened by what had taken place in Jerusalem during Paul’ s visit to that city. II. This dissimulation was prompted by a very unworthy motive. Peter feared them which were of the circumcision. Many have made shipwreck of faith upon this same rock. How often have men been ashamed to confess Christ, or to acknowledge their connection with His people for fear of man. III. This dissimulation was an evil example, soon copied by others--“ And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.” Peter’ s sin was followed by the sin of others. One of the greatest mysteries of our life is that so much of our happiness or misery appears to depend upon others. “ As it sometimes happens on the snow slopes of the Alps, that one man’ s slip will involve the overthrow and destruction of all his fellow-travellers, so is it with us in the moral and spiritual life. Peter drags Barnabas and the rest of the Jews with him; and in our day men too often exercise the same fatal spell on those within the region of their influence.” Lessons:1. Honesty of belief, purpose, and work should be one of the chief laws of Christian life. This should apply to every kind of secular business, and to religion. “ This above all; to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man.” 2. God can preserve the truth by the few as well as by the many. Whatever may be the character of human conduct, God does not allow his purpose to fail. At Antioch Paul alone was faithful (of the Jewish believers), but the truth triumphed notwithstanding. (Richard Nicholls.)A fearless spirit in rebuking evil strikes us with admiration When Frederick the First, the half-mad king of Prussia, was so enraged against his son that he announced his intention of condemning him to death, even though the Emperor remonstrated, in his fury exclaiming--“ Then I will hold my own court on him at Konigsberg, which is outside of the Empire, where no one can control me!” But a fearless courtier spoke out--“ Only God, your majesty, will be over you there to call you to task for shedding your son’ s blood!” (Dr. Hardman.)The two contentions Now, before we go farther, we may learn the following lessons from this personal contention between Paul and Peter: In the first place, before we withstand a brother, let us be quite sure that he is to be blamed, and that the occasion warrants our protest. Paul would not have cared to interfere, with Peter in any trivial matter; nor would he have felt constrained to move in the ease but for the handle which would be made of his peculiar vacillation just at that time. No one had a fuller comprehension of what Christian liberty involved than had Paul; and no one was more jealous of its infringement. If, therefore, he had not seen that the fundamental principle of the gospel was at stake, he would not have said a word. The thing which Peter had done was in itself indifferent; but by doing it just then, at the appearance of the Judaizers, he had compromised that truth which was dearer to Paul than friendship, or even than life, and therefore he could not be silent. Now, let us learn from this example to withstand a brother only when we are thus constrained to do so by our allegiance to the truth of the gospel. If in any respect we cannot approve his conduct, while yet it may be explained in perfect harmony with his loyalty to Christ, let us give him the benefit of the explanation, and be silent. But if his procedure is such as seriously to compromise the purity of the Church or the truth of the gospel, then let us withstand him. Nothing is more contemptible than to be always putting ourselves on the opposition benches; objecting to everything that is proposed by some particular brother, and going to a church meeting with the motive of the Scotchman for appearing in the debating society--“ jist to contradic a wee.” But on the other hand, nothing ought to be dearer to a Christian than “ the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which is committed to his trust.” Again, we may learn not to be deterred from opposing wrong by the position of him who has committed it. Peter was an apostle. He was, in fact, one of the greatest pillars of the early Church; but Paul was not prevented by any such considerations as these from protesting against his injudicious and unseemly vacillation. On the contrary, the very prominence of Peter made it all the more important that his inconsistency should be promptly and publicly dealt with. Had he been an ordinary member of the Church, moving only in private circles, Paul might have been disposed to pass his conduct by with a mild remonstrance. It was not, therefore, because he loved Peter less, but because he loved the truth more, that he uttered this glowing and uncompromising admonition. But the same principles hold still; error or evil is dangerous in any man, but it is far more so in a leader of the people or a minister of the gospel than in others. Great eminence may command our respect, but the truth is before all things else; and nothing whatever should be allowed by us to excuse treason to that. Once more we may learn from Paul’ s conduct here that when we withstand a brother, it should be to his face. He did not go hither and thither among the elders, speaking against Peter and complaining of his course, while at the same time he kept unbroken silence concerning it to Peter himself. Let us say nothing in his absence that we would not utter in his presence; and if we have not the courage to speak to him, let us at least have the grace to be silent about him. From the conduct of Peter here, however, we may learn the no less valuable lesson that when we are thus withstood we should take it meekly, and, if we are in the wrong, should frankly own our error, and retrace our steps as rapidly as possible. We cannot doubt, therefore, that he accepted Paul’ s rebuke in the spirit of meekness. Now in all this there was a magnanimity which is worthy of all praise. So far as appears, he did not become excited, and exclaim against Paul for presuming to think that he could be wrong, but he did a more difficult and a more manly thing: he acknowledged his fault. Now here was a great triumph of grace. It may seem a paradox to say it; but there are few things which test a man’ s real Christianity more than reproof for that which is actually blameworthy. It is comparatively easy to guard against giving offence; but it is exceeding hard to keep from taking offence in such circumstances, and to say with the Psalmist, “ Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head.” We all assent to Solomon’ s proverb, “ Open rebuke is better than secret love.” We cry out against the modern dogma of papal infallibility, but we have all too much belief in that of our own infallibility; for our tempers are roused, and our hearts are estranged by any exposure of our error or inconsistency. How many personal alienations and ecclesiastical schisms might have been prevented, if there had been on the one side the honest frankness of Paul, and on the other the manly meekness of Peter, as these come out in this transaction! If I had my choice, I would rather see a controversy spring up in a Church about some great central doctrine than about some question of paltry detail of arrangement or of pitiful personality; for there would be less likelihood in the one case than in the other of an angry and acrimonious debate. “ Little sticks kindle great fires.” The flame that would die out before it could set fire to a log will easily ignite a chip, and that may have strength enough to kindle a faggot that will at length set the log in a blaze. Take care, therefore, especially in little things, lest temper should explode, and make a painful separation between you and your friend. Admirably has the poet said: “ Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between those that love.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)Grace not suddenly destructive of the old nature The grace of God, which raises men’ s hearts by degrees into conformity with the Divine image, does not suddenly destroy the old nature. St. Peter is still the same impulsive man who could now confess the Christ, and now, when troubles came, deny Him; who could follow Him bravely into danger, yet be overcome by the gossiping remark of a girl that met him by chance. We must not try this ease by the standard of Anglo-Saxon consistency. We sometimes perhaps run the risk of purchasing too dearly the favourite virtue, at the price of zeal and ardour. We are not naturally indulgent towards that impulsive nature which the great apostle, more Jewish in this than the Jews, derived from his race. Anxious to please, and to be in sympathy with those about him, he rejoiced at first in the Gentile freedom, until those came about him who were full of prejudice for their venerable law, its severe conditions of communion, its austere separation. Let us neither praise nor blame--let us only say grace has not yet wrought her perfect work in this apostle’ s heart. Nor has the other great apostle yet learned all that the school of grace can teach him. Face to face, before the whole Church, he rebukes and humbles a brother whom Christ had honoured, who had laboured much, and turned many from darkness to light. He quotes it as a proof of his independence amongst the apostles, not without complacency. All this is consistent with this bold and resolute nature, which marched straight to its objects, and refused to swerve either out of respect of persons or out of fear. His steadfast resolution, that Christ should be all in all, came from above; his manner of compassing it bears clear marks of his old nature. That blessed change under the power of grace can be perhaps more fully studied in St. Paul’ s career than anywhere else in the Church history. The strong, loving, fierce, harsh nature--you see the faults transformed to virtues, the angles rounded off, the strong will made obedient to the bit and bridle of love; and yet it is the same man still. You recognize the old features of the portrait, but it is transfigured by preternatural light. Again we will not praise or blame; we will rather recognize the power of the mighty Spirit of God which could use for His purposes the timid impulse of one man and the impatient zeal of another, for building up the house of God; and at the same time could take in hand the timid and the impatient natures alike, and give courage to the one and softening to the other, thus building at one time the great house of God and carving delicately each living stone of which the house is compacted. It is very common for us to look up out of our welter of troubles, our sects, and schisms, and disputations, and to see far back in the first ages nothing but peace; a united Church, offering its harmonious, universal praise; a well-drilled army, marching in obedience to a single will, a code of faith which always, everywhere, all the faithful heard, and, without questioning, believed. But, as the student draws near, the object grows more distinct, the mists disperse, the shadows separate and fall into their places; and the rose-flush of the dawn ceases to conceal the true colours of that primaeval region. Then we come to see something very different from our preconceptions, and learn--what is indeed gladness to learn--that upon the whole, in the old time as in the new, the Holy Spirit sent of the Lord has wrought in the Church in the same manner. He was a Spirit of light and life and comfort to the souls of men; but then, as now, the men were enlightened, not transformed. And the glory of God’ s great work lay in this--not that the powers, wishes, and passions of the actors were petrified into a lifeless uniformity, and the superseding life from heaven took their place; but rather that, using as His instruments men so weak and perverse, He built with them the Church of God. To me, I do confess, it is a comfort to know that the Church in the first age grew by the same principles as it grows by in the nineteenth; that the very divisions amongst us have their counterparts in the age of the apostles, and that our disputes, like them, may be but permitted struggles and aberrations of us who are acting out God’ s great commands, and that all the while He is making perfect the circle of His purpose and accomplishing His kingdom. The Church has grown, as all things seem to grow, by the life within her striving to perfect itself amidst opposing forces. So grows the acorn, pushing its weak shoot through hard ground, and its strength and dignity are not less that once the swinish jaws narrowly missed devouring the heart, and the swinish foot did actually trample it into the clay. So grew the liberties of the English people: are they less dear to us because they have been threatened, and at times, eclipsed in the past? So grow the mind and spirit of a man, passing through trials and efforts, even through falls, to the ripeness of a resolute, tolerant, patient, helpful age. So grew the Church of Christ; and her life is not less real, less secure, if she has passed sometimes through fears and fightings, and the deep waters of the proud have seemed to go even over her life. At one time Athanasius has had to stand against a world; at another, a Hildebrand imperils the Church by making it the supreme kingdom amongst the earthly kingdoms. Worldly motives are said to have tainted the Reformation of religion in this country: and it is true. So much the greater is our reason for blessing God: that the sweet honeycomb has come from the lion’ s carcase; that amidst the strife and selfishness of kings, and the ignorance of peoples, the truth passed safely. So even now the Church is growing, and God dwelling in her gives the increase. We seem in deadly peril. There is unbelief on one side, and on the other that deadening system which would hand over the conscience to the priest, and the priest to a mediaeval theology, hostile to knowledge and incapable of change. “ The waves of the sea are mighty and rage horribly, but yet the Lord that dwelleth on high is mightier.” Yet there is one more lesson which the study of the past might bring us. By the vehemence of past disputes--nay, by the bitter hatred that they have brought in, one might think that men had lost faith in the power of the Holy Ghost to keep safe the ark of God upon the stormy waters. To “ withstand to the face” has been the common remedy for emergencies. It may be permitted us reverently to doubt whether the pulse of Divine life in the Church has been hastened by one beat by the violence of the zealous, who have thought well to be angry for the cause of God. Through strife, but not by strife, the Church has passed upon her way. Struggle and conflict, and even partial failure, should not convince us that God has left us: they are the heritage of the Church from the beginning. (Archbishop Thomson.)Paul’ s rebuke of Peter was I. Just--because he was guilty of dissimulation--misled others--acted in opposition to the spirit and doctrine of Christ (verses 11-14). II. Fearless. without respect of Peter’ s age and position--without fear of others; the offence was public, therefore the rebuke was administered before all (verse 14); otherwise our Lord’ s rule is imperative (Matthew 18:15-17). III. Pointed--“ thou,” a transgressor of thine own law--enlightened and accepted in Christ (verses 14, 15). IV. Faithful--Paul indicates the greatness of the offence as a violation of Christian uprightness (verse 14)--of fidelity to Christ, inasmuch as it was a practical denial of Him and made Him the minister of sin (verses 17, 18)--of Christian doctrine (verses 19, 20)--of God’ s grace (verse 21). (J. Lyth.)Peter at Antioch I. His fault--dissimulation--reprehensible in any, much more in the apostle Peter (Acts 10:28). II. The occasion of it--fear of man--which ensnares even the best. III. The effect of it--it misled others--even Barnabas. IV. Its gravity--it was dishonest--unchristian. V. Its reproof--dictated by love to Christ--manly and open. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 2:13 And the other Jews dissembled. Barnabas was carried away It is not difficult to trace here the characteristic temperament of Barnabas on its weak side. He was just that kind of disposition which makes it easy to become a partisan, to flow on with the general current, to take the complexion of surrounding opinion, and to sanction by acquiescence many things which ought to be resisted. It is not pleasant for a warm-hearted and generous man to tell his neighbours that they are all wrong. Where there is ready facility for giving and receiving confidence, and for securing co-operation, there must also be the danger of easy yielding, in order to please. But we may carry this trustful and inquiring acquiescence so far that it becomes unfaithfulness; and then harm results instead of good. The desire to make everything smooth with everybody is to be most resolutely resisted. If our end is to save souls we shall often find resistance a duty; and certainly the tolerating of erroneous human admixtures with revealed truth is not the way to save souls. (Dean Howson.)The influence of pernicious example As it sometimes happens on the snow slopes of the Alps that one man’ s slip will involve the overthrow and destruction of all his fellow-travellers, so it is in the spiritual life. Peter drags Barnabas and the rest of the Jews with him; and in our own day men too often exercise the same fatal spell on those within the region of their influence. (S. Pearson, M. A.)Dissimulation This is hypocrisy--not simply for a man to deceive others, knowing all the while that he is deceiving them, but to deceive himself and others at the same time; to aim at their praise by a religious profession, without perceiving that he loves their praise more than the praise of God. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)The hypocrite sets his watch not by the sun, i.e., the Bible, but by the town clock; what most do he will do. (Gurnall.)Influence of unfaithful leaders When a number of ships are moored, or anchored, or buoyed in the river, all have an interest in the safety of each. If some of those that lie farther seaward break off from their moorings, and drift up with wind and tide, they will run foul of us as we lie secure in the channel farther up. The drifting ships may sink, but they will drag others down. (D. Guthrie.)Dissimulation is I. Sinful. II. Infectious. III. Totally inconsistent with Christian character, (J. Lyth.) Galatians 2:14-15 But when I saw that they walked not uprightly. Moral shuffling I. Its nature.1. Literally--not to walk on straight feet, i.e., erect, or straightforwardly.2. Morally. (1) Thinking rightly and acting wrongly.(2) Orthodoxy in creed, heterodoxy in conduct.(3) All compromises when conscience is concerned. II. Its relation to the gospel. It is “ not according to its truth.”1. In the letter.2. In the spirit. III. Its motives.1. Aversion to unpleasantness.2. Desire to be agreeable all round.3. Hope by its means to get over a temporary difficulty. IV. Its consequences.1. It deceives the very elect, “ even Barnabas.”2. It involves others in deplorable inconsistencies. V. Its inexcusableness (Galatians 2:15-16).1. Knowledge and experience are against it.2. Spiritual privileges render it unnecessary.3. God’ s Word has condemned the doing of evil that good may come. VI. The duty of the truth-lover with reference to it. To rebuke it in--1. The most eminent.2. The most esteemed. Straightforwardness has been defined as a mixture of sincerity and simplicity, and is well illustrated by an anecdote of Bishop Atterbury. On one occasion he was asked why he would not suffer his servants to deny him when he did not care to see company. “ It is not a lie for them to say that you are not at home, for it deceives no one; every one knows that it only means that your lordship is busy.” He replied, “ If it is (which I doubt) consistent with sincerity, yet I am sure it is not consistent with that simplicity which becomes a bishop.” But the fine nervous Saxon word aptly explains the virtue for which it stands. It is rectitude in motion, movement in a right direction in spite of all inducements to swerve, movement on that straight line which in morals as in mathematics is the shortest distance between two points. The grave question at issue There was no question of charity here, but a question of principle. To eat with the Gentiles was either right or wrong. In the light of the gospel it was right; but to shilly-shally on the matter and to let it depend on the presence or absence of certain people was clearly wrong. It was monstrous that a Gentile convert should at one time be treated as a brother, and at another shunned as though he were a Pariah. (F. H. Farrar.)Eating with the Gentiles This involved concessions of the nature of which it is almost impossible for us at this distance to conceive. It was to the Jew what the breaking of caste is to the Hindoo, as startling, in some respects, as though in our own country peers and working men were found to be working daily on the most friendly terms, (S. Pearson, M. A.)Law versus gospel Many have the gospel, but not the truth of the gospel. So Paul saith here, that Peter, Barnabas, and other of the Jews, had the gospel, but walked not uprightly according to the gospel. For, albeit they preached the gospel, yet, through their dissimulation (which could not stand with the truth of the gospel) they established the law; but the establishing of the law is the abolishing of the gospel. Whoso then can rightly judge between the law and the gospel, let him thank God, and know that he is a right divine. Now the way to discern the one from the other, is to place the gospel in heaven, and the law on earth; to call the righteousness of the gospel heavenly, and that of the law earthly; and to put as great difference between the righteousness of the gospel and of the law as God hath made between heaven and earth, light and darkness, day and night. Wherefore, if the question be concerning the matter of faith or conscience, let us utterly exclude the law, and leave it on the earth; but, if we have to do with works, then let us lighten the lantern of works and of the righteousness of the law. Wherefore, if thy conscience be terrified with the sense and feeling of sin, think thus with thyself: Thou art now remaining upon earth; there let the ass labour and travail; there let him serve and carry the burden that is laid upon him; that is to say, let the body with his members be subject to the law. But when thou mountest up into heaven, then leave the ass with his burden on the earth; for the conscience hath nothing to do with the law, or works, or with the earthly righteousness. So doth the ass remain in the valley, but the conscience ascendeth with Isaac into the mountain, knowing nothing at all of the law or works thereof, but only looking to the remission of sins and pure righteousness offered and freely given unto us in Christ. (Luther.)Unswerving integrity Bishop Hooper was condemned to be burned at Gloucester, in Queen Mary’ s reign. A gentleman, with the view of inducing him to recant, said to him, “ Life is sweet, and death is bitter.” Hooper replied, “ The death to come is more bitter, and the life to come more sweet. I am come hither to end this life, and suffer death, because I will not gainsay the truth I have here formerly taught you.” When brought to the stake, a box, with a pardon from the queen in it, was set before him. The determined martyr cried out, “ If you love my soul, away with it! if you love my soul, away with it!” (Foster.)Fidelity A man gave his two infant children in charge of a negro slave, to be by him cared for, and taken to a distant port. The ship was wrecked, and had to be abandoned. The boats were nearly full. The slave had his choice to leave the children, or himself be left. He kissed them; bade the sailors take good care of them, and tell his master of his faithfulness; and soon went bravely down with the foundering ship. (Foster.)Swerving from the truth 1. The multitude of those who swerve from truth should not make truth seem less lovely to others, or damp their ardour in defending it against error. Though truth should be deserted by all except one only, yet is it worthy to be owned, stood to, and defended by that one, against all who oppose it. 2. It is the duty of all professors to walk so, both in the matter of opinion and practice, as is suitable to, and well agreeing with, the sincere truth of God held out in the gospel; holding nothing which is even indirectly contrary to it, and practising nothing which may reflect upon it. When they halt, or walk not with a straight foot in either of those, they are blameworthy. 3. When many are guilty of one and the same sin, the minister of Jesus Christ ought to reprove wisely and without respect of persons; making the weight of the reproof light upon them, as they have been more or less accessory to the sin. 4. Though private sins, which have not broken forth to a public scandal of many, are to be rebuked in private (Matthew 18:15), yet public sins are to receive public rebukes, that hereby the public scandal may be removed, and others may be scared from taking encouragement to do the like (1 Timothy 5:20). 5. Though the binding power of the ceremonial law was abrogated at Christ’ s death, and the practice thereof, in some things at least, left as a thing lawful and in itself indifferent unto all for a time after that, yet the observance thereof, even for that time, was dispensed with more for the Jews’ sake, and was more tolerable in them who were born and educated under the binding power of that yoke, than in the Gentiles, to whom that law was never given, and so were to observe it, or any part of it, only in ease of scandalising the weak Jews by their neglect of it (Romans 14:20-21). 6. A minister must not take liberty of practice to himself in things which he condemns in others. 7. It is no small sin for superiors to bind where the Lord has left free, by urging upon their inferiors the observing of a thing, in its own nature indifferent, as necessary; except it be in those cases wherein the Lord, by those circumstances which accompany it, points it out as necessary; e.g., cases of scandal (Acts 15:28-29), and contempt (1 Corinthians 14:40). 8. In the primitive times of the Christian Church, the people of God did wonderfully subject themselves to the ministry of the Word in the head of His servants, and much more than people now do; for if the actions of the apostles compelled men to do this or that, as Peter’ s action did compel the Gentiles, what then did their doctrine and heavenly exhortations? (James Fergusson.)Inconsistency reproved I. That the gospel supplies the rule of life. II. To depart from the rule of gospel truth is to become inconsistent in the Christian life. III. Such inconsistency calls for reproof.1. That reproofs are sometimes necessary. An earthly life is ever an imperfect one, and the best men may in unguarded moments fall into grievous errors. 2. They should be given with faithfulness, yet in love. No ties of private friendship should prevent sin being reproved, and where the sin has been committed openly, it should be reproved openly--Burkitt. Yet there should be no personal reproaches, but the manifestations of brotherly love. (R. Nicholls.) Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law.Christian doctrine of justification I. Justification is properly a word applicable to courts of justice, but is used in a similar sense in common conversation among men. An illustration will show its nature. A man is charged, e.g., with an act of trespass on his neighbour’ s property. Now there are two ways which he may take to justify himself, or to meet the charge, so as to be regarded and treated as innocent. He may either(1) deny that he performed the act charged on him, or he may (2) admit that the deed was done, and set up, as a defence, that he had a right to do it. In either case, if the point be made out, he will be just, or innocent in the sight of the law. The law will have nothing against him, and he will be regarded and treated in the premises as an innocent man; or, he has justified himself in regard to the charge brought against him. II. Charges of a very serious nature are brought against man by his Maker. It is not a charge merely affecting the external conduct, nor merely affecting the heart; it is a charge of entire alienation from God--a charge, in short, of total depravity (see especially Romans 1:1-32; Romans 2:1-29; Romans 3:1-31.). That this charge is a very serious one, no one can doubt; that it deeply affects the human character and standing, is as clear. It is a charge brought in the Bible; and God appeals, in proof of it, to the history of the world, to every man’ s conscience, and to the life of every one who has lived; and on these facts, and on His own power in searching the hearts, and in knowing what is in man, He rests the proof of the charge. III. It is impossible for man to vindicate himself from: this charge. He can neither show that the things charged have not been committed, nor that, having been committed, he had a right to do them. He cannot prove that God is not right in all the charges He has made against him in His Word; and he cannot prove that it was right for him to do as he has done. The charges against him are facts which are undeniable, and the facts are such as cannot be vindicated. But if he can do neither of these things, then he cannot be justified by the law. The law will not acquit him; it holds him guilty; it condemns him. No argument which he can use will show that he is right, and that God is wrong. No works that he can perform will be any compensation for what he has already done. No denial of the existence of the facts charged will alter the case; and he must stand condemned by the law of God. In the legal sense he cannot be justified; and justification, if it can exist at all, must be in a mode that is a departure from the regular operation of law, and in a mode which the law did not contemplate, for no law makes any provision for the pardon of those who violate it. It must be by some system which is distinct from the law, and in which man may be justified on different principles than those which the law contemplates. IV. This other system of justification is that which is revealed in the gospel by the faith of the Lord Jesus. It does not consist in either of the following things:1. It is not a system or plan where the Lord Jesus takes the part of the sinner against the law, or against God. He did not come to show that the sinner was right, and that God was wrong. He admitted most fully, and endeavoured constantly to show, that God was right, and that the sinner was wrong; nor can an instance be referred to where the Saviour took the part of the sinner against God, in any such sense that He endeavoured to show that the sinner had not done the things charged on him, or that he had a right to do them. 2. It is not that we either are, or are declared to he, innocent. God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5). We are not innocent; we never have been; we never shall be; and it is not the design of the scheme to declare any such untruth as that we are not personally undeserving. It will be always true that the justified sinner has no claims to the mercy and favour of God. 3. It is not that we cease to be undeserving personally. He that is justified by faith, and that goes to heaven, will go there admitting that he deserves eternal death, and that he is saved wholly by favour, and not by desert. 4. It is not a declaration on the part of God that we have wrought out salvation, or that we have any claim for what the Lord Jesus has done. Such a declaration would not be true, and could not be made. 5. It is not that the righteousness of the Lord Jesus is transferred to His people. Moral character cannot be transferred. It adheres to the moral agent as much as colour does to the rays of light which cause it. It is not true that we died for sin, and it cannot be so reckoned or imputed. It is not true that we have any merit, or any claim, and it cannot be so reckoned or imputed. All the imputations of God are according to truth; and He will always reckon us to be personally undeserving and sinful. But if justification be none of these things, it may be asked, What is it? It is the declared purpose of God to regard and treat those sinners who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as if they had not sinned, on the ground of the merits of the Saviour. (Albert Barnes, D. D.)Justification of sinners Justification has been defined to be an act of God s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His right;” or, “ to declare judicially the innocence of the person justified” (see Deuteronomy 25:1; 1 Kings 8:32; Matthew 12:37; Romans 8:33). The gist of St. Paul’ s argument with St. Peter is as follows: “ If thou, being a Jew, livest, as thy usual habit, as a Gentile, how is it that thou art compelling the Gentiles to adopt Jewish customs as necessary to salvation? We truly are by nature Jews, and not sinners from among the Gentiles; we are not only not Gentiles but not even proselytes; we are of pure Jewish descent, and so enjoy the highest spiritual privileges; but yet, since we know that no man is justified by the works of the law, nor in any manner except through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Jesus Christ in order that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law; for it is a certain truth, that by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.” Here we have-- I. The absolute exclusion of works from the office of justifying.1. Heavy charges are brought against man by his Maker. He is charged (1) with violating the law of God;(2) with having no love to his Maker;(3) with possessing a corrupt, proud, unbelieving heart;(4) with being alienated from God by wicked works. 2. It is impossible for man to vindicate himself from these charges. (1) He cannot show that the things charged have not been committed;(2) nor that, having been committed, he had a right to do them. He is without excuse. II. The office of justifying is ascribed to faith only.1. The principal cause of our justification is the love of God the Father. 2. The meritorious cause is the active and passive obedience, the perfect righteousness and vicarious death, of God the Son. 3. The efficient cause is the operation of God the Holy Ghost. 4. The instrumental cause is faith in Christ. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The nature of justification 1. Justification is not the Lord’ s making one who was before unjust to be just by works of habitual and inherent righteousness in him. This is to confound justification with sanctification. But it is a judicial action, whereby God absolves the sinner from death and wrath, and adjudges him to life eternal: for the word expressing this grace here, is a judicial word taken from courts of justice, which being attributed to the judge, is opposed to condemn (Romans 8:33-34), and so signifies to absolve and give sentence. 2. The ground whereupon, and the cause for which sinners are thus justified or absolved from wrath, and adjudged to life eternal, is not any works which they do in obedience to the law of God, whether ceremonial or moral; for works are excluded, and faith alone established. 3. The works which are excluded from having hand in justification, are not only those which are done before conversion, but also which follow after, and flow from the working of God’ s Spirit in us: even those works are imperfect (Isaiah 64:6), and so cannot make us completely righteous; and we do owe them to God in the meantime (Luke 17:10), and so they cannot satisfy Divine justice for faults in time past. They are the work of God’ s Spirit in us (Philippians 2:13), and so we can merit nothing at God’ s hand by them: for He excludes the works of the law in general. 4. That, through virtue whereof we are thus justified and absolved by God, is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, performed by Himself while He was here on earth, both in doing what we should have done (Matthew 3:15), and suffering what we ought to have suffered (Galatians 3:15); which righteousness is not inherent in us, but imputed to us (Romans 5:17); as the sum of money paid by the cautioner stands good in law for the debtor, so we are said to be justified by the faith of Christ, or faith in Jesus Christ, as laying hold upon His righteousness, which is imputed to us, and by which alone we are made righteous. 5. Though faith be not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, yet it is the only grace which has influence in our justification. 6. Faith has influence upon our justification, not as it is a work, or because of anyworth which is in itself more than in any other grace, but only as it lays hold on Jesus Christ, and gives us a right to His righteousness, through the merit whereof alone we are justified. 7. This way of justification by free grace accepting of us for the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and not because of our own worth, is common to all who ever were, are, or shall be justified, whether good or bad. 8. Before man be justified through virtue of this imputed righteousness, he must first be convinced of his own utter inability to satisfy Divine justice, and so to be justified by anything he himself can do. 9. He must be convinced also of the value of Christ’ s merits to satisfy Divine justice. 10. Being thus convinced, he must by faith receive and rest upon Jesus Christ and that most perfect righteousness of His, by making his soul adhere and cleave to the word of promise, wherein Christ is offered (Acts 2:39; Acts 2:41), whereupon follows the real justification and absolution of him who so does. (James Fergusson.)Self-righteousness destroyed The squirrel in his wire cage, continually in motion but making no progress, reminds me of my own self-righteous efforts after salvation, but the little creature is never one-half so wearied by his exertions as I was by mine. The poor chiffonier in Paris trying to earn a living by picking dirty rags out of the kennel, succeeds far better than I did in my attempts to obtain comfort by my own works. Dickens’ s cab-horse, which was only able to stand because it was never taken out of the shafts, was strength and beauty itself compared with my starveling hopes propped up with resolutions and regulations. Wretches condemned to the galleys of the old French kings, whose only reward for incessant toils was the lash of the keeper, were in a more happy plight than I when under legal bondage. Slavery in mines where the sun never shines must be preferable to the miseries of a soul goaded by an awakened conscience to seek salvation by its own merits. Some of the martyrs were shut up in a dungeon called Little-ease; the counterpart of that prison-house I well remember. Iron chains are painful enough, but what is the pain when the iron enters into the soul? Tell us not of the writhings of the wounded and dying on the battle-field; some of us, when our heart was riddled by the artillery of the law, would have counted wounds and death a happy exchange. O blessed Saviour, how blissful was the hour when all this horrid midnight of the soul was changed into the day-dawn of pardoning love! (C. H. Spurgeon.)On justifying righteousness in connection with true faith I. The doctrine of justification.1. Guard here against two errors: (1) That of those who conceive of justification as originating with the creature instead of the Creator; (2) That Of those who exclude man, not only from meritorious acting, but from all concern in the reception of the boon. 2. That we may attach distinct ideas to the word, “ justification,” it is necessary for us to consider it in reference to the attributes and revealed will of the Divine Lawgiver. 3. Justification is vouchsafed to rebellious men on precisely the same ground as if they had continued steadfast and immoveable in their allegiance. 4. Justification includes pardon of sin, whether original or actual, and acceptance as righteous. Both are due to the voluntary substitution of the Son of God in our nature, who, by active obedience, fulfilled the law to the uttermost; and by penal suffering redeemed us from its curse. II. The nature of the faith by which we are justified.1. Its Divine origin. Like every other good gift, it comes from above; is implanted in the soul by the Holy Spirit, without whose omnipotent agency mankind are never withdrawn from a vain confidence in human deservings. 2. Its appropriating character. In the experience of the true believer, faith must attach itself to Christ as a Redeemer sufficient not only for other sinners, but all-sufficient for him; it must lay hold on His doings and sufferings, as supplying him with a sure ground of confidence. 3. The faith which is connected with justification is inseparably conjoined with all other Christian graces. Grievous mistakes have proceeded in consequence of men putting asunder things which God has joined together in the bonds of sacred union. Thus, faith has been often viewed as a simple act of the understanding conversant with certain doctrines, whilst its relation to the affections of the heart and the virtues of character has been greatly overlooked. III. The evidences which scripture furnishes of a justified condition.1. Indications of which we are personally conscious (Acts 24:16; 1 Timothy 1:5; 1 Timothy 1:19; 1 Peter 3:16, etc.). 2. External manifestations which our temper, converse, and ordinary transactions supply (Philippians 4:8). (John Smyth, D. D.)Justification and its method I. The nature of justification. It includes--1. The pardon of sin (Acts 13:38-39; Romans 4:5; Romans 4:8). Thus God remits the penalties of sin. “ Upon this ground of a moral concurrence in the mind of the sinner with the reasons and intentions of the Redeemer’ s sufferings, God is graciously willing to remit the punishment of sin, in its greatest and most awful inflictions, those which are spiritual and eternal.” 2. The enjoyment of the favour of God. God’ s declaration of pardon is not in word only, but also in power. “ It is not a mere judgment in words, but is also a judgment in deeds, i.e., the favour of God to any one shows itself in actual blessing.” The possession of this blessing secures a happiness that is pure, perfect, and abiding. But to guard this doctrine from abuse it is necessary to remember--1. That it does not mean that Christ has taken the part of the sinner against the law or against God. None ever gave such honour to the law as Christ did. 2. Those who are justified are not thereby declared to be innocent. “ God justifies the ungodly.” Sin remains the same, and although its penalty has been remitted by an act of grace, the pardoned should come before Gad with the most profound humiliation (Ezekiel 16:62-63). 3. Justification depends upon personal trust. God does not save the careless or the unbelieving, or those who cease to confide in Him. II. The method of justification. “ To have a complete view of this method we must consider the originating, the meritorious, and the instrumental cause of justification.”1. The originating cause is the love of God (John 3:16; Titus 3:4-5). 2. The meritorious cause is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. His life was absolutely holy. In Him there was no sin. Yet He suffered, as none had ever suffered before; but He suffered for the guilty, the just for the unjust. “ It is entirely agreeable to the dictates of reason and justice that the perfect righteousness of another (if such could be found) should be available, under a constitution of Divine mercy, to procure the pardon and acceptance as righteous of sinful beings, who are otherwise under an absolute incapacity of obtaining these blessings.” It is manifest that all the conditions essential to a Redeemer have been fulfilled by Christ (Romans 3:21; Romans 3:26). 3. The instrumental cause of justification is faith. “ We are justified by the faith of Christ.” The faith which justifies has been defined as including “ three distinct but concurrent exertions of the mind.”1. The assent of the understanding to the truth of the testimony of God in the gospel. 2. The consent of the wilt and affections to the plan of salvation; such an approbation and choice of it as imply a renunciation of every other refuge, and a steady and decided adherence to this. 3. Actual trust in the Saviour and personal apprehension of His merits. Faith that justifies is a “ sincere, active, affectionate receiving and resting upon the testimony of the Scriptures concerning the Lord Jesus Christ as a Divine and complete Saviour.” But it must be remembered that faith is not a meritorious condition, but simply that by which the soul embraces Christ and enters into union with him. Lessons:1. Justification cannot be attained by any human work. The most highly-privileged have to submit to be saved by grace. The works of the law cannot justify. If obedience to moral rule cannot merit pardon, how much less can ritual or ceremony? 2. Faith in Christ is the only way of salvation of which the gospel speaks; to reject Christ therefore must leave all the burden of sin upon the individual conscience. (R. Nicholls.)Definition of a Christian We make this definition of a Christian: that a Christian is not he which hath no sin, but he to whom God imputeth not his sin, through faith in Christ. This doctrine bringeth great consolation to poor afflicted consciences in serious and inward terrors. It is not without good cause, therefore, that we do so often repeat and beat into your minds, the forgiveness of sins and imputation of righteousness for Christ’ s sake: also that a Christian hath nothing to do with the law and sin, especially in the time of temptation. For in that he is a Christian, he is above the law and sin. For he hath Christ the Lord of the law present and enclosed in his heart, even as a ring hath a jewel or precious stone enclosed in it. Therefore, when the law accuseth and sin terrifieth him, he looketh upon Christ, and when he hath apprehended Him by faith, he hath present with him the Conqueror of the law, sin, death, and the devil; who reigneth and ruleth over them, so that they cannot hurt him. Wherefore a Christian man, if ye define him rightly, is free from all laws, and is not subject unto any creature, either within or without: in that he is a Christian, I say, and not in that he is a man or a woman; that is to say, in that he hath his conscience adorned and beautified with this faith, this great and inestimable treasure, this unspeakable gift which cannot be magnified and praised enough, for it maketh us the children and heirs of God. And by this means a Christian is greater than the whole world; for he hath such a gift, such a treasure in his heart, that although it seemeth to be but little, yet notwithstanding the smallness thereof, is greater than heaven and earth, because Christ, which is this gift, is greater. (Luther.)The Christian’ s righteousness derived from Christ The righteousness wherein we must be found, if we will be justified, is not our own … Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are found in Him. In Him God findeth us, if we be faithful; for by faith we are incorporated into Him. Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man who in himself is impious, full of iniquity, full of sin; him being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in hatred through repentance; him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putting away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto by pardoning it; and accepteth him in Jesus Christ, as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law: shall I say more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law! I must take heed what I say: but the apostle saith, “ God made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Such we are in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom, and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered; that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God. (Richard Hooker.)Faith alone justifies Suppose I say, “ A tree cannot be struck without thunder” ; that is true: for there is never destructive lightning without thunder. But again, if I say, “ The tree was struck by lightning without thunder, that is true too, if mean that the lightning alone struck it without the thunder striking it. Yet read the two assertions, and they seem contradictory. So, in the same way, St. Paul says, “ Faith justifies without works” ; i.e., faith alone is that which justifies us, not works. But St. James says, “ Not a faith which is without works.” There will be works with faith, as there is thunder with lightning; but just as it is not the thunder, but the lightning (the lightning without the thunder) that strikes the tree: so it is not the works which justify. Put it in one sentence: Faith alone justifies, but not the faith which is alone. Lightning alone strikes, but not the lightning which is alone without thunder, for that is only summer lightning, and harmless. (F. W. Robertson. , M. A.)Faith unites to Christ As the graft is kept in union with the stock by means of the clay which has been applied by the gardener, so is the believer united to Christ by faith, which is the gift of God. The clay cement keeps the parts together, but has no virtue in itself: so faith is the means of union with Christ; it shows that the husbandman has been there. When the clay is removed in an ordinary tree, the graft is found united to the stock; so, when faith is swallowed up in sight, then the perfect union of Christ and His people is seen. (J. H. Balfour.)Faith an instrument Faith is technically called the instrumental cause of our justification. It is not therefore faith that justifies, but Christ: faith is the hand that grasps Him. The trust of some is in a strong faith, of others in certain frames and feelings; but both of these err in their mode of looking at salvation. In so far as they look not to Christ, in His life and death, as the one only Justifier, they will surely suffer damage to their spiritual life. (J. G. Pilkington.)Faith a venture Faith is nothing else but the soul’ s venture It ventures to Christ, in opposition to all legal terrors. It ventures on Christ, in opposition to our guiltiness. It ventures for Christ, in opposition to all difficulties and discouragements. (W. Bridge.)Justification by faith Why hath God appointed the eye to see, and not the ear? Why the hand to take our food, rather than the foot? It is easily answered: Because those members have a particular fitness for these functions, and not the other. Thus faith hath a fitness for the work of justification peculiar to itself. We are justified, not by giving anything to God--what we do--but by receiving from God, what Christ hath done for us. Now faith is the only receiving grace, and therefore only fit for this office. (W. Gurnall.)How faith justifies Some make works their righteousness; some make faith their righteousness; and they walk in this faith, not in Christ by faith; but it is not faith that saves merely, but Christ received by faith. As it is not the laying on the plaster that heals the sore, but the plaster itself that is laid on; so it is not our faith, or receiving of Christ, but Christ received by faith, that saves us. It is not our looking to the brazen serpent mystical, but the mystical brazen serpent looked upon by faith--Christ received by faith--that saves us. (Erskine.)The justifying power of faith Faith is receiving Christ into our emptiness. There is Christ like the conduit in the market-place. As the water flows from the pipes, so does grace continually flow from Him. By faith I bring my empty pitcher and hold it where the water flows, and receive of its fulness grace for grace. It is not the beauty of my pitcher, it is not even its cleanness that quenches my thirst: it is simply holding that pitcher to the place where water flows. Even so I am but the vessel, and my faith is the hand which presents the empty vessel to the flowing stream. Is it not grace, and not the qualification of the receiver which saves the soul? And though I hold that pitcher with a trembling hand, and much of that which I seek may be lost through my weakness, yet if the soul be but held to the fountain, that so much as a single drop trickle into it, my soul is saved. (C. H. Spurgeon.)No safety in our works In the twenty-eighth year of the Emperor Tan Kwang, the rise of the river Yangtze was higher than it had been for a hundred years or more. The loss of property was incalculable. Old Doctor Tat, who well remembers the occurrence, gave me the account. “ Were there many lives lost?” I asked. “ Numbers,” said he. “ It was something like obtaining salvation from sin,” he continued. “ The rich, who had well-built houses, trusted to them, and went to the upper story, thinking themselves safe. But the flood increased. The foundations gave away; and the house to which they trusted, fell and buried them in its ruins, or in a watery grave. But the poor, knowing that their mud-built huts could not stand the rising flood, fled in time to the neighbouring hills; and though they lost all, yet they themselves were saved.” Faith is trusting God Some time ago I remember reading of an incident that occurred between a prince in a foreign land and one of his subjects. This man for rebellion against the government was going to be executed. He was taken to the guillotine block. When the poor fellow reached the place of execution he was trembling with fear. The prince was present and asked him if he wished anything before judgment was carried out. The culprit replied: “ A glass of water.” It was brought to him, but he was so nervous he couldn’ t drink it. “ Do not fear,” said the prince to him, “ judgment will not be carried out till you drink that water,” and in an instant the glass was dashed to the ground and broken into a thousand pieces. He took that prince at his word. Not justified by the works of the law I. The means of justification here rejected. II. The means acknowledged and exhibited. Faith--1. In what.2. In what sense.3. To what extent. Learn:1. That guilt does not prevent justification.2. No circumstances constitute an exception to the mode of justification.3. Justification is within the reach of all who can believe. (S. Martin.)I. Justification.1. It includes-- (1) freedom from guilt;(2) Divine acceptance. 2. It is grounded on obedience to the law-- (1) Personally or(2) by substitute. The former justifies unfallen angels, the latter by Christ accepted justifies the sinner. II. The Instrument Of justification--Faith. (J. C. Jones.)The causes of justification I. The meritorious cause--Christ. II. The instrumental cause--Faith. The faith of Christ.1. The faith which Christ makes possible.2. The faith which Christ gives.3. The faith which Christ receives.4. The faith through which Christ comes.5. The faith by which Christ works.6. The faith which Christ will crown. The works of the law here (Romans 3:20) and elsewhere are undoubtedly the works required generally by the law of the old covenant--not ceremonial as contradistinguished from moral, nor moral as contradistinguished from ceremonial--but whatever of one kind and another it imposed in the form of precept--the law, in short, as a rule of right and wrong laid in its full compass on the consciences of men; but pre-eminently, of course, the law of the Ten Commandments, which lay at the heart of the whole, and was its pervading root and spirit. By deeds of conformity to this law they knew that they could not be justified, because they had not kept it. (Fairbairn.)The impossibility of justification by the works of the law Because-- I. Man is flesh.1. Depraved by natural corruption.2. Obnoxious by actual transgression. II. His best obedience is necessarily imperfect. III. All he does or can do is a due debt owing to the law.1. He owes all possible obedience to the law as a creature. 2. But by performing his obligation as a creature he can never pay his debts as a transgressor. IV. Christ alone is able to justify him. (J. Vaughan.)The law abolished The superiority of the Judaic ritual over the heathen arose from its being the shadow of good things to come. But it had now fulfilled its task, and ought to be allowed to drop away. It is not for the sake of the calyx, but for the sake of the corolla that we cultivate the flower, and the calyx may drop away when the flower is fully blown. To cling to the shadow when it had been superseded by the substance was to reverse the order of God. (F. W. Farrar.)In a sermon preached at York Minster shortly after the death of the late Dean (Augustus Duncombe) Canon Body said: “ A few days before his departure I was by his bedside, and in course of conversation alluded to his work for the Church, and the brave way he contended for the faith. He stopped me, saying, ‘ Say nothing of that. When you are where I am now you will see nothing will bear looking at of one’ s own. There is only one trust then, the infinite mercies of the Saviour: I said, True, it is peace, is it not, with you now: He replied, ‘ Perfect peace, thank God, perfect peace.’” Justification impossible by the law I. All men have sinned-are consequently under the sentence of the law. II. The office of the law is not to acquit the sinner--but to detect--expose--and condemn his sin. III. The works of the law only avail for the innocent--the works of a sinner are defective in principle and extent--cannot possibly reverse or atone for the past. IV. All a sinner can expect from the law is aggravated punishment--his sins multiply--become more sinful by the rejection of Christ. (J. Lyth.)The end and design of the Jewish law We may proceed to observe more particularly that the apostle, designing on one hand to magnify the gospel by setting forth its sufficiency to salvation, and on the other hand to demonstrate the insufficiency and unnecessariness of the ceremonial observances of the Jewish law, does all along make use of such terms to express the Christian and Jewish religion by, as may best serve to set forth the excellency of the one, and diminish the opinion which men had taken up of the necessity of the other. And,1. Because the first and most fundamental duty of the gospel is believing in God, and believing that most perfect revelation of His will which He has made to mankind by our Saviour Jesus Christ; whereas, on the contrary, the principal part of that religion which the Judaizing Christians so earnestly contended for was an anxious observance of the burdensome rites of the ceremonial law; therefore the apostle calls the Christian religion “ faith,” and the Jewish religion the law (Romans 3:28). Do we then, as some men object, by our preaching up the Christian religion, disannul and make void the law of God or that revelation of His will which He made to the Jews? No, we are so far from that, that by introducing Christianity we establish, confirm, and perfect the moral and immutable part of the law much more effectually than the Jewish ceremonies were able to do. 2. Because the Christian religion teaches us to expect salvation not from our own merits, but from the grace of God, that is, according to the terms of that new and gracious covenant wherein God has promised to accept of sincere repentance and amendment, instead of perfect unsinning obedience; whereas, on the contrary, the Jews depended upon their exact performance of the works of the law; therefore the apostle calls the Christian religion “ grace,” and the Jewish he styles “ works” (Romans 11:5-6). 3. Because the duties of the Christian religion are almost wholly moral and spiritual, respecting the inward disposition of the heart and mind; whereas on the contrary the ceremonies of the Jewish law were for the most part external; and as the Apostle to the Hebrews styles them, carnal ordinances, respecting chiefly the outward purification of the body; therefore the apostle calls the Christian religion “ spirit,” and the Jewish he styles “ flesh.” Thus in the Epistle to the Romans 8:3, 4. Thus also in the Epistle to the Galatians 3:3; “ Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” i.e., Are ye so weak as to think, that after ye have embraced the gospel of Christ, ye can become yet more perfect by observing the ceremonies of the Jewish law. First, The Jewish religion having proved insufficient to make men truly holy, as natural religion also had before done, there was therefore a necessity of setting up another institution of religion, which might be more available and effectual to that end. Now the setting up a new institution of religion, necessarily implying the abolishing of the old, it follows that Christianity was not to be added to Judaism, but that Judaism was to be changed into Christianity, i.e., that the Jewish religion was from thenceforward to cease, and the Christian religion to succeed in its room. This argument the apostle insists upon in chaps, 1., 2., 5., 6., and 7. to the Romans, and in chaps, 1. and 4. to the Galatians. The Jewish law was an institution of religion adapted by God in great condescension to the weak apprehensions of that people; but when the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son Jesus Christ to institute a more perfect form of religion, after the settlement of which in the world the former dispensation was to cease. And that it must needs do so, is evident also from the nature of the thing itself; for as after remission of sin obtained by the sufficient sacrifice of Christ, there needed no more legal sacrifices to be offered for sin; so in all other its ritual parts, the first covenant was in course taken away by establishing the second; there being necessarily a dis-annulling of the commandment going before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof (Hebrews 7:18). That, Secondly, The sum and essence of all religion is obedience to the moral and eternal law of God. Since therefore the ceremonies of the Jewish law were never of any esteem in the sight of God, any otherwise than as they promoted this great end, and prepared men’ s hearts for the reception of that more perfect institution of religion, wherein God was to be worshipped and obeyed in spirit and in truth; ‘ tis manifest that when this more perfect institution of religion was settled, the former and more imperfect one was to cease. This argument the apostle insists on in the second chapter to the Romans, and in the third to the Galatians. Thirdly, The religion of Abraham was acceptable to God, before the giving of the law; the Scripture saying expressly that the gospel was preached before unto Abraham: and consequently it could not but be acceptable likewise, after the abolishing of the law. Lastly, That by the posterity of Abraham, were not meant strictly those who descended from Abraham according to the flesh; but the children of the promise (that is, as many as are of the faith of Abraham) shall be counted for the seed. That the true religion therefore, and the service of God, was not to be confined always to the nation of the Jews, who were the posterity of Abraham according to the flesh; but the Gentiles also, which believe, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith; that is, those of all nations as well Gentiles as Jews, who embrace the gospel, which is the same with the religion of Abraham, shall be justified with faithful Abraham. And this argument the apostle insists upon in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, and in the fourth to the Galatians. And now from what has been said, I shall, in order to practice, draw two or three useful inferences; and so conclude. And, 1. From hence it appears, that though the essence of religion be eternally and immutably the same, yet the form and institution of it may be and often has been changed. The essence of all religion is obedience to that moral and eternal law, which obliges us to imitate the life of God in justice, mercy, and holiness, that is, to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. But though religion itself be thus immutably the same, yet the form and institution thereof may be different. When natural religion, because of its difficulty and obscurity in the present corrupt estate of human nature, proved ineffectual to make men truly religious; God left them no longer to the guidance of their reason only, but gave them first the Patriarchal and afterwards the Mosaic dispensation; and when this also, by reason of its being burdened with so many ritual observances, proved ineffectual to the same great end, God abolished this form of religion also, and instituted the Christian. In all which proceeding there is no reflection at all upon the immutable nature of God: for as the Divine nature is in the truest and highest sense unchangeable, so religion itself in its nature and essence is likewise unchangeable; but as the capacities, the prejudices, and the circumstances of men are different; so the institution and outward form of that religion, which in its essence is always the same, may be and hath been changed by the good pleasure of God. 2. If the whole and only design of St. Paul, in these Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, be to prove that God hath indeed made this change of the institution of religion from the Jewish to the Christian, and to vindicate His justice in so doing, then we ought never so to understand any passages in these Epistles, as if the apostles designed to magnify one Christian virtue in opposition to all or any of the rest; but only that he would set forth the perfection of the virtues of the Christian religion without the ceremonies of the Jewish. Thus when he tells us that we are justified by faith without works, we must by no means interpret it, as some have absurdly done, of the faith of the Christian religion in opposition to the works of the Christian religion; but of the faith of the gospel, in opposition to the external works of the Jewish law. But as to the works of the Christian religion, the same apostle everywhere urgeth their necessity; and particularly the five last chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, are a most earnest exhortation to be fruitful therein. 3. From hence it follows that there is no contradiction between St. Paul and St. James, when the one says that a man is justified by faith without works, and the other says that faith without works cannot justify; for the one speaks professedly of the works of the Jewish religion, and the other of the works of the Christian. Lastly, If St. Paul so severely treated the Judaizing Christians, as to call them perverters of the gospel of Christ, and esteem them as preachers of another gospel; then let us also take heed lest on the authority of men we preach or obey at any time any other gospel than what Christ and His apostles preached and obeyed. (S. Clarke, D. D.)Justification I. In what manner justification cannot be obtained. “ We are justified not by the works of the law.” It will naturally be asked, what is meant by “ the law,” as spoken of here by the apostle? To this I reply, reference is no doubt here made to the ceremonial law, and hence to circumcision, and the other rites and ceremonies enjoined by that ritual. By these things, however, a man cannot be justified. Nor can the moral law, as embodied in the Ten Commandments, do so; for the whole tenor of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, declares, with reference to man as a sinner, “ We are justified not by works of the law.” As given to Adam, when a perfect creature, the moral law (comprised in one brief injunction, as the test of his obedience) was ordained unto life, and was calculated, if observed, to perpetuate life; but as given to us, who are fallen and corrupt, it is only calculated to produce death, showing us our guilt, and our consequent desert of death as the punishment of that guilt. Like the angel, then, with the flaming sword at the east of the garden of Eden, the law drives us from itself that we may seek salvation elsewhere. And whither does it drive us? This we shall see while we notice-- II. In what manner justification can be obtained. “ We have believed in Jesus Christ.”1. We are justified by believing in what Christ did. The Lord Jesus Christ, made of a woman, made under the law, obeyed the law perfectly in our behalf. But we are justified by believing, not only in what Christ did, but also-- 2. In what Christ suffered. Having thus, in accordance with the words of our text, stated in what manner we cannot, and in what manner we can, be justified before God, I now proceed to apply the subject, in the way of warning and of consolation.1. Warning. The reason, my brethren, why St. Paul was so earnest upon this matter was, because he felt that the eternal salvation of multitudes was herein involved. I ask, if you are conscious that you are sinners against God, how are your sins to be forgiven? You reply, that “ you hope your good moral character will screen your secret deficiencies.” But, brethren, trust not in such a spider’ s web. Such a confidence will assuredly fail you when you most want it. You cannot have a debtor-and-creditor account with God. Perhaps you are saying, “ God is merciful, and will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss.” God is merciful; but you must remember that He is at the same time just, and that He will by no means clear the guilty. Do you say, that “ you will do your best, and leave Christ to make up the remainder?” In that case you make Christ a divided Saviour. If, again, you would plead “ your sincere obedience,” you must remember that God is a perfect God, and can therefore accept nothing short of a perfect obedience. No, brethren; in Christ, and Christ alone, must be our confidence. I need not, however, I trust, remind those of you who profess to esteem Christ as all your salvation and all your desire, that although you hold the truth, there is danger, if you watch not, of holding that truth in unrighteousness. The sun, by his bright beams, not only expels the cold, but causes heat and fruitfulness also. So is it in the justification of a sinner. There is not only the pardon of sin, but likewise an infusion of grace and holiness. While, therefore, we profess that we are justified, not by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ, let us also remember to go on “ perfecting holiness in the fear of God. The subject, however, supplies us not only with a word of warning, but also with one of-2. Consolation. Blessed be God, “ the doctrine that we are justified by faith is,” as our article expresses it, “ not only a most wholesome doctrine, but also one very full of comfort.” And, brethren, it ought to be a source of the highest consolation to you to remember how complete is this gift. (C. Clayton, M. A.) Galatians 2:17 But if, while we seek to be Justified by Christ. I. The blasphemy of making Christ the minister of sin. II. The perfect sufficiency of Christ for the justification of His people. III. The impertinence of the doctrine of justification by works; as--1. Impossible.2. Needless. IV. The motive that the justified have to live righteously. (W. Perkins.)Justification by Christ guarded I. A privilege.1. Christ has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. (1) Fulfilled the law;(2) borne the penalty of its infractions; and thus(3) delivered us from its claims. 2. He has secured for us (1) pardon,(2) acceptance,(3) Divine privileges. II. The abuse of this privilege.1. The legalists nullified it, and thus became sinners by (1) sinfully rejecting the only means of salvation;(2) seeking justification in that which could only intensify the sense of sin. The Antinomians who made it an encouragement to sin. III. The logical consequences of this abuse.1. In the case of the legalists: if Christ fails to remove sin and the works of the law are still necessary, then Christ ministers to sin by delusive offers of salvation. 2. In the case of the Antinomians: if justification is only an incentive to presumption, Christ is morally chargeable with its guilt. IV. The apostle’ s horror at this conclusion.1. It is blasphemous.2. It is preposterous. (1) Justification in Christ is complete and effectual.(2) It is the strongest incentive to righteousness (Galatians 2:19). Grace and Duty Griffiths says that travellers in Turkey carry with them lozenges of opium, on which is stamped “ mash Allah,” the gift of God. Too many sermons are just such lozenges. Grace is preached but duty denied. Divine predestination is cried up, but human responsibility is rejected. Such teaching ought to be shunned as poisonous, but those who by reason of use have grown accustomed to the sedative, condemn all other preaching, and cry up their opium lozenges of high doctrine as the truth, the precious gift of God. It is to be feared that this poppy-juice doctrine has sent many souls to sleep who will wake up in hell. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The wickedness of Christians no argument against Christianity One of the greatest and most plausible objections alleged by unbelievers against the Divine institution of the christian religion, is the smallness of the influence it may seem to have upon the lives and manners of its professors. It were natural to expect, if God condescended to give men an express revealed law, and to send so extraordinary a person as His own Son to promulgate that law upon earth; it were natural to expect, it should have some very visible and remarkable effect in the world, answerable to the dignity of the thing itself, and worthy of its great Author. Are there to be met withal, in the lives and manners of Christians, any considerable marks or distinguishing characters, by which it might be judged that they are really under the influence and peculiar guidance of such a Divine director? Is there, among those who call themselves Christians, less of profaneness and impiety towards God, less of fraud, injustice, and unrighteousness toward men, than among the professors of other religions? Is there not too plainly the same boundless ambition, the same insatiable covetousness, the same voluptuousness and debauchery of manners, to be found among them, as among other men? Nay, have not moreover the pretences even of religion itself, been the immediate and direct occasion of the bitterest and most implacable animosities, of the cruellest and most bloody wars, of the most barbarous and inhumane persecutions? Have not the greatest vices and immoralities of all kinds received too plain an encouragement from the reliance upon a power of repeating continually certain regular and periodical absolutions: and, much more, from an imagination that the practices of a vicious life may be compensated before God by the observance of certain weak and ridiculous ceremonies, and made amends for by superstitious commutations? Lastly, and beyond all this, hath not even the grace of God, as the apostle expresses it, been itself too frequently turned into wantonness? I. The wickedness of the lives of those who call themselves Christians is no argument at all against the truth and excellency of the Christian religion itself. Natural and necessary causes always and necessarily produce effects proportional to their natural powers; so that from the degree or quantity of the effect, may always certainly be judged the degree of power and efficacy in the cause. But in moral causes the case is necessarily and essentially otherwise. In these, how efficacious soever the cause be, yet the effect always depends on the will of the person upon whom the effect is to be worked, whether the cause shall at all produce its proper effect or no. For as, where no Law is, there is no transgression; so on the other side, and for the same reason, where there is law, not obeyed, that law worketh wrath; and sin, by this commandment, becomes exceeding sinful. Were therefore the effect always to be the measure, in judging of the goodness and excellency of a cause, the best and wisest laws would often, upon account of their very excellency, be the worst. And the same may, in proportion, be said concerning reason itself, even the absolute and necessary reason of things. The more we are sensible of the reasonableness and necessity of moral obligations, the worse is our condition if we act unreasonably. Yet reason is of essential excellency, eternally and immutably; being the necessary result of the nature and truth of things: and the commandments of God who cannot err, are always holy and just and good (Romans 7:12). If, therefore, it be no objection against the excellency of reason itself, that it very often is not able to make men act reasonably, and no diminution to the Divine commandments in general, that they frequently not only fail of reforming men’ s manners, but even on the contrary do moreover make sin to become the more exceedingly sinful; then, for the same reason, neither against the truth and excellency of Christianity in particular can any argument be drawn from the wickedness of the lives of those who profess themselves Christians. But-- II. Though the practice of any wickedness whatsoever, affords no real argument against Christianity itself, yet it is always matter of very great and just reproach to the professors of this holy religion, as being the utmost contradiction and the highest possible inconsistency with their profession. Just as the Jews of old, who perpetually styled themselves the people of God, and yet fell into the vices of the heathen nations. But when anything which is a part of the Christian doctrine is itself in particular made a direct ground and immediate cause of wickedness, the case then is infinitely worse, and the reproach unspeakably greater. When the gospel is not only rendered ineffectual to prevent sin, but Christ (as the apostle in the text expresses it) made to be Himself the minister of sin; this is what St. Jude calls, “ Turning the grace of God into lasciviousness” ; or, in St. Peter’ s language, it is, by means of the very “ promise of liberty,” making men the “ servants of corruption.” And of the same kind are those Christians at all times and in all places, who, upon any pretence whatsoever, set up any expedients, of whatever sort they be, either in point of doctrine or practice; as equivalents to be accepted of God, in the stead of virtue and true goodness. III. The third and last thing I proposed to show, was, that from what has been said, there arises a very plain and easy rule by which we may judge of the malignity and dangerousness of any error in matters of religion. In proportion as the error tends to reconcile any vicious practice with the profession of religion, or (as the text expresses it) to make Christ the minister of sin, in the same proportion is the doctrine pernicious, and the teachers of it justly to be deemed corrupt. By their fruits ye shall know them. All other tests may possibly be deceitful. Fair speeches, great learning and abilities, fervent zeal, numbers, authority, strict observance of ceremonies, even worldly austerities, and the appearances of the most devotional piety; all these may possibly accompany a very false and very wicked religion. But the fruits of virtue and true goodness, these are marks which admit no counterfeit. (S. Clarke, D. D.) Galatians 2:18 For if I build again the things which I destroyed.I. Teachers are great offenders when good doctrine is joined to bad conversation. Good doctrine destroys the kingdom of darkness, bad doctrine builds it up again. II. Rulers are transgressors when good counsel which beats down wickedness goes with bad example, which sets it up again. III. Professors are great sinners when reformed religion and unreformed life are connected, for unreformed life builds again that which Christ hath destroyed. (W. Perkins.)The sinfulness of Judaistic practices In repairing to Christ, Peter had virtually pulled down the fabric of the law as the ground of justification (formally did so, under Divine direction, in the house of Cornelius); but in now returning to its observance as a matter of principle, he was again building it up, and in this he proved himself to be a transgressor: but how? I. Such vacillation, playing fast and loose with the things of God, was a serious moral obliquity. II. In the retrogression complained of there was involved a departure from the very aim of the law, which was to lead men to Christ. Peter, therefore-- III. Defeated the intention of the law, and acted toward it the part of a transgressor. (Fairbairn).Value of consistency In one of the older States resided an infidel, the owner of a saw-mill, situated by the side of a highway, over which a large portion of a Christian congregation passed every Sabbath to anti from the church. This infidel, having no regard for the Sabbath, was as busy, and his mill was as noisy, on that holy day as any other. Before long it was observed, however, that a certain time before service the mill would stop, remain silent, and appear to be deserted for a few minutes; when its noise and clatter would recommence and continue till about the close of the service, when for a short time it again ceased. It was soon noticed that one of the deacons of the church passed the mill to the place of worship during the silent interval; and so punctual was he to the hour, that the infidel knew just when to stop the mill, so that it should be silent while the deacon was passing, although he paid no regard to the passing of the others. On being asked why he paid this mark of respect to the deacon, he replied, “ The deacon professes just what the rest of you do; but he lives, also, such a life, that it makes me feel bad here (putting his hand upon his heart) to run my mill while he is passing.” (Elon Foster.) Galatians 2:19 For I through the law am dead to the law. Death and life I. Those who are justified are qualified for the highest service--“ living to God.” II. Living to god is dying to sin.1. The aim of crucifixion was the death of the body.2. Its means: the Cross.3. The death painful and protracted. So (1) the aim of soul crucifixion is the death of sin (Romans 6:6).(2) Its means: the Cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14).(3) The death, (a) painful (Matthew 5:29), (b) protracted (Romans 7:23). As Jesus lived to God by dying on the cross, so Christians live to God by dying to sin. III. The power by which the cross of christ is made effectual to the death of sin.1. By faith.2. By the indwelling of Christ.3. By the inspiration of Christ’ s love. (W. Harris.)Death to the law I. What it means--freedom from its dominion in respect of--1. The accusing and condemning sentence (Romans 8:1).2. Its power (Romans 7:8).3. Its vigour.4. The obligation of conscience to conform to its ceremonies. II. The instrument--the law itself.1. It accuses, terrifies, condemns, and thus urges us to fly Christ who is the cause of our death to the law. 2. The law goes before, and effects an entrance for law-killing grace. III. The end--living to God (Titus 2:12), which may be urged by the facts:1. That through Christ we belong to God (1 Corinthians 6:20); 2. That the purpose of our justification and redemption is practical godliness; 3. That heaven hereafter depends on godliness here. 4. That this is the supreme end of the ministry. (W. Perkins.)The paralyzing power of the sense of being alive to the law Sir Walter Raleigh to find a gold mine at Guiana for the king, went out on his last voyage under an unremitted sentence of death that had been passed upon him fifteen years before. No wonder that the magnetic consciousness of a sword dangling over him by a hair should benumb his brain, distract his faculties, and turn his enterprize into a long tangle of blunders and calamities. Pity the adventurer who goes out on an evangelistic enterprize under the unremitted sentence of the law, a preacher of Christ crucified who has himself to be crucified; alive to the law and dead to God. (C. Stanford, D. D.)Death to the law and life to God When he said “ I died, lest any one should say, “ How then dost thou live?” he subjoined also the cause of his life, and showed indeed that the law killed him when living, but that, Christ taking hold of him when dead, quickened him through death; and he exhibits a double wonder, both that Christ had recalled the dead to life, and through death had imparted life. (Chrysostom.)The Christian dead to the law What a collection of paradoxes might be made from St. Paul’ s Epistles. I. Let us examine the state in which the apostle describes himself to be--“ I am dead to the law;” but what can he mean by this? that the moral law of God has no longer any authority over him? We dare not say so. That moral law is the law of God’ s universal empire, of heaven and earth, and of all the worlds that are. The believer continues under its dominion as long as he is a creature. He must escape from existence before he can escape from the law of God. He means that he is dead to the law as a covenant between God and himself. The law in its relation to us is more than a simple authoritative declaration of God’ s will Besides commands, it consists of a promise and a threatening. This gives it the character of a covenant. He is dead to all hope from the law, to all expectation of salvation from it; he has no fear of condemnation from it. A man in his grave is free from every relationship of his former life; the servant is free from his master. So the believer, dead to the legal covenant, rests from it. II. The means whereby the apostle has been brought into the state he describes--“ I through the law am dead to the law.” This excludes a great number of those who call themselves Christians; who as regards their own feelings are utterly dead to it. They are dead to the law, to God, to Christ, to everything but the petty affairs of this life. But the apostle’ s deadness was brought about by the law itself. The extent of the law and its unbending denunciations render it impossible for us to make our way to God by it. It penetrates within a man; it reaches to the affections, the will, the thoughts, the whole mind and heart. You say this “ is hard and unreasonable.” Holy angels do not think so; they live under this law in happiness. But who, with a law like this before him, can hope for salvation from it? But this only partially accounts for St. Paul’ s deadness to the law. It explains how the law itself robbed him of all hope from it, but it does not tell us how he was saved from the fear of it. He was crucified with Christ. “ I have endured in the Person of my Redeemer the curse of the law, the chastisement of my sins has been laid upon him; and now when my faith is firm I no more fear the law than a debtor fears the bond which has been cancelled.” III. The design of this deadness to the law in the Christian’ s soul--“ That I might live unto God.” Naturally we know nothing of such a life as this. Through the influence of education, or the power of conscience, there may be some reference in our lives to God; it is but occasional and slight. Self is the ruling principle of our lives. This living to God dethrones self within the soul. The origin of this Divine life is that deadness to the law, which I began with describing. It is not a mere accompaniment of the deadness, but the effect of it; a life proceeding out of that death. His renunciation of his self-righteousness has gradually brought on other renunciations of self. The law driving him to Christ has been the happy means of driving him out of self altogether. It has brought him into the sphere of the gospel, and among those soul-stirring feelings connected with it. I can serve my God now, for He has set me free to serve Him. I can obey Him now and with delight, for He has brought me to love Him. It is not so much I who live this heavenly life; it is the God who dwells in heaven, who in condescension dwells in my soul. Learn:1. to think more, in the first instance, of the law; to endeavour more to understand its character, and to be brought under its power. There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the gospel has destroyed the law; the gospel is indeed based on it; you will never rightly estimate the gospel till you have rightly understood the law, as a covenant of condemnation. 2. Are we amongst those who have taken refuge from the condemnation of the law in the blood and righteousness of Christ? Then the law has done its work in us. (C. Bradley.)The law an obstacle in the way of salvation Suppose a man anxious to pass from one country to another, from a dangerous and wretched country to a safe and happy one. Directly in his road stands a mountain which, it would appear, he must pass over, and which he at first imagines he can without much difficulty climb. He tries, but scarcely has he begun to breast it, when a precipice stops him. He descends and tries again in another direction. There another precipice or some other obstacle arrests his course; and still ever as he begins his ascent, he is baffled, and the little way he contrives to mount serves only to show him more and more of the prodigious height of the mountain, and its stern, rugged, impassable character. At last, wearied and worn, heart-sick with labour and disappointment, and thoroughly convinced that no efforts of his can carry him over, he lies down at the mountain’ s foot in utter despair; longing still to be on the other side, but making not another movement to get there. Now ask him as he lies exhausted on the ground, what has occasioned his torpor and despair, he will say, that mountain itself; its situation between him and the land of his desires, and its inaccessible heights and magnitude. So stands the law of God between the Christian and the land he longs for. At first he thought he could obey it, so obey it as to find his way to God by it, and he made the effort, made perhaps many and long-continued efforts, but the result of them all has been disappointment and despair. The law itself has stripped him of all hope of getting to heaven by means of it. He is exactly in the situation of that traveller by the mountain’ s side, whom you can no longer prevail on to move. “ Of what use is it?” he says. “ I will try no more. I know the difficulty of the work, and I know my own weakness too well.” Here lies the difficulty, or rather the impossibility to such creatures as we are, of making our way to God by means of the law, here in these two things--the extent of that Jaw’ s requirements, and the unbending, inexorable character of its denunciations. (C. Bradley.)Dead to the law 1. They are dead unto the law in the matter of justification, as it holdeth forth the condition of the covenant of works; in this respect they are dead unto the law (Romans 7:3; Romans 7:6), for, by obedience to the law in their own persons, they are not now to expect justification by the works of the law. 2. They are dead unto the curse and condemning power of the law, whereby it adjudgeth all that transgresseth it unto death, and the wrath of God. The law threateneth death to all that transgress it, and bindeth this wrath on all that are alive to it, and not yet delivered from it. “ Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.” Hence it is, that he that “ believeth not is condemned already,” and “ the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:18; John 3:36). For there is now no “ condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). 3. They are dead unto the law, as to its libels, indictments, and accusations, tending to bring them again under the lash or curse of the law, and sentence of its condemnation; and this clearly floweth from the former; for from it they are delivered from the sentence of death in the law; they are delivered from all accusations tending thereunto (Romans 8:33). 4. They are dead to the law, as it exacteth full obedience, under pains of breach of the covenant. 5. They are dead unto the law, as it exacts full obedience in their own strength, without any help from another, in whole or in part; for, now, help for them is laid upon one who is mighty (Psalms 39:19), and God worketh all their works in them (Isaiah 26:12), and worketh in them both to will and to do (Philippians 2:13), so that in Christ that strengtheneth them, they can do all things (Philippians 4:13), and in Christ do they bring forth fruits (John 15:5). 6. They are dead to the law, as to its rigid obedience in their own persons; for the law, as such, doth not point out a contrary way; nor doth it positively admit of one, though it doth not positively exclude or refuse one. Adam, and all his posterity, were bound to personal obedience; but now the believer is freed from that rigidity, and has a cautioner, with whom he is one in law, to fulfil the law, and answer all its demands; and, by his obedience, they are made righteous, and attain to justification of life (Romans 5:15; Romans 5:19), so that they “ are complete in Him” (Colossians 2:10). 7. They are dead unto the law, as to its rigid exacting full and actual performance, not regarding any sincerity of intention. 8. They are dead unto the law, as to its enslaving power, keeping the soul in bondage for fear of the curse, and pressing obedience on the unwilling, with arguments only taken for fear of the curse; for, now, though all fears are not fully removed, yet are they under sweeter and milder motives and encouragements to obedience--the love of Christ now constraineth them (2 Corinthians 5:14). Thoughts of the benefits of redemption lay on strong and sweet ties, and oil the wheels of the soul; so that obedience now is sweet, filial, and kindly, not forced and constrained; for the heart is willing, and the soul delighteth in the law of the Lord after the inner man, and duties now flow out more natively. 9. They are dead to the law, in respect of its being the strength of sin, as the apostle terms it (1 Corinthians 15:36), so that they are now more free from sin than formerly, both as to its guilt and dominion; the law cannot now so charge home guilt upon them as formerly, Christ being now accepted of as cautioner (Matthew 12:18), and having made full satisfaction for the sinner of his own, the law cannot require double payment, or payment of both the cautioner and principal debtor; and therefore the believer is free of making any satisfaction to justice. This lets us then see what a change is made on the state of believers from what it formerly was.1. A great change, from being alive to the law and under its power, to a being dead unto the law. 2. It is a great change, and no imagined but a real change, having real effects, though it be a relative change; and this believers experience in themselves. 3. It is a necessary change, for, without it, no life nor salvation is obtained. 4. It is an honourable change. From slavery to freedom (John 8:36). 5. Therefore it is a most desirable change; for every one would desire to be free of a heavy yoke of slavery, and from under tyranny. How desirable, then, must it be to be free of this spiritual yoke, and this soul’ s tyranny, 6. It is a most advantageous and profitable change: For (1) There is much inward peace, quietness, and serenity of soul had hereby; the soul is now freed of these tossings and perturbations of mind that it was obnoxious unto before, by being under the restless and continual challenges and accusations of the law, and dreadful fear following thereupon; for the mouth of the law being stopped, the man is dead thereunto. (2) This change yieldeth much joy and consolation to the soul that formerly was tossed with tempest, and had no comfort, but filled with heartbreaking sorrow and grief, as seeing no outgate, but living in the fearful expectation of the terrible sentence of the law, which was as water to their wine; but this sorrow is now abated, by this freedom from the law. (3) This change is accompanied with a lively hope, which keepeth up the head, while before the poor soul was drowned in despair, sinking in that gulf, crying out, undone I and that it was cut off for its part, and so refused to be comforted! But it is not so now when dead unto the law. (4) It addeth courage to the soul that was before heartless for any duty, and casten down with despondency of spirit; for now the law is removed out of the way: And so, (5) It emboldeneth the soul, and gives it confidence in approaching to God. (J. Brown.)That I might live unto God I. We shall show what it is to live unto God, by pointing out some principal heads of, or ingredients in, as requisite to a living to God.1. A reconciliation with God. Enemies cannot please one another. 2. A new principle of life. A dead man, as such, cannot live to God. 3. A hearty complying with the law of God as their rule. 4. It includeth a walking by the guidance of the Spirit of God. 5. It taketh in a holy life in all manner of conversation, and the study of sanctification. 6. It taketh in a lively, holy, divine, and spiritual manner of performing commanded duties. 7. It taketh in an eying of God and His glory, with singleness of heart in what they are doing. 8. It includeth a fixed, stayed, and constant walking thus, not by fits and starts. II. That such as are alive yet unto the law cannot thus live unto God.1. They are yet married to their old husband, and not brought out of that state of enmity wherein they were and are (Romans 7:4). 2. They have no principle but the old principle of nature, helped a little with some education; for they are growing still upon the old stock of nature. 3. They are not subject unto the law of God, neither indeed can be (Romans 8:7), their will, ease, pleasure, etc., is all their care, with this their heart complieth. 4. Their guide is the flesh; for they walk after the flesh (Romans 8:4). 5. Instead of holiness, they are yielding themselves servants of unrighteousness unto sin, and sin is reigning in them, and being the servants of sin, they are free from righteousness (Romans 6:13-20). 6. All the service they do is in the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6), and not in newness of the Spirit; it is carnal, vain, and selfish, every way corrupt. 7. Their ultimate end is themselves; their own peace, quiet, ease, profit, esteem, to get a name, or to make a price to buy heaven to themselves, that they may have whereof to boast. 8. Their constant trade of life, is either to serve Satan, by following vile affections, their own lusts and pleasures, or the world; and thus their days are spent. (J. Brown.)Living unto God “ That which tells,” says Professor Henry Drummond, speaking of Mission work, “ is the Shepherd’ s life, his daily moving in and out amongst the people, and what is now wanted for Africa is a great many white men, with gentleness and kindness, and Christ-likeness, to simply go there and do nothing but live. If they can educate the people, so much the better.” Galatians 2:20-21I am crucified with Christ. The believer’ s riddle This verse enunciates three striking paradoxes which are realized in the experience of every Christian. I. The judicial paradox, or the mystery of the believer’ s legal standing. The believer, be it remembered, is a dead man to begin with, i.e., before he becomes a believer. In his natural condition he is an unpardoned transgressor, and therefore in the law’ s eye as good as dead. He is already taken, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced, shut up to the just judgment of wrath, and only waiting the hour of death to meet its execution. But now in Christ, who before the law acted as his representative, and for his sake became obedient unto death, he is executed too. So far as the claims of justice are concerned, he is crucified with Christ, i.e., Christ’ s crucifixion stands for his, and he personally is free. He has died, and yet he lives! II. The spiritual paradox, or the mystery of the believer’ s inner life. The moment a man becomes a believer, he at the same time becomes the subject of an inward change, by which his old corrupt nature of sin is destroyed, and a new principle of holy life is implanted. Christ lives in him. III. The practical paradox, or the mystery of the believer’ s outer walk. While living in the body and in the world the believer is not under the dominion of either, but regulates his conduct and conversation by principles superior to both--by faith in the Son of God. Christ’ s law is his rule of life; Christ’ s person the object of his love. Conclusion:1. The text examines us about our standing in the eye of the law. Are we crucified with Christ or not? 2. The character of our inner life. Are we spiritual men, or sensuous? 3. Our walk and conversation. Are we walking by faith, or by sight? (Anon.)Christus et ego I. The personality of the Christian religion. This verse swarms with I and me. Christianity brings out a man’ s individuality, not making him selfish, but making him realize his own separate existence, and compelling him to meditate on his own sin, his own salvation, his own personal doom unless saved by grace.1. In proportion as our piety is definitely in the first person singular, it will be strong and vigorous. 2. In proportion as we fully realize our personal responsibility to God shall we be likely to discharge it. II. The inter-weaving of our own proper personality with that of Jesus Christ. I think I see two trees before me. They are distinct plants growing side by side, but as I follow them downward, I observe that the roots are so interlaced and intertwisted that no one can trace the separate trees and allot the members of each to its proper whole. Such are Christ and the believer.1. Dead to the world with Christ.2. Alive to God in Christ.3. The link between Christ and the believer--faith.4. A union of love.5. A union by sacrifice. III. The life which results from this blended personality.1. A new life.2. A very strange life.3. A true life.4. A life of self-abnegation.5. A life of one idea.6. The life of a man.7. The life of heaven. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Practical faith Faith is not a piece of confectionery to be put upon drawing-room tables, or a garment to be worn on Sundays; it is a working principle, to be used in the barn and in the field, in the shop and on the exchange; it is a grace for the housewife and the servant; it is for the House of Commons and for the poorest workshop. I would have the believing cobbler mend shoes religiously, and the tailor make garments by faith, and I would have every Christian buy and sell by faith. Whatever your trade may be, faith is to be taken into your daily calling, and that is alone the true living faith which will bear the practical test. You are not to stop at the shop door and take off your coat and say, “ Farewell to Christianity till I put up the shutters again.” That is hypocrisy; but the genuine life of the Christian is the life which we live in the flesh by faith of the Son of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The Christian’ s life of faith Every moment the life of the Christian is to be a life of faith. We make a mistake when we try to walk by feeling or by sight. I dreamed the other night, while musing upon the life of the believer, that I was passing along a road which a Divine call had appointed for me. The ordained pathway which I was called to traverse was amid thick darkness, unmingled with a ray of light. As I stood in the awful gloom, unable to perceive a single inch before me, I heard a voice which said, “ Let thy feet go right on. Fear not, but advance in the name of God.” So on I went, putting down foot after foot with trembling. After a little while the path through the darkness became easy and smooth, from use and experience; just then I perceived that the path turned: it was of no use my endeavouring to proceed as I had done before; the way was tortuous, and the road was rough and stony; but I remembered what was said, that I was to advance as I could, and so on I went. Then there came another twist, and yet another, and another, and another, and I wondered why, till I understood that if ever the path remained long the same, I should grow accustomed to it, and so should walk by feeling; and I learned that the whole of the way would constantly be such as to compel me to depend upon the guiding voice, and exercise faith in the Unseen One who had called me. On a sudden it appeared to me as though there was nothing beneath my foot when I put it down, yet I thrust it out into the darkness in confident daring, and lo, a firm stop was reached, and another, and another, as I walked down a staircase which descended deep, down, down, down. Onward I passed, not seeing an inch before me, but believing that all was well, although I could hear around me the dash of falling men and women who had walked by the light of their own lanterns, and missed their foothold. I heard the cries and shrieks of men as they fell from this dreadful staircase; but I was commanded to go right on, and I went straight on, resolved to be obedient even if the way should descend into the nethermost hell. By and by the dreadful ladder was ended, and I found a solid rock beneath my feet, and I walked straight on upon a paved causeway, with a balustrade on either hand. I understood this to be the experience which I had gained, which now could guide and help me, and I leaned on this balustrade, and walked on right confidently till, in a moment, my causeway ended and my feet sank in the mire, and as for my other comforts I groped for them, but they were gone, for still I was to know that I must go in dependence upon my unseen Friend, and the road would always be such that no experience could serve me instead of dependence upon God. Forward I plunged through mire and filth and suffocating smoke, and a smell as of death-damp, for it was the way, and I had been commanded to walk therein. Again the pathway changed, though all was midnight still: up went the path, and up, and up, and up, with nothing upon which I could lean; I ascended wearily innumerable stairs, not one of which I could see, although the very thought of their height might make the brain to reel. On a sudden my pathway burst into light, as I woke from my reverie, and when I looked down upon it, I saw it all to be safe, but such a road that, if I had seen it, I never could have trodden it. My journey could only be accomplished in childlike confidence upon the Lord. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The life of faith I. Death to the law is the condition of life unto God.1. The part which the law performs in bringing about this death. By its own teaching the law proclaims its impotence, forbids our reliance on it, and prepares the way for Christ who delivers from its bondage. 2. The connection between death to the law and life unto God. Emancipation. Abject slavery exchanged for filial freedom. II. Life unto God is a life of faith in the Son of God. It introduces the believer to(1) a new power--even the power of a Divine life; (2) a new motive--love. The believer works no longer up to the point of acceptance with God, but from that of sin forgiven and acceptance secured. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Freedom from the law through death “ I am crucified with Christ” --wondrous words! I am so identified with Him that His death is my death. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him. I am so much one with Him under law and in suffering and death, that when He died to the law I died to the law. Through this union with Him I satisfied the law, yielded to it the obedience which it claimed, suffered its curse, died to it, and am therefore now released from it--from its accusations and its penalty, and from its claims on me to obey it as the means of winning eternal life. By means of law He died; it took Him and wrought its will on Him. As our Representative in whom we were chosen and in whom we suffered, He yielded Himself to the law, which seized Him and nailed Him to the cross. When that law seized Him, it seized at the same time all His in Him, and through the law they suffered and died to it. Thus it is that by the law taking action upon them as sinners they died to the law. (John Eadie, D. D.)Christ the source of sanctity What principle can tend to cherish tenderness, lowliness, modesty, recollectedness, dignity, quietness in speech and manner, devotion and the winning grace of a pervading charity, so effectually as the abiding consciousness of our Lord dwelling and walking in one’ s self as a tabernacle of His own gracious election, and in others as in oneself according to the same promise? What can so sustain the soul above natural desires, in a higher sphere of life, in an ever-upward advance towards the glory of the heavenly Court, as the instinctive sense, rooted and grounded in the soul’ s life, that there is a wedded union between the soul and the Lord who bought it with His own blood, and now Himself within it claims it for His own? What gives so keen a remorse at the hatefulness and horror of sin, as a conviction of its desecrating the organs, the limbs, the faculties which God inhabits and uses as the chosen vessel of His own sanctity? It is not what he himself is that forms the joy of the saint, nor the failing to be what God had willed him to be, that constitutes the remorse of the true penitent; but it is to the one the consciousness that God is in him, and he in God; and to the other the loss of a Presence in Whom alone is peace, and out of Whom is utter darkness. To realize what we are, or what we fail to be, we must appreciate what His abiding in us causes us to be. We can never truly look at ourselves separate from Him. Our power is His power in us. Our efforts are the putting forth of His strength. Our sin is, that after He had come to us, we resisted Him. (T. T. Carter, M. A.)Christ in man Christ liveth in the flesh still, in the body of every believer; not merely Jesus the humbled man, but Jesus the Christ of God; Jesus, who by the resurrection was declared to be the son of God with power, and proclaimed to angels and men as both Lord and Christ! Who liveth in me? Yourself! Nay, I am dead; I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I--Not thee! Ah, who then? “ Christ liveth in me.” Yes, the mighty God liveth in thee, believer. Not thyself; not thy poor, weak, helpless self; but Christ by His power, the power of His Spirit liveth in thee. Ah, why then dost thou talk about impossibilities? Why say, “ I cannot do this; I cannot do that; I cannot attain to this or to that; I cannot overcome this or that enemy” ? Thou speakest foolishly, if thou speakest thus: and if thou now persistest in saying so, thou wilt speak falsely, aye, and blasphemously too: for not thou, but Christ liveth in thee. And who is mighty as He? Is Satan too many for Him who trampled on the power of all His enemies, who triumphed over them openly, and who led captivity captive? Ah, and is the flesh too powerful for Him? Who is the man who says, “ I must sin--I must sin; while I continue in the flesh I must continue to sin” ? And is sin too great, too powerful for Jesus, for Him who, when in the flesh, a Man of sorrows, encompassed with infirmities, beset by perils, a weak man, overcame it, and remained holy, harmless, undefiled? Did He, when thus weak through the flesh, put sin far away from before His face? And shall He not, now that He sits on the right hand of the Majesty on high, prevail against all your sins? O speak not so lightly of Him and of His power! (Edward Irving, M. A.)The sinner’ s Substitute The Eternal Being gave Himself for the creature which His hands had made. He gave Himself to poverty, to toil, to humiliation, to agony, to the Cross. He gave Himself “ for me,” for my benefit; but also “ for me,” in my place. This substitution of Christ for the guilty sinner is the ground of the satisfaction which Christ has made upon the cross for human sin. But on what principle did the Sinless One thus take the place of the guilty? Was it, so to speak, an arbitrary arrangement, for which no other account can be given than the manifested will of the Father? No; the substitution of the suffering Christ for the perishing sinner arose directly out of the terms of the Incarnation. The human nature which our Lord assumed was none other than the very nature of the sinner, only without its sin. The Son of God took on Him human nature, not a human personality. He becomes the Redeemer of our several persons, because He is already the Redeemer of this our common nature, which He has made for ever His own (1 Corinthians 15:20). As human nature was present in Adam, when by his representative sin he ruined his posterity, So was human nature present in Christ our Lord, when by His voluntary offering of His Sinless Self, He “ bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” Christ is thus the second Head of our race. Our nature is His own. He carried it with Him through life to death. He made it do and bear that which was utterly beyond its native strength. His Eternal Person gave infinite merit to its acts and its sufferings. In Him it died, rose, ascended, and was perfectly well-pleasing to the All-Holy. Thus by no forced or artificial transaction, but in virtue of His existing representative relation to the human family, He gave Himself to be a ransom for all. (Canon Liddon.)Christ’ s universal love “ He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Each sinner, each saint around His cross might have used these words of the apostle. For His blessed mother and St. John; for the Roman judge and for the Roman soldiers; for the chief priest and for the Pharisee; for the vilest and hardest of His executioners, and for the thieves who hung dying beside Him, our Lord gave Himself to death. For all who have been first and greatest, for all who have been least and last in human history, for all whom we have loved or seen, for our separate souls, He gave Himself. True, His creatures indeed are still free to accept and appropriate or to refuse His gift. But no lost soul shall murmur hereafter that the tender loving-kindness of God has not willed to save it. No saint in glory shall pretend that aught in him has been accepted and crowned save the infinite merit, the priceless gifts of his Redeemer. The dying love of Jesus embraces the race, and yet it concentrates itself with direct--as it seems to us--with exclusive intensity upon each separate soul. He dies for all, and yet he dies for each; as if each soul were the solitary object of His incarnation and of His death. (Canon Liddon.)How Christian life is sustained A Christian life is the living Christ manifesting Himself. It is the vital power putting forth leaves and fruits--the vine sending out its strength into the branches. It cannot be too deeply impressed upon us that Christianity is a profound connection of the soul with Christ--that it is not the imitation of a splendid model, but the indwelling of a living Person--that the Christ form is only the outward development of the Christ nature, the life manifesting itself after its kind. You all know that the various forms of vegetable creation are sustained and perfected by a secret, silent, but resistless power which we call life. It is this that lifts the oak in the forest am! spreads its mighty branches to the storm; and this that carpets the earth with verdure and decks the fields with teeming flowers. In the great and in the small, in the tree and in the herb, in the pine of the mountain and the grasses of the field, this secret but resistless principle asserts its power. Now, thus is it with us as Christian men; our Christianity is a principle of life; we are not imitations, we are alive; we are not artificial flowers, we are flowers growing in the garden, branches growing in the vine. (J. W. Boulding.)Derived life Christ is our life. How His life is made to be, at the same time, our own, is a mystery of grace, of which you have seen types in the garden, where just now so many millions of God’ s thoughts are springing and growing into beautiful expression. You once grafted something on to a fruit tree. The process, though delicate, was most simple. You only had to be careful that there should be clean, clear, close contact between the graft and the tree. The smallest shred or filament of wrapping round the graft would have prevented the life of the tree from flowing into it. The weak, bleeding graft was fastened on to the strong stem just as it was, then in due time it struck, then gradually the tiny slip grew into the flourishing bough, and lately, as you stood looking at that miracle of tender formation and soft bright flush, you almost fancied it was conscious. It seemed to say, “ I live; nevertheless not I, but the tree liveth in me; and the life I now live in the foliage, I live by faith in the shaft of the tree. I trust to the tree only; every moment I am clinging to it, and without it I can do nothing.” (Chas. Stanford, D. D.)How Christ is appropriated by the individual soul My conception of Christ is that He is mine: not mine in any sense which appropriates Him to me alone; but mine as really and truly as though I were the only human being in the universe. My father was absolutely mine, although my next younger brother could say the same thing, and though every brother and sister could say the same thing. I had the whole of him, and each of my brothers and sisters had the whole of him. And I have the whole of my God. The God of all the heaven, and the God of the whole earth, and of time, and of physical law and its sequence, and of all invisible laws and their sequences--He is my God. (H. W. Beecher.)Man’ s double life We all live in the midst of two worlds--a material world and a spiritual world. The material world is visible to all. We see it, and deal with it, every moment. The spiritual world is visible only to those whose eyes have been supernaturally opened to see it. But the one is as real and as great a fact as the other. They both are close to us. And every man is a centre round which they both are circulating.1. The material world is the world of our senses. The spiritual world is the world of our faith. We come into the first at our natural birth; we enter the second at our regeneration. When we have entered it, it is far grander than the other. 2. The material world is beautiful and pleasant, but it has its dark shadows. It is not what it was once made to be. It brings its sorrows, disappointments, and regrets. It is always passing away. And soon, very soon, it will be but as the shadow of a dream! The spiritual world remains unfallen. It is hidden. But all the elements of our immortality are there, and it can never pass away. 3. In the material world are our friendships, ambitions, businesses, professions, earthly work, bodily pleasures. In the spiritual world are the ministrations of angels; the operations of the Holy Ghost, the presence of Christ; the sweet sense of pardon; the peace and love and service of God; an eternity begun; heaven always in sight; thoughts that satisfy; occupations that will never tire; joys that cannot fade. To the man who lives in the spiritual world, the material world is becoming small. He uses it, and enjoys it; but it is not his life. It is his servant, whom he employs; not his master, whom he obeys. And of that great spiritual and eternal world, which is about us everywhere, and in the midst of which, consciously or unconsciously, we are all walking every step, the circumference is glory--the key which opens it is faith--and its centre, from which all radiates and to which all converges, is the Son of God, His person and His work. (James Vaughan, M. A.)Life in Christ ;--Life--the higher and truer life of a man--resolves itself into one thing, viz., trust in Jesus. Expand that trust, and you will find it life--life indeed--life for ever. Consider this life. The question was, How can a sinner live at all, and not die? seeing God has said, “ The soul that sinneth it shall die;” and every one of us has sinned? Can God falsify His own word?1. When Jesus died we died. We died in Him. So we have died, and our death is passed. We can live, and God be true. 2. But what makes life? Union with life. Christ is life. We are united to Christ, as a member is united to the head. And as the member lives because the head lives, we live by and in the life of Jesus Christ. That is life. 3. Now life thus possible, and thus made--what is it? Life is to live in every part of our being--body, intellect, heart, soul. Now what can engage the whole man but religion? And what is religion? The indwelling of Christ and the service of God. 4. Then of that life what is the motive power? Love. The love of God. Who can really love God but those who are forgiven, and who therefore can feel, “ God is my Father” ? And who can say that out of Jesus Christ? 5. And of that life what is the root? The Exemplar, the great Exemplar--the pattern of Christ. 6. What is its aim and focus? To please and glorify Him to whom it owes itself. 7. What is its consummation and rest? The presence, and the image, and the enjoyment, and the perfect service of God throughout eternity. (James Vaughan, M. A.)The secret of the spiritual life The secret of this life, which alone is life, is faith. And what is faith? Trust. And what is trust? Taking God simply at His word. Now, let us see what God has said concerning this life. God has said--He has repeated it under many forms and by many images--“ Believe and live.” “ Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Now you must take that without any deduction, or any qualification, or any condition whatsoever. It is for all sinners--for sinners of every dye--without one single exception! The promise is to every one who will accept it. Accept what? Accept that the Son of God (and no other but the Son of God could do it, for no other would be an equivalent) the Son of God has, by His death, paid all the penalty and cancelled all your debt to God; and so the mandate has gone forth from the throne, “ Live!” “ Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.” That done, your life from that moment--if you have faith enough--may be a life without any fear. Your sins forgiven are sins buried. And buried sins have no resurrection. They shall “ never be mentioned.” They are “ remembered no more.” (James Vaughan, M. A.)Self-crucifixion the source of life I. That self-crucifixion is the source of life. This is the reason; there is an old life which must utterly perish, that by its death and out of its death the new life may arise.1. The death of the old life. The life that must be crucified before the Divine life can rise is the self-life in all its forms. Why must man’ s self-life die? It is the very ground and root of all sin. The assertion of the “ I” of the self is the perpetual tendency of the flesh. “ I live” is the watch-word of carnalism--there is no sin which is not an assertion of self as the principle of life. Man not always conscious of this, blinded to it. Thus the sensualist may be conscious only of the wild cravings of desire, but by yielding to them he is asserting his passion, his pleasure, to be greater than the law of God. The old self-life must die. Before the Cross, faith and love are self-crucifixion. Faith renounces self and destroys the old life. Love goes out of self to Christ. 2. The awakening of the new life. “ Nevertheless I live.” This is more than being constrained by any new emotional motive of love; literally Christ was in St. Paul by His Holy Spirit. This is best understood by experience. You know that when you by faith died with Him to the flesh you felt the impulse of a life not yours possessing you, and inbreathing a Divine energy and a heavenly love. Christ living in you will consecrate all. II. Nature of the life that springs from it.1. Purity. The inspiration of the indwelling Christ will free from sensual and low temptation; it means perfect devotion to God. 2. Peace. Christ in us calms the troubled spirit; becomes the fulness of emotion. 3. Power. If the self-life is crucified with Christ, and Christ is dwelling in us, we have His power to overcome sin. The Cross-life is power, kingship over self. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)The presence of Christ in the soul Some men have called this doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the soul mystical and untrue. I only know that if it be so, the Bible is mystical and untrue, for the Saviour and His apostles assert it again and again in words which cannot be explained away. They speak little of motives or influences; they speak plainly of man being inspired by the actual contact of God, through the Eternal Spirit. It only seems mystical because we are so prone to fancy that we can explain spiritual processes by outer motives and influences. But what are the motives, what are the influences, which change a man’ s nature? They are only the words by which we feebly express the great mystery of the real touch of God. All creation seems to me to confirm this spiritual truth. We are driven to believe in the present action of God in the world. We speak of law, but law is only a phrase by which we hide our ignorance. What we call law is the act of God. The seed bursts into life not by dead laws, but the Eternal finger touches it, and it lives. The stars burn, not by dead laws; God’ s glory smites them, and they light the firmament. The earth moves, not by dead laws; God’ s arm propels it, and it rolls on its destined path through the untravelled infinity of space. And if the eternal power of the present God thus blooms in the flower, glows in the stars, and is seen in the majestic march of worlds, shall we not much rather believe that the real Spirit of the living Christ is in actual contact with the soul when, crucified with Him, it wakes to a life of immortal beauty? This, then, is the life springing from self-crucifixion--Christ in the soul, forming it into a new creature. Until the old life has perished He cannot live there, for only when the forces of the carnal nature are destroyed can His holy presence dwell within. I cannot describe it, but you may know it. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)The Christian’ s communion with the death and life of Christ Peculiar language. One clause seems to contradict another. Yet no real contradiction; but strikingly suitable language to express the mysteries of faith respecting Christ’ s union with His people, and their consequent participation of the benefits of His sufferings and death. I. The believer’ s crucifixion with Christ, or his communion with Him in His death. The meaning is: “ The ends of Christ’ s crucifixion are accomplished in me.”1. Believers are crucified with Christ, in virtue of their legal union to Him as their Head of righteousness. Christ and His people are as one body, one mass; He the Sanctifier, and they the sanctified, are all one. 2. Really and spiritually crucified with Him, through union to Him as their Head of living and quickening influence. II. The believer’ s life in Christ, or communion with Him in His life.1. He is invested with a righteousness commensurate to all the demands of the Divine law. 2. With respect to his sanctification also, it may be said that the believer lives--yet not he, but Christ lives in Him. 3. With respect to the life of consolation and glory, it may be said that it is not the believer who lives, but Christ lives in him. III. The influence of faith in maintaining this life.1. Faith as the means of our union with Christ, is necessary to our communion with Him, both in His righteousness and His grace. 2. By faith our communion with Christ is carried on, in our receiving of all His benefits. 3. Faith is the means of the spiritual life, as it terminates on the promises, the apprehension of which has so powerful an influence both on our peace and our purity (2 Corinthians 7:1; Psalms 27:13-14). 4. Faith is the means of the spiritual life, as by bringing eternal things near, it counterbalances the temptations and terrors of the world (1 John 5:5; Hebrews 11:1-40.). 5. Faith is the means of the spiritual life, as it supplies from its contemplation of the love of Christ fresh motives to obedience and patience (2 Corinthians 5:14). 6. As it refers to the authority of Christ’ s law, and enables the Christian to perceive the reasonableness even of the most difficult of His precepts, as well as the awful responsibility under which he lies to Christ’ s judgment (2 Corinthians 5:9-11; Hebrews 11:6). 7. Faith, by making the Christian habitually conversant with spiritual objects and motives of conduct, gives a spiritual character even to the common actions and enjoyments of this natural life. (M. Willis.)Crucified with Christ This extremely bold, startling, and paradoxical assertion of the apostle, is a metaphorical, pictorial statement of a great spiritual truth, about all really Christian life. Every genuine Christian, who is really united to Christ by living faith, has been crucified with Christ; and since he still lives, his life thereafter is the life of Christ in him. I. The context will furnish us with the first ray of the light we seek. St. Paul is combating an error subversive to Christianity itself, viz., ritualism. He declares that if you go back to that--to the old notion that by deeds you can be justified--you are going back again to law, and have left Christ behind, II. What is the universal spiritual truth represented by these images--“ dead with Christ,” “ Christ living in us” ? If you have really gone to God with the prayer and hope of faith, resting on the propitiation of Christ, you have died to sin. It is as if you had been crucified with Christ. It may be that your Christian history contains no moment of mighty conscious change; that your change took place by slow and imperceptible degrees, more like education than conversion. In that case, it would not be likely that you should feel this great truth about yourself as Paul felt it. Your death to sin may have been less like a crucifixion, a sudden, painful, yet blissful, inevitably conscious severance from it, than like a slow, lingering, almost painless process; like a disease whose stages of advance could never be marked by hours or days. But still it is true of you; if you be hoping in God through Jesus Christ our Lord, you have been crucified with Christ to that huge guilt of which law, just and holy law, convicted you; and having thus died to it, you have no more to fear from it. God has severed it and you. And it is now for you to recognize the grand truth, and rejoice in it. III. This crucifixion has respect to something else than the previous guilt or debt to Divine law. Sin is not merely an external thing; an ever-accumulating mass of wrong deeds and words, of omissions and neglects. All these are the results of what we are. The seat of sin is in the soul. The working of the evil element has produced evil habits and tendencies. These must be eradicated. The old nature has to be mortified, crucified; and in its place Christ is to reign. (G. W. Conder.)The old life and the new Think of a man who is living to himself, without any thought of God, or any earnest endeavour to serve or please Him. Living to gratify only his own tastes, passions, desires, and none else’ s. Self-interest his law, self-love his inspiration, self-satisfaction his end and aim, self his god. This is the man. Not the caricature of him--his faithful portrait. If he be not living unto God, he must be that; there is no alternative. Look well at him as such. Scan him closely for an instant more, a man whose whole principle, law, motive, aim, end, is self. And now, see him again, emerging, as it were, from Christ’ s sepulchre with Christ, his hand in his Saviour’ s, yielding to the loving entreaty of the Lord to come hopefully to God; to confess his sin, and be pardoned. How completely altered his mien! How relaxed that stiff unbending erectness which formerly marked him! How softened down that stern unlovely expression which spoke from his every feature. Surely the proud, harsh, unyielding spirit of self must have been outcast from him, left behind him in the grave of Christ. It is not the same man. God! God’ s law! ,God’ s favour! tits anger, His pardon, His help and guidance, that used to be nothing to him, are everything to him now. If he could, he would so grave that law in him as that its force could never depart from him. If he might, he would stay there for ever gazing on God, never to look at anything else, lest he should sin again. (G. W. Conder.)Christ in the soul Hear the testimony of one who has experienced this. He says to you, “ You know my former life. It was I who lived then. It was my ideas, my wishes, my passions, my tastes, which moved me then. But it is not so now. I have seen Christ, I have heard Him, have begun to love Him, and He is to me, in addition to being my glorious and living Friend outside-me, with whom I can converse and to whom I can pray, also a living system of truths, a living revelation of Divine ideas. Truth has laid hold of me by Him; has entered into me; has won my approbation, my choice, aye, my intense desire. Eternity touches me by Him. Law attracts, governs me through Him. God is very near to me in Him. Man is more beautiful and great to me in Him. He is the portrait of what I may be, and desire to be. I see obstacles overcome in Him. Hope fills me from Him. Holiness begins to suffuse me from Him. He is all in all to me. And so my new life is no longer that self-prompted thing it once was. It is, though still my life, because I choose and love it, nevertheless all of it derived, drawn, inspired from Christ. ‘ I live--nevertheless not I, but Christ liveth in me.’” (G. W. Conder.)The part of faith in the new life And now you will see what part faith plays in the matter. Obviously it is the connecting link betwixt that Incarnate Truth and my inner self. Here is a man who once did not see, and therefore could not believe it. And he had no Divine life in him--nothing but what was perishable; all of it, its joys, hopes, attainments--perishable. But, he came at last to see, aye, to believe. The record, the saying, the preaching, was fact in his esteem. And immediately--as the fluid flies along the galvanic wire when it has contact--immediately, by the contact of a living faith, a faith of the heart, the influence, the vitalizing, Divine force of that truth begins to flood his being, and he begins to live a life that shall never rile. (G. W. Conder.)Faith and the spiritual life I. The nature of faith1. As described in the Bible.2. As defined by theological writers.3. As elucidated by familiar illustrations. II. The relation of faith to the spiritual life.1. It is a realizing grace.2. It is a strengthening grace.3. It is a receiving grace.4. It is a uniting grace. (George Brooks.)The spiritual life The apostle had said before, that “ we are justified by faith alone, and not by the works of the law;” and that a believer was crucified with Christ. Now, says he, this doctrine that I have preached unto you, is no way opposite unto our spiritual life, or unto our holiness; yet, now I live, or “ nevertheless I live.” I. Every true believer, every godly, gracious man, is a living man, lives a spiritual life, is in the state of life (John 6:40; John 6:47-48; John 6:54-55).1. What is this spiritual life? (1) It is a supernatural perfection (Ephesians 4:18). (2) It rises from our union with Christ by the Spirit. (3) It is that supernatural perfection whereby a man is able to act, and move, and work towards God as his utmost and last end. 2. Whereby may it appear, that every godly, gracious man, is thus a living man, made partaker of this spiritual life, so as to be able to act, and move, and work towards God as his utmost end? (1) Take the life of plants and herbs, or of flowers; and what is the essential property of the vegetative life? It is to grow. So with saints; they grow in grace (Psalms 84:7; Romans 1:27; 2 Corinthians 3:18). (2) What is the essential property of the sensitive life, of the life of beasts and birds? To be sensible of good or evil suitable to it. This is found also in saints (Romans 7:23-24). (3) What is the essential property of the life of reason? To understand, to know, and to reflect on a man’ s own actions. This distinguishes a man from a beast. Every godly, gracious man, especially, has this power. So, then, take the argument in the whole, and it lies thus: If a godly, gracious man have all the essential properties of those three lives, in a spiritual way and manner, then certainly he is in the state of life, and doth lead a spiritual life. 3. But how does it appear that others are not in this state of life? (1) He that believeth not is spiritually dead (John 3:36; John 5:40). (a) If we be alive indeed, and made partakers of this spiritual life, why then should we not live at a higher rate than the world do, which have none of this life? (b) If we be alive indeed, and made partakers of this spiritual life, why should our hearts run after the things of the world, so as to feed on them as our meat, to be satisfied with them? (c) If we be alive indeed, why is our communion and fellowship together no more living? A living coal warms. II. Our justification by faith alone is no enemy, but a real friend to our spiritual life. How comes this to pass?1. The more a man forsakes any good thing of his own for Christ, the more Christ is engaged to give a man His good things. There is no losing in losing for Jesus Christ. 2. God never causes any man to pass under any relation, without giving him the ability needed for its duties. 3. The more a man agrees with God and the law, the more fit he is to walk with God and observe the law. 4. Faith establishes a man in the covenant of grace. (W. Bridges.)Fellowship with the Redeemer’ s death This must be taken in connection with two other texts in this crucifixion Epistle, viz., 5:24, and 6:14. The three together exhibit-- I. The order. II. The characteristics. III. The perfection of personal religion as fellowship with the Redeemer’ s death. I. The sinner, condemned by the law, makes the sacrifice of the great Substitute his own, and is, therefore, legally released from its penalty. II. The flesh, or the old man remaining in the pardoned believer, is hanged up, and delivered to death in the same mystical fellowship. III. The saint glorying in Christ crucified as the ground of his acceptance, and the source of his sanctification, is crucified with Rim to the world and all created things that belong not to the new creation. Let us read these words, where they were written, at the foot of the Cross. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)The Christian’ s crucifixion with Christ I. Christ crucified.1. A great mystery. 2. The way to glory. (1) For Christ.(2) For us. 3. The ground of our highest glorying. II. Paul crucified.1. Sin has a body (Romans 7:24; Colossians 3:5.). 2. Sin and grace cannot co-exist any more than life and death. 3. Kill your runs or they will kill you. 4. And this not only in the matter of notorious crimes, but in the whole carriage of your lives. 5. Thus to be a Christian is a serious thing. 6. Afflict not so much your bodies as your souls. III. Paul crucified with Christ.1. Many are crucified, but not with Christ. (1) The covetous and ambitious man with the world.(2) The envious man by his own thoughts: Ahithophel’ s cross.(3) The desperate man with his own distrust: Judas’ s cross.(4) The superstitious man.(5) The felon and justly: the cross of the two malefactors. 2. Paul was crucified with Christ. (1) In partnership. Christ s crucifixion is re.acted in us. (a) In His agony, when we are afflicted with God’ s displeasure against sin. (b) In His scourging, when we tame our flesh with holy severity. (c) In His crowning with thorns, when we bear reproaches for His name. (d) In His affixion, when all our powers are fastened to his royal commandments. (e) In His transfixion, when our hearts are branded with Divine love. (2) In person. (a) As in the first Adam all lived and then died, so in the second Adam all die and are made alive. (b) Our real union with Christ makes His Cross and Passion ours. (c) Every believer may comfort himself that having died with Christ he shall not die again. (Bishop Hall.)Life in Christ I. Christ dwelling by faith in the heart becomes the principle of a new life. II. From this life, as an inexhaustible fountain, the believer draws to the supply of his wants and fruitfulness in well doing. III. What properly distinguishes the believer’ s life in the flesh and makes it what it is, is its being kept in perpetual fellowship with Christ. IV. The recognition of the truth that as dying and atoning Jesus becomes a source of new life runs out into appropriating confidence. (Principal Fairbairn.)Death and life I. Death by sin.1. Its guilt makes us liable to condemnation.2. Its filth, which makes us odious.3. Its punishment, which is death eternal. II. The tree of life affords the antidote to sin.1. The life of justification. The righteousness of Christ, cancelling the obligations of the law, frees us from the first.2. The life of sanctification, which is Christ in us.3. The life of joy and cheerfulness, which makes us more than conquerors. (T. Adams.)Christian enthusiasm I. Christian enthusiasm is possible under great natural disadvantages. II. This enthusiasm must be maintained by continued faith in Christ. III. It is heightened by the consciousness of the personal love of Christ. IV. It is gloriously aroused by thankfulness to God for His unspeakable gift. V. The Christian feels free to serve Christ enthusiastically because Christ has borne the penalty due to sin. VI. Christian enthusiasm, so far from crushing individuality and independence, emphasizes them. VII. It overpowers unhealthy self-consciousness. VIII. The source of it all is the indwelling Christ. (C. Stanford, D. D.)Paradoxes I. Christian existence is a death and yet a life. II. The believer lives and yet he does not live. III. The believer’ s life is a life in the flesh, but nor according to the laws of the flesh. (T. Hamilton, A. M.)The life of faith may be considered with respect to-- I. Its object, the promises of the new covenant as--1. Our justification.2. Sanctification.3. The supplies of the present life.4. Everlasting blessedness. II. Its trials, or the evils that seem to infringe the comfort of the promises.1. Afflictions.2. Temptations. III. Its effects, as--1. Holy duties and exercises of grace.2. The ordinances by which it is fed and increased, as the Word, prayer, and sacraments.3. The duties of charity, of public and private relations, as honouring God, in our generation and callings. (T. Hamilton, A. M.)The faith of the Son of God So called because-- I. He is the revealer of it (John 1:17). II. He is the author of it (Hebrews 12:2). III. He is the object of it. (T. Adams.)An idyll of the Divine life I. Its personal interest. II. The burthen of it. III. Its inspiring power. (A. J. Muir, M. A.)Paul’ s estimate of the religion of Christ The living Person in whom we trust, not the system of precepts which we follow, or of dogmas which we receive, is the centre of the Christian society. The name by which religion in all subsequent times has been known is not an outward “ ceremonial” (θρήσκεια) as with the Greeks, nor an outward “ restraint” (religio) as among the Romans, nor an outward “ law” as among the Jews; it is by that far higher and deeper title which it first received from the mouth of St. Paul, “ the faith.” (Dean Stanley.)Lent and Easter A Lent of mortification--“ I am crucified with Christ.” An Easter of resurrection--“ I live, etc.” (Bishop Hall.)Sharing Christ’ s Cross We must have our part with Christ in every part of His Cross. In the transverse, by the ready extension of our hands to all good works of piety, justice, and charity; in the arrectary, or beam, by uninterrupted perseverance in good; in the head, by an elevated hope and looking for of glory; in the foot, by a lively and firm faith, fastening our souls upon the affiance of His free grace and mercy. And thus shall we be crucified with Christ. (Bishop Hall.)Crucifixion with Christ The phrase carries us back to the historical scene. There Christ was crucified with two thieves. Jesus was crucified with us, that we might be crucified with Him. He entered into our pain that we might enter into His peace. He shared the shame of the thieves, that Paul might share His glory. This double truth was manifest at the time of Christ’ s suffering. You remember the penitent thief, as their crosses were lifted side by side, he saw Christ entering into his wretchedness. Before the feeble tortured breath had left the body, he had entered into Christ’ s glory. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)The power of the Cross The other night a friend of mine witnessed a drunken brawl. There was a man there who continued in the brawl, and his wife came out of the crowd and said: “ I will go and fetch baby to him; that will bring him out if anything will.” Ah! she was a philosopher, though she did not know it. She wanted to get to the deepest part of the man’ s nature. She did not talk of policemen and prison; she wanted to bring the innocent one before him, as much as to say, “ Will you make a thorny couch for this little one to lie upon? Will you forge a dagger with which to pierce this little one’ s heart?” And in a measure she came in the spirit of the gospel; for the gospel comes to make us hate sin by showing that another suffered and died for it. (C. Vince.)Life in Christ This is a striking” point of union,, between Paul and John; the Pauline form of “ He that hath the Son hath life.” (W. B. Pope, D. D.)As the mistletoe, having no root of its own, both grows and lives in the stock of the oak, so the apostle, having no root of his own, did live and grow in Christ. As if he had said, “ I live, I keep a noble house, am given to hospitality, but at another’ s cost, not at mine own. I am beholden to Christ. I have not a farthing of mine own. He carrieth the pack for me, and gives out to me according to my necessities.” (Surinnock.)The immortality of life in Christ The sun might say every morning in the spring, I am come that the earth may have life and have it more abundantly; I am come that the fields may grow, that the gardens and vineyards be more fruitful, that the beauty of the landscape may appear, that the dead may become alive, and the world be filled with joy. And the sun might add, I am the resurrection and the life; I raise the buried flowers and herbs from their graves, and cause them to live. But they perish in the autumn. The Christian shall never perish; never by annihilation, absorption, or eternal misery. (Thomas Jones.)The progressiveness of the life of Christ Man was made to grow. To stand still in the course of nature is to die. When the force that raised the mountain to its height had ceased, that moment the mountain began to sink again; when the tree stops growing it begins to decay; when the human body has attained its perfection, when the tide of growth has reached its highest mark, it begins to recede. But the life that Christ gives means everlasting progress in knowledge, love, usefulness, and bliss. (Thomas Jones.)Paul’ s flesh It was hard for an enthusiast to live in flesh like Paul’ s. He suffered so much from his eyes that the rough Galatians felt so much for him that they would have been willing to give him their own. He suffered so much from his hands, that when his great heart was full, and he longed to dash off a missionary letter, he was unable to hold a pen. He suffered so much from shattered nerves, that his first appearance among strangers was “ in weakness, fear, and much trembling.” Who can always be calm and wise and bold, have a commanding presence, and secure a fascinated silence, when he always works in weakness, when pain is ever crashing through the sensibilities, when the smallest frictional touch can sting the life to agony. (Thomas Jones.)Strong in Christ Plant the tenderest sapling in the ground, and all the elements of nature shall minister to its wants. It shall feed upon the fatness of the earth, its leaves shall be wet with dew, it shall be refreshed with the showers of spring, and the warmth of summer shall cause it to grow. In like manner the man who is rooted in Christ, united to Him by faith and love, shall be energized and made strong for the work which he has to do. (Thomas Jones.)The personal love and gift of Christ All that Christ did and suffered He did for thee as thee; not only as man, but as that particular man, which bears such and such a name; and rather than any of those whom He loves should appear naked before His Father, and so discover the scars and deformities of their sins, Christ would be content to do and suffer as much as He hath done for any one particular man yet. But beyond infinite there is no degree; and His merit was infinite because both an infinite Majesty resided in His person, and because an infinite Majesty accepted His sacrifice for infinite. (John Donne, D. D.)Life in the flesh When Paul and his companions were shipwrecked at Melita, the apostle set to work like other people to gather fuel for the fire. Even so you and I must take our turn at the wheel. We must not think of keeping ourselves aloof from our fellow-men as though we should be degraded by mingling with them. We are men, and whatever men may lawfully do we may do; wherever they may go we may go. Our religion makes us neither more nor less than human, though it brings us into the family of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Luther’ s motto Luther’ s motto was, Vivit Christus, Christ liveth. How to use life:--Two friends gathered each a rose; the one was continually smelling at it, touching its leaves, and handling it as if he could not hold it too fast; you do not wonder that it was soon withered. The other took his rose, enjoyed its perfume moderately, carried it in his hand for a while, then put it on the table in water, and hours after it was almost as fresh as when it was plucked from the bough. We may dote on our worldly gear until God becomes jealous of it and sends a blight upon it; and, on the other hand, we may, with holy moderateness, use these things as not abusing them, and get from them the utmost good they are capable of conveying to us. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Great love We read in English history of the rare affection of Eleanor, wife of Edward I. The king having received a wound by a poisoned dagger, she put her mouth to the wound to suck out the poison, venturing her own life to preserve her husband’ s. But the love of Christ was greater than this. (R. B.)Christ’ s love is an individual love The great trouble is that people take everything in general, and do not take it to themselves. Suppose a man should say to me: “ Moody, there was a man in Europe who died last week, and left five million dollars to a certain individual.” “ Well,” I say, “ I don’ t doubt that; it’ s rather a common thing to happen,” and I don’ t think anything more about it. But suppose he says: “ But he left the money to you.” Then I pay attention; I say: “ To me?” “ Yes, he left it to you.” I become suddenly interested. I want to know all about it. So we are apt to think Christ died for sinners; He died for everybody, and for nobody in particular. But when the truth comes to me that eternal life is mine, and all the glories of heaven are mine, I begin to be interested. (Moody.)The substitute A negro of one of the kingdoms on the African coast who had become insolvent, surrendered himself to his creditor, who, according to the custom of the country, sold him for a slave. This affected his son so much that he came and reproached his father for not selling his children to pal his debts; and, after much entreaty, he prevailed on the captain to accept him, andliberate his father. The son was put in chains, and on the point of sailing to the West Indies, when the circumstances coming to the knowledge of the governor, he sent for the owner of the slaves, paid the money that he had given for the old man, and restored the son to his father. (Biblical Treasury.)The life of faith I. What is this faith? Faith is a grace, by which we believe God’ s Word in general, and in a special manner do receive Christ, and rest upon Him for grace here and glory hereafter.1. There is assent.2. Consent.3. Affiance. Resting on Christ. II. How, and why, are we said to live by faith? Distinct graces have their distinct offices. In Scripture language we are said to live by faith, but to work by love. There must be life before operation. Now we are said to live by faith--1. Because it is the grace that unites us to Christ. 2. Because all other graces are marshalled and ranked under the conduct of faith. It is the first stone in the spiritual building, to which all the rest are added. Without faith, virtue would languish, our command over our passions be weak, and the back of patience quite broken, and our care of the-knowledge of Divine things very small. 3. Because whatever is ascribed to faith, redounds to the honour of Christ. The worth lies in the object, as the ivy receives strength from the oak round which it winds. Faith does all, not from any intrinsic worth and force in itself; but all its power is in dependence upon Christ. We are said to live by faith, as we are said to be fed by the hand; it is the instrument. 4. Because faith removes obstructions, and opens the passages of grace, that it may run more freely. Expectation is the opening of the soul (Psalms 81:10). III. Observations concerning this life.1. Life must be extended, not only to spiritual duties and acts of immediate worship, but to all the actions of our natural and temporal life. A true believer sleeps, eats, drinks, in faith. Every action must be influenced by religion, looking to the promises. 2. We never act nobly in anything, till we live the life of faith. 3. We never” live comfortably, till we live by faith. 4. The life of faith is glory begun. First we live by faith, and then by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith now serves instead of sight and fruition (Hebrews 11:1). (T. Adams.)Humanity in union with God The late Bishop Ewing, writing of his friend Thomas Erskine, said, “ His looks and life are better than a thousand homilies; they show you how Divine a thing humanity is, when the life we live in the flesh is that of conscious union with God.” Real religion Here is the whole sum of St. Paul’ s experience, the heart of his heart, the gem out of which his life grew. It was this inward conviction that made him what he was. And this is the one thing the world wants. You who work for God, keep your own consciousness of His love alive; if that gets dim, your word is poverty-stricken and empty. I. Here is real religion: the inward conviction that the son of God loved me, and gave himself for me. After seeking religion for thirty-nine years, John Wesley stands in a little room in Aldersgate-street, London, reading the Epistle to the Galatians and Luther’ s notes on it; and as he reads it, he says, “ I felt a strange warmth at my heart, and a blessed persuasion wrought into me, that the Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me” ; and up he leapt, mighty, resistless, sweeping through this land like the flame of the fire of God. What does it avail to know all about the life of Christ, if thy heart has not got hold of Him?1. It is not knowledge that saves. A man in the desert may die for thirst, and yet he may know all about water and its properties. 2. It is not hope that saves. You must have a right foundation for your hope. II. There are three steps up to this.1. Here is all majesty--“ He;” and utter insignificance--“ me.” “ He” stands over “ me,” and so redeems my life from its lowliness. 2. Here is all goodness, and all unworthiness. He draws us to His heart and tells us of His love. Claim this love, rest on it, exult in it. 3. Love alone cannot save. “ He” must “ give Himself for me.” Here is the condemned prisoner in his cell, and there beside him is his Friend, who loves him; and the tears are flowing down His cheeks as He says, “ I am so sorry for you.” But that doesn’ t loosen the fetters and open the prison doors. But look! that Friend is gone, and the door is shut, and now hark! Without the prison walls is heard the shout, “ Crucify Him.” What does it mean? Now steps approach the door, and it is flung open, and the chains are knocked off. “ Come forth; thou art free.” How? Why? And the man is told, “ Why, He who loved thee hath given Himself for thee, and hath satisfied the claims of the law.” That is our Friend, Jesus Christ. Let the hand of thy faith claim Him now. (New Outlines.)Christ’ s love for individuals When the Prince of Wales went over to Ireland in the spring of 1885, he went about and saw with his own eyes how poor some of the people of Dublin were. He went down to the places where they lived, and into their houses, and spoke to them, and was as kind as kind could be; and they were glad of it. For a real prince--the son of a great queen, and a prince who is to be a king himself one day if God spares him--for him to go down to the poor quarter of the city and be interested in the poor people there and be friendly with them, it was just like sunshine I And that is just what it is like when a boy or girl, a man or woman, can say these words truly, “ The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” I once read of a man who was so loving, and good, and kind, that it was said he loved everybody in the “ London Directory.” Now the “ London Directory” is a big, big book, for there are some millions of names and addresses there, and my name is there too; and when I heard that this good man loved everybody whose name was in that directory, I supposed that he loved me too; but I confess I didn’ t mind it much, for I didn’ t think he could love my very self, because he didn’ t know me, myself. If I had only been sure that when he saw my name he thought about me really, as any friend of mine would have done, then it would have been very different, and I would have been touched by his kindness. And that is how many people think when they say, “ God so loved the world.” Of course they know He must have loved them too; but then, it is such a different thing to be loved like one in a crowd, and to be loved your very own self. Yet that is how Jesus loves us. He loves us, every one; He knows us, every one; and so we can each say truly, “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” (J.R. Howatt.)God’ s love specific and personal The presentation of this thought stirs up a great many doubts in those who have been exercised thereby. Men think that Paul probably was beloved, that Peter was beloved, and that many others were beloved. Men look around, and think that their mother was beloved, and that others, with superior natures and symmetrical parts, and full of moral excellences, were beloved. They can well conceive how those who draw upon their amiable feelings, might likewise excite in the Divine mind personal affection. But they say, “ When men love single persons, it does not follow that they love all persons. And God loves men, doubtless; but does He love every one?” “ God so loved the world,” is the comprehensive answer to that question. God loved the world, and the whole world. And the word, “ world,” for its definition and boundaries, runs through all time and among all races. It included in it all individuals, from age to age. Everywhere God loved “ the whole world.” “ Yes,” men say, “ But God loves men after He has made them loveable.” But the apostle says, “ God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Love, which death tested but could not measure, was shed abroad toward each man and the whole world, without moral conditions. That is the import of what the apostle says. God’ s disinterestedness is made plain, in that He loves each man, not on condition of repentance, but whether he repents or not. He loves men, not because there is that in them which has a tendency to excite complacency, but though they are sinful. He loves unlovely men. Yea, men that we could not love, God loves. And His love is not generic. It is not a part of the governmental benevolence: It is individualized both ways--in the heart of God, and in the heart of the recipients. It is God’ s nature to love what His eye looks upon. Every human being, whether good or bad, God loves. I do not say that it makes no difference to God whether men are good, or whether they are bad, but I do say that the great crowning fact of Divine love has no respect of character--that it precedes character, and is not founded upon it. To be sure, the benefit of that love to us depends very largely upon our faith, and upon our repentance, but the existence of the Divine personal love does not depend on us in anywise. It is--if I may apply to God language which belongs to men--the constitutional nature of God. It is the tendency of His attributes. Love is the test of Divinity. It carries with it a great many other things. It carries with it in God the conception of purity, and of uprightness, and of integrity of disposition, and of justice, and of truth. It carries with it, also, the full idea of instrumentality--both penalty and reward, pleasure and pain. And back of all these, as the root-ground out of which they spring, as the source from which they come, as the animating influence which runs through them all, is love. And that love is personal to us. It is Divine, infinite; and yet it touches each one by name throughout the whole realm.1. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 2:21I do not frustrate the grace of God. Salvation by works a criminal doctrine 1. The idea of salvation by the merit of our own works is exceedingly insinuating. When it gains the least foothold, it soon makes great advances. The only way to deal with it is to stamp it out. War to the knife. No surrender. 2. This error is exceedingly plausible. Said to encourage virtue. But where will you find a devout and upright man who glories in his own works? 3. Self-righteousness is natural to our fallen humanity. Hence it is the essence of all false religions. 4. This erroneous idea arises partly from ignorance: (1) of the law of God;(2) of what holiness is;(3) of themselves. 5. It arises also from pride. 6. And from unbelief. 7. It is evidently evil, for it makes light of sin. 8. No comfort in it for the fallen. It gives to the elder son all that his proud heart can claim, but for the prodigal it has no welcome. What, then, is to become of the guilty? (C. H. Spurgeon.)Frustration of the grace of God 1. He that hopes to be saved by his own righteousness rejects the grace or free favour of God, regards it as useless, and in that sense frustrates it. If we can keep the law and claim to be accepted as a matter of debt, it is plain that we need not turn supplicants and crave for mercy. Grace is a superfluity where merit can be proved 2. He makes the grace of God to be at least a secondary thing. Many think they are to merit as much as they can, and that God will make up for the rest by His grace. Every man his own saviour, and Jesus Christ and His grace make-weights for our deficiences. 3. He who trusts in himself, his feelings, his works, his prayers, or in anything except the grace of God, virtually gives up trusting in the grace of God altogether. God will never share the work with man’ s merit. You must either have salvation wholly because you deserve it, or wholly because God graciously bestows it though you do not deserve it. 4. This doctrine takes off the sinner from confidence in Christ. So long as a man can maintain any hope in himself, he will never look to the Redeemer. 5. This doctrine robs God of His glory. If man can save himself, then the glory is his own, not God’ s. What an awful crime, then, is this doctrine of salvation by human merit. It is a sin so gross that even the heathen cannot commit it.. They have never heard of the grace of God, and therefore they cannot put a slight upon it: when they perish it will be with a far lighter doom than those who have been told that God is gracious and ready to pardon, and yet turn on their heel and wickedly boast of innocence, and pretend to be clean in the sight of God. It is a sin which devils cannot commit. With all the obstinancy of their rebellion, they can never reach to this. They have never had the sweet notes of free grace and dying love ringing in their ears, and therefore they have never refused the heavenly invitation. What has never been presented to their acceptance cannot be the object of their rejection. (C. H. Spurgeon.)I. Two great crimes are contained in the doctrine of self-righteousness.1. The frustration of the grace of God. The self-righteous (1) reject it as baseless;(2) make it at least a secondary thing;(3) virtually give up trusting in it;(4) renounce their confidence in Christ;(5) rob God of His glory. 2. The making of Christ to be dead is vain. (1) Christ’ s finished work is rendered imperfect;(2) the covenant sealed with Christ’ s death is rejected;(3) each person in the Trinity is sinned against;(4) fallen man is sinned against, who can have no mercy but; through Christ;(5) the saints are sinned against, who have no hope but through Christ. II. The two crimes are committed by many people. By--1. Triflers with the gospel.2. The senseless as to guilt.3. The despairing.4. Those who have misgivings about the power of the gospel.5. Apostates. III. No true believer will be guilty of these crimes. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Folly of human righteousness How can a man trust in his own righteousness? It is like seeking shelter under one’ s own shadow. We may stoop to the very ground; and the lower we bend, we still find that our shadow is beneath us. But if a man flee to the shadow of a great rock, or of a widespreading tree, he will find abundant shelter from the rays of the noonday sun. So human merits are unavailing; and Christ alone can save. (Dr. Medhurst.)Rejection of God’ s grace The rejection of the grace of God may take place(1) by a denial of the perfect satisfaction of Christ; (2) by setting alongside of it our own merits, worthiness and righteousness, as popery does in doctrine, and many Protestants do in fact; (3) by abusing this grace to favour presumption, and to supersede sanctification; (4) when even sincere souls, in the feeling of their unworthiness, are much too timorous to appropriate grace to themselves, and think they must first have arrived at this or that degree of holiness, before grace can avail them anything; (5) when tempted ones from a lack of feeling conclude that they have fallen out of grace again. (Starke.)Righteousness I. The insufficiency of the law to promote righteousness.1. It was never instituted for that purpose. (1) It is a standard of righteousness,(2) and therefore a constant and irritating reminder of unrighteousness, and(3) has no moral power. 2. Men have never found righteousness by the law. (1) All have sinned and broken it.(2) The best morality falls below its requirements. 3. On the assumption of its sufficiency (1) God’ s grace is frustrated;(2) Christ is dead in vain. II. Hence the necessity of some better provision for the promotion of righteousness.1. Men yearn after it. 2. It is God’ s will that man should be righteous or He would never have made him so.3. Righteousness is the law and harmony of the universe which sin has broken. III. God has made this provision in the death of Christ.1. That death has atoned for sin, and when accepted by faith past unrighteousness is remitted and man is justified (Romans 3:25). 2. By that death the Holy Spirit is secured who makes man actually righteous, and gives the power to fulfil all righteousness. The frustration of God’ s grace If people can make themselves good by doing what is called their duty, then the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ constitute the greatest mistake that ever was made in the universe. If a man can be really good, can make himself all that God can possibly desire him to be, of his own motion and will and by the resources of his own invention and energy, then the mediation of Jesus Christ was a great and generous expenditure of pain and life and sorrow, and an expenditure that ended in nothing. (J. Parker, D. D.)Divine grace does not dispense with conditions but with merit While in the case of two mutinous seamen who, having long resisted every effort on the part of the captain to reform them, have at last, through their continued intemperance, fallen overboard, one grasps the rope thrown out by his master’ s mercy, and is saved, while the other rejects it, or depends on his own efforts and is drowned; has the former ground to boast that he is his own saviour? There was assuredly more mad wilfulness in his hardened companion who refused the proffered aid; but the recklessness of the latter imparts no merit to the former. While the one can ascribe his deliverence to nothing in himself “ moving” his captain “ thereunto,” but solely to his master’ s compassion, the other had equal mercy shown to him, but his destruction was entirely his own doing. When the prodigal returned would his sense of the entire freeness of his father’ s goodness and of his own absolute demerit have been at all diminished by learning that another brother who had run the same course of riot as himself refused to cast himself into those arms by which he himself had been so warmly welcomed? Would the greater obduracy and infatuated perverseness of his brother extenuate, in the pardoned son’ s eyes, his own guilt, or lead him less to ascribe his own forgiveness to free unmerited grace? (Principal Forbes.)Morality not righteousness Let the law stand for any attempt at duty doing with a view to self-salvation. I do not say that a man cannot wash his hands; I am not here to reason that it is not possible for a man to put on a good deal of external decoration. I believe that it is quite within his power to say to some of his appetites, “ Now you shall be starved for six months. I will touch no intoxicant for the rest of my life, and never more go into any associations which I believe to be corrupting, and will do my best to conform to the highest moral standard. What more can you expect me to do?” Well, what have you done? Outside work; you have washed your hands, but you have not cleansed your heart. As between man and man you have done a good deal. But seeing that the question is not primarily between man and man, but between you and God, you have done nothing but confound righteousness with morality. (J. Parker, D. D.)The moral consolation that righteousness is not of the law but through Christ If Satan, the great Judaizer as well as antinomian, tempts us to trust in our own endeavours we fly to the cross. If conscience, the advocate of Sinai, reminds us of our multiplied offences and failures we say, “ Were it ten thousand times worse there can be no condemnation.” Hardest of all, if, in times of despondency our innumerable and peculiar sins, not against the law, but against the very gospel that saves from the law, are pressed upon our spirits, we can still take refuge in the cross and think, “ I have paid my own debt in Him who died not only to discharge the obligation to clerical law, but also to expiate offences against the gospel itself, who atoned for sins against the atonement, and suffered on the cross for dishonour done to the very cross on which He suffered;” and there is, or will be, a time to every one of us, when amidst the thick darkness that divides time from eternity, we shall find no greater consolation than this: I am crucified with Christ; I do not frustrate the grace of God; Christ hath not died for me in vain. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)Grace is a free gift A benevolent rich man had a very poor neighbour, to whom he sent this message: “ I wish to make you the gift of a farm.” The poor man was pleased with the idea of having a farm, but was too proud at once to receive it as a gift. So he thought of the matter much and anxiously. His desire to have a home of his own was daily growing stronger; but his pride was great. At length, he determined to visit him who had made the offer. But a strange delusion about this time seized him; for he imagined that he had a bag of gold. So he came with his bag, and said to the rich man, “ I have received your message, and have come to see you. I wish to own the farm; but I wish to pay for it. I will give you a bag of gold for it.” “ Let us see your gold,” said the owner of the farm. “ Look again: I donor think it is even silver.” The poor man looked, tears stood in his eyes, and his delusion seemed to be gone; and he said, “ Alas! I am undone: it is not even copper; it is but ashes. How poor I am! I wish to own that farm; but I have nothing to pay. Will you give me the farm?” The rich man replied, “ Yes: that was my first and only offer. Will you accept it on such terms?” With humility, but with eagerness, the poor man said, “ Yes: and a thousand blessings on you for your kindness!” (W. S. Plumer, D. D.)Grace must not be frustrated I was once invited out to tea by a poor widow, and I took something in my pocket. But I’ ll never do it again. It was two cakes; and, when I brought them out and laid them on the table, she picked them up and flung them out into the street, and said, “ I asked you to tea; I didn’ t ask you to provide tea for me.” And so with Christ. He asks, He provides, and He wants nothing but ourselves; and if we take aught else He’ ll reject it. We can only sup with Him when we come as we are. Who will accept salvation? Who’ ll say, “ I take the blessing from above, And wonder at Thy boundless love” ? (J. W. Ackrill.). Galatians 3:1O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?A foolish Church I. In its origin. II. In its idea of the sustaining energy of the Church. III. In its retrogression. IV. In its estimate of the true position and requirements of humanity. V. In having left its first love. (D. Allport.)The folly of apostasy The backslider-- I. Barters truth for falsehood. II. Ignores the facts of consciousness and is victimized by fantastic fictions. III. Abandons the sure means of securing the spirit for the certain means of losing Him (verse 2). IV. Abandons a good beginning for the sake of reaching a bad conclusion (verse 3). V. Yields willingly to persuasion what could not be extorted by persecution (verse 4). VI. Rejects unquestionable evidence in favour of baseless assumptions (verse 5). Christ evidently crucified I. He placarded Christ crucified before their eyes. II. He arrested the gaze of the spiritual loiterer. III. He rivetted that gaze on the proclamation of his sovereign. (Bishop Lightfoot.)The Galatians bewitched St. Paul’ s metaphor is derived from the popular belief in the power of the evil eye, and the word he employs originally referred to witchery by spells and incantations; but as it occurs in actual use it denotes the blighting influence of the evil eye. This belief is not confined to the East or to ancient times, but is common in some countries of Europe even now. The word then involves two ideas--(1) The baleful influence on the recipient.(2) The envious spirit of the agent. (Bishop Lightfoot.)Christ evidently set forth Christ crucified belongs to no one age or place. In this matter period and locality are not of much account. Faith bridges over intervening land and seas, and leaps across centuries at a bound. In the modern period, in the middle ages, in the primitive times, faith sees and experiences over again what apostles saw and experienced. Faith detaches Christ crucified from geography and chronology, and throws Him on Christian consciousness where, independent of local associations and mere sequences of time, He bangs, as it were for all time, between earth and heaven as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (Canon Liddon.)Christ crucified, the preacher’ s theme It hath been told me in the ear and whispered into my very soul, that there is pardon for the greatest guilt through faith in Jesus Christ; that His precious blood shed on Calvary is able to cleanse us from every sin of every kind; and that as many as believe in Him are saved: their sins, which are many, are forgiven. I read this once; I thought it through. I heard this many times; I thought it through. But on a day I looked to Him that did hang upon the cross. It was a dark day for my spirit, and my burden was exceeding heavy. I was like a man that preferred to die rather than to live; and would have laid violent hands upon myself to end my misery, but that the dread of something after death did haunt me. I found no rest nor respite; but I heard one say, “ Look unto Christ, and you shall be saved.” I looked; and that my sins were there and then forgiven me I do know, as I know that I am standing here and speaking to you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Power of Christ A burglar, not long ago, rifled an unoccupied dwelling by the seaside. He ransacked the rooms, and heaped his plunder in the parlour. There were evidences that here he sat down to rest. On a bracket in the corner stood a marble bust of Guido’ s “ Ecce Homo” --Christ crowned with thorns. The guilty man had taken it in his hands and examined it. It bore the marks of his fingers, but he replaced it with its face turned to the wall, as if he would not have even the sightless eyes of the marble Saviour look upon his deeds of infamy. (Professor Phelps.)The enchantment of error I. The enchantment by which they had been deluded. They had been bewitched. Their eyes had been dazzled by mere appearances. II. The circumstances under which the enchantment had been practised. The apostle significantly points out the fact that the Galatians had been led away by error, even when before their eyes Christ crucified had been clearly and distinctly set forth. The cross of Christ had been set forth in their midst. III. The practical results of the enchantment. It had affected both their conduct and character.1. They had not obeyed the truth. This was the truth as it was in Jesus. At first they yielded to the claims of the truth. Their thoughts, feelings, actions, were governed by the understanding and belief which they had of the truth. Now they had departed from the truth, and relinquished their hold of its doctrines. 2. In doing this they had displayed the greatest folly. They were foolish in surrendering what they did. They had given up a Divine appointment, a Divine Redeemer, and peace with God. They had turned away from the fountain of living waters. lessons:1. The preaching of the gospel should consist in holding up Christ crucified to the eyes of men. 2. Those who have looked to Christ should still be on their guard against false teachers. (R. Nicholls.)The Lord’ s Supper a picture of Christ crucified I. The person depicted. II. The particular aspect in which Jesus Christ is set forth. Not the Teacher, Maker, but as crucified. III. The feelings with which Christ crucified should be contemplated. There are pictures of martyrs and other sufferers which cannot be looked upon without deep feeling. But no picture can stir our hearts like this. It is so near--“ Before whoso eyes.” It is so real--“ Evidently.” It is so vital to our interests--“ Among you.” It is so transforming and elevating in its character. Only those who are stupid, senseless, beguiled--who are “ bewitched” --can fail to be ennobled and benefited by its holy and benign influence. This picture should be contemplated with--1. Deep seriousness.2. Unfeigned faith.3. Holy aspiration.4. Adoring gratitude.5. Catholic love and self-dedication. (W. Forsyth, M. A.)The folly of being captivated by form, etc., after the experience of faith I. It contradicts our clearest convictions. II. Denies the work of the Spirit in our hearts. III. Deteriorates our moral nature. IV. Deprives us of our reasonable hope. V. Attributes the mightiest operations of grace to an insufficient cause. (J. Lyth.)The folly of forsaking the right path There are many who have lost their way; some through ignorance, and some who have been deceived by false lights, and led away by untrustworthy guides. Many are the stories which travellers relate of the perils of leaving the right path. A visitor, recently arrived in New Zealand, ascended to the top of a mountain overgrown with the huge ferns of that country. He had climbed up by a winding road cut through the bushwood, and was advised by the rest of his party to return by the same circuitous route; but he was tempted to make a short cut, and go straight down the side of the mountain. So he started, and went on rapidly for a while, but soon he found that the ferns of New Zealand were far taller than those of England. They rose over his head. They shut out light and air. Beneath their palm-like leaves the heat was suffocating, and soon he panted for breath. To retrace his steps was impossible. He could not see in any direction, but tried to follow the rapid slope of the ground, hoping to meet some open space. But his progress amongst the innumerable tall stems of the ferns was necessarily slow, The ground was so steep, it was difficult to keep on his feet, and in the dim green twilight he felt himself getting more and more exhausted; and when, in a fainting condition, he emerged at last on a pathway, he had bitterly regretted his folly in wandering from the usual road. (Dr. Hardman.)Paul’ s lament I. Christ crucified had been declared to the Galatians.1. Christ as the Redeemer.2. Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.3. The whole system of Christian doctrine, including the duties, responsibilities, and privileges of believers.4. Christ crucified had been received, believed in, loved by them. II. They were going back.1. Back to the slavery of the ceremonial law.2. Back to the world, to fleshly lusts, to the devil.3. Appeal to backsliders, reminding them of former peace and blessedness, present wretchedness. III. Who hath bewitched you?1. Your desires.2. Your companions.3. Your prejudices.4. Your procrastination.5. Your unbelief.6. Your want of principle.7. Your lack of childlike love. (A. F. Barfield.)Men bewitched I. The subtle danger. Epidemic of error. People calmly tolerating what shortly before they would have indignantly repudiated. II. The only preservative--Christ crucified.1. Set forth plainly.2. Realized vividly.3. Clung to simply but firmly. III. The supreme folly of any other course. If you say, “ We see what the gospel can do in the way of reclaiming sinners, but we are going to try something else,” you will be fools. I am always ready to try a new machine: we will try the electric light one of these days, instead of gas, when we are sure of it; but suppose it should all go out and leave us in the dark! I will wait till the invention has been tested. So it may happen with the new religious lights that men bring up, which are like dim rushlights compared with the blazing sun of gospel truth; we are not going to try anything new to the risk of our souls. We will keep to the old, old gospel, until it is worn out. When that happens, it will be time to think of something fresh. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The evil eye and the amulet Two picturesque metaphors here, “ Bewitched” refers to the old superstition that still lingers in many dark corners of England itself--the old superstition of the “ evil eye,” according to which some persons had the power of hurting and even slaying with a glance. The spiritual life of the Galatian churches seemed to Paul as if it had been sucked out of them by the baleful glitter of some evil eye. “ Openly set forth” is the technical expression to describe all public notices and proclamations; it might almost be rendered, “ placarded as a proclamation.” The whole verse brings before us the mysterious melancholy factor religious declension, the fascinations which produce it, and seem as if they worked by some malign magic, and the one charm which guards against their power. I. Religious declension.1. The Church as a whole. The apostles were not cold in their graves when grievous wolves began to enter in and spoil the flock. The law seems to work almost inevitably that close on the heels of every period of earnestness and quickened life, there shall follow a period of reaction and torpor. However high the arrow is shot, the impulse that sped it on its way heavenwards soon seems to die, and gravitation begins, and down it comes again. 2 The individual. Moments of illumination are replaced by use and wont; we get into our old ruts again, and quaff once more the opium soporifics which have lulled us to sleep so often before. How strange, how sad, that this should be so universally true. II. The fascinations which produce religious declension.1. External. Worldly cares, occupation, treasures. Many men’ s Christianity trickles out without their knowing it. They are too busy to look after it, or even to notice its escape, and so, drop, drop, drop, slow and unnoticed through the leak, it slips until there is none left. 2. But the real cause lies within. No outward temptation has any power to seduce, unless we choose to allow it. If I had not combustibles in my heart, it would do me no harm to put ever so fierce a light to it. But if I carry about a keg of gunpowder within me, I must not blame the match if there comes an explosion. It is because our hearts do not find in Jesus Christ all that they crave, that we are unfaithful and turn away from Him; and it is because our hearts are foolish and bad, that they do not find in Him all that they crave. If we were as we should be, there would not be a desire in us that would not be met in our loving Lord, in His sweetness and grace. And if there were not a desire in us that was not met in our loving Lord’ s sweetness and grace, then all these temptations might play upon us innocuously; we should walk through the fire and not be harmed. III. the amulet. Fix your eye, not on the glittering eye that would fascinate you, but on the counter charm--Christ crucified. Hearts and minds that are occupied with Him will not be at leisure for lower and grosser tastes. An empty vessel let down into the ocean will have its sides bulged in far more quickly than one that is filled. Fill your hearts, and keep them full, with Jesus Christ, and they will be able to resist the pressure of temptation. Try to see placarded on every common thing the crucified Christ. That sight will take the brightness out of many a false glitter, as a poor candle pales before the electric light, or as the sun puts even it to shame. You may be as powerless of yourself before temptations, as a hummingbird before a snake; but if you look fixedly to Him, neither the glittering eye of the serpent nor the forked tongue with its hiss will harm or frighten you. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Spiritual witchcraft To “ bewitch” here involves two ideas.1. A pernicious influence exercised on the recipient.2. The envious, jealous spirit of the agent. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The fascination of the cross A rebuke for apostasy. St. Paul tells the Galatians they have been fascinated as with the power which the Orientals ascribe to the “ evil eye,” notwithstanding the clear representation of the wondrous love of Christ’ s death set forth in the vivid and impressive preaching of the apostle, as in a picture The fascination of the cross should prevent the power of all other fascinations. Of many it may be asked, “ Who did fascinate you?” I. The fascinations which turn us from obedience to the truth.1. Worldliness.2. Intellectualism.3. Novelty.4. Self-will. II. The fascination of the cross should destroy the power of all these. The cross should teach us--1. Self-denial in opposition to worldliness.2. Humility as against intellectual pride.3. Steadfastness in place of love of novelty in doctrine.4. Submission of our will to God. The cross may exercise a magic charm over us. Let us always be in the circle of its influence. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)Paraphrase of the verse Christ’ s death in vain? O ye senseless Gauls, what bewitchment is this? I placarded Christ crucified before your eyes. You suffered them to wander from this gracious proclamation of your King. They rested on the withering eye of the sorcerer. They yielded to the fascination and were rivetted there. And the life of your souls has been drained out of you by that envious gaze. (Bishop Lightfoot.)The Galatians’ deflection I. Consider wherein their disobedience to the truth consisted. II. The particular aggravation with which their deflection was attended. III. The apostle’ s reproof. Inferences--1. How great is the evil and danger of self-righteousness. 2. What need have even the most eminent Christians to watch against apostasy. 3. What cause of thankfulness have they who are kept stedfast in the truth. (C. Simeon, M. A.)Importance of preaching Christ crucified In any circumstances it is both sinful and unwise to turn away from the truth as it is in Jesus; it bespeaks us blind to our own interest, as well as regardless of the glory of God. But what rendered such conduct inexcusable in the Galatians, was the degree of evidence with which the gospel was attended, and the abundance of evangelical preaching which they enjoyed. I. Endeavour to ascertain the import of the terms employed in the text. Not merely the setting forth of Christ’ s bodily sufferings.1. Christ is set forth in the gospel as the great propitiation, by which God’ s righteousness might appear in the remission of sins (Romans 3:25). 2. Christ is set forth as the great expression of Divine love to a sinful and perishing world (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). 3. Christ is set forth in the gospel as affording the strongest proof of God’ s displeasure against sin (Romans 8:3; Galatians 3:13). 4. Christ crucified is set forth as the only foundation of a sinner’ s hope (John 1:29; John 3:14-15). 5. The terms in the text further denote, the high degree of evidence which attended the ministry of the apostles, especially among the Galatians. II. Consider the importance of setting forth Christ in the preaching of the gospel. It is a principal part of the work of the Holy Spirit to take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us; it should, therefore, be the great object of the Christian ministry to co-operate with this design.1. To exhibit Christ crucified will tend to prove the hearts of men, and make them manifest. 2. It is the only way of giving peace to souls in distress for sin. When a sinner is brought under the terrors of the law, made to see and realize his guilt and danger, and to feel his need of a Saviour, he is apt to look inward for some qualification to recommend him to Christ; but to set forth a crucified Saviour is to point him to the only refuge, and to show him at once his remedy. All his help must come from Calvary. If we desire a more spiritual and humble frame of mind, no means are so effectual to its production as the contemplation of a crucified Redeemer. 3. It is the way to draw forth and bring into exercise all the Christian graces. 4. The preaching of Christ crucified is that which leaves all unbelievers without excuse. It will be impossible for those to plead ignorance of the way of salvation, before whose eyes this truth has been evidently set forth. If they perish it will not be for lack of knowledge, but for want of a heart to attend to the things which belong to their everlasting peace. (Theological Sketch-Book.)Beholding the crucifixion Jesus Christ was certainly not crucified in Galatia. Your children can tell you He was crucified at Golgotha, without the gate of Jerusalem. Nor do I suppose that many Galatians were present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, Yet the words of the apostle are very forcible--“ Before whose eyes,” etc. These men had seen the Lord, though not in the flesh. They had seen Him crucified, and they were crucified with Him. Although Christ was set forth crucified, only in representation, in the words of truth and soberness, yet the representation was indeed a reality to them. They believed it; they saw it; they felt it. They knew its truth; they felt its power; they beheld its glory. If this be all, some of you say, that is meant by the words, then there is nothing more intended than may be seen and felt in these latter times and in this our land, Just so I mean you to understand me. There is nothing in this vision of Jesus Christ “ evidently set forth crucified” which may not be seen in our day, and seen by you as the life of your own souls. This is not an old picture of the crucifixion, suspended in the churches of Galatia for their especial benefit, but a lively representation, having grace and power unexhausted, for all times and places, wherever on the face of the earth is to be found a company of sinners looking for salvation. But our text suggests another very solemn consideration. These Galatians, “ before whose eyes Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth, crucified among them,” were so bewitched, notwithstanding the glorious sight which they beheld, that they did not obey the truth. This strange infatuation was not confined to the old times. I. Explain the vision of Jesus Christ “ evidently set forth, crucified among you,” An evident setting forth, glorious in its own evidence, and mighty in its own power; a great sight which fills the soul of men beholding, and works upon the springs of life and activity within them. It is Christ brought so near them that nothing seems nearer, everything else is distant. That voice of prayer--prayer, loving and mighty in death, sounds so near that its tones touch their hearts, and they feel it working mightily in them for their regeneration. The pitiful compassion of the Saviour is so near that He seems to weep with them and feel for them, as though He suffered to succour them, was tempted to encourage them to resist the tempter, and fought in the dreadful conflict that they, in His strength and spirit, may fight with Him, and like Him, overcome the same enemies. The shedding of His blood is so near them that it seems to sprinkle their consciences, and allay the burning sense of guilt. Penitence sees Christ set forth crucified where impenitence cannot discern Him. Looking through its tears, it sees the great sight, and instantly feels the healing virtue and soothing power of that wonderful death. But, then, ye must be penitent, ye must feel your sinfulness--that is, you must be in the condition to which the death of Christ is appropriate. Men naturally overlook things inappropriate to them, or those in which they have no concern. Thus it is that the penitent, broken-hearted sinner sees Christ when the evangelist sets Him forth crucified for sin. Have you thus seen Christ crucified for you? You saw no miraculous signs as the Galatians saw; but there are personal signs of the Spirit in changing your heart, subduing your sins, overcoming temptations, conquering the world, inspiring bright hopes, exciting fervent prayers, forming Christian graces--all the fruits of the Spirit; not, indeed, miracles, prophesyings, tongues, interpretations, gifts of healing; but better fruits in the maturity, not the infancy, of true religion--love, joy, peace, etc. II. Propose a solemn and affecting inquiry. Has anything bewitched you (and if anything, what?) “ that ye do not,” etc. To have had the experience of a present Christ; to have seen Him crucified before our eyes; to have felt and handled that good Word of life. And to have experienced all these things in vain! Those who have experienced these things in vain--who can they be? The man who sees the truth and does not obey it may well be regarded as bewitched, under the spell of a sorcerer, choosing what he knows is death and refusing what he knows is life. What is the spell? The preceding thoughts wilt suggest the nature of the sorcery. How did we bring Christ before the eyes of the sinner? By convincing him of the appropriateness of the Saviour and His great salvation. And this was appropriate to the sense of guilt,--humble penitence beholds Christ, and rejoices in His presence. Now let an opposite feeling, a proud feeling of self-righteousness and self-sufficiency, take possession of the heart, and the vision of Christ crucified vanishes as a dream when one awaketh. Feeling no need of Christ crucified, the soul looks no longer to Him. It has found other hope, and applied to itself a false peace. It has healed the wound slightly, and, so long as the pain is relieved, it seeks no other remedy. Just so it was with the Galatians: they listened to Jewish teachers, who told them of the ritual of Moses, the righteousness of the Pharisees, the works of the law, by the doing of which they might be saved. And so they were beguiled from the simplicity of Christ. But there are other sorcerers which infest the Christian Church, and beguile many. Whatever renders us indisposed to receive Christ, to love Him, to serve Him, blinds us to the glory of His gospel, and so removes Him further from us. There is the infatuation of the world, with its gaieties and follies; and sad infatuation it is upon some, of whom better things might have been expected. There is the infatuation of avarice, of men who make haste to be rich, who will be rich at all costs and hazards, until they destroy their own peace and make their past experience vanity, and past profession a lie. (R. Halley, D. D.)The folly of disobeying the truth I. What is implied in Christ being evidently set before us crucified. Christ is evidently set before us crucified--1. In the evangelical histories of the New Testament. The whole scenery of the cross is there exhibited. 2. In the preaching of the gospel. The cross is its very essence, its sum and substance, its all and in all. We must know nothing else. 3. In the Holy Communion. There we set forth the broken Body, the shed Blood. II. What is implied in not obeying the truth. By “ the truth” we may understand either Christ, who is emphatically the Truth, or the gospel, which is the revelation of God’ s truth. We shall consider the latter as the meaning of the text. In reference to the truth of the gospel--1. Some reject it wholly. Revelation disbelieved and despised. 2. Many reject it practically. Do not obey its exhortations. Are hearers only. Do not yield themselves to God. Still live in unbelief and sin. 3. Others reject the truth partially. Believe general truths--obey general commands--and acknowledge general principles; but are undecided, compromising, and half-hearted. III. The folly and bewitchment of such a course of disobedience. It is evidently folly--1. As it is the rejection of true light. Darkness is fraught with present evil, and tends to eternal destruction. 2. It deprives of all the solid comforts of religion. No peace, or joy, or hope. Desponding, restless, miserable. 3. It exposes to the severe disapprobation of God. 4. It will end in everlasting and irremediable ruin (Hebrews 3:2; 1 Peter 4:17-18). How important, then, that the question of the apostle be duly considered? Who hath bewitched you?1. Have men, by their creeds and false doctrines?2. Has Satan, by his devices?3. Has the world, by its allurements? Application:1. We urge the sinner to consider his ways--receive the truth in the love of it--and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he shall be saved. 2. We expostulate with backsliders--and say, Why will ye die? Why forsake Christ? Oh, return. 3. We exhort the believer to buy the truth--to grow in truth--to witness to the truth--to rejoice in the truth--and stedfastly to hold fast the truth to the end. (J. Burns, D. D.) Galatians 3:2 Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?The hearing of faith I. What faith?1. A historical (James 2:19).2. Dogmatical (Acts 8:13; Acts 8:23; Luke 4:41).3. A temporary (Luke 8:13; John 5:35).4. A faith of miracles (Luke 17:6; 1 Corinthians 13:2).5. A saving faith (Romans 10:10; Acts 16:31; 1 Peter 2:6). II. What is meant by hearing? Hearing the Word of God--1. Read.2. Expounded.3. Preached. III. How is faith wrought by the Word? Not as a principal, but as an instrumental cause. Thus--1. The minister commissioned by God speaks it to the ears sometimes of God’ s mercy to man, sometimes of man’ s duty to God (2 Timothy 4:2). 2. The ears of the hearer take in what is spoken, and convey it to the understanding. But that cannot receive it (1 Corinthians 2:14): therefore-- 3. The Spirit goes along with the “ Word, and enables the understanding to receive it. 4. And also inclines the will to embrace it (Philippians 2:13; Romans 7:15; Hebrews 4:12). (Bishop Beveridge.)Directions for hearing I. Before hearing--1. Consider what thou art going about. 2. Set all worldly thoughts aside (Nehemiah 13:19-20) and sins (James 1:21). 3. If thou would have God pour forth His blessing, do thou pour forth thy spirit to Him in prayer (Psalms 10:17; Psalms 65:2). (1) For the minister (Romans 15:30).(2) For yourselves, that God would put in with the Word (Isaiah 8:11). 4. Come with an appetite.5. With large expectations.6. With strong resolutions to practise. II. During hearing. Hear--1. Reverently.2. Diligently, with hearts as well as ears.3. Meekly (James 1:21).4. With faith (Hebrews 4:2).5. Apply it to thyself (Job 5:27).6. Renew your resolutions, lifting up your heart in prayer. III. After hearing.1. Meditate (1 Timothy 4:15).2. Confer with others.3. Square thyself according to it, that thy life may be the commentary (James 1:22; Matthew 7:24-25). (Bishop Beveridge.)A lesson for the Church The helmsman may work the wheel with the greatest dexterity and earnestness, but unless he hears and obeys the captain’ s signal, his work will be worthless, and the ship must go out of its course. The builder may accumulate the best materials, and may put them together with industry and skill; but what if he be so busy as to have no time to listen to the architect’ s instructions? His labour will be lost, and lost in proportion to his very carefulness: and the house he builds will be thrown upon his hands as not according to the plan, and may possibly be his ruin. A child to whom a father has promised a gift may earn what he deems an equivalent, and may offer it as a filial recompense; but that is not the way to secure it, and will probably lead to disappointment. And so men may work in what moral manner they like, and in what moral direction they like, but they will only labour in vain and go astray unless they hear God’ s voice, and obey His directions respecting the Divine gift of the Spirit. “ If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask for Him?” The Holy Spirit comes through the believing hearing of that message. Works will only obstruct, but faith will open an entrance for the Spirit. And we have learned this as individuals, but we have yet to learn it as Churches. How many revivals are manufactured, yet how few Churches are revived, but on the contrary made more impotent by the manufacture. The patching of organizations, the utilization of special agencies may be hindrances rather than helps. The Spirit alone quickeneth a dead Church, and He is to be had not by special services as such, but by the hearing of faith. “ Not by might nor by power,” etc. “ I will pour My blessing on thy seed, and My spirit on thy offspring.” Hear this, ye Churches, and your souls shall live. The mode of salvation A great delusion is upon the heart of man as to his salvation. His ways are perverse. He does not love the law of God; nay, his mind is opposed to it, and yet he sets up to be its advocate. When he understands the spirituality and severity of the law, he reckons it to be a sore burden; and yet, when the gospel is preached, and set forth as the gift of sovereign grace, and he is bidden to accept it by an act of faith, he professes great concern about the law, lest it should be made void by the freeness of grace. He takes the broken pieces of the two tables of the law, and hurls them at the cross. He will resort to any pretence to oppose the way of salvation appointed by God. The reason is, that man is not only poor, but proud; not only guilty, but conceited. He will not humble himself to be saved upon terms of Divine charity. Rather than believe God, he will accept the proud falsehoods of his own heart, which delude him into the flattering hope that he may merit eternal life. Against this error the text opposes itself. St. Paul points out to the Galatians that they were bound to admit, each one for himself, that they received the Holy Spirit by faith, and by no other means. I. An argument of experience for the people of God.1. See the testimony to this in the early history of the Church (Acts 1:1-26; Acts 2:1-47; Acts 3:1-26; Acts 4:1-37; Acts 5:1-42; Acts 6:1-15; Acts 7:1-60; Acts 8:1-40.). 2. In your own experience. (a) Enlightenment. (b) Peace. (c) Sanctification. (d) Communion with God. (e) Assurance. These are all received by “ the hearing of faith.” They cannot be obtained in any other way but that. II. An argument derived from observation for the use of seekers. Honesty, generosity, righteousness--these have not justified, cannot justify. Why not abandon this vain method, and try the Lord’ s appointed way “ the hearing of faith” ?1. Personal hearing. Each for himself. 2. Hearing of the gospel. The faith that saves does not come by just hearing whatever comes first; it only comes by hearing the testimony of the Spirit to the appointed Saviour. 3. Attentive hearing. 4. The hearing of faith. Accepting the gospel as God’ s message, and depending upon it fully and wholly. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The venture of faith When a man is in trouble of spirit, faith is a venture to him; it appears to him to be the greatest venture possible. He that saith, “ This gospel which I have heard is true, and I will venture my soul upon the truth of it,” is the man who has given to the gospel “ the hearing of faith.” Let me try to set forth faith yet again: This bridge is strong enough to carry me over the stream, therefore I am going over the stream upon it. That is real faith. Faith is a most practical principle in daily life. The most of trade hangs on trust. When a man sows wheat he has to scatter it into the furrows and lose it, and he does so because he has faith that God will send a harvest. When the sailor loses sight of the shore, he has to sail by faith; believing in his compass, he feels safe, though he may not see land for weeks. Faith is the hand which receives what God presents to us, and hence it is a simple, childlike thing. When a child has an apple offered him, he may know nothing about the orchard in which the apple grew, and nothing of the mechanism of his hand and arm, but it is quite enough for him to take the apple. Faith does the most effectual thing when it takes what God gives. All the rest may or may not be. Faith is the main thing. When God holds out to me salvation by Christ Jesus, I need not ask anything further about it, but just take it to myself and be at once saved, for by faith the Spirit of God is received. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Faith and works I heard a grumbler say, “ We do not want this doctrine. What we want is more morality and honesty.” You remind me of a poor little child. His father planted bulbs to come up in the spring, and make the garden gay with golden flowers. But the boy said, “ We don’ t want bulbs; we want crocus cups and daffodils.” The child forgot that flowers never grow without roots. Flowers stuck into the ground without roots are babes, follies, and good works without faith are childish vanities. We preach faith in order that good works may follow, and they do follow. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Galatians 3:3 Having begun in the Spirit.I. The commencement of salvation is the holy spirit’ s work. Salvation is not begun by--1. The means of grace alone.2. The minister or priest.3. Self-effort. II. What the holy spirit does at the beginning. He--1. Regenerates the soul.2. Teaches the soul that it is incapable of saving itself.3. Gives the grace of faith, and applies the cleansing blood of Christ.4. Brings all precious things to the believer. Apply--1. To the sceptic.2. To the self-righteous.3. To the morally estimable. (C. H. Spurgeon.)A good beginning and a sad ending I. A good beginning.1. In the faith given by the Spirit.2. In the enjoyment of the Spirit through faith.3. In the experience of spiritual privileges.4. In the use of spiritual powers.5. In the discharge of spiritual duties.6. In the exercise of spiritual hopes of perfection and heaven. II. A sad ending. Flesh may mean either(1) the beggarly elements of Gal 4:9, or(2) the works of the flesh, Galatians 5:19. 1. The works of the law will not secure perfect holiness: as shown in the ease of Paul and Luther.2. The works of the flesh will not give perfect happiness, as shown in the case of Augustine and John Newton. 3. Because both alike throw away the means by which both holiness and happiness are promoted here and consummated in heaven. Learn:1. To begin as you intend to continue.2. To continue as you have begun. Though the man of mean estate, whose own want instructs his heart to commiserate others, say to himself, “ If I had more good, I would do more good” ; yet experience justifieth the point that many have changed their minds with their means, and the state of their purse hath forespoken that of their conscience. So they have begun in “ the charity of the spirit,” and ended in the “ cares of the flesh.” (T. Adams.)Changeable Christians There are impetuous good people; fickle good people; unwise good people; let us say it out, foolish good people, who lack wisdom, and do not know they lack it. A certain sober judgment ought to mark Christians. They should be like the needle in the mariner’ s compass, not like the pendulum which, within its limited range, is always going from one extreme to another. They should not startle people with paradoxes, nor banish all confidence in them by the wildness with which they unfold their ideas to minds quite unprepared. (Dr. John Hall.)Love of change It will be found that they are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love variety and change; for the weakest-minded are those who both wonder most at things new, and digest worst things old; in so far that everything they have lies rusty, and loses lustre from want of use. Neither do they make any stir among their possessions, nor look over them to see what may be made of them, nor keep any great store, nor are householders with storehouses of things new and old; but they catch at the new-fashioned garments, and let the moth and thief look after the rest; and the hardest-hearted men are those that least feel the endearing and binding power of custom, and hold on by no cords of affection to any shore, but drive with the waves that cast up mire and dirt. (John Ruskin.)The work of the Spirit in the Church I. The Church is the product of the Holy Ghost. This is the doctrine of the whole of this text; it is the cord by which all its parts are bound together. Throwing the minds of the Galatians back upon the beginning of their religious life, whether as Churches, or as individual believers, the apostle reminds them that then they received the Holy Ghost. They began in the Spirit. This truth admits of a twofold application. First, in relation to the Church as a whole; secondly, in relation to those who compose its members.1. The Church of Christ had no existence before the Holy Spirit was given. In the Old Testament, and also in the New, an assembly or congregation of men received that name (Deuteronomy 18:16;: Nehemiah 5:13; Psalms 22:22; Acts 7:38; Acts 19:32-40). But the Church of Christ, which is His body, has been originated by the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38-41; 1 Peter 1:2). Before the coming of Christ, and during His ministry on the earth, the Holy Spirit was in the world. 2. Believers enter upon the new life through the Holy Spirit. They are born of the Spirit. II. All the attainments of the Church are reached through the help of the Spirit.1. That the Spirit dwells in His people that they may make progress in the Divine life. Truth relating to salvation is revealed by Him (1 Corinthians 11:10). Guidance is given through Him (1 Corinthians 8:14). Liberty (2 Corinthians 3:18). His presence is the earnest of the future inheritance (Ephesians 1:18; Ephesians 1:14). 2. Through the Holy Ghost the conditions and circumstances of this present life are made subservient to spiritual ends. III. The efficiency and power of the Church depend upon the Spirit.1. It is possible for Churches, after having received the Holy Spirit, to lose His gracious presence and power. 2. The most fatal means to this end is renouncing faith in Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour. 3. Turning from Christ, and from the Spirit’ s work, is conduct most foolish in its commencement, and most disastrous in its final results. 4. Avoiding the errors described in the text, all Christians should seek to profit by instruction and correction, and through the Spirit to become thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (R. Nicholls.) Galatians 3:4 Have ye suffered so many things in vain?The vanity of past Christian life in the case of apostasy Unless you continue faithful to the end, all your former Christian life must remain without the recompense God longs to bestow. Your struggles, your self-sacrifice, will all be unrewarded. The apostasy of the closing days of your life would render worthless the fidelity of all your previous years. You have done so well, that if now you do not fail you will have an abundant entrance into glory. It is not God’ s will that any who have suffered with Christ should miss the honour and blessedness of reigning with Him. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The power of hopefulness It is worthy of consideration on the part of all who are entrusted with the moral and religious care of others, that throughout Holy Scripture there is the union of kindly loving hopefulness with strong and even stern rebuke. If in despair of men who have gone grievously wrong, they will soon despair of themselves. Those who have been most successful in prevailing others to trust in Christ have commonly had an ardent and unconquerable persuasion that they should succeed; the eager faith of their own hearts has passed into the hearts of those with whom they pleaded. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Use of adversity As the skilful pearl-seller and cunning lapidary doth willingly suffer the Indian diamond or adamant to be heavily smitten, because he knoweth well the hammer and anvil will sooner be bruised than the diamond or adamant be broken; so our most wise God suffereth men of excellent virtues, of unquenchable love and charity, and invincible constancy, to fall into divers temptations, great afflictions, and manifold miseries, because He will have their moral grace to break out and shine before men, that they, seeing the constancy of His saints, may glorify God which is in heaven. (Cawdray.)Backsliders run in vain The philosopher, being asked in his old age why he did not give over his practice, and take his ease, answered, “ When a man is to run a race of forty furlongs, would you have him sit down at the nine-and-thirtieth, and so lose the prize? We do not keep a good fire all day, and let it go out in the evening, when it is coldest; but then rather lay on more fuel, that we may go warm to bed.” He that slakes the heat of his zeal in old age will go cold to bed, and in a worse case to his grave. Though the beginning be more than half, yet the end is more than all. (Spencer.) Galatians 3:5 He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles.Moral inspiration I. Its nature. The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit in man.1. In ordinary Christians: regeneration; Christian energy” moral influence. 2. In extraordinary ministers, as apostles and prophets: miracles; tongues; prophecy. The latter form intermittent; the former permanent. II. Its origin. Divine, and therefore to be distinguished from--1. The intellectual inspiration of genius.2. The emotional inspiration of rhapsody.3. The evil inspiration of imposture. On the lowest possible hypothesis the inspiration of Shakespeare, Mohammed, and Simon Magus must differ not only in degree but in kind from that of St. Paul. III. Its measure.1. Sufficient for (1) the age in which it works;(2) the purpose for which it is given. 2. According to the capacity of the recipient. IV. The means of its enjoyment.1. Not the works of the law. The folly of this supposition may be seen by the endeavour to work for the inspiration of the poet; but poets are born, not made. So are apostles and Christians. 2. By the hearing of faith. We do not call the genius a deserving man, but a “ gifted” man; so is the apostle in working miracles, and the Christian in exerting his influence for good. Inspiration, literary and moral The great, the sublime, is almost always something involuntary and unforeseen. The higher we rise in literary creation, the more it seems as though we get effaced, and no longer dispose of ourselves. The mediocre in our achievements is thoroughly our own. We feel this by our fatigue, our exhaustion. The great is given us. We write under dictation; we do not know the source, we cannot predict the arrival. It is ours, and yet not ours. What we are, then, we are by grace; and thus all poets have spoken of their inspiration, of a God in us, of a mens divinior, Remarkable testimony, and too little reflected upon! Oh, why will man, who in his artistic life so readily believes in grace and in the Spirit, in his moral life believe only in himself? Why not understand this confession of poets, and recognize in general that man is not the source but the channel and the organ of all that rises above the habitual level of his life; that he is then only a medium through which the Divine alternately appears and disappears. (Vinet.)Inspiration to be respected Let, us respect in each man, whether he be poet or no, the moment--so well named that of inspiration--when he says more than he knows, does more than he can, and becomes more than he is; that mysterious moment when he ceases to comprehend himself, when he honours himself not in what he himself is, but in the word he has just pronounced, the act he has just accomplished; when, perhaps, he trembles at the unforeseen height on which that effort has placed him, because well aware that his own strength cannot sustain him there. It is the Titan raising himself beneath the mountain that crushes him, or some imprisoned god that sighs within our breast. (Vinet.)The use of miracles “ Miracles,” says Fuller, “ are the swaddling-clothes of the infant churches” ; and, we may add, not the garments of the full-grown. They were as the proclamation that the king was mounting his throne; who, however, is not proclaimed every day, but only at his accession. When he sits acknowledged on his throne, the proclamation ceases. They were as the bright clouds which gather round and announce the sun at his first appearing: his midday splendour, though as full, and fuller indeed, of light and heat, knows not those bright heralds and harbingers of his rising. Or they may be likened to the framework on which the arch is rounded, which framework is taken down as soon as that is completed. (R. C. Trench.)Miracles of to-day Miracles are like candles lit up until the sun rises, and then blown out. Therefore, I am amused when I hear sects and Churches talk about having evidence of Divine authority, because they have miracles. Miracles in our time are like candles in the street at midday. We do not want miracles. They are to teach men how to find out truths themselves; and, after they have learned this, they no more need them than a well man needs a staff, or than a grown-up child needs a walking-stool. They are the educating expedients of the early periods of the world. As such, they are divinely wise. After they have served their purpose as such, it is humanly foolish for persons to pretend to have them. There is no teaching in Scripture of a stated providence of miracles. They are not daily helps. They do not even belong to the mere economic relations of men. In secular things, God helps the men that help themselves. (H. W. Beecher.) Galatians 3:6 Even as Abraham believed God. The faith of Abraham I. A simple, child-like dependence on the naked word of God. II. An acceptance of and trust in God’ s promised Saviour. III. A renouncing of his own works as meritorious. IV. A faith that wrought by love, making him the friend of God. V. One that overcame the world, leading him to seek a better country. VI. One that evinced its reality by a self-denying obedience. (T. Robinson.)I. Its object.1. The promise of a seed, and consequently of a Saviour. 2. The faith of the gospel not simply Divine promise of salvation, but the specific offer of a Saviour. II. Its ground.1. Neither reason nor sense. 2. But the solemnly given, clearly stated, perfectly sufficient, wholly unsupported Word of God. 3. So the Christian rests on the offer of Christ (John 3:36). III. Its acting.1. Instantaneous. 2. Full-hearted (Romans 4:21). IV. Its effect. It was counted to him for righteousness.1. The nature of justification. Possessing no righteousness of his own, Abraham had the righteousness of another (not yet revealed) set to his account. 2. The time. The instant a soul believes, whether he is cognisant of it or not. (T. Whitelaw, D. D.)I. It was faith in the personal revealed, covenant Jehovah; not merely in a word or sign, or in a prospect. II. The bond of covenant. Faith on the one side, God dealing with a sinful creature as righteous on the other. The elements of that bond are--1. Gracious acceptance.2. Gracious revelation3. Gracious reward of obedience. (W. Roberts, M. A.)In Abraham the attitude of trustfulness was most marked. By faith he left home and kindred, and settled in a strange land; by faith he acted upon God’ s promise of a race and an inheritance, although it seemed at variance with all human experience; by faith he offered up his only son, in whom alone that promise could be fulfilled (Acts 7:2-5; Romans 4:16-22; Hebrews 11:8-12; Hebrews 11:17-19). Thus this one word “ faith” sums up the lesson of his whole life. (Bp. Lightfoot.)Abraham justified by faith Powerful as is the effect of these words when we read them in their first untarnished freshness, they gain immensely in their original language, to which neither Greek nor German, much less Latin or English, can furnish any full equivalent. “ He supported himself, he built himself up, he reposed as a child in his mother’ s arms” (such seems to be the force of the Hebrew) in the strength of God, in God whom he did not see, more than in the giant empires of earth, and the bright lights of heaven, or the charms of tribe and kindred, which were always before him. It was counted to him for “ righteousness.” It “ was counted to him,” and his history seals and ratifies the result. His faith transpires not in any outward profession, but precisely in that which far more nearly concerns him and every one of us, in his prayers, his actions, in the righteousness, uprightness, moral elevation of soul and spirit which sent him on his way straightforward, without turning to the right hand or to the left. (Dean Stanley.)He was justified by faith when his faith was mighty in effect, when he trusted in God, when he believed the promises, when he expected a resurrection of the dead, when he was strong in faith, when he gave glory to God, when, against hope, lie believed in hope; and when all this passed into an act of a most glorious obedience, even denying his greatest desires, contradicting his most passionate affections, offering to God the best thing he had, and exposing to death his beloved Isaac at the command of God. “ By this faith he was justified,” saith St. Paul; “ by these works,” saith St. James, i.e., by this faith working this obedience. (Jeremy Taylor.)Marks of a justifying faith He that hath true justifying faith believes the power of God to be above the power of nature; the goodness of God above the merit and disposition of our persons; the bounty of God above the excellency of our works; the truth of God above the contradiction of our weak arguings and fears; the love of God above our cold experience and ineffectual reason; and the necessity of doing good works above the faint excuses and ignorant pretences of disputing sinners; but want of faith makes us generally wicked as we are, so often running to despair, so often baffled in our resolutions of a good life; but he whose faith makes him more than conqueror over these difficulties, to him shall Isaac be born even in his old age, the life of God shall be perfectly wrought in him; and by this faith, so operative, so strong, so lasting, so obedient; he shall be justified, and he shall be saved. (Jeremy Taylor.)Faith accounted for righteousness We call a child’ s imitation of copper-plate writing a copy, though every letter betrays a fault, and the whole effort, strictly speaking, more a caricature than a copy, but there is sincere intention in it, and therefore we account it a copy. In imputing faith for righteousness God acts by way of encouragement, and uses the most certain means by bringing us to righteousness at last. (E. W. Shalders, M. A.)Trusting the promises Last winter a man crossed the Mississippi on the ice, and, fearing it was too thin, began to crawl on his hands and knees in great terror; but when he gained the opposite shore, all worn out, another man drove past him gaily, sitting upon a sled loaded with pig-iron. That is just the way most Christians go up to the heavenly Canaan, trembling at every step lest the promises shall break under their feet, when really they are secure enough for us to hold our heads and sing with confidence as we march to the better land. Abraham a witness to the doctrine of justification by faith I. The text speaks of a gracious blessing. The blessing Abraham received was that his faith was accounted to him for righteousness. This is another term for justification. For the amplification of this part of the subject see Romans 4:1-8. Justification is a gracious blessing, for it includes--1. The forgiveness of sins. 2. “ The being brought into the right relationship with Divine law. When a man has broken the Divine law, he is not justified--he feels himself condemned and excluded from the Divine favour. Could he be but once restored, and brought into harmony with that Divine law, he would be justified.” 3. “ The being brought into a state of potential righteousness. While justification is not to be confounded with sanctification, it implies that sanctification will take place in the processes of spiritual recovery through which we shall pass. We are justified among other reasons because we shall be sanctified.” How precious, then is this blessing! II. The text states by whom this blessing is enjoyed. “ They which are of faith.” This means--1. Those who for salvation put no trust in any human work. They have no confidence in the flesh, in hereditary privileges, or national distinctions. (The Jews trusted in the fact that they were the natural descendants of Abraham.)2. Those who through faith alone seek to obtain and retain spiritual life. “ Those who are not working that they may obtain the favour of God as a meritorious reward, but who are believing that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself; and that the gift of God is eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.” III. The apostle introduces a witness to these truths. To those who boasted that Abraham was their father, and who yet clung to the law for justification, the apostle declares that Abraham obtained the favour of God not as a worker but as a believer.1. The object of Abraham’ s faith. “ He believed God.” Bearing in mind the incidents of his life, this is abundantly clear that the Being in whom he trusted was the Almighty. 2. The subject of Abraham’ s faith. 3. The result of his faith. Lessons:1. There is no righteousness possible to us but through faith.2. The inheritance of the gospel is a spiritual inheritance.3. The Divine promise is the support of faith. (R. Nicholls.) Galatians 3:7 They which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.The children of Abraham By grace all believers are such. I. By imitation: in that Abraham is set forth as a pattern in the steps of whose faith believers walk. II. By succession: in that they succeed him in the same blessing. III. By a kind of spiritual generation: in that Abraham by believing the promise of a seed did after a sort beget them and receive them as his children (Romans 9:8). Here then is the true mark of a child of Abraham: to be of his faith.1. The Jews are not his children though descended of Isaac, because they follow not the faith of Abraham. 2. Nor the Papists, in spite of their antiquity and numbers, unless they are of his faith. 3. Nor the mere professors of that faith (Matthew 7:22). To be children of Abraham we must-- (1) Have knowledge of the promises touching the blessing of God in Christ.(2) Believe the power and truth of God to accomplish those promises.(3) Faithfully follow God in all things. (W. Perkins.)The example faithful Abraham I. The particulars of this example. In his faith in God’ s promise, he considered--1. The terms of the promise.2. The attributes of Him who made it. II. The duty of imitating this example.1. We must, like Abraham, think of-- (1) The object.(2) The promise.(3) The promiser. 2. Our faith, like his, must be-- (1) Simple.(2) Single. III. The benefit of such an example. (T. Dale, M. A.)Children of Abraham--Spiritual kinship To be the children of a person, in a figurative sense, is equivalent to, “ to resemble him, and to be involved in his fate, good or bad.” The idea is, similarity both in character and circumstances. To be “ the children of God,” is to be like God and also, as the apostle states it to be, “ heirs of God.” To be “ the children of Abraham,” is here to resemble Abraham, to imitate his conduct, and to share in his blessedness (John 8:39; 1 John 2:29; 1 John 3:1; 1 John 3:8-9). It is as if the apostle had said, “ These Judaising teachers talk much of the glory and advantage of being children of Abraham, and insist that it is by circumcision that men attain to this dignity and happiness. But how far is this from the truth! Abraham’ s highest distinction was that he was a justified person, a friend of God; and this distinction he attained not by circumcision, but by faith. It follows, then, that they who believe like Abraham, and are like Abraham justified through believing, they--they alone--are his true spiritual descendants. Though a man should be “ a Hebrew of the Hebrews, circumcised the eighth day, and touching the righteousness that is in the law, blameless,” if he is not a believer, he is not spiritually a child of Abraham. And if a man be but a believer, be he Jew or Gentile, he is spiritually a child of Abraham. And this fact, that all who believe, whether they were descendants of Abraham or not, were to be made partakers of his blessedness, was distinctly enough taught in the ancient oracles given to Abraham. (John Brown, D. D.)The blessing of the gospel All the weight and force hereof lies in the words “ with faithful Abraham.” For he puts a plain difference between Abraham and Abraham; of one and the selfsame person making two. As if he said: There is a working and there is a believing Abraham. With the working Abraham we have nothing to do. For if he be justified by works, he hath to rejoice, but not with God. Let the Jews glory as much as they will of that begetting Abraham, which is a worker, is circumcised, and keepeth the law; but we glory of the faithful Abraham, of whom the Scripture saith, that he received the blessing of righteousness through his faith, not only for himself, but also for all those which believe as he did; and so the world was promised to Abraham, because he believed. Therefore all the world is blessed; that is to say, receiveth imputation of righteousness, ii it believe as Abraham did. Wherefore the blessing is nothing else but the promise of the gospel. And that all nations are blessed, is as much as to say, that all nations shall hear the blessing; that is, the promise of God shall be preached and published by the gospel among all nations. To bless signifieth nothing else, but to preach and teach the word of the gospel, to confess Christ, and to spread abroad the knowledge of Him among all the Gentiles. And this is the priestly office, and continual sacrifice of the Church in the New Testament, which distributeth this blessing by preaching and by ministering of the sacraments, by comforting the broken-hearted, by distributing the word of grace which Abraham had, and which was also his blessing; which when he believed, he received the blessing. So we also believing the same are blessed. (Luther.)Faith obtains salvation I have seen shrubs and trees grow out of the rocks, and overhang fearful precipices, roaring cataracts, and deep running waters; but they maintained their position, and threw out their foliage and branches as much as if they had been in the midst of a dense forest. It was their hold of the rock that made them secure, and the influences of nature that sustained their life: so believers are oftentimes exposed to the most horrible dangers in their journey to heaven; but, so long as they are “ rooted and grounded” in the Rock of Ages, they are perfectly secure. Their hold of Him is their guaranty; and the blessings of His grace give them life, and sustain them in life. And as the tree must die, or the rock fall, before a dissolution could be effected between them, so either the believer must lose his spiritual life, or the rock must crumble, ere their union can be dissolved. (J. Bate.) Galatians 3:8 And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith. The Scripture foreseeing I. God foresaw that He would justify the heathen through faith. II. Foreseeing this issue, God announced it by word of mouth to Abraham. III. Moses recorded it in the spirit of prophecy. IV. Paul justifies this use of scripture here, and in Romans 15:1-4, and 1 Corinthians 10:1-11. See also 1 Peter 1:11-12. V. We may apply it to the New Testament.1. The Scripture foresaw and provided against the doctrine of the supremacy of Peter, which is the foundation of the Papal claims (Galatians 2:11, etc.; Ephesians 2:20; 1 Peter 5:1-3). 2. Against mariolatry (Luke 8:21; Luke 9:28). (Dean Goulburn.)The foresight of Scripture The Old Testament is endowed with foresight of the New; the New with foresight of things that should come after in the history of the Church. The Scripture expresses the prescience of its Divine Author. Nor is there any ground for confining this prescience to great events, and the solemn crises of ecclesiastical history. God foresaw us, with the circumstances into which we should be thrown, the characters which we should exhibit, the temptations to which we should be subjected. Writing in the spirit of foresight we may well conceive then that He has dropped a word for each one of us somewhere in His book, and that this word will find us out, and come home to us if we study it under the light of prayer. (Dean Goulburn.)The gospel I. Its antiquity--preached to Abraham. II. Its universality.1. In its objects: heathen, all nations.2. In its terms: faith. III. The slowness but sureness of its development: foreseeing. IV. Its gratuitousness: justification V. Its blessedness.1. Fellowship in Abraham’ s privileges on earth.2. Fellowship with Abraham in heaven. The universality of the gospel. Salvation is for all the sinful family of man. The plan is vast, immense, worthy of God. The arms of Divine love are open to embrace all. All nations are invited to the life-giving waters of God’ s grace. Let the sons of wealth come, and they shall be welcome; let the hardy sons of toil come, and they shall quench their thirst; let the ignorant come, and they shall be made wise unto salvation; let the young come, and Godwill be their guide through life; let the aged come, and they shall find peace at the eleventh hour. (Thomas Jones.)The worst are justified by faith Mr. Fleming, in his “ Fulfilling of the Scriptures,” relates the case of a man who was a very great sinner, and for his horrible wickedness was put to death in the town of Ayr. This man had been so stupid and brutish a fellow, that all who knew him thought him beyond the reach of all ordinary means of grace; but while the man was in prison, the Lord wonderfully wrought on his heart, and in such a measure discovered to him his sinfulness, that after much serious exercise and sore wrestling, a most kindly work of repentance followed, with great assurance of mercy, insomuch, that when he came to the place of execution, he could not cease crying out to the people, under the sense of pardon, and the comforts of the presence and favour of God,--“ O, He is a great forgiver! He is a great forgiver!” And he added the following words,--“ Now hath perfect love cast out fear. I know God hath nothing to lay against me, for Jesus Christ hath paid all; and those are free whom the Son makes free.” The gospel is I. Old as Abraham: the promise given to him contained the spirit of it--the assurance of it--the power of it, for he was justified by faith. II. Comprehensive as the world: it includes all nations--offers them the same privileges--on the same terms. III. Unchangeable as God: it is His purpose. foreseen and predicted--steadily advancing with the course of time--must be fully accomplished in the happiness of all nations. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 3:9 Are blessed with faithful Abraham. Aspects of faith I. Faith as a possessor--“ of faith.”1. Men are hardly believers in the fullest sense until they have been mastered and subjugated by their faith. 2. History, secular and sacred, is full of examples of men who have not only had faith, but have belonged to faith. The true believer--1. Acts on faith’ s impulse; 2. Follows faith’ s guidance as a good servant (1) unquestionably;(2) fully;(3) cheerfully. II. Faith as a possession--“ Faithful.”1. There is a partial faith (1) of the intellect;(2) of the affections;(3) of the will;(4) of the life. Of these one may act without the other. We may believe in Christ(1) historically;(2) doctrinally;(3)emotionally;(4) ethically. 2. There is a fulness of faith which embraces all. III. Faith as a bond of union, “ Blessed with Abraham.”1. This bond unites all classes, Jew and Gentile.2. Unites all ages.3. Unites all classes and ages in a common blessedness. Believers are saved I recollect the lesson which I learned from my Sunday school class, Though yet a youth, I was teaching the gospel to boys, and I said, “ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” One of them asked somewhat earnestly, “ Teacher, are you saved?” I answered, “ I hope so.” As if he had been sent to push the matter home to me the boy replied, “ Teacher, don’ t you know?” and further inquired, “ Teacher, have you believed?” I said, “ Yes.” “ Have you been baptized?” I said “ Yes.” Well, then, he argued, “ You’ re saved.” I was happy to answer, “ Yes, I am,” but I had hardly dared to say that before. (C. H. Spurgeon.)God’ s people blessed in faithful Abraham I. Observe, then, in the first place--Abraham is declared to be faithful and blessed. Truly he may well be called faithful Abraham; for though there are some evident marks of want of faith in Abraham, yet this is saying no more of him than of any one of God’ s people. In those the most excellent--standing forth the most prominently in God’ s Word--it is remarkable, that in the very point in which the Holy Ghost made them peculiarly excellent--gave a peculiar beauty in their character--you will find in that very point are they distinguished, in some few stages of their journey, for that which is the direct opposite; and if that teaches us no more than this, than Abraham was not saved for his faith’ s sake--that Job was not saved for his patience” sake--that David was not saved for his courage’ sake--it leads us to this, to say that by grace they were saved, and not by anything wrought in them or done by them. When we look at the character of this eminent servant of God, truly he was distinguished for this most excellent gift--the faith of God’ s elect. But observe: the passage also asserts that faithful Abraham was “ blessed,” Faithful Abraham had temporal blessings. That’ s one proof, among many, why I cannot think that Abraham’ s covenant is the same with our gospel covenant. There was the act of circumcision that entitled him to a blessing; and there was the promised land--the temporal good. Surely this does not savour of the unearthly gospel. The gospel covenant gives no promise of any temporal blessing, except, indeed, in this way” Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these shall be added unto you.” All these things shall be thrown in. Ye shall find riches in your poverty, and health in your sickness. Ye shall find that God, who worketh by contraries, shall give you real good even out of evil. But His covenant gives no assurance of earthly blessings, though the covenant of Abraham did; and that’ s one reason, among ten thousand, why I never could consider it the same with the gospel covenant. But besides this, Abraham was especially blessed in spiritual things. He inherited the promise--the great promise. He inherited the promise of Isaac, and saw through him the Messiah that was to be cut off, but not for Himself. II. But now observe, secondly, that “ they which be of faith are blessed with him.” When it is said that “ they which be of faith,” we are not to understand that they have the same measure of faith as Abraham. My dear friends, we are oftentimes accused of laying too great stress on faith. I never heard a believer think we laid too much stress upon faith. I hear of those who talk of faith as a blind man talks of colours, unable to describe or truly to understand that of which he speaks. I have heard them saying we lay too much stress upon faith; but the Apostle Paul wrote two whole Epistles especially on this subject; and you will find, throughout the whole of the Romans, and throughout the whole of the Galatians, how great and how continued a stress he lays on this most important point; and how is that? He knew well this grand subject of faith sinks everything else. As faith is strong, so every thing is strong. When our views of faith rise, so our views of God rise; and when such is the case, obedience to the law of God flows as a stream, pervades the heart, and worketh by love--subjecteth the will, and leadeth a man upwards to his salvation. All the blessings are received by faith. They are as much received by faith as I receive the bread I eat. That bread becomes mine as I eat it, it becomes mine by appropriation, as it were--it becomes my own, to nutrify and sustain me; and so, by faith, Christ becomes the support of my spiritual frame. I now come to that part of the subject which opens a great and glorious prospect: “ they are blessed.” They who have Christ are blessed; they inherit the promise--the great promise--Christ--Jehovah--Jesus the Saviour. They have Him in the glory of His person, the perfection of His work, and all the fulness of His grace. Oh I what a blessing has that man who has Christ for his portion. Does any one doubt it? They are blessed because they are hastening to that world where they shall be superlatively blessed. (J. H. Evans.)Abraham; or, the influence of faith Let us consider: I. The character of his faith. Few things are more talked about, and less understood, than this subject of faith. St. James teaches us in his second chapter and twenty-sixth verse, that there are two distinct kinds of faith--that, as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. There are those who possess what we may call a living faith amongst the heathen--a faith which indeed does not come down from the living Spirit--but it inspires the soul of the Hindoo mother when she is constrained to cast her own child beneath the wheels of the ponderous machine which carries the god called Juggernaut. Is it not so, also, where the Jew really trusts on his god--who, however, is not the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, but one of his own creation? Is it not equally so with the Mahommedan, who will imbrue his hands in the blood of those who deny that Mahomet was God’ s prophet? Is it not so with those Roman Catholics who believe the Virgin Mary to be more tender and compassionate than Christ, who came into the world and suffered death to save us? They exercise a living faith, but its object is such as to render it nevertheless short of salvation. You will observe that the right object of faith is as essential as the living principle of faith. Here then is the one true and only object by which faith is made instrumental in saving the soul. I need not say that faith itself never saves a man--it is the object of that faith. Faith is the instrument--it is not the life which is brought into the soul, but it merely opens the soul to receive that life--it leads the thirsty soul to the waters of life, where it may be refreshed. Still, it may be asked, how can this be true as regards the Old Testament Saints? The text teaches us to take Abraham as a type of the whole of the Old Testament Saints, and that Abraham did believe in Jesus Christ; for you will find in verse 16--“ Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, ‘ and to seeds,’ as of many; but, as of one, ‘ and to thy seed’ --which is Christ.” He did believe. As you read in the first lesson of this evening’ s service, you will remember that Abraham said unto his son--“ My son, God will provide himself a Lamb for a burnt-offering.” Now this Lamb was no other than the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it is said--“ He was the Lamb which was slain from the foundation of the world.” He was regarded by all the Old Testament Saints as a Lamb slain for them. They looked forward to the sacrifice which was to be made, as we look back to it now it has been made. The promise made to Abraham is noticed in Galatians 3:8. Now this does away with the notion that any faith in the abstract can possibly save. I know that there is a common notion amongst men in these latitudinarian days, by which they affirm and endeavour to maintain that it matters little what a man’ s faith is, provided it be sincere. Now you will observe from this that it does matter altogether what his faith is; for it may be sincerely placed on a wrong object. We come, therefore, to the inevitable conclusion, that unless the object of your faith be one with the object of Abraham’ s faith--i.e., the Lord Jesus Christ, His blessing cannot be yours. II. The influence of his faith. They that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham by righteousness imputed to their souls. Another point is, that through faith Abraham walked with God. St. James tells us that Abraham was a friend of God. What an exalted honour and privilege is this. Can there be any term more endearing to the believing soul than to be called the friend of God? And yet Jesus says to His people, “ Ye are my friends” ! Now, dear friends, those who be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. They have the same blessing, and they, too, are the friends of God. How do they prove they are His friends? They follow the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, who says, “ My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.” Through faith Abraham was supported in all his trials, and protected in all his dangers; and was there ever a friend of God left in an un-befriended state by God? No! Genesis 15:1 --“ Fear not, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” He is a shield to ward off and protect. But not only was Abraham blessed: he was made a blessing to others. He was made a blessing to all the families of the earth by being the father of the seed to whom the promises were made. He was also a blessing by his bright example of faith and holiness, and all who follow his example shall receive his blessing. He was made a blessing to others; and, dear friends, all who are “ of faith” are “ blessed with faithful Abraham” by being made a blessing to others. Suffer me, then, to ask you, brethren, whether you this night have the mark of the blessing of Abraham? Because, if you have not this mark, you have not his faith, and consequently are not blessed with him. There is, one thought more before we leave the subject, Abraham through faith realized the Lord as his portion. You will find in Genesis 15:1 : “ I am thy shield and exceeding great reward.” Dear friends, what a depth there is here! “ I am thy exceeding great reward!” This is what we are all seeking for--a recompense for our labours, toils, and anxieties. But here--“ All them that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” --they have the Lord as their “ exceeding great reward.” He is their portion, their everlasting inheritance--He is their all in all in this world! But here is a blessing which reaches not only to the end of time, but to all eternity. (G. A. Rogers, M. A.)The blessing in Abraham is like a stream I. Full--of comfort and refreshment for guilty man--of promise for the world. II. Flowing--first enjoyed by Abraham--it flows on through time. III. Expansive--it reaches to all nations. IV. Free--for every one that believeth. V. Inexhaustible--for its source is Christ. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.The curse and its removal I. The curse of the law is of universal application. All are born under the law, and are bound to observe it. But all have broken it, and their guilt remains. There is no question of mercy here. Law, viewed in itself, knows no mercy. It pronounces a man righteous only on condition of perfect obedience. The chain is severed, though only one link be broken. The cable which joins two continents together, fails to convey the electric current if hut a single flaw exist in it. Every other part may be perfect; but one fault mars the whole. So with law. Thus all are under condemnation. II. The spirit of the law is antagonistic to faith. The starting-point of the law is obedience. III. The curse removed. Christ not only died for our sins, but suffered that particular kind of death with which the law had specially connected the infliction of the curse, and so became a curse for us.1. He who was to remove the curse must not be Himself liable to it. The Substitute for the guilty must Himself be innocent. 2. He who was to be the Substitute for all, must have the common nature of all. 3. He who was to do more than counterbalance the weight of the sins of all, must have infinite merits of His own, in order that the scale of Divine justice may preponderate in their favour. 4. In order that He may remove the curse pronounced in the law of God for disobedience, He must undergo that punishment which is specially declared in that law to be the curse of God. 5. That punishment is hanging on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23). (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The curse realized The curse that men have in this life is as nothing compared with the curse that is to come upon them hereafter. In a few short years, you and I must die. Come, friend, I will talk to you personally again--young man, we shall soon grow old, or, perhaps, we shall die before that time, and we shall lie upon our bed--the last bed upon which we shall ever sleep--we shall wake from our last slumber to hear the doleful tidings that there is no hope; the physician will feel our pulse, and solemnly assure our relatives that it is all over! And we shall lie in that still room, where all is hushed except the ticking of the clock, and the weeping of our wife and children: and we must die. Oh, how solemn will be that hour when we must struggle with that enemy, Death! The death-rattle is in our throat--we can scarce articulate--we try to speak; the death-glaze is on the eye; Death hath put his fingers on those windows of the body, and shut out the light for ever; the hands well-nigh refuse to lift themselves, and there we are, close on the borders of the grave! Ah! that moment, when the spirit sees its destiny; that moment, of all moments the most solemn, when the soul looks through the bars of its cage, upon the world to come! No, I cannot tell you how the spirit feels, if it be an ungodly spirit, when it sees a fiery throne of judgment, and hears the thunders of Almighty wrath, while there is but a moment between it and hell. I cannot picture to you what must be the fright which men will feel, when they realize what they often heard of. It is a fine thing for you to laugh to-night! But when you are lying on your deathbed, you will not laugh. Now, the curtain is drawn, you cannot see the things of the future, it is a very fine thing to be merry. When God has removed that curtain, and you learn the solemn reality, you will not find it in your hearts to trifle … I think I see that terrible day. The bell of time has tolled the last day. Now comes the funeral of damned souls. Your body has just started up from the grave, you unwind your cerements and look up. What is that I see? Oh! what is that I hear? I hear one dread, tremendous blast, that shakes the pillars of heaven, and makes the firmament reel with affright; the trump of the archangel shakes creation’ s utmost bound. You look and wonder. Suddenly a voice is heard, and shrieks from some, and songs from others--He comes, He comes, He comes--and every eye must see Him. There He is; the throne is set upon a cloud, which is white as alabaster. There He sits. ‘ Tis He, the Man that died on Calvary--I see His pierced hands--but ah, how changed! No thorn-crown now. He stood at Pilate’ s bar, but now the whole earth must stand at His bar. He opens the book. There is silence … “ Come, ye blessed”… “ Depart, ye cursed.” Oh, escape, before it is too late. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Mercy needed by all Though we have sinned less than others, we cannot be saved by merit; even as, thank God, though we have sinned more than others, we maybe saved by mercy. How idle to talk of other men being greater sinners than we are--to flatter and deceive ourselves with that! He drowns as surely who has his head beneath one inch of water, as he who, with a millstone hung round his neck, has sunk a hundred fathoms down. Let the strain of the tempest come, and the ship that has one bad link in her cable, as certainly goes ashore to be dashed to pieces on the rocks, as another that has twenty bad. It is, no doubt, by repeated strokes of the woodman’ s axe that the oak, bending slowly to fate, bows its proud head and falls to the ground, and it is by long dropping that water hollows the hardest stone. But those who speak of great and little, of few or many, sins, seem to forget that man’ s ruin was the work of one moment, and of one sin. The weight of only one sin sank this great world into perdition; and now all of us, all men, lie under the same sentence of condemnation. Extinguishing every hope of salvation through works, and sounding as ominous of evil in men’ s ears, as the cracking of ice beneath our feet, or the roar of an avalanche, or the grating of a keel on the sunken rock, or the hammer that wakens the felon from dreams of life and liberty, that sentence is this: “ Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law, to do them.” Such is our position; and instead of shutting our eyes to it, like the foolish ostrich that hides her head in the bush when the hunters are at her heels, it is well to know and to face it. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things.-- The slightest flaw is fatal Who does not see that the tiniest flaw or fracture in a diamond vitiates the whole gem, be it a very Koh-i-noor--that the smallest streak or stain sets aside the marble block of Carrara that is like the driven snow--that the slightest spot or speck dims to rejection the whole polished speculum--that the most insignificant leak is perilous? In these cases it will not arrest the verdict, to allege the fault is so very small. Actual transactions can easily be quoted which establish this. Once a famous ruby was offered to this country. The report of the crown jeweller was that it was the finest he had ever seen or heard of, but that one of its facets--one of the “ little” cuttings of the face--was slightly fractured. The result was, that almost invisible flaw reduced its value by thousands of pounds, and it was rejected from the regalia of England. Again: when Canova was about to commence his great statue of the great Napoleon, his keenly-observant eye detected a tiny red line running through the upper portion of the splendid block, which at infinite cost had been fetched from. Paros, and he refused to lay a chisel on it. Once more: in the story of the early struggles of the elder Herschel, while he was working out the problem of gigantic telescope specula, you will find that he made scores upon scores ere he got one to satisfy him. A scratch like the slenderest spider-cord sufficed to place among the spoiled what had cost him long weeks of toil and anxiety. Again: in the leak of a ship, the measure of the ship to resist the shock of wave or the strain of wind, is not, its strongest but its weakest part. The tremendous issues contingent on attention or non-attention to the slightest leak, was illustrated in a recent incident in the late deplorable civil war in America. One of the Federal war-ships had what seemed a merely superficial leakage, and, though noticed, it was not thought necessary to countermand the order that she should take part in an approaching conflict. At the crisis of the encounter, it was found that the sea-water had got oozing into the gunpowder magazine, and rendered nearly the whole useless. On that powder hung victory or defeat. The “ little leak” went uncared for, and an inferior force won. The very perfection aimed at, you will observe, necessitated rejection of gem, and marble block, and speculum, and leaking timber. Even so, were Christianity a less holy thing--a thing that could abide compromise--then what are called “ small sins” --the larger and grosser being acknowledged--might be passed over, winked at. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.)Look, as one drop of ink coloureth a whole glass of water, so one gross sin, one shameful action, one hour’ s compliance with anything of Antichrist, will colour and stain all the great things that ever you have suffered, and all the good things that ever you have performed; it will stain and colour all the good prayers that ever you have made, and all the good sermons that ever you have heard, and all the good books that ever you have read, and all the good words that ever you have spoken, and all the good works that ever you have done; and therefore, whatever you do, keep off from sin, and keep off from all sinful compliances, as you would keep off from hell itself. (T. Brooks.)A call to the unconverted We shall-- I. Try the prisoner.1. One pleads “ not guilty.” Well, have you continued in all things? Let us go through the Tea Commandments. Each convicts you. 2. Another says, “ I shall not plead guilty, because, although I have not continued in all things, I have done the best I could.” 3. Another pleads, “ While I have broken the law, I am no worse than others.” 4. Another cries, “ I have striven to keep the law, and think I have succeeded a little.” 5. Another, “ There are many things I have not done, but I have been virtuous.” But all are guilty because none have continued in all things. II. Declare the sentence. Sinner, thou art cursed--1. Not by some wizard.2. Not by an earthly monarch.3. But by God the Father.4. This curse is present.5. In some cases visible: in the drunkard, e.g.6. Universal.7. Eternal. III. Proclaim the deliverer.1. Christ has borne your curse.2. This substitution is realized by penitence and faith.3. All classes of sinners may be freed from the curse through Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The curse of the law I. Brings home to the sinner the guilt of sin.1. He is a debtor to do the whole law (1) literally,(2) spiritually. 2. But he has broken the whole law in (1) sins of omission,(2)sins of commission. II. Places the sinner under the wrath of God.1. God has guarded the law with the most solemn and terrible sanctions.2. The condemnation of the sinner is present as well as future. III. It reduces the sinner to despair.1. To perform its obligation.2. To escape its penalties. IV. It drives the sinner To Christ the only Saviour who has borne this curse. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)I. Every man by nature is under this curse (Ephesians 2:3). II. This curse abideth on us till we believe in Christ (John 3:18; John 3:36.)III. There is no way of escaping this curse but by fleeing to Christ for refuge (Hebrews 6:18). IV. Having accepted Christ, the life of faith must become one of sincere obedience (1 John 5:3; Galatians 5:24). V. But when Christ is tendered and finally refused, the sentence of the law is ratified in the gospel, the court of mercy. (T. Manton.)The claims of the law I. Practical obedience: not hearing, knowing, speaking what is written, but doing. II. Personal obedience--“ every one.” Proxies, sureties, mediators, are excluded. III. Perfect obedience--“ all things,” every jot and tittle as well as weightier matters. IV. Perpetual obedience--past, present, future. (Swinnock.)No salvation by works The voice of that cromlech stone, which still stands on our moors, the centre of the Druids’ grey, lonely, mystic circle, and on whose sloping surface I have traced the channel which, when human victims lay bound on this altar, drained off the blood of beautiful maiden, or grim captive of the fight--the voice of those tears the Indian mother sheds, as she plucks the sweet babe from her throbbing bosom to fling it into the Jumna or Ganges’ sacred stream--the voice of those ruined temples which, silent now, once resounded with the groans of expiring victims, what are these, again, but an imperfect echo of the words, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us? (Dr. Guthrie.)Righteousness by works I read lately that the Emperor of Brazil had given the Queen a dress made of spiders’ webs; it took 17,000 webs to make it. What a curiosity! No doubt the Queen would keep it all her life. Such a robe is the righteousness of works without Christ, a curiosity indeed, but not made to stand the storm of the judgment day. One sin ruinous One wheel broken in the machinery will render the whole inefficient; one breakage of a stave in the ladder may make it unfit for safe and full use; one piece of rail displaced on the railway may result in fearful disaster: one inch of wire cut out of the telegraph would prevent the use of all the rest, whatever its extent; one failure in any law of Nature may go on producing other failures ad infinitum. So the transgression of but one law of God: it is ruinous to the soul; it leads on to innumerable transgressions; it violates the whole code. (J. Bate.)Cursed, etc. The penalty of the law is-- I. Severe--in character--authority--execution. II. Comprehensive--includes every sinner-every sin. III. Inevitable--except through God’ s mercy--for none is guiltless, can satisfy the demands of the law or make amends for the past. (J. Lyth.)The curse I. Its import--it includes Divine condemnation--moral weakness--misery--death. II. Its extent--it reaches all men because all have sinned--are incapable of fulfilling the law--are condemned by the law. III. Its severity--the law permits no escape--provides no justification--insists upon its full demands. IV. Its relief--God is merciful--has made full satisfaction--justifies us by faith. (J. Lyth.)Redemption from the curse of the law I. The fearful condition of men as transgressors--“ Under the curse.”1. What the law demands. 2. The reasonableness of this requirement. Law cannot be satisfied with partial obedience. 3. The doom denounced upon all who do not comply with this requirement. (1) It is universal--“ Cursed is every one,” etc.(2) It is unspeakably awful in its nature.(3) It is present in its infliction.(4) It is irremediable as far as our own deeds and deservings are concerned. II. The blessedness of those who are interested in the glorious provisions of the Gospel--“ Christ hath redeemed us.”1. The person who interposed in order to effect our redemption.2. From what He redeems.3. How this redemption was effected--“ Being made a curse for us.”4. The blessed results which flow from His redeeming work. (Expository Outlines of Sermons.)Transgressors of the law are under the curse The law consists of two parts: a system of precepts, and the sanction and enforcement of those precepts by promises and threatenings. According to the first, it is the rule of our obedience, and shows what we ought to render unto God. According to the second, it is the rule of Divine justice, and shows what God will render unto us. I. The sanction of this law is twofold. First: A promise of life and happiness to the observers of it (Romans 10:5; Galatians 3:12; Ezekiel 20:11). Second: Threatenings of a most heavy and tremendous curse against all that transgress it; a curse that will blast and wither their souls for ever.1. What the apostle means by those who are “ of the works of the law.” To be of the works of the law signifies no other than to expect justification and eternal happiness by legal works; to depend wholly on our obedience unto and observation of the law, to render us acceptable to God and worthy of eternal life. Those, who thus rely on a legal righteousness, are said to be of the works of the law; as persons are said to be of such or such a party, because they stiffly defend the cause of the law; and stand for justification by the observance of it, in opposition to the grace of the gospel, and the way of obtaining justification and eternal life by believing. 2. What it is to be accursed. So that the true and proper notion of a curse is this: That it is the denunciation or execution of the punishment contained in the law, in order to the satisfaction of Divine justice for transgressing the precepts of it. (1) Some, therefore, are only under the curse denounced. And so are all wicked men, whose state is prosperous in this life, though they flourish in wealth and honour, and float in ease and pleasure; yet are they liable to all that woe and wrath, with which the threatenings of the law stand charged against them. (2) Some are under the curse already executed. And so are all wicked men, on whom God begins to take vengeance and exact satisfaction in the miseries and punishments which He inflicts on them in this life, II. You see, then, what an universal curse these words denounce; a curse that sets “ its mouth and dischargeth its thunder against all the sinful sons of Adam. A curse it is which, as Zechariah speaks (Zechariah 5:3), “ goeth forth over the face of the whole earth;” and will, if mercy rebate not the edge of it, cut off on every side all those that stand in its way; that is, all that are sinners, and all are so; for the characters which the apostle doth here give to those who are under the curse of the law are so general and comprehensive, that no man living could possibly escape if God should judge him according to the conditions of the covenant of works.1. It is said that every one is accursed that doth not those things which are written in the book of the law. And this is a curse that cuts off on both sides. On this side it cuts off those who are but negatively righteous, who ground all their hopes for heaven and happiness upon what they have not done and put into the inventory of their virtues that they have not been vicious, no extortioners, no unjust persons, no adulterers, etc., but, alas! this account will not pass in the day of reckoning; the law requires thee not only to forbear the gross acts of sin but to perform the duties of obedience. And it cuts off on that side all those who have done contrary to what is written in the law. 2. Those, also, who have not done all that is written in the law are struck with this anathema or curse. And where is the man that dares lift up his face to justify himself against this charge? 3. But suppose that, at some time or other, thou shouldst have performed every particular duty; yet, hast thou continued in all things that are written in the law to do them? Hast thou spun an even thread of obedience? Are there no flaws, no breaks, no breaches in it? Hast thou been always constant in the highest fervour of thy zeal for God? Hast thou been in the fear of the Lord all the days of thy life? Have thy affections never languished; thy thoughts never turned aside, so much as to glance upon vanity? Didst thou never drop one unsavoury word, nor do any one action which, both for the matter and manner of it, was not perfectly agreeable to the law? III. This curse is most dreadful, if we consider that it is universal, and extends itself not only over all persons but unto all things. Everything which a sinner either doth or hath is accursed to him.1. He is accursed in all his temporal enjoyments. His bread is kneaded and his drink mingled with a curse, his table becomes a snare to him, and every morsel he eats is dipped in the bitterness of God’ s wrath and curse. His very mercies are curses unto him; as, on the contrary, a true believer’ s afflictions are blessings. 2. He is accursed in all his spiritual enjoyments. And, oh, what a sad and dreadful curse is this that thou, who comest to hear the same word preached, which to ethers proves the savour of life unto life eternal, to thee, through the corruption and wickedness of thine own heart, it should prove the savour of death unto death eternal! 3. If all the favours of God’ s providence and all the dispensations of His grace; then, certainly, much more are all their chastisements and afflictions turned into curses. If there be poison in the honey, much more certainly is there in the sting. If God be wroth with them when He shines, much more when He frowns upon them. 4. In hell they shall be cursed to purpose, and lie for ever under the revenging wrath of God. Their sentence is, “ Depart from me, ye cursed” (Matthew 25:41). Hell, indeed, is the general assembly of all curses and plagues. They are eternally cursed (1) In their separation from the sight and presence of God.(2) In the society of devils and damned spirits.(3) In the work of hell, which is blaspheming and cursing.(4) In the pains and torments which they must eternally suffer. IV. application.1. See what an accursed thing sin is that carries, wrapped up in its bowels, woe, wrath, and eternal death. 2. If every transgressor of the law be accursed, see, then, the desperate folly of those wretches who make light of sin, and account the commission of it a matter of small or no concern to them. 3. If every transgression exposes us to the curse, beware, then, that you never encourage yourself to commit any sin because the world accounts it but small and little. 4. See here, what reason we have to bless God for Jesus Christ, who has delivered us from the curse of the law. (E. Hopkins, D. D.)The desert of sin Though some sins are greater than others, yet there is no sin but deserves damnation. Consider--1. The party condemned by the law. Every sinner. Condemned for omissions as well as commissions. 2. The doom pronounced. God’ s wrath and curse. I. I shall show, what is God’ s wrath and curse which every sin deserves.1. God’ s wrath is no passion nor is there any perturbation in God, though an angry God. His wrath may be taken up in these two things. (1) God’ s displeasure against the sinner (Psalms 5:4-5). Sin makes the soul loathsome and hateful in God’ s sight, kindles a holy fire in His heart against the sinner (Psalms 90:11). (2) God’ s dealing with sinners as His enemies, whom He is incensed against (Nehemiah 1:2; Isaiah 1:24). The wrath of a king is as the roaring of a lion; what then must the wrath of God be, an enemy where we can neither fight nor flee from, neither outwit nor outbrave? Of this wrath it is said, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 2. His curse is His separating one to evil (Deuteronomy 29:21). It is a devoting the sinner to destruction, to all the direful effects of the Divine wrath. II. I shall show, what is God’ s wrath and curse in this life and that which is to come.1. In this life they comprehend all the miseries of this world which one meets with on this side of time, miseries on the body, relations, name, estate, employment; miseries on the soul, as blindness, hardness, vile affections, horrors of conscience, etc., and, finally, death in the separation of soul and body. Thus they make a flood of miseries in this life. 2. In the life to come they comprehend eternal death and damnation, and an eternal being under the punishment of loss and sense in hell. So they make a shoreless sea of miseries in the life to come. III. I proceed to show, that there is no sin which does not deserve these, but that every sin deserves this wrath and curse,1. The wages of every sin is death (Romans 6:23). 2. Every sin is a breach of the law; and he who breaks it in erie point is guilty of all (James 2:10). The commands of the law have all one Author, whose majesty is offended by whatsoever breach. The law requires universal obedience. 3. Christ died for all the sins of all His elect (1 Peter 3:18; 1 John 1:7). 4. The least sin will condemn a man if it be not forgiven (Matthew 5:19); even idle words (Matthew 12:36-37). IV. I come to show, why every sin deserves so much. The reason is, it is a kind of infinite evil; and, therefore, since the punishment is deservedly proportioned to the offence, it deserves infinite punishment. Sin is an infinite evil in two respects.1. In respect that the guilt and defilement of it is never taken away, but endures for ever, unless the Lord Himself in mercy do remove it. 2. In respect it wrongs an infinite God. The creature, being finite, is not capable of punishment infinite in value, therefore it is necessarily infinite in duration, There is a manifold wrong to God in the least sin. (1) It wrongs His infinite sovereignty (James 2:10-11).(2) It wrongs His infinite goodness (Exodus 20:1-2).(3) It wrongs His holiness (Habakkuk 1:13).(4) It breaks His law, the eternal rule of righteousness (1 John 3:4). (T. Boston, D. D.)The condition of men under the broken covenant In a shipwreck, when the ship is dashed in pieces upon a rock, how heavy is the case of the crew among the raging waves? The ship can no more carry them to the harbour, but, failing them, leaves them to the mercy of the waves. If one can get a broken plank to hold by, that is the greatest safety there; but that doth often but hold in their miserable lives for a little, till the passengers are swallowed up. Such, and unspeakably worse, is the case of sinners under the broken covenant of works, which leaves them under the curse, as we see in the text. In which we have--1. The covenant-state of some of mankind, yea, of many of them. They “ are of the works of the law;” it is the same thing as to be of the law of works; that is, to be under the covenant of works. 2. The state and case of men under that covenant; they “ are under the curse.” The covenant is broken, and so they are fallen under the penalty. As the blessing or promise, which they have lost, comprehends all good for time and eternity, soul and body; so the curse comprehends all evil on soul and body for time and eternity. 3. The proof and evidence of this their miserable state and case. I. I shall evince the truth of this doctrine, that there are some, yea, many of mankind, who are still under the broken covenant of works. This will clearly appear, if ye consider--1. That there are but “ few that shall be saved” (Matthew 7:14). Christ’ s flock is but a very little flock (Luke 12:32). The truth is, all men by nature are under it, and so are born under the curse (Ephesians 2:3). 2. The Scripture is plain on this head. It curseth and condemneth many; Galatians 3:10, “ Cursed is every one,” viz., who is under the law; for its curse cannot reach others, there being “ no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). It condemns all unbelievers; John 3:18, “ He that believeth not is condemned already,” viz., by the sentence of the law as the covenant of works; for the covenant of grace condemns no man (John 5:45); said our Lord to the Jews, “ Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust.” Chap. 12:47, “ And if any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world but to save the world.” 3. As all men in Adam were taken into the covenant of works, so no man can be freed from the obligation of it, but they who are discharged from it by God, who was man’ s party in it. This is evident from the general nature of contracts. And none are discharged from it but on a full answering of all it could demand of them (Matthew 5:18). This no man can attain unto but by faith in Jesus Christ, whereby the soul appropriates and applies to itself Christ’ s obedience and satisfaction offered in the gospel; and so, pleading these, gets up the discharge; “ For being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). 4. Freedom from the covenant of works is such a privilege as requires both price and power, each of them infinite, to invest a sinner with it. 5. There are many who still live as they were born; in the same state wherein their father Adam left them when he broke; who were never to this day in any due concern how to be discharged from the debt he left upon their head, or of the bond of the covenant of works which in him they entered into. 6. There are but two covenants, viz., of works and grace (Galatians 4:24), as there never were but two ways of life and salvation, by works and by grace; and but two federal heads of mankind, the first and second Adam. II. Those under the covenant of works described.1. Men may be under the covenant of works, and yet living under the external dispensation of the covenant of grace. 2. Men may receive the seals of the covenant of grace, and yet be under the covenant of works. 3. Men may be convinced in their consciences of the impossibility of obtaining salvation by Adam’ s covenant of works, and yet remain under it still. 4. Men, upon the offer of the covenant of grace made to them, may aim at accepting of it, and so enter into a personal covenant with God, and yet remain under the covenant of works. But more particularly and directly-- (1) All unregenerate persons are under the covenant of works. That man or woman is yet a branch of the old Adam, growing on the old stock, a stranger to ,the new covenant, because not in Christ, the head of the covenant. (2) All that have not the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them are under the covenant of works, for “ if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Romans 8:9). Galatians 5:8, “ But if ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” It is one of the first promises of the covenant of grace, the giving of the Spirit (Ezekiel 37:27), “ A new Spirit will I put within you.” (3) All unbelievers (John 3:18). Whosoever is destitute of saving faith is under the covenant of works; for it is by faith that one is brought within the bond of the covenant of grace, is married unto Christ, being dead to the law. (4) All unsanctified, unholy persons (Romans 6:14). So that true holiness is an infallible mark of one delivered from the law; and unholiness, of one that is yet hard and fast under it (Galatians 5:18). (5) All profane, loose, and licentious men are under the covenant of works (Romans 7:5; Romans 8:2). These men of Belial are under that heavy yoke. (6) All mere moralists, such as satisfy themselves with common honesty and sobriety, living in the meantime strangers to religious exercises, and without a form of godliness. These are under the covenant of works, as seeking justification and acceptance with God by their conformity (such as it is) to the letter of the law (Galatians 5:4). They are under the covenant of works with a witness, having betaken themselves to their shreds of moral honesty, as so many Broken boards of that split ship. (7) All formal hypocrites or legal professors, these sons and daughters of the bond-woman (Galatians 4:24-25). These are they who have been convinced, but never were converted; who have been awakened by the law, but were never laid to rest by the gospel; who are brought to duties, but have never been brought out of them to Jesus Christ; who pretend to be married to Christ, but were never yet divorced from nor dead to the law; and so are still joined to the first husband, the law, as a covenant of works. III. The effect of the broken covenant of works upon those who are under it.1. It has and exercises a commanding power over them, binding them to its obedience with the strongest bonds and ties of authority. (1) It commands and binds to perfect obedience under pain of the curse. (2) It commands, without any promise of strength at all to perform. 2. It has a debarring power over those under it, in respect of the promise. It bars them from life or salvation so long as they are under its dominion, (1) There is no life to the sinner without complete satisfaction to justice for the wrong he has done to the honour of God and His law; Hebrews 9:22, for “ without shedding of blood is no remission.” (2) There is no life and salvation without perfect obedience to its commands for the time to come; Matthew 19:17, “ If thou wilt enter into life,” says Christ unto the young man in the gospel, “ keep the commandments.” This was the condition of the covenant; and it is not enough that a man pay the penalty of a broken covenant, but he must perform the condition of it ere he can plead the benefit. 3. A cursing and condemning power, in respect of the threatening. 4. An irritating influence upon all that are under it, so that, instead of making them better, it makes them worse, stirring up their corruptions, like a nest of ants, being “ troubled by one’ s touching of them (Romans 7:9-11). Now this is accidental to the law as the covenant of works; for it is holy, and just, and good; and therefore ,an never bring forth sin as the native fruit of it. But it is owing to the corruption of men’ s hearts, impatient of restraint (Romans 7:12-13), forecited. While the sun shines warm on a garden, the flowers send forth a pleasant smell; but while it shines so on the dunghill, it smells more abominably than at other times. So it is here. There are two things here to be considered in the case of the law. (1) It lays an awful restraint on the sinner with its commands and threatenings (Galatians 3:10). The unrenewed man would never make a holy life his choice; might he freely follow his own inclination, he would not regard what is good, but give himself a liberty in sinful courses. But the law is as a bridle to him; it crosses and contradicts his sinful inclinations. It is to him as the bridle and spur to the horse; as the master and his whip to the slave. So that the sinner can never cordially like it, but all the obedience it gets from him is mercenary, having no higher springs than hope of reward and fear of punishment. (2) In the meantime it has no power to subdue his corruptions, to remove his rebellious disposition, to reconcile his heart to holiness, or to strengthen him for the performance of duty; “ For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). As it finds the man without strength, so it leaves him, though it never ceases to exact duty of him. Though no straw is given to the sinner by it, yet the tale of the bricks it will not suffer to be diminished. IV. I now proceed to show, why so many do still remain under the broken covenant of works.1. It is natural to men, being made with Adam, and us in his loins; it is engrained in the hearts of all men naturally. “ Tell me,” says the apostle (Galatians 2:21), “ ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” And there are impressions of it to be found in the hearts of all among the ruins of the fall. We have a clear proof of it-- (1) In men left to the swing of their own nature; they all go this way in their dealing with God for life and favour. (2) In men awakened and convinced, and in moral seriousness seeking to know what course they shall take to be saved, and plying their work for that end. They all take this principle for granted, That it is by doing they must obtain life and salvation (Matthew 19:16). (3) in the saints, who are truly married to Jesus Christ, O what hankering after the first husband, how great the remains of a legal spirit, how hard is it for them to forget their father’ s house! (Psalms 45:10). 2. The way of that covenant is most agreeable to the pride of man’ s heart. A proud heart will rather serve itself with the less, than stoop to live upon free grace (Romans 10:3). Man must be broken, bruised, and humbled, and laid very low, before he will embrace the covenant of grace. While a broken board of the first covenant will do men any service they will hold by it rather than come to Christ; like men who will rather live in a cottage of their own than in another man’ s castle. 3. It is most agreeable to man’ s reason in its corrupt state. If one should have asked the opinion of the philosophers concerning that religion which taught salvation by a crucified Christ, and through the righteousness of another, they would have said it was unreasonable and foolish, and that the only way to true happiness was the way of moral virtue. 4. Ignorance and insensibility of the true state of the matter as it now is. There is a thick darkness about Mount Sinai through the whole dominion of the law, so that they who live under the covenant of works see little but what they see by the lightnings now and then flashing out. Hence they little know where they are nor what they are. (1) They do not understand the nature of that covenant to purpose (Galatians 4:21). (2) They are not duly sensible of their own utter inability for that way of salvation. V. Application of this doctrine.1. For information. Hence learn-- (1) That some, yea, many of mankind, are under the curse, bound over to wrath. (2) See here whence it is that true holiness is so rare, and wickedness and ungodliness so rife. (3) Here ye may see the true spring of legalism in principles as well as in practice. (4) See whence it is that the doctrine of the gospel is so little understood, and in the purity of it is looked at as a strange thing. 2. For exhortation. Be exhorted then seriously and impartially to try what covenant ye are under. For motives, consider-- (1) It is in the region of the law that we all draw our first breath. And no man will get out from its dominion in a morning dream. We owe it to our second birth, whoever of us are brought into the covenant of grace; but that is not our original state. (2) Till once ye see yourselves under the covenant of works, and so lost and ruined with the burden of that broken covenant on you; ye may hear of the covenant of grace, but ye will never take hold of it in good earnest (Galatians 2:6). Here lies the ruin of the most part who hear the gospel; they were never slain by the law, and therefore never quickened by the gospel; they never find the working of the deadly poison conveyed to them from the first Adam, and therefore they see no beauty in the second Adam for which He is to be desired. (3) Your salvation or ruin turns on this point. (4) There is no ease for a poor sinner but severity and rigour, under the covenant of works. (5) While ye are under that covenant ye are without Christ (Ephesians 2:12). And being without Christ, ye have no saving interest in his purchase. (6). All attempts you make to get to heaven while under this covenant will be vain. The children of that covenant are, by an unalterable statute of the court of heaven, excluded from the heavenly inheritance; so that, do what you will, while ye abide under it you may as well fall a-ploughing the rocks, and sowing your seed in the sand of the sea, as think to get to heaven that way. (T. Boston, D. D.)The misery of those under the broken covenant I. What the curse is which men are under.1. God’ s curse.2. The curse of the law. (1) the revenging wrath of God is in it.(2) A binding over of the sinner unto punishment for the satisfaction of offended justice.(3) A separating of the sinner unto destruction. II. What it is to be under the curse.1. Under the wrath of God.2. Bound over to revenging justice.3. A mark for the arrows of vengeance. III. Confirmation of the truth of this doctrine.1. This is evident from plain Scripture testimony. The text is express.2. It is evident from the consideration of the justice of God, as the Sovereign of the world. Two things will make this clear.1. The breaking of that covenant, whereof all under it are guilty, deserves the curse. They broke it in Adam, and they are breaking it every day; and so they deserve the curse. Now, sin’ s deserving of the curse does not arise from the threatening of eternal wrath annexed for a sanction to the commands in the law, as our new divinity would have it; that is framed for bringing believers under the curse of the law too. But it arises from sin’ s contrariety to the command of the holy law; for it is manifest, that sin does not therefore deserve a curse, because a curse is threatened against it; but because it deserves a curse, therefore a curse is threatened. Now look at sin in the glass of the holy commandment, and you will see it deserves the curse. For the commandment is-- (1) An image of the sovereign spotless holiness of God--“ The law is holy” (Romans 7:12). When God would let out the beams of His own holiness to man, He gave him the law of the ten commandments, as a transcript of it, and wrote them in his heart; and afterwards, the writing being much defaced, He wrote them to him in His Word. So the commandment is holy without spot, as God is. So that the creature rising up against the commandment, riseth up against God. (2) It is an image of His righteousness and equity, whereby He does justly to all: “ The commandment is just” (Romans 7:12). The commandment is all right in every part, and of perpetual equity” I esteem all Thy precepts concerning all things to be right” (Psalms 119:128). Look to it as it prescribes our duty to God, to our neighbour, and to ourselves (Titus 2:12). It is of spotless and perfect righteousness, as that God is whose righteous nature and will it represents. (3) An image of His goodness The commandment is good (Romans 7:12). It is all lovely, lovely in every part; lovely in itself, and in the eyes of all who are capable to discern truly what is good, and what evil--“ O how I love Thy law!” (Psalms 119:97). Conformity to it is the perfection of the creature, and its true happiness, as rendering the creature like unto God (1 John 3:2). Thus the breaking of the covenant, by doing contrary to the holy commandment, is the transgressing of the holy, just, and good will of our sovereign Lord; a defacing of and doing violence to His image, who is the chief good and infinite good. Therefore sin is the chief or greatest evil, and consequently deserves the curse. 2. Since it deserves the curse, the justice of God, which gives everything its due, ensures the curse upon it (Genesis 18:25; 2 Thessalonians 1:6). If sin did not lay the sinner under the curse, how would the rectoral justice of God appear? He will rain a terrible storm on the wicked, not because He delights in the death of the sinner, but because He loves righteousness (Psalms 11:6-7), and His righteousness requires it. 3. It appears from the threatening of the covenant--“ In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). And the truth of God requires that it take effect, and be not like words spoken to the wind. 4. If man had once run the course of His obedience, being come to the last point of it, he behoved to have been justified and adjudged to eternal life, according to the tenor of the covenant--“ The man which doth those things shall live by them” (Romans 10:5); the sentence of the law would immediately have passed in his favour, according to the promise. And therefore man, having once broken the covenant, falls under the curse, and is adjudged to eternal death; for the curse bears the same relation to the threatening that law-justification bears to the promise. 5. Christ’ s being made a curse for sinners is a clear evidence of sinners being naturally under the curse. (T. Boston, D. D.)Man’ s condition under the curse The most terrible scene that men are capable of beholding, in time or eternity. Happy they who timely behold it, so as to be thereby stirred up to flee to Christ. I. The condition of the natural man’ s soul under the curse. This is the most noble part of man. In the moment he sinned, his soul fell under the curse. And so 1. His soul was separated from God, in favour with whom its life lay. 2. Hence, man’ s soul-beauty was lost; death seized on him by sin, his beauty went off. A dead corpse is an awful sight, where the soul is gone.. But thy dead soul, from which God is gone, O natural man I is a more awful one. Couldst thou see thy inward man, as well as thou seest the outward, thou wouldst see a soul within thee of a ghastly countenance, the eyes of its understanding set, its speech laid, all the spiritual senses now locked up, no pulse of kindly affection towards God beating any more; but the soul lying speechless, motionless, cold and stiff like a stone, under the curse. 3. Hence the whole soul is corrupted in all the faculties thereof. As the soul being gone, the body corrupts; so the soul, being divested of its original righteousness, is wholly corrupted and defiled, having a kind of verminating life in it--“ They are altogether become filthy” (Psalms 14:3). And as when the curse was laid on the earth, the very nature of the soil was altered; so the souls of men under the curse are quite altered from their original holy constitution. This appears in all the faculties thereof. (1) Look into the mind, framed at first to be the eye of the soul; there is a lamentable alteration upon it under the curse. “ O how is the fine gold become dim!” There is a mist upon it, whereby it is become weak, dull, and stupid in spiritual things, and really incapable of these things. Darkness has sat down on the mind--“ Ye were sometimes darkness” (Ephesians 5:8); and there spiritual blindness and ignorance reign, not to be removed by man’ s instruction, or any power less than what can take off the curse. This cursed ground is fruitful of mistakes, misapprehensions, delusions, monstrous and misshapen conceptions in Divine things; doubtings, distrust, unbelief of Divine Revelation, grow there, of their own accord, as the natural product of the cursed soil; while the seed of the word of the kingdom sown there does perish, and faith cannot spring up in it, for such is the soil that they cannot take with it. (2) Look into the will, framed to have the command in the soul, and it is in wretched plight. Its uprightness for God is gone, and it is turned away backward from Him. It is not only under an inability for good, but having lost all power to turn itself that way--“ We were without strength” (Romans 5:6); “ For it is God which worketh in you to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13); but it is averse to it, as the untrained bullock is to the yoke (Psalms 81:11). (3) Look into the affections, framed to he the arms and feet of the soul for good, and they are quite wrong. Set spiritual objects before them to be embraced, then they are powerless, they cannot embrace them, nor grip them stedfastly; they presently grow weary, and let go any hold they have of them; like the stony-ground hearers, who because they had no root withered away (Matthew 13:6). But as for carnal objects, agreeable to their lusts, they fly upon them, they clasp and twine about them; they hold so fast a grip, that it is with no small difficulty they can be got to let go their hold. Summon them to duty, they are flat, there is no raising of them, they cannot stir; but on the least signal given them by temptation, they are like Saul’ s hungry soldiers, flying on the spoil. (4) Look into the conscience, framed to be in the soul God’ s deputy for judgment, His spy, and watchman over His creature; and it is miserably corrupted--“ Their mind and conscience is defiled” (Titus 1:15). It is quite unfitted for its office. It is fallen under a sleepy distemper, sleeping and loving to slumber. (5) Look into the memory, framed to be the storehouse of the soul, and the symptoms of the curse appear there too. Things agreeable to the corruption of nature, and which may strengthen the same, stick fast in the memory, so that often one cannot get them forgotten, though they would fain have their remembrance razed. But spiritual things natively fall out of it, and are soon forgotten; the memory, like a leaking vessel, letting them slip. 4. Man being in these respects spiritually dead, the which death was the consequent of the first sin, the curse lies on him as a gravestone, and the penalty binds it upon him, that he cannot recover. So he is in some sort, by the curse, buried out of God’ s sight. 5. Hence that corruption of the soul grows more and more. As the dead corpse, the longer it lies in the grave, it rots the more, till devouring death has perfected its work in its utter ruin; so the dead soul under the curse grows worse and worse in all the faculties thereof, till it is brought to the utmost pitch of sin and misery. 6. And hence the corruption of nature shoots forth itself in innumerable particular lusts, according to its growth (Mark 7:21-23). But this is not all the misery of the soul under the curse; there are additional plagues, which by the curse they are liable to, who are under it. These soul-plagues are of two sorts--silent strokes, and tormenting plagues. 1. Silent strokes, which make their way into the soul with no noise; but the less they are felt, they are the more dangerous; such as-- (1) Judicial blindness.(2) Strong delusions.(3) Hardness of heart.(4) A reprobate sense.(5) Vile affection. 2. Tormenting plagues. Many are the executioners employed against the soul fallen under the curse, who together do pierce, rack, and rend it, as it were, in pieces. (1) Discontent.(2) Wrath.(3) Anxiety.(4) Sorrow of heart.(5) Fear and terror.(6) Despair. II. The condition of the natural man’ s body under the curse.1. It is liable to many defects and deformities in the very constitution thereof. Adam and Eve were at their creation not only sound and entire in their souls, but in their bodies, having nothing unsightly about them. But O how often now is there seen a variation from the original pattern, in the very formation of the body! Some are born deaf, dumb, blind, or the like. Some with a want of some necessary organ, some with what is superfluous. Some with such a constitution of body as makes them idiots, the organs of the body being so far out of case, that they are unfit for the actions of the rational life; and the soul is by them kept in a mist during the union with that body. All this is owing to sin and the curse, without which there had been no such things in the body of man. 2. As the temperature of the body was by the first sin altered, so as it disposed to sin (Genesis 3:7), so by the curse that degenerate constitution of it is penally bound on, by which it comes to pass that it is a snare to the soul continually. The seeds of sin are in it; it is “ sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3), “ a vile body” (Philippians 3:21), and these seeds are never removed while the curse lies on it, being a part of that death to which it is bound over by the curse. 3. It is under the curse a vessel of dishonour. By its original make, it was a vessel of honour, appointed to honourable uses, and was so used by the soul before sin entered; and every member had its particular honourable service, serving the soul in subordination to God. But now it is brought down from its honour, and its “ members are yielded instruments of unrighteousness unto sin” (Romans 6:13), and it is abused to the vilest purposes; and it is never restored to its honour till, the curse being removed, it becomes the temple of God, by virtue of the purchase of it made by the blood of Christ. 4. It is liable to many mischiefs from without, tending to render it uneasy for the time, and at length to dissolve the frame of it. From the heavens above us, the air about us, the earth underneath us, and all that therein is, it is liable to hurt. 5. There is a seed-plot of much misery within it. It is by the curse become a weak body, and so liable to much toil and weariness, fainting and languishing under the weight of the exercise it is put to (Genesis 3:19). And not only so, but it hath in it such seeds of corruption, tending to its dissolution, as spring up in many and various maladies, which often prove so heavy that they make life itself a burden. 6. In all these respects the body is a clog to the soul in point of duty, often hanging like a dead weight upon it, unfitting it for, and hindering it from, its most necessary work. The sinful soul is in itself most unfit for its great work, in this state of trial, by reason of the evil qualities of it under the curse. But the wretched body makes it more so. The care of the body doth so take up its thoughts with most men, that, caring for it, the soul is lost. Its strength and vigour is a snare to it, and its weakness and uneasiness often interrupt or quite mar the exercises wherein the soul might profitably be employed. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 3:11 But that no man is Justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident. Justification not by the law but by faith in Christ I. What is justification.1. To be justified is to be brought into a right relation to law. 2. Justification is the bringing of a man into right relations with all law-loving and law-keeping beings. 3. When God justifies He brings us into a condition of potential righteousness. II. Justification is impossible through the law.1. Not ceremonial but moral law.2. The Bible assumes (1) that man has broken this law, and(2) that no amount of obedience can restore him to his lost dignity. III. Justification is possible through faith in Jesus Christ.1. His atonement is the ground of it.2. Faith in that atonement the means. (S. Pearson, M. A.)The just shall live by faith I. Life is received by the faith which makes a man just. A man begins to live--1. By a full acquittal from condemnation and from penal death as soon as he believes in Christ. 2. As one raised out of spiritual death. 3. No form of works, or knowledge, or profession, or feeling, can prove him to be an absolved and quickened man; but faith does this. II. Life is sustained by the faith which keeps a man just.1. He who is forgiven and quickened lives ever afterwards as he began--by faith. Neither feelings, devotion, nor acquirements become his trust; he still looks out of himself to Jesus. 2. He lives by faith as to all the forms of his life. (1) As a child and a servant.(2) As a pilgrim progressing and a warrior contending.(3) As a pensioner enjoying and a heir expecting. 3. He lives by faith in every condition. (1) In joy and sorrow.(2) In wealth and poverty.(3) In strength and weakness.(4) In labouring and languishing.(5) In life and death. 4. He lives best when faith is at its best, even though in other respects he may be sorely put to it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)I. The soul is the life of the body. II. Faith is the life of the soul. III. Christ is the life of faith. (Flavel.)The impossibility of a legal and the certainty of a Christian justification The law is like a noble vessel which man has damaged so that the waters flow through many a leak. As the waves rise higher and higher, and the prospects of destruction become more stern, and every effort is seen to be but wasted strength, these words come over the drowning soul, “ As many as are of the works of the law are under a curse.” But Christ Jesus has come on to the sinking vessel, and, engulfed in the waves, has taken upon Him the effect of our folly and sin. And by His death the curse that rested upon us rests on Him. (S. Pearson, M. A.)Faith: life Faith engrafts us into Christ; by faith we are inserted lute the vine; but the plant that is engrafted, must also be fruitful, or else it shall be quite cut off from the root, and thrown into everlasting burning. And this is the full plain meaning of those words so often used for the magnification of faith, “ The just shall live by faith.” (Jeremy Taylor.)Living by faith requires effort A schoolmaster teacheth a boy gratis, but the youth cannot possibly attain to learning unless he be industrious; but it doth not therefore cease to be free on the teacher’ s part because the learner’ s pains are required. (Arrowsmith.)Life by faith Men who are saved by faith become just. The operation of faith upon the human heart is to produce love, and through love, obedience, which is only another name for morality or holiness, the flower of the new nature. The Christian man should aim after the highest degree of spiritual culture and heavenly perfection; yet his salvation depends not on his attainments, but upon his faith in a crucified Redeemer. Faith is the fruitful root, the inward channel of sap, the great life-grace in every branch of the vine. I. In the purest spiritual sense it is true that the just shall live by faith. Great saints must be great believers. Little-faith can never be a matured saint.1. The nobility of the inner life depends upon faith. A man whose life is hid with Christ in God is one of the aristocrats of this world. In proportion as the spiritual life is developed, the man grows in dignity. 2. The energy of the spiritual life depends on faith. Wherever the spiritual life fairly pervades a man, it is a force which cannot be bound, fettered, or kept under; a holy fury, a sacred fire in the bones. But this energy can only be exerted under the power of faith. 3. Growth in the spiritual life depends upon our faith. Faith enriches the soil of the heart, fills our treasuries with the choicest gold, and loads our tables with the daintiest food for the soul. II. Faith is operative in our daily life.1. It sustains the just man under all his trials, difficulties, sufferings, or labours.2. It has an effect upon the dispensations of Divine Providence. III. This is also true in the history of the Christian Church as a whole.1. The Church lives by faith, not speculation.2. By faith, not retiring despondency.3. By faith, not “ the proprieties.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)Life by faith The Jews in the Talmud have the saying, “ The whole law was given to Moses at Sinai, in six hundred and thirteen precepts.” David, in the fifteenth Psalm, brings them all within the compass of eleven. Isaiah brings them to six (Isaiah 33:15); Micah to three (Micah 6:8); Isaiah, again, to two (Isaiah 56:1-12.); Habakkuk to this one, “ The just shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). (Lightfoot.)Hopeful endeavour the beginning of faith See the spider casting out her film to the gale, she feels persuaded that somewhere or other it will adhere and form the commencement of her web. She commits the slender filament to the breeze, believing that there is a place provided for it to fix itself. In this fashion should we believingly cast forth our endeavours in this life, confident that God will find a place for us. He who bids us pray and work will aid our efforts and guide us in His Providence in a right way. Sit not still in despair, O son of toil, but again cast out the floating thread of hopeful endeavour, and the wind of love will bear it to its resting place. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Justification by the law impossible I. The requirements of the law.1. Its authority. It was the Word of God. 2. In reference to its precepts, perfect obedience was required (Deuteronomy 33:2). II. The penalty which the failure of obedience involved. “ Cursed is every one that continueth not,” etc. III. The ruin to which those are exposed who are seeking justification through the works of the law. “ As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.” Lesson--The folly of those who are seeking justification by works. To expect to be warmed by the keen northern blast, or to have our thirst quenched by a draught of liquid fire, were not more--were not so--incongruous. This were merely to expect that a positive appointment of God should be altered, which is not in the nature of things impossible--which in particular cases has actually taken place. That were, to expect a revolution to take place in the moral nature of Him “ with whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning.” (R. Nicholls.)Justification by law inconsistent with Scripture I. The blessedness of the righteous is obtained by faith. II. In contrast to faith, the law gives the promise of life only to him who worketh. The law says: “ The man that doeth them shall live in them.” The law knows nothing of faith; it secures blessings only for those who obey its precepts. III. Having proved that the blessedness of the righteous is obtained by faith, and that through the law there is a promise for the obedient only, the conclusion is obvious that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God. The man who seeks to establish his own righteousness may “ justify himself” in his own estimation, or in that of his fellow-men, but he cannot make himself acceptable in the judgment of God. In the lower courts, where partial justice is administered, he may succeed in obtaining a favourable verdict, but, entering into the presence of God, he stands condemned. (R. Nicholls.) Galatians 3:12 And the law is not of faith. The law and the gospel I. They differ in the work of our justification.1. The law promiseth life to him that performs perfect obedience, and that for his works.2. The gospel promiseth life to him that believes for the sake of Christ.3. The law then requires doing, the gospel believing. II. They agree in our good conversation.1. Faith comes first.2. Then the life of faith.3. Then the evidence of the love of faith in obedience. Observe--1. Salvation was the unfulfilled end of the law, and so it is now.2. Salvation is the accomplished beginning of the gospel.3. The law under which we live is not by obedience-salvation, but by salvation-obedience. (W. Perkins.)The necessity of Divine law Under whatever relation we consider God to stand to us we must feel that He has a law by which He governs us all. Is He a King? There must be royal decrees. Is He a Master? There must be appointed service. Is He a Judge? The very name implies a tribunal. Is He a Redeemer? The redemption must be in accordance with the principles of righteousness. Is He a Father? The home over which He presides must be a scene of harmonious action. (S. Pearson, M. A.) Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.Sin and redemption I. The divine execration of sin.1. Under a moral government a righteous governor will, yea, must, append blessing to good and cursing to evil. 2. There is a law above all human laws: (1) In the perfection of its nature;(2) the extent of its application;(3) the power of its condemnation. 3. If we have broken this law, then we are placed under a curse. II. The Divine redemption of the sinner1. Guilty men are under the curse; a guiltless one comes under it (1) joyfully;(2) completely. 2. The Lord Jesus Christ, then, represents our race, and for us has become a curse. (1) He was of such dignity that He could represent it;(2) His act was spontaneous;(3) He was appointed of the Father;(4) foreseeing the result of His work He rejoiced to do it (Isaiah 53:11; Hebrews 13:1-2). 3. By bearing the curse on Himself He bore it off from us. 4. The curse being thus rolled away, the way is prepared for the coming of the blessing. 5. The blessing comes to those who repent and believe. (C. Clemance, D. D.)I. The curse of the law contained all that was due to sin. II. This belonged to us. III. It was transferred to Christ. His hanging on a tree was the sign and token of this (Deuteronomy 21:23 cf.; 1 Peter 2:24). IV. This secures for all believers the blessing of faithful Abraham.1. An interest in Christ. 2. Righteousness. 3. Acceptance with God. (J. Owen, D. D.)The necessity for Christ ’ s bearing our curse The sentence or curse of the law must not fall to the ground, for then the aid of God’ s governing the world could not be secured; His law would seem to be given in jest, and His threatenings would be interpreted to be a vain scarecrow, and the sin of the creature would not seem so odious a thing, if the law might be broken and there were no more ado about it; therefore Christ must come to bear this curse. (T. Manton.)Deliverance firm the curse through Christ 1. The threatenings of the law, denouncing a curse against those who yield not personal obedience to it, did not exclude or forbid a surety to come in the sinner’ s room, and to undergo the curse due to him. 2. All men are by nature under the sentence of the law’ s curse, whereby in God’ s justice they are under the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13), slavery and bondage to sin and Satan (Ephesians 2:2), so to remain until they be cast into utter darkness (Jude 1:13), except delivery and redemption intervene. 3. There is no delivery of enslaved man from this woeful bondage, but by giving satisfaction and by paying of a price for the wrong done to Divine justice, either by himself, or by some surety in his stead. Satisfaction is demanded by (1) God’ s fidelity (Genesis 2:17);(2) His righteous nature (Psalms 11:6-7);(3) the inward desert of sin (Romans 1:32). 4. It is not in the power of fallen man to acquire a ransom for himself, by anything he can either do or suffer. 5. Jesus Christ has undertaken and accomplished this great work. 6. This work is to “ redeem.” Christ buys back what was once His own, but for a time lost. 7. It is a real redemption, all that was forfeited being restored. 8. The price paid by Christ, in order to our redemption, was no less than His undergoing the curse due to us. (James Ferguson.)Christ made a curse for us The apostle here unveils a reason why men are not saved by their personal righteousness, but by their faith. He says the reason is, that men are not saved now by any personal merit, but their salvation lies in another, viz., in Christ Jesus, the Representative Man, who alone can deliver from the curse of the law; and since works do not connect us with Christ, but faith is the uniting bond, faith becomes the way of salvation. Since faith is the hand that lays hold upon the finished work of Christ, which works could not and would not do, for works lead us to boast and to forget Christ, faith becomes the true and only way of obtaining justification and everlasting life. Let us try to understand more clearly the nature of His substitution, and of the suffering which it entailed upon Him. I. What is the curse of the law here intended?1. It is the curse of God. God who made the law has appended certain penal consequences to the breaking of it; and the man who violates the law becomes at once the subject of the wrath of the Lawgiver. Hence it must be (1) supremely just;(2) morally unavoidable;(3) most weighty. 2. It is a sign of displeasure. God is angry with the wicked every day: His wrath towards sin is great. 3. God’ s curse of something more than a threatening; He comes at length to blows. He uses warning words at first, but sooner or later He bares his sword for execution. Cain. Flood. Sodom. II. Who are under the curse?1. The Jewish nation. To them the law of God was very peculiarly given beyond all others. 2. All nations. The law, although not given to all from Sinai, has been written by the finger of God more or less legibly upon the conscience of all mankind. 3. Those who, when offered the gospel, prefer to remain under the law (Galatians 3:10). All that the law of works can do for men is to leave them still accursed. III. How was Christ made a curse for us?1. By substitution. Christ was no curse in Himself. Of His own free will He became a curse for us. 2. All the sins of His people were actually laid upon Him. He endured both (1) the penalty of loss; and (2) the penalty of actual suffering, both (a) in body and (b) in soul. It was an anguish never to be measured, an agony never to be comprehended. To God only were His griefs fully known. Well does the Greek liturgy put in, “ Thine unknown sufferings,” for they must for ever remain beyond guess of human imagination. Behold Christ bearing the curse instead of His people. Here He is coming under the load of their sin, and God does not spare Him, but smites Him as He must have smitten us, lays His full vengeance on Him, launches all His thunderbolts against Him, bids the curse wreak itself upon Him, and Christ suffers all, sustains all. IV. The blessed consequences of Christ’ s having thus been made a curse for us.1. We are redeemed from the curse. The law is silenced; it can demand no more. The quiver of wrath is exhausted. 2. The blessing of God, hitherto arrested by the curse, is now made most freely to flow. A great rock has been lifted out from the river-bed of God’ s mercy, and the living stream comes rippling, rolling, swelling on in crystal tides, sweeping before it all human sin and sorrow, and making the thirsty who stoop down to drink at it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The nature of our redemption Redemption being deliverance by means of the substitution of a ransom, it follows that, although the ransom can only be paid to God, and to Him only as the moral governor of the universe, we may still be said to be redeemed from all that we are delivered from by means of the ransom paid in the sacrifice of Christ. Thus we are said to be redeemed from(1) our vain conversation (1 Peter 1:18);(2) death (Hosea 12:14);(3) the devil (Colossians 2:15);(4) all iniquity (Titus 2:14);(5) the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13; Galatians 4:5). It is, of course, not meant that the ransom is paid to the devil, or to sin or to death, or to the law. These different conceptions are not inconsistent. A captive is redeemed by a price paid only to him that holds him in bondage, but by the same act he may be redeemed from labour, from disease, from death, from the persecution of his fellow-captives, and from a slavish disposition. (Hodge.)The two curses Two curses pronounced in the law are here referred to. All mankind was liable to the former one. How was it to be removed?1. He who was to remove it must not Himself be liable to it. He who was to be a substitute for the guilty must Himself be innocent. He who was to suffer in the stead of the disobedient must Himself be obedient in all things. 2. He who was to be the substitute for all must have the common nature of all. He must not take the person of one individual man (such as Abraham, Moses, Elias), but He must take the nature of all, and sum up all mankind in Himself. 3. He who was to do more than counterbalance the weight of the sins of all, must have infinite merits of His own, in order that the scale of Divine justice may preponderate in their favour. And nothing that is not Divine is infinite. In order, therefore, that He may be able to suffer for sin, He must be human; and in order that He may be able to take away the sins, and to satisfy God’ s justice for them, He must be Divine. 4. In order that He may remove the curse pronounced in the law of God for disobedience, He must undergo that punishment which is especially declared in the law to be the curse of God. 5. That punishment is hanging on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23). 6. By undergoing this curse for us, Christ, He who is God from everlasting, and who became Emmanuel, God with us, God in our flesh, uniting together the two natures--the Divine and the human--in His one person--Christ Jesus, redeemed us from the curse of the law. Thus, having accepted the curse, He liberated us from it. (Bishop Chris. Wordsworth.)Christ stood for the “ every one who continueth not,” by becoming the “ very one” who hung upon the tree. (M. B. Riddle, D. D.)The satisfaction of Christ 1. The believer’ s discharge. The law of God hath three parts, commands, promises, and threatenings or curses. The curse of the law is its condemning sentence, whereby a sinner is bound over to death, even the death of soul and body. The chain, by which it binds him, is the guilt of sin, and from which none can loose the soul but Christ. This curse of the law is the most dreadful thing imaginable; it strikes at the life of a sinner, yea, his best life, the eternal life of the soul; and when it hath condemned, it is inexorable, no cries nor tears, no reformations or repentance, can loose the guilty sinner: for it requires for its reparation that which no mere creature can give, even an infinite satisfaction. Now from this curse Christ frees the believer; that is, He dissolves the obligation to punishment, cancels the hand-writing, looses all the bonds and chains of guilt, so that the curse of the law hath nothing to do with him for ever. 2. We have here the way and manner in and by which this is done; and that is by a full price paid down, and that price paid in the room of the sinner, both making up a complete and full satisfaction. He pays a full price, every way adequate and proportionable to the wrong. 3. The nature of Christ’ s satisfaction. (1) It is the act of God-man; no other was capable of giving satisfaction for an infinite wrong done to God. But by reason of the union of the two natures in His wonderful person, He could do it, and hath done it for us. (2) If He satisfy God for us, He must present Himself before God, as our Surety, in our stead, as well as for our good; else His obedience had signified nothing to us: To this end He was made under the law (Galatians 4:4), comes under the same obligation with us, and that as a Surety, for so He is called (Hebrews 7:22). Indeed, His obedience and sufferings could be exacted from Him upon no other account. It was not for anything He had done that He became a curse. (3) The internal moving cause of Christ’ s satisfaction for us was His obedience to God, and love to us. That it was an act of obedience is plain from Philippians 2:8, “ He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (4) The matter of Christ’ s satisfaction was His active and passive obedience to all the law of God required. (5) The effect and fruit of this His satisfaction is our freedom, ransom, or deliverance from the wrath and curse due to us for our sins. Such was the dignity, value, and completeness of Christ’ s satisfaction, that in strict justice it merited our redemption and full deliverance; not only a possibility that we might be redeemed and pardoned, but a right whereby we ought to be so. We pass on to state some obections, and to answer them. The doctrine of Christ’ s satisfaction is absurd, for Christ (say we) is God; if so, then God satisfies Himself, than which what can be more absurd to imagine? I answer, God cannot properly be said to satisfy Himself; for that would be the same thing as to pardon, simply, without any satisfaction. But there is a twofold consideration of Christ; one in respect of His essence and Divine nature, in which sense He is the object both of the offence, and of the satisfaction made for it. Another in respect of His person and economy, or office; in which sense He properly satisfies God, being in respect of His manhood another, and inferior to God (John 14:28). The blood of the man Christ Jesus is the matter of the satisfaction; the Divine nature dignifies it, and makes it of infinite value. 2. If Christ satisfied by paying our debt, then He should have endured eternal torments; for so we should, and the damned shall. We must distinguish betwixt what is essential, and what is accidental in punishment. The primary intent of the law is reparation and satisfaction; he that can make it at one entire payment (as Christ could and did) ought to be discharged. He that cannot (as no mere creature can) ought to lie for ever, as the damned do, under sufferings. 3. If God will be satisfied for our sins before He pardon them, how then is pardon an act of grace? Pardon could not be an act of pure grace, if God received satisfaction from us; but if He pardon us upon the satisfaction received from Christ, though it be of debt to Him, it is of grace to us: for it was grace to admit a surety to satisfy, more grace to provide Him, and most of all to apply His satisfaction to us, by uniting us to Christ, as He hath done. 4. But God loved us before Christ died for us; for it was the love of God to the world that moved Him to give His only-begotten Son. Could God love us, and yet not be reconciled and satisfied? God’ s complacential love is indeed inconsistent with an unreconciled state: He is reconciled to every one He so loves. But His benevolent love, consisting in His purpose of good, may be before actual reconciliation and satisfaction. 5. Temporal death, as well us eternal, is a part of the curse; if Christ have fully satisfied by bearing the curse for us, how is it that those for whom He bare it die as well as others? As temporal death is a penal evil, and part of the curse, so God inflicts it not upon believers; but they must die for other ends, viz., to be made perfectly happy in a more full and immediate enjoyment of God, than they can have in the body; and so death is theirs by way of privilege (1 Corinthians 3:22). They are not death’ s by way of punishment. The same may be said of all the afflictions with which God, for gracious ends, now exercised His reconciled ones. Thus much may suffice to establish this great truth. We proceed to make the following inferences: 1. If the death of Christ was that which satisfied God for all the sins of the elect, then certainly there is an infinite evil in sin, since it cannot be expiated, but by an infinite satisfaction. Fools make a mock at sin, and there are but few souls in the world that are duly sensible of, and affected with its evil; but certainly, if God should damn thee to all eternity, thy eternal sufferings could not satisfy for the evil that is in one vain thought. 2. If the death of Christ satisfied God, and thereby redeemed the elect from the curse, then the redemption of souls is costly; souls are dear things, and of great value with God. 3. If Christ’ s death satisfied God for our sins, how unparalleled is the love of Christ to poor sinners! 4. If Christ, by dying, hath made full satisfaction, then God is no loser in pardoning the greatest of sinners that believe in Jesus; and consequently His justice can be no bar to their justification and salvation. He is just to forgive us our sins (1 John 1:9). What an argument is here for a poor believer to plead with God! 5. If Christ hath made such a full satisfaction as you have heard, how much is it the concernment of every soul, to abandon all thoughts of satisfying God for his own sins, and betake himself to the blood of Christ, the ransomer, by faith, that in that blood they may be pardoned? It would grieve one’ s heart to see how many poor creatures are drudging and tugging at a task of repentance, and revenge upon themselves, and reformation, and obedience, to satisfy God for what they have clone against Him: And alas! it cannot be, they do but lose their labour; could they swelter their very hearts out, weep till they can weep no more, cry till their throats be parched, alas, they can never recompense God for one vain thought. For such is the severity of the law, that when it is once offended, it will never be made amends again by all that we can do; it will not discharge the sinner, for all the sorrow in the world. (John Flavel.)Suffering, redemption, blessing I. The sufferings of Christ. He was made a curse. Upon Him rested, for a season, the wrath of God.1. This was the bitter experience of His life. From His standpoint of perfect rectitude and purity, He saw how far men had wandered from God, and how deeply they had fallen in sin. 2. This was the agony of His death. Man’ s hatred to God culminated in the act that put Christ to death. 3. That Christ endured such suffering, being made a curse, was evident from the peculiar manner of His death. “ As it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” II. Redemption by christ. “ He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” III. Blessing through Christ. In this blessing is included--1. Salvation for the Gentiles, “ That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.” 2. Blessing through Christ included the “ promise of the Spirit.” Lessons:1. Christ the sufferer must be Christ the Redeemer. 2. The blessings of salvation are to be obtained in Christ (ἐνΧριστῷ). There must be fellowship with Christ. 3. Salvation becomes an actual and personal blessing through the ministration of the Spirit. (Richard Nicholls.)Christ made a curse for man A man pays a ransom for slaves; but Christ took the slave’ s place. A doctor gives medicine to a sick man; but Christ “ took the disease on Himself.” We are told of Sister Dora “ that she was in the habit of bringing back to life patients who had sunk into the first stage of the fatal collapse which often precedes death from small-pox, by actually putting her mouth to theirs, and breathing into them, until vitality was restored.” (“ Sister Dora,” by M. Lonsdale.) St. Vincent do Paul was at one time almoner-general to the prison ships in the chief harbours of France, during the reign of Louis XIII. “ While visiting those at Marseilles, he was so much struck by the broken-down looks and exceeding sorrowfulness of one of the convicts, that, on discovering his sorrow was less for his own sake than for the misery to which his absence must needs reduce his wife and children, St. Vincent absolutely changed places with the convict. The prisoner went free, whilst St. Vincent wore a convict’ s chain, did a convict’ s work, lived on convict fare, and, worst of all, had only convict society. He was soon sought out and released, but the hurts he had received from the pressure of the chains lasted all his life …. After this St. Vincent worked with infinitely more force on the consciences of the convicts for having been for a time one of themselves.” Our redemption by Christ This curse is the wretched inheritance of all the guilty sons of Adam. And can there any, in this forlorn and desperate ease, interpose to shelter the trembling sinner from so great, so deserved, so imminent a destruction? Is there any way of escape, any door of hope opened? There is; for, behold! I this day bring unto all penitent and humble souls the glad tidings of great joy; joy which, if excess of fear and horror have not altogether stupefied and made us insensible, must needs fill us with the highest raptures of triumph and exultations. A Saviour, a Redeemer: O sweet and precious names, for lost and undone sinners! Names, full of mercy, full of life! Justice is answered; the law is satisfied; the curse removed; and we restored to the hopes of eternal life and salvation. “ Christ hath redeemed us,” etc. I. Jesus Christ, the ever-blessed God, was made a curse for us.1. What it is to be made a curse. Now to be accursed, in its proper notion, signifies to be devoted to miseries and punishments; for we are said to curse another when we devote and, so far as in us lies, appoint him to plagues and miseries. And God is said to curse men when He doth devote and appoint them to punishments. Men curse by imprecation; but God curseth more effectually by ordination and infliction. But yet, notwithstanding, every one whom God afflicts must not be esteemed as cursed by Him. Every one, therefore, that is afflicted is not presently accursed. For God hath two ends for which He brings any affliction upon us. The one is the manifestation of His holiness; the other is the satisfaction of His justice. And accordingly as any affliction or suffering tends to the promoting of these ends, so it may be said to be a curse or not. 2. How Jesus Christ, who is God blessed for ever, could be made a curse or become accursed. This, at the first glance of our thoughts upon it, seems very difficult, if not impossible, to be reconciled. And the difficulty is increased, partly because the true faith acknowledgeth our Lord Jesus Christ to be the true God, blessed for ever; and partly because the apostle tells us, “ That no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, calleth. Jesus accursed” (1 Corinthians 12:3). (1) Then certain it is that Christ is essentially blessed, being the most blessed God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, possessing all the infinite perfections of the Deity, invariably and immeasurably. Yea, and He is the fountain of all blessing, whence flow all our hopes and happiness. But although He is for ever blessed essentially, yet, (2) Mediatorily, He was accursed; and that because the economy and dispensation of His mediatory office required that tie should be subjected unto sufferings, not only as they were simply evil, but as they were penal, and inflicted on Him to this very end, that justice might be repaired and satisfied. (3) But the curse of the law being only duo unto sin and guilt, it remains yet to be inquired how this curse could be justly inflicted on our Saviour, who was infinitely pure and innocent; and to whom the Scripture gives this testimony, that He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22). To this I answer: That sin may be considered either as personal or imputed. (a) Christ was free from all personal sin, whether of corruption of nature or transgression of life. (b) Yet He was not free from all imputed sin and guilt. The sins of all the world assembled and met together upon Him. 3. Is it consistent with the justice of God to punish an innocent person for the sins of those that are guilty? To this I answer: (1) In general, that it is not unjust for God to punish the sins of one person upon another who hath not committed them. We find frequent instances of this in the Scripture (Exodus 20:8; Lamentations 5:7; Genesis 9:25; 2 Samuel 21:1-14; 2 Samuel 24:17). (2) It is just with God to inflict the punishment of our sins upon Christ, though innocent. And there are two things upon which this justice and equity are founded--conjunction and consent. [1] There is a near conjunction between Christ and us, upon which account it is no injustice to punish Him in our stead. And this conjunction is twofold-either natural or mystical. 1st. There is a natural conjunction between us, as Christ is truly man, and hath taken upon Him our nature, which makes a cognation and alliance between us. We are bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh. It was therefore necessary that Christ should take our nature upon a threefold account. (1st) That thereby the same person, who is God, might become passive, and a fit subject to receive and bear the wrath of God; for had He not been man, He could not have received it; and had He not been God, He could not have borne it. (2ndly) That satisfaction might be made to offended justice in the same nature which transgressed; that as it was man which sinned, so man also might be punished. And yet farther, (3rdly) that the right of redemption might be in Christ, being made near of kin unto us, by His taking our flesh and our nature. For we find in the law that the person who was next of kin was to redeem to himself the lands of his relations, when they were fallen to decay, and constrained by poverty to sell them (Leviticus 25:25; Rth 3:12; Rth 4:4). Whereby was typified unto us our redemption by Jesus Christ, who, having a body prepared for Him, is now become near of kin unto us, and is not ashamed to call us brethren. Now, because of this natural conjunction, the transferring the punishment from us, who are guilty, unto Christ, who is guiltless, doth, at least in this respect, answer the rules and measures of justice; that although the same person be not punished, yet the same nature is. But this is not all, for-- 2ndly. There is a nearer conjunction between Christ and us, and that is mystical, whereby we are made one person with Him. And by reason of this, God, in punishing Christ, punisheth not only the same nature, but the same person. For there is such an intimate union by faith between Christ and a believer, that they make up but one mystical person. [2] As Christ is thus conjoined to us, both naturally and mystically, so He has also given His full consent to stand in our stead, and to bear our punishment.4. Did Christ bear the same wrath and curse which were due to us for our sins, or some other punishment in lieu thereof? For answer to this, we must carefully distinguish between the substance of the curse and the adjuncts and circumstances of it. For want of rightly distinguishing between these, too many have been woefully staggered and perverted in their faith; and have been induced to believe that Christ died not in the stead of any, but only for the good of all, as the Socinians blaspheme. Now certain it is that Christ underwent the very same punishment, for the matter and substance of it, which was due to us by the curse and threatening of the law, though it may be different in very many circumstances and modifications, according to the divers natures of the subjects on whom it was to be inflicted. For the substance of the curse and punishment threatened against sinners is death. “ In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” 5. For whose sake was Christ thus accursed and punished? (1) He died in our place and stead as a Ransom for us. (2) He suffered our punishment to free us from it. II. Christ being thus made a curse for us, and suffering all the wrath and punishment that was due unto us, hath thereby redeemed us from the curse and condemnation threatened in the law.1. Let us consider what redemption is. Redemption, therefore, may be taken either properly or improperly. An improper redemption is a powerful rescue of a man from under any evil or danger in which he is. Thus Jacob makes mention of the angel which redeemed him from all evil (Genesis 48:16); and the disciples profess that they hoped that Jesus had been He who should have redeemed the Israelites from under the Roman yoke and subjection, etc. A proper redemption is by paying a price and ransom. And that either fully equivalent: thus one kinsman was to redeem another out of servitude (Leviticus 25:49-50); or else what is given for the redemption of another may, in itself, be of a less value, but yet is accepted as a recompense and satisfaction: thus the first-born of a man was to be redeemed, and the price paid down for him no more than five shekels (Numbers 18:15-16). Now the redemption made for us by Christ is a proper redemption, by way of price; and that price, not only reckoned valuable by acceptation, but, in itself, fully equivalent to the purchase, and compensatory to Divine justice. 2. The reasons which moved God to contrive the method of our redemption by substituting His own Son to bear the punishment of our offences. (1) God substitutes His Son to undergo our punishment that thereby the exceeding greatness of His love towards us might be expressed and glorified. (2) In the sufferings of Jesus Christ, God manifests the glory both of His justice and mercy, and with infinite wisdom reconciles them one with the other. (3) By this means also God most effectually expresses His infinite hatred and detestation of sin. For it is expedient that God should, by some notable example, show the world how provoking a thing sin is. It is true He hath already demonstrated His hate against it by ruthful examples upon all the creatures. As soon as ever the least breath of this contagion seized upon them, God turned the angels out of heaven, and man out of Paradise; He subjected the whole creation unto vanity, that nothing but fears, care, sorrow, and disappointment reign here below; and under these woeful effects of the Divine wrath we groan and sign away our days. But all these are but weak instances of so great and almighty a wrath; and their capacity is so narrow, that they can only contain some few drops of the Divine indignation, and those, likewise, distilled upon them by degrees and succession. And, therefore, God is resolved to fit a vessel large enough, a subject capable enough, to contain the immense ocean of His wrath; and because this cannot be in any finite and limited nature, God Himself must be subject to the wrath of God. (4) God so severely punisheth His Son that the extremity of His sufferings might be a caution to us, and affect us with a holy dread and fear how we provoke so just and so jealous a God. For if His own Son, dear to Him as His own essence, could not escape, when He only stood in the place of sinners, how thinkest thou, O wretch! to escape the righteous judgment of God if thou continuest in thy sins and provocations? 3. Who the persons are for whom Jesus Christ has wrought out this great redemption. (1) That Christ died for all men, with an absolute intention of bringing all and every one of them into a state of salvability; from the which they were excluded by their guilt and God’ s righteous judgment, and that He is not frustrated in this His intention, but, by His death, hath fully effected and accomplished it. (2) The second argument is this: The covenant of grace is propounded to all indefinitely and universally. (Mark 16:16) “ Whosoever believeth shall be saved.” And, under these general terms, it may be propounded unto all, even the most desperate and forlorn sinners on earth. But if Christ had not died for all, as well for the reprobate as the elect, this tender could not be made to all, as our Saviour commands it to be (v. 15), “ Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” (3) It must needs be acknowledged that Christ died for all men, in such a sense, as He is denied to have died for the fallen angels; then His death was not only a sufficient, but an intended, ransom for all. For the death of Christ had sufficient worth and value in it to have redeemed and restored them, being an infinite price, through the infinite dignity of His person. (4) All are bound to the great duty of believing in Christ; therefore He died for all. (5) All men in the world are obliged to return gratitude and obedience unto Christ upon the account and consideration of His death; therefore His death had a respect to all (See 1 Corinthians 6:20; 2 Corinthians 5:15). (6) Christ challenges unto Himself supreme authority and dominion over all by the right of His death (Romans 14:9). But if Christ’ s authority over all, as Mediator, be founded on His death, it will follow that, as His authority is over all, so His death was for all; otherwise He must exercise His jurisdiction over those persons over whom He hath no right nor title. III. Practical inferences and corollaries.1. Be exhorted to admire and adore the infinite love of our Lord Jesus Christ towards fallen and undone mankind, in that He was pleased to substitute Himself in our stead, and, when the hand of justice was lifted up against us, to thrust Himself between us and the dread effects of the Divine wrath, receiving into His own bosom all the arrows of God’ s quiver, every one of them dipped in the poison of the curse (1) Consider the infinite glory and dignity of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2) Consider our infinite vileness and wretchedness. (3) The infinite love of Christ, in being made a curse for us, is mightily glorified, if we consider, not only what He was, and who we are, but the several bitter and direful ingredients that compounded the curse which was laid upon Him. 2. If Christ has thus borne the curse for us, why should we think it much to bear the cross for Him? 3. Here is abundant satisfaction made to the justice of God for all the transgressions of true believers. They, by their Surety, have paid to the full, yea, and supererogated in His sufferings. For God could never have been so completely satisfied in exacting the penalty from us in our own- persons as now He is by the punishments laid upon His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. For those very sufferings of thy Saviour, which were an expiation for the sins of the whole world, were all of them tendered to the Father as an expiation for thine, and the full value of His infinite satisfaction belongs all of it entirely unto thee. And, therefore, look upon thy sins as horrid and heinous as thou canst; yet, unless thine in particular have been more than the sins of all the world, unless thine have been more sinful than sin itself can be, know, for thy comfort, that a full atonement is made, and now nothing is expected from thee but only to accept, it, and to walk worthy of it. (E. Hopkins, D. D.)The substitute One of our boys had committed an offence so bad that Mr. Gibb, his teacher, though rarely using the rod, felt it necessary to make an example of him. The punishment was to be publicly inflicted, “ that others might fear.” But when the culprit, who had only been a few days in our school, was stripped, he was such a living skeleton, that the master had not the heart to beat him. At his wit’ s end what to do--for the crime must be punished--it occurred to him to make such an appeal as, to compare small things to great, reminds us of the mystery of salvation, and the love of Him who “ was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, and by whose stripes we are healed.” Turning to the others, “ It goes,” he said, “ against my heart to lay a hand on that miserable creature. Will any one take his place, and be punished in his stead?” The words bad hardly left his lips when, with tears of pity brimming in his eyes, a boy stepped bravely out, pulled his jacket off, and pushing the culprit aside, offered his own back and shoulders to the rod. A ragged school boy, he was a hero in his way, presenting an example of courage and kindness, of sympathy and unselfishness, rare in schools--or anywhere else. (Dr. Guthrie.)Christ our substitute Damon, a Grecian philosopher, is remarkable for his devotion to Pythias, his friend. Pythias having been condemned to death, he obtained leave of absence to go home and settle his affairs, and Damon pledged himself to endure the punishment if his friend did: not return. Pythias was absent at the time for the execution, but Damon was punctual, and ready to die for his friend, and the king was so pleased with the friendship of Damon that he pardoned him. (W. Birch.)Enduring the curse for another “ About a fortnight ago a man was admitted to the Bristol Royal. Infirmary, suffering from an affection of the throat, supposed to be diphtheria. The operation of tracheotomy was performed by Mr. W. C. Lysaght, M.R.C.S., assistant medical officer to the Infirmary; but the tube becoming choked, the last chance of saving the man’ s life was for some one to apply his lips to the tube and suck the moisture. This Mr. Lysaght did, but without avail, for shortly afterwards the patient died of suppressed scarlatina. Mr. Lysaght caught the disease in its worse form, and died.” (From “The Yorkshire Post,” Aug. 6, 1887.)Christ made a curse I. “Christ made a curse.” First of all, I lay down this position as certain (however unlikely it might have seemed to us beforehand:), that the curse which the apostle speaks of is the curse of God. True, there was no lack of the cursing of this blessed One, in a secondary sense of the word, from other quarters,--no lack of the cursing of Him by men and devils, in the sense of maligning, blaspheming--wishing, calling Him accursed. But Paul assuredly does not speak of anything of that kind. Besides that he says “ made” --not called, or wished, but (γενόμενος) made a curse,--see how certain it is from the entire context that it is the curse of God which he speaks of, and which he says Christ was made. He had begun to speak of this curse at the tenth verse, saying, “ As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that con-tinueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Then in the thirteenth verse, where the text lies, “ Christ,” says he, “ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” It is out of the question to imagine the sense of the term to be entirely changed in this second: clause. Beyond all doubt the meaning is, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, having borne that curse--been made the curse of the law for us. And then, as it is God’ s curse which the apostle says Christ was made, so was it God Himself who made Him that curse. God alone can bring His curse on any man. And you may only further notice as to this, that the word “ made” here is the same the apostle uses in the fourth verse of the next chapter, “ When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law” --made by God, of course. Our first position then is, that it is the curse of God “ which the apostle says Christ was made, and God Himself who made Him that curse. II. But, secondly, at once the question arises, how could such a thing ever be? For the righteous God will bring His curse on no guiltless one. But it is certain He will not bring His curse on the guiltless. Wicked men may curse them--may wish, or call them, accursed. III. But now, thirdly, there was a mysterious manner, yet most real and true, in which Christ was not guiltless. I might remind you of those words of the ransomed Church in Isaiah, “ All we like sheep have gone astray; “ we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” But let us fix our attention a little more closely on those words of 2 Corinthians 5:21, “ God made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” “ Made Him to be sin” --the entire expression is, “ made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.” So much is certain, therefore, negatively, that the apostle’ s meaning is not, and cannot be, that He was made our sin in the pollution, or stain, or turpitude of it, either in nature or in life. For, besides the frightfulness of such a thing to be even imagined, it were in contradiction to the express words, “ He hath made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.” So that the question remains just as before, what that sin was which was transferred. It could not be the pollution, the turpitude, on the one hand; it was not the suffering simply, on the other. But there was a great intermediate element between the turpitude and the suffering;and this it was that Christ was made in the whole fearful reality of it--even the guilt (the reatus, as the Latins spoke)--the just liability in law, and in the eye of the lawgiver, to endure the suffering, the punishment, the curse. For Christ, by an altogether peculiar Divine constitution--of infinite grace alike on the Father’ s part and on His own--had become the Head of His body the Church,--taken their place in law--become one with them in law for ever. Read again, for instance, that fourth verse of the following chapter, “ When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law” --under the law? But what could the Son, the very Lawgiver, have to do with subjection to the law? Nothing, assuredly, for Himself--nothing save as a public Person, Surety, Representative. And now turn we for a moment to the passage cited by the apostle from the Pentateuch. Let no one be startled in the reading of it. It is the twenty-first of Deuteronomy, the twenty-second and twenty-third verses--“ If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree; his body Shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of God); that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” IV. Fourthly, thus have we the wondrous explanation of the whole life of our Lord Jesus Christ, which otherwise were an inexplicable enigma. Even had His sufferings proceeded simply from the hands of men and devils, the mystery would not have been removed, since neither devils nor men could be more than instruments--voluntary and guilty, yet only instruments--in the hand of Jehovah for the executing of His designs. But the fact, unquestionably, was that the principal sufferings of this Just One came from the immediate hand of the Father himself. It is impossible to read the Gospel histories without perceiving that by far His deepest agonies were those which He endured when there was no hand of man upon Him at all, or when, at least, He himself traces the suffering to another hand altogether--saying, for example, “ Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? but for this cause came I unto this hour.” --“ My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with Me” --“ Oh My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me” --“ My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Ah! behold the explanation of all--of the travail of Messiah’ s soul--of an agony that wrung the blood from every pore of His sacred body--of what He himself declared to be His own Father’ s desertion of Him--see, not the source of it only, but the soul also of its deepest bitterness and anguish, in these words, “ made sin,” “ made a curse,” --not accursed simply, but--as if all the curses due to a world’ s sin had been made to meet in His person--“ made curse,” that we might be redeemed from the curse of the law! V. Fifthly, there are certain great central things among the types of the Old Testament which cast much light over the mysterious fact in our text, and, in their turn, receive important light from it. Let me select three--the brazen serpent, the burnt offering, and the sin offering.1. The brazen serpent. At first view it seems very strange that the chosen type of the blessed Redeemer should have been the likeness of a serpent,--that, when the Israelites were dying of the bite of serpents, the medium of their cure should have been the likeness of one, “ Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” But the wonder ceases, or rather is turned into another wonder of holy admiration, when we find that the only possible way of our deliverance from sin, was the Redeemer’ s taking it, in its whole guilt and curse into His own person--being made sin and a curse for us. What glorious light is thus cast on the words of Jesus, “ As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life!” 2. The burnt offering. There is no doubt that the fire of all the burnt offerings of the law, whether it came down immediately from heaven to consume the victim, as on various memorable occasions, or was kindled naturally, was the emblem of the Divine holiness and justice, consuming the substitute lamb on which the sin had been laid--the sacrifice in place of the sinner. What a picture of Christ made a curse, enduring the fire of “ the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men!” What a picture of the prophet’ s “ Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the shepherd!” What a picture of Him who cried, “ My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of My bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and My tongue cleaveth to My jaws; and Thou hast brought me into the dust of death!” 3. The sin-offering. Let these words, for example, be carefully observed (Leviticus 16:27-28), “ The bullock for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin-offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall one carry forth without the camp; and they shall burn in the fire their skin, and their flesh, and their dung. And he that burneth them shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp.” That is to say, the victim, as having had the whole iniquities transferred to it by the laying of the hand upon its head, had become an unclean and accursed thing, and so behoved to be carried away out of God’ s sight without the camp, and consumed in the fire. This is what our apostle refers to in those words in Hebrews, “ The bodies of those beasts, whose blood for sin is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” As if to say that when God appointed the sin-offerings of the law to be carried forth outside the camp as unclean and accursed, and to be burned in the fire, it was but a figure of our Lord Jesus, laden with our accursed iniquities, made sin and a curse, numbered with the transgressors, dealt with as the vilest of all--not by man so much as by God, the Holy One of Israel--because the Lord had, with His own most free consent, made to meet on Him the iniquities of us all. When Jesus was led forth out of Jerusalem, and there crucified between the thieves, it was as if all the innumerable multitudes of sinners whom He represented had been in that hour carried out, and had there endured, in their own persons, the curse of the Divine law due to their whole ungodliness, unrighteousness, pride, falsehood, vanity, uncleanness, rebellion, and I know not what other crimes and sins. VI. But thus I observe, once more, that we do not get at the full explanation of the mysterious fact in our text till we have taken into view the wondrous design and issue of all, as set forth in the passage thus--“ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” And now, not only are we thus delivered from the law’ s terrible sentence, but--the stone which lay over the grave of our corruption once removed--the way is open for the Holy Ghost’ s descending into it to make an end of our corruption too,--yea, open for the whole blessing of the Abrahamic covenant, “ I will be a God to thee,” coming on believers everywhere, of the Gentiles and of the Jews alike--from which blessing the apostle singles out the promise of the Holy Ghost, as being the centre and sum of it all, saying, “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, etc., that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Three words in conclusion.1. The apostle, in the opening chapter of this Epistle, speaks of “ another gospel, which is not another.” Very rife in our day is another gospel, which truly is not another gospel. Substantially it is this, that God never has had a quarrel with man, but only man a quarrel with God,--that God never has been angry with men, but men only jealous of Him; and that the whole design, of Christ’ s coming into the world, and of His suffering unto death was to convince men of this--who, as soon as they are persuaded to believe it--to believe that God loves them, and has loved them always, are saved. Another gospel truly--which in fact turns the whole mission and work of our Lord Jesus Christ into an unreality! But see the apostle’ s gospel in verses 10, 13, 14, of this chapter. Verse 10, God’ s quarrel with guilty men--“ As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Then, the wondrous settlement of that quarrel (verse 13), “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” And hence the settlement of our vile quarrel also with God (verse 14), “ that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Now at length a conscience purged, and righteously purged, from dead works, to serve the living God! Now all possible motives, of love, and fear, and gratitude, and hope, and joy, unto a new and child-like obedience! “ O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid: Thou has loosed my bonds.” 2. Behold here the very soul of the Lord’ s Supper, which might have for its motto, “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,” --“ This is My body broken for you: this cup is My blood of the new covenant, shed for remission of the sins of many.” Oh for a profound self-abasement, and fervent love, and lively faith, in the observing of it! 3. Be it well known to all, that we become partakers of this whole redemption by faith alone without the deeds of the law. (C. G. Brown, D. D.) Galatians 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. The purpose of redemption I. That the blessing of abraham might come upon the gentiles.1. Whence comes this blessing? From the cursed death of Christ. 2. Where is it to be found? In Christ Jesus, who is (1) the storehouse of God’ s blessing;(2) the dispenser thereof to all nations. II. That we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith.1. What is meant by the promise? (see Isaiah 44:3; Joe 2:28). 2. For what end do we receive the Spirit? (1) For illumination (1 John 2:27; 1 Corinthians 2:13).(2) Regeneration, whereby the image of God is restored to us (John 3:5).(3) For the government of our counsels, will, affections, actions (Isaiah 11:1; Romans 8:14).(4) For union with Christ (1 Corinthians 6:17).(5) For consolation (Romans 8:16).(6) For the confirmation of our faith in every good duty (2 Corinthians 1:22). (W. Perkins).The blessing of Abraham I. The receivers of God’ s blessing receive it not for themselves alone. II. One is most blessed in being made a blessing to others. (J. Parker, D. D.)The meek, the just, the pious, the devout souls are everywhere and in all ages of one religion; and when death hath taken off the mask they know one another, though the liveries they wear here make them strangers. (William Penn.)Perpetuated blessings It has been asked why the goodness of one man should extend to, and be rewarded in, successive generations, covering the remotest ages and reaching to the close of our present economy? But is it not a fact that in the world of providence the very same thing occurs? Has not, e.g., such a character as Howard left a mark upon the world that cannot be obliterated, and bequeathed influences that live long after he has gone up higher? Have not the victories of Wallington, secured at a dread price, left us years of prosperity and peace? Do not millions shine in the light, and are not thousands of hearts warmed by the fires, that were kindled by Luther, Ridley, Cranmer, Knox, Calvin, and others? And if you find this to be a fact in the world, you should not object to its being declared the law of God’ s administration of the world. The discovery of printing, steam, the telegraph, are also illustrations all tending to show that beneficent discoveries made by fathers break in benedictions upon their children. (J. Cumming, D. D.)The value and power of faith Faith is the only sure and infallable good, the solace of life, the fulfilment of worthy hopes, barren of evil and fertile in good, the repudiation of the powers of evil, the confession of piety, the inheritance of happiness, the entire amelioration of the soul which leans for support on Him who is the cause of all things and willeth to do those things which are excellent. In the possession of this Abraham was thrice blessed indeed. (Philo.)Blessing through Christ’ s sufferings When the prairie grass catches fire and the wind is strong and the flames hasten onward twenty feet high, what do the frontier men do when they see them coming? Knowing that they cannot outrun them--the fleetest horse cannot do that--“ they just take a match,” says Mr. Moody, “ and light the grass around them, and let the fire sweep it, and then they get into the burnt district and stand safe. They hear the flames roar; they see death coming towards them; but they do not tremble, because the fire has passed over the place where they are and there is no danger; there is nothing for the fire to burn. There is one mountain peak that the wrath of God has swept: that is Mount Calvary, and that fire spent its fury upon the bosom of the Son of God. Take your stand here by the Cross, and you will be safe for time and for eternity.” Galatians 3:15 Though it be but a man’ s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.Covenants I. It is allowable to use human analogies in the enforcement of divine truth--“ after the manner of men.” II. The conditions of covenant-making in human life.1. A covenant is an arrangement between two parties for mutual benefit, with an implied character of permanence. 2. The covenant stands in all the integrity of its provisions without either party having the power to annul it or add fresh clauses to it. III. What is tree of a human covenant is essentially involved in the idea of a Divine covenant. It is irreversible and irrevocable, since it is a covenant established by oath. IV. The Judaistic theory: the law as a supplement would entirely abrogate the covenant. (Professor Crosskerry.)The whole new covenant consists in these two words--Christ and faith--Christ bestowed on God’ s part; faith required on ours--Christ the matter; faith the consideration of the covenant. (Hammond.) Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made.The great promise The promise was twofold. I. A lower or temporal blessing: II. A higher or spiritual blessing. III. The two are intermingled. The spiritual could not have come without the temporal, nor the temporal without the spiritual. (Christian Age.)The promise was fulfilled in the benefits the world has received from-- I. The industry, wealth, genius, and morality of the Jewish people. II. The scriptures, the monotheism and religious spirit of the Jews. III. The Messiah who was Abraham’ s seed. (Todd.)The promises Some of the promises are like the almond tree--they blossom hastily in the very earliest spring; but there are others which resemble the mulberry tree--they are very slow in putting forth their leaves. Then what is a man to do, if he has a mulberry tree promise which is late in blossoming? Why, he is to wait till it does. If the vision tarry, wait for it till it come, and the appointed time will surely bring it. (Spurstow.)Seed and seeds The singular form denotes Christ’ s individuality, while its collective force suggests the representative character of His human nature. (Canon Liddon.)The Paradisiacal promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’ s head was from the first understood of some deliverer. It was so understood when Cain was named as the expected restorer (Genesis 4:1); so again when Noah was expected to be one that “ shall comfort us” (Genesis 5:29). During the long ages that followed, this promise must have been the stay of every devout and God-fearing soul. It survived the terrible judgment of the flood; it passed into the expectation of the better part of every nation. It was surely not wanting in the family of Shem, nor in the race of Eber; and when Abraham was called to be the father of a chosen nation, and it was promised that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed, he must have understood by it that the long-expected Redeemer, the seed of the woman, was to be born of his posterity. So the promise was understood as it was localized successively in the tribe of Judah and in the family of David. And the later prophets never waver in the idea that it was to be accomplished by a “ Person,” whose birthplace at Bethlehem is distinctly announced by Micah. He was then an individual, not a multitude. To express this in English we should say; it was not to seeds as of many; but as of One, and “ to thy seed, which is Christ,” without any reference to the intrinsic etymological value of the singular and plural. Similarly, St. Paul uses these words, not arguing from the force of the singular in the promise, but from the whole idea and understanding of that promise which he simply explains by the singular and plural in Greek. (Professor Gardiner.)The promises are given to believers Where is thy casket of promises? Bring it out. Open the jar of jewels. Pour out the golden ingot, stamped with the image and superscription of heaven’ s King. Count over the diamonds that flash in thy hand like stars. Compute the worth, of that single jewel, “ Ask and ye shall receive ,” or that other ruby, “ All things shall work together for good to them that love God.” Bring forth that royal Koh-i-noor, “ He that believeth shall be saved.” Then remember who it is that gave them, and to what an unworthy sinner, and tell me if they are not “ exceeding great and precious.” When Caesar once gave a man a great reward, he exclaimed, “ This is too great a gift for me to receive.” --“ But,” said Caesar, “ it is not too great a gift for me to give.” So the smallest promise in thy casket is too much for thee to deserve: yet tile most magnificent promise is not too great for the King of kings to bestow. God scorns to act meanly and stingily by His children; and how must He scorn us often when we put Him off with such contemptible stinginess of deeds or donations! (C. H. Spurgeon.)But some may object, and say, Is the law opposed to the older promise? Clearly not; for it is powerless to do that which the Faith alone could do, give life. For if the law could have given spiritual life it would have conferred righteousness. But this the law does not pretend to do, since it does but declare all to be under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. In the Epistle, then, for this day the apostle shows:--1. That the faith in Christ, the promise made by God to Abraham and to his seed, was prior to the law of Moses. 2. That the original promise made to Abraham is more excellent in itself, and attended by more glorious circumstances, than the law of Moses. 3. That the completion, the perfection of the law itself is the faith in Christ. The covenant made by God with Abraham is here called the promises, because these promises are the instruments, as it were, by which the inheritance is conferred. These are promises, for the pledge of future possession and of future blessing was not made once only, but was often repeated; neither was one blessing only promised,--but many,--things in earth, Canaan in its fertility; things in heaven, peace, and rest, and abundant joy. All the good things of God were comprised in these promises to Abraham and his seed. The reasons why the covenant is spoken of as promises are:-- 1. Because it chiefly consists of promises of God’ s gifts.2. Because the covenant was revealed to Abraham in promises of blessings to be afterwards given. (W. Denton, M. A.)The great promise The best commentary on this whole passage is perhaps to be found in St. Paul’ s own words: “ All the promises of God in Him are “ yea,” and in Him “ amen,” to the glory of God by us.” Christ is the foundation and the accomplisher of every good thing that God has decreed for man: in Him alone is enjoyment or blessing to be obtained. When creation’ s fair beauty was marred by the dark shadow of sin, the voice of prophecy rang forth with promise of future deliverance; but the promise was, in reality, a promise to Christ. Later on, when one race was singled out for special notice and peculiar privilege, their faith was sustained by a great inspiring promise; but again, that promise was centred in Christ--“ In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” With grammatical and logical accuracy, the apostle proves the point he is arguing. He shows that the true explanation of the singular number being used where the plural might have been expected, is to be found in the fact that God was speaking of one collective seed according to the spirit. The Inheritor of the promise made to Abraham was Christ: not Christ as an individual merely, but Christ the anointed Head and Representative of His people--Christ the Elder Brother in a united family-Christ and all who are incorporated with Him in that spiritual Body which includes Abraham and all the faithful of every age and race. “ For ye are all one man in Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ’ s, then are ye Abraham’ s seed, heirs according to promise.” Having made it clear that the gospel of Jesus Christ, believed and received, puts men in possession of the inheritance promised to Abraham, St, Paul goes on (in verse 17) to deal with the question that naturally rises to the mind: “ What relation, then, does the law of Moses bear to the promise made to Abraham?” To this he replies, that whatever the law does it cannot for a moment be supposed to abrogate and annul the promise which existed so long before it: it was not a codicil, cancelling or limiting the promissory document of earlier date. Totally distinct and separate are the ideas involved in law and promise respectively: the one is a gift, the other a contract. If in the wise ordering of God’ s providence they both come into play, there must be arranged for each its proper place and function--neither trespassing upon the domain of the other. And this is just what has been arranged. The Covenant of Promise and the law of Moses, so far from being opposed to one another, are parallel lines which gradually converge until they meet in Christ. (J. Henry Burn, B. D.)Epistle for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity The covenant of God with Abraham an everlasting covenant with the good.1. Establishment, character of the same in itself. (1) It is truly Divine, inviolable.(2) It had reference, as to its contents, to all men and their redemption through Christ. 2. The continuance of the same even under the law. (1) The law cannot abrogate the covenant of grace.(2) On the other hand, the law is meant as a dispensation on account of sin, to prepare the way for the perfect dispensation of the covenant. 3. The perfecting of the same by Christianity. (1) Necessity of this covenant even according to the law.(2) The condition of the same is faith in Christ. (Heubner.)The great promise Here we are carried back to a promise made to Abraham four thousand years ago, which is declared to be full of vital importance still. This shows the Bible is one book, and may not be treated as a collection of fragments to be accepted or rejected at pleasure. The passage is similar to many in St. Paul’ s writings. In his view the Old Testament is full of half-fulfilled expectations, and the fact that they were only half-fulfilled is in itself a prophecy of a truer and more perfect fulfilment to come. He sees in them all a looking forward to Christ, who came to fulfil the law, the prophets, the types, the promises, and all the hitherto unrealized expectations of men. Taking advantage of the fact that the noun used to particularize the descendants of Abraham is, according to Hebrew usage, in the singular number, he shows that this is no mere verbal accident, but that as a matter of fact the children of Abraham are all summed up in One Man, even in Christ, and that upon Him came spiritually all the promises which had generally been supposed to apply to the Jewish nation collectively. Christ is the nation in its highest aspect, and for the fulfilment of its noblest end. Since, then, Christians are in Christ--part of Him--the promise is theirs also.(1) The Promiser. God. The unchangeable; the unerring; He who is Love. One and the same at all times and to all people. (2) The promise. (a) Inheritance in God’ s chosen country. A type of the better country we are now seeking. (b) To be a blessing to others. High privilege. The gift is conferred on us, in order that we may hand it on. We have not truly received Christ, unless we are seeking to minister Him.(3) The conditions of the promise. We must be in Christ. He is the heir; we can only share in His inheritance, by becoming one with Him. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)The promise really made to Christ This comment of St. Paul has given rise to much discussion. It has been urged that the stress of the argument rests on a grammatical error; that, as the plural of the word here rendered σπέρμα is only used to signify “ grain” or “ crops,” the sacred writer could not under any circumstances have said “ seeds as of many.” The answer to this objection is, that St. Paul is not laying stress on the particular word used, but on the fact that a singular noun of some kind, a collective term, is employed, where a plural (such as τὰτέκνα or οἱἀπόγονοι) might have been substituted. Avoiding the technical terms of grammar, he could not express his meaning more simply than by the opposition, “ not to thy seeds, but to thy seed.” A plural substantive would be inconsistent with the interpretation given; the singular collective noun, if it admits of plurality, at the same time involves the idea of unity. The question therefore is no longer one of grammatical accuracy, but of theological interpretation. Is this a legitimate sense to assign to the seed of Abraham? Doubtless by the seed of Abraham was meant in the first instance the Jewish people, as by the inheritance was meant the land of Canaan; but in accordance with the analogy of Old Testament types and symbols, the term involves two secondary meanings:(1) With a true spiritual instinct, though the conception embodied itself at times in strangely grotesque and artificial forms; even the Rabbinical writers saw that “ the Christ” was the true seed of Abraham. In Him the race was summed up, as it were. In Him it fulfilled its purpose and became a blessing to the whole earth. Without Him its separate existence as a peculiar people had no meaning. Thus He was not only the representative, but the embodiment of the race. In this way the people of Israel is the type of Christ; and in the New Testament parallels are sought in the career of the one to the life of the other. In this sense St. Paul uses “ the seed of Abraham” here. But (2) according to the analogy of interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, the spiritual takes the place of the natural; the Israel after the flesh becomes the Israel after the spirit; the Jewish nation denotes the Christian Church. So St. Paul interprets the seed of Abraham (Romans 4:18; Romans 9:7; and above, verse 7. These two interpretations are not opposed to each other; they are not independent of each other. Without Christ the Christian people have no existence. He is the source of their spiritual life. They are one in Him. By this link St. Paul at the close of the chapter (verses 28, 29) connects together the two senses of the “ seed of Abraham,” dwelling once more on the unity of the seed--“ ye are all one man in Christ; and if ye are part of Christ, then are ye Abraham’ s seed and heirs according to promise.” (Bishop Lightfoot.)The difference between a promise and a law A promise gives: a law takes. A promise bestows something on others: a law demands something from others. Suppose some great king to promise vast riches and possessions to all his faithful subjects. And suppose that, seeing those subjects to be proud and headstrong, and to need humbling and curbing, the same king after a time made laws which he ordered them to obey. Which should we say the subjects owed their riches and possessions to--the king’ s laws, or the king’ s promise? We could all see it would be to the promise. So it is with the riches and possession which we, the subjects of the heavenly King, look for. (Bishop Walsham How.) Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul.God’ s covenants with men A covenant is an agreement or contract, in which the parties to it solemnly bind themselves to the fulfilment of certain conditions. When we speak of a covenant as entered into by God, we understand that He, who has no rule of action but His own will, has been pleased to bind Himself, in His dealings with men, to the observance of certain specified conditions; whilst those with whom the covenant is made are hound to fulfil the obligations imposed upon them, under pain of forfeiting the promised blessings, and incurring the attendant penalties.1. The covenant under which all men are born is that of works; in other words, the moral law, the law of Adam’ s nature, written in his heart, and afterwards republished from Mount Sinai, The terms of this covenant are, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.” The sanctions by which it is enforced are, on the one hand, “ This do, and thou shalt live,” and on the other, “ Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” This covenant is one by which an unfallen being, continuing in his obedience to it, might merit life; but to creatures such as we are, it can only be a dispensation of death. Of mercy to transgressors it knows nothing. It is law for man, as God made man--perfect--and to man in that condition, and in that only, is it a law that can give life. We ask, therefore, is there any other covenant whereby (letting go the first, and laying hold on this) we may have that eternal life which we have forfeited by the covenant of works? 2. The Scriptures reveal to us the covenant of grace, so called, inasmuch as it is grace which especially distinguishes it from the former covenant of works. The terms of this covenant are contained in the gospel of Jesus Christ: by it God is graciously pleased to bind Himself to bestow all spiritual blessings upon those who give up entirely their hope of life by the works of the first covenant, and, embracing this, plead the gracious provisions of it as the ground of their acceptance with God. But besides these two covenants, which form the groundwork of all God’ s dealings with men, there is a third--that, viz., which was entered into with Israel at Sinai. 3. The Sinaitic Covenant was (1) national, as made only with one people, the Jews; (2) temporary, as designed to fulfil certain special ends, and to cease when those ends were accomplished; (3) mixed, as partaking in part of the covenant of works, while containing certain provisions which had in them an echo, and something more than an echo, of the covenant of grace. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The Abrahamic covenant I. The Abrahamic covenant viewed in itself (Genesis 13:15; Genesis 17:7). The prominent feature in it is grace, and it clearly looks forward to Christ. Its chief blessings are--(1) Divine forgiveness;(2) Divine reward;(3) Divine adoption;(4) Divine illumination. II. The Abrahamic covenant viewed in its relation to the Covenant of Sinai. The covenant of grace was announced to Abraham in the promise made to him and his seed, Christ, long before the giving of the covenant of Sinai; its conditions were fulfilled by Christ during the Incarnation, at a period long subsequent to the giving of that covenant, it was therefore independent of and superior to it; it was designed for the benefit of the whole human race, whereas the Sinaitic covenant was confined to a single nation, was limited in its application, imperfect in its provisions, and, as far as the Jews were concerned, a failure in its results. We may conceive of the covenant of grace as stretching through time like some vast geological formation, having its beginning in the ages that are past, and reaching onward to the ages that are to come. As such formation, however, displays itself upon the surface of the earth, there is at one point a depression, a sinking of its outline, and that depression or valley is filled up by a formation of more recent growth, an overlying stratum which conceals the older formation from view, but does not destroy it. Such older formation crops up on the one side, and on the other of the later one, and in fact underlies it in all its parts; the one being limited and partial as contrasted with the other, which is comparatively unlimited and universal. Thus the covenant of grace stretches through the entire period of man’ s history; but at one point in its course it becomes overlaid by a covenant of recent growth, the national covenant of Sinai. But the older covenant is neither lost nor superseded; it recedes for a while from view; it gives place in the history of man to an intermediate covenant; but it does not vanish from our history. It had shown itself in Abrahamic times; it was to display itself yet more gloriously at the coming of Christ; but yet even during the period of its seeming obscuration, its operation was not suspended: the pious Jew looked through his own covenant to the covenant of grace--he dug, as it were, through the mixed and local deposit of his own economy, to the rock beneath him. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The everlasting covenant I. God made a covenant of grace with Abraham long before the law was given on Sinai. II. Abraham was not present on Sinai, and therefore there could have been no alteration in the covenant made there by his consent. III. Abraham’ s consent was never asked as to any alteration in the covenant, without which the covenant could not have been set aside. IV. The covenant stands firm, seeing that it was made to Abraham’ s seed as well as to Abraham himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The supremacy of faith I. To be the true seed of Abraham the gentiles are to seek justification, not by the law but by faith. II. Faith has precedence of the law, and consequently is not disannulled by it. It rests on promises given to Abraham. III. The purposes of the law are subservient to conviction and preparation (V. 19), and, therefore, were not designed to disannul it. IV. The inferiority of the law is marked by its being in the hands of a mediator, and not personal, as was the promise to Abraham. V. Nevertheless faith and law do not clash. There is harmony between the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic law. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)The immutability of the covenant I. Time cannot disannul it: neither the time before the law nor the time which has elapsed since.1. Some covenants run out in the course of time, or are annulled through non-fulfilment within a given time, or are abrogated in the very fact of their fulfilment. 2. The Christian covenant is independent of time. (1) No time was specified.(2) In a sense its fulfilment began at once.(3) It cannot pass away till the last of Abraham’ s seed has enjoyed its provisions. II. The unfaithfulness of one of the contracting parties did not disannul it.1. During the four hundred and thirty years. (1) The obliquities of Jacob.(2) The evil conduct of his sons.(3) The religious apathy of the Egyptian sojourn.(4) The perversities of the wilderness wandering. 2. During the following years till the advent. (1) In spite of Divine revelation.(2) Notwithstanding repeated chastisements, Israel grieviously sinned; yet the covenant was not withdrawn. III. The intermediary dispensation did not disannul it.1. The law itself did not. (1) It was intended to help on its fulfilment.(2) It was one part of God’ s remedial plan of which the covenant was another part. 2. The infraction of the law did not. (1) Sin led men to yearn for its fulfilment.(2) Where sin abounded grace did much more abound. III. It rests on the immutability of God.1. Of His wisdom. He saw when the time would be ripe. 2. Of His mercy: He knew when it would be best to work in the interests of mankind. The covenant, then, was not disannulled by the law.1. Because then the blessing promised by the covenant would not have depended upon that promise. 2. Because then in vain is any mention made of the seed of Abraham, that is, of Christ. 3. Because those who died before the law was given on Sinai, amongst others, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, would have no claim to partake of the Divine blessing, no share in the promised inheritance. (W. Denton, M. A.)The covenant in Christ I. Its nature--a covenant of promise--of mercy: II. Its antiquity--older than the law--old as the first promise. III. Its Immutability--confirmed to (Galatians 3:16) and in Christ--cannot be disannulled. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 3:18 For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. Law and promise I. The law was restricted and conditional--“ added because of transgression” : the promise was absolute and unconditional. II. The law was temporary and provisional--“ until the seed should come” : the promise was permanent and eternal. III. The law was communicated indirectly--“ by angels” : the promise was directly given by God (Hebrews 2:2-3). IV. The law was received from God through “ a mediator” : the promise was received by Abraham in person. (P. J. Gloag, D. D.)The covenant of grace is called “ the promise,” because God hath promised both the reward and the condition. And so-- I. It differs from human covenants. Among men each party undertaketh for and looketh after his own part of the engagement; but here the duties required of us are undertaken by Him that, requireth them. No man filleth his neighbour’ s hand with anything to pay his rent to him, or enableth him to do what he hath covenanted to do; but God filleth our heart with a stock of habitual grace, with actual influences to draw forth habits into act (Ezekiel 36:26-27; Jeremiah 32:39-40). II. It differs from the covenant of works. That had more of a law and less of a promise: there was a promise of reward to the obeyer but none of obedience. There man was to keep the covenant; here the covenant keepeth us (Jeremiah 32:40). God undertaketh for both parties, and worketh in His people all that is required of them. (T. Manton.)The inheritance of the promises I. The promises of God to the believer an inexhaustible mine of wealth. Happy is it for him if he knows how to enrich himself with their hidden treasures. II. They are an armoury containing all manner of offensive and defensive weapons. Blessed is he who has learned to enter the sacred arsenal, to put on the breastplate and the helmet, and to lay his hand to the spear and the sword. III. They are a surgery in which the believer will find all manner of restoratives and blessed elixirs; nor lacks there an ointment for every wound, a cordial for every faintness, a remedy for every disease. Blessed is he who is well skilled in heavenly pharmacy, and knoweth how to lay hold on the healing virtues of the promises of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Life gift On these streets, I have seen the poor hanging on the steps of the rich, and refusing to be ordered away; to move pity, laying bare their sores; and holding out their skinny hands to implore men’ s charity. But whoever saw the rich following the poor, with a hand filled with gold;pressing money on their acceptance; stopping them; entreating, beseeching, imploring them to take it? Yet thus, to the amazement both of angels and devils, God does with you, in offering His Son; and through Him, the gift of eternal life. (Dr. Guthrie.)Salvation all of grace Mr. McLaren and Mr. Gustart were ministers of the Tolbooth Church, Edinburgh. When Mr. McLaren was dying, Mr. Gustart paid him a visit, and put the question to him, “ What are you doing, brother?” His answer was, “ Doing! I’ ll tell you what I am doing, brother. I am gathering together all my prayers, all my sermons, all my good deeds, all my evil deeds; and I am going to throw them all overboard, and swim to glory on the plank of free grace.” (E. Foster.) Galatians 3:19 Wherefore then serveth the law?It was added because of trasgressions. The function of the law Of what use, then, is the law, if (as you assert) it is not simply a codicil to--a substitute for--God’ s promise to Abraham? “ It was added.” Not being a part of the original scheme, but made necessary on account of the hardness of men’ s hearts, it came in as a sort of marginal addition or parenthesis in the dealings of God with the Jews. The moral atmosphere was changed. In circumstances of amity the promise had been given, God speaking to Abraham as a man with his friend; in circumstances of discord, with suitable accompaniment of hailstones and coals of fire, the law was promulgated and enforced. The function of the law was to assist as an ally: to be subsidiary to the promise, and help towards its fulfilment. This it did by revealing men’ s deeds to them in their true light--showing them their own sinfulness in the sight of God, and their own inability to do anything towards mending matters--a necessary preliminary to their attainment of that faith which would lead them to embrace the promise. The law, again, was merely a temporary, enactment; its work would be done when He Should appear to whom the promise had been made. Still further: the provisional nature of the law may be perceived, if we consider the manner of its promulgation. “ It was ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator.” Direct had been God’ s communication with Abraham when He gave the promise; but at the giving of the law He delivered His decrees to angels, and the angels entrusted them to a second intermediate agent, viz., Moses. Now the existence of a mediator (or go-between) implies duality, separation, disunion; whereas a promise is a simple direct transaction requiring no such intervention. If there had not been discord, at the time of the giving of the law, a mediator would have been out of place; he would have had no business there at all. There was discord at that time; and for that reason Moses was appointed to mediate. But this, instead of proving that the law is antagonistic to the promise, proves exactly the contrary, for--“ God is one.” If the law had been intended to annul the promise, it would necessarily follow that God had changed His mind, His dealings with the children of Israel through Moses would contradict His dealings four hundred and thirty years before with Abraham. Such a thought cannot for a moment be tolerated. The Lord our God is one Lord; with Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. He is ever one and the same; and the eternal principles upon which He acts can never alter. However different and opposed to one another His various dispensations towards mankind may at first sight appear, a secret thread of harmony runs through them all. His unity of purpose is expressed from first to last, in unity of plan. He will justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision by the same faith--in Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise was made. Now it is easy to see in what sort of relation the law stands to the promise. The work of the law is a work of discipline. It presents to view the sterner side of the Divine character; it shows God frowning at sin, and holding aloof from the sinner; it teaches man that by no effort of his own can he regain that communion with his Maker which was forfeited at the fall. But if that communion is not regained, man is lost--hopelessly lost for ever. Is there no other means of recovering the forfeited possession, and of once more enjoying the privilege of basking in the light of the Divine countenance? Yes, there is; and surely the law has been a most useful and valuable institution, if it has led men to ask that question. The promise, given hundreds of years before the law, still remains in force. Nothing can abrogate it--seeing that God is one and the same both in essence and in will. If in the time of Abraham He was willing to justify by faith, He is willing to justify by faith now, and He will continue in the same mind to the end of time and throughout eternity. Thus is the law our pedagogue, taking us by the hand, and leading us back over rough and devious paths to that earlier promise which was made to Christ the true seed of Abraham, and, in Christ, to all who believe. (J. Henry Burn, B. D.)The law I. Its purpose.1. To reveal sin.2. To convict of sin.3. To warn respecting its punishment. Consequently we should examine ourselves by the law.(1) When any one sin is forbidden, all sins of the same kind are forbidden.(2) A negative commandment includes the affirmative.(3) Every command must be understood with a curse.(4) Look particularly to the first commandment, which forbids the first motions of our heart against God; and to the last, which forbids the first motions of our heart against man. II. Its duration.1. Particularly: till Christ should come in the case of the Jews. 2. Generally: till God has revealed His Son in us, before which the law, although abrogated as a dispensation, has still a condemning power. III. The method of its promulgation. 1. Guilty man could not have received it direct. 2. It was therefore given (1) by angels (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:17; Acts 7:53). (a) They were attendants on God at the time of its delivery. (b) They were witnesses and approvers of its delivery. (c) Perhaps its commands were uttered by angels (Hebrews 2:2). (2) By the instrumentality of Moses (Deuteronomy 5:5). 3. Learn then (1) to reverence it,(2) to fear to break it,(3) to repent of breaking it,(4) to look for shame and confusion in the case of impenitence in the presence of God and the angels. (W. Perkins.)The present use of the law I. To the unconverted.1. To restrain and limit transgression.2. To bring to light transgressions.3. To convince of transgression.4. To prepare men to seek and receive the mercy of God in Christ. II. To the justified.1. It is a rule by which they are to be governed.2. It serves to warn and guard them against the commission of sin.3. To make them grateful for the privileges they enjoy.4. To keep them in close dependence on Jesus. In conclusion: the final judgment must be administered in accordance with the provisions of the law. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)I. The law was like a torch carried into the dark crevices and cellars of human nature that it might reveal the foul shapes that lurked there, and rouse man to long for a righteousness which it could not itself confer. II. In the process of doing this, the law aggravated the very evil it brought to light: the presence of a Divine rule which forbade the indulgence of human passion had the effect of irritating those passions into new self-asserting activity (Romans 7:7). In the absence of the law, the sinful tendency had been inert, “ but when the commandment came sin revived and I died.” III. Not that the law was answerable for this result. In itself it was holy, just, and good; the cause lay in the sinful tendency of fallen human nature. IV. So the law inflicted on the conscience that was not fatally benumbed an overwhelming conviction that righteousness in the way of legal obedience was a thing impossible; and was very far from furnishing a man with a real righteousness, of making him what he should be, correspondent to the true ideal. V. This conviction prepared men for a righteousness which should not be the product of human efforts, but a gift from heaven; a righteousness to be attained by the adhesion of faith to the perfect Moral Being, Jesus Christ, so that the believer’ s life becomes incorporate with His, and man becomes such as he should be, viz., “ justified by faith.” (Canon Liddon.)The revealing power of the law The law acts as a surgeon does when he takes the film from the eye of the blind. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The restraining power of the law A steam-engine at work in a manufactory is so quiet and gentle that a child might put it back. But interpose a bar of iron, and it cuts through as though it were so much leather. Introduce a human limb--it whirls round, and the form of man is in one moment a bleeding, mangled, shapeless mass. Now, observe, it is the restraint that manifests the unsuspected power. In the same way law discovers the strength of evil in our hearts. Not till a man has felt something resisting the evil does he know its force. (F. W. Robertson.)Law I. To prepare the way for the gospel. II. To constitute a period of probation. III. To bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). IV. To guide us in the path of holiness. V. To vindicate the justice of God in the punishment of sinners. (J. Lyth.)Christ our Mediator As, when a king is angry with a subject, the king’ s son marries the daughter of the subject, and brings him into favour with the king again: so, when God the Father was angry with us, Christ married Himself to our nature, and now mediates for us with His Father, and brings us to be friends again; and now God looks upon us with a favourable aspect. As Joab pleaded for Absalom, and brought Him to King David, and David kissed Him; so doth Jesus Christ ingratiate us into the love and favour of God. Therefore He may well be called a peacemaker, having taken our flesh upon Him, and so made peace between us and His angry Father. (T. Watson.)During one of the journeys of Queen Victoria, a little boy was desirous of seeing her. He determined to go direct to the castle where she was residing, and ask to see her. He was stopped at the gate by the sentry, who demanded what he wanted. “ I want to see the queen,” he replied. The soldier laughed at the boy, and with the butt-end of his musket pushed him away, and told him to be off immediately, or he would shoot him. The boy turned to go away, and gave vent to his grief in tears. He had not gone far when he was met by the Prince of Wales, who inquired why he was crying. “ I want to see the queen,” replied the boy, “ and that soldier won’ t let me.” --“ Won’ t he?” said the prince: “ then come along with me, and I’ ll take you to the queen.” He accordingly took’ him by the hand, and led him towards the castle. On passing the sentinel, he, as usual, presented arms to the prince; and the boy became terrified, and ran away, fearing that the soldier was going to shoot him. The prince soon quieted his fears, and led him past the gates into the presence of her Majesty. The queen with surprise, inquired of her son whom he had there; and, upon being informed of what had taken place, she laughed heartily, spoke kindly to her little visitor, and to his great delight dismissed him with a piece of money. As the prince presented the boy to the queen, so Christ presents us to His Father. (T. Watson.)The use of the law is I. Moral--it was brought in to detect--expose--restrain--punish transgression. II. Preparatory--it prepared the way for the gospel, developing human weakness--pointing to Christ its substance and antitype. III. Divinely ordained--by angels (Deuteronomy 33:2; Hebrews 2:2)--in the hand of a mediator, Moses. IV. Temporary--because mediatorial (see Galatians 3:15-22, also Lisco, in loco)--but the promise is everlasting, for God is one. V. Harmonious with the gospel--it does not propose to communicate righteousness and life--but concludes all under sin. VI. Conducive to faith--by convincing men of sin--excluding all other hope--shutting them up to the faith of Christ--in whom the promise is given. (J. Lyth.)The nature of the law I. In the first place, I will endeavour to define what is meant by the law of God is the abstract. The simple sense of the term law, and the most general sense, is this--it is that mode by which an agent proceeds. The mode by which the government of a country proceeds to rule its subjects, is called the law of that government. The term will be found to have the same signification when applied to the very highest class of objects--I mean, the government of God: the constant procedure of the Divine will, with respect to any object in any part of His dominions, is called the law of God, in respect of that particular object. While we are upon the nature of the law, let it be observed, chat these modes by which the Divine Being governs either the moral or the natural “ world, are not merely arbitrary regulations imposed upon its objects solely with a design to exercise His authority; but, that they are the necessary perceptions of the Divine mind, as to what is proper or benevolent, in regard to each of the objects to which they relate. Whence it follows, that the law of God, in relation to any class of beings in His government (but, in relation to man, pre-eminently) is the result of infinite wisdom and infinite goodness, the Lawgiver Himself being infinitely wise and good. One more remark may be added, which is, that the law of God, being the transcript of His own benevolence and wisdom, proposes and accomplishes the best possible results; promotes happiness to the utmost extent of which the object may be capable. This law may be expressed and promulgated by different modes. God has impressed His laws upon all nature below man. He did not render the obedience of man a matter of mechanical certainty; but the result of free choice. II. This leads me, secondly, to consider the modes whereby God hath promulgated His laws. These are two. He wrote the law originally upon the mind of Adam in the garden of Eden; and when it was effaced in a great measure by his apostasy, and almost obliterated from the mind of man, through the love of sin, he republished it to the world in the form of the Decalogue on Mount Sinai. III. Thirdly, to remark on the different kinds of the law, which we must distinguish in perusing the Holy Scriptures. Although all that was republished on Sinai to the Jews, and at all other times, goes under the general term of the law of God; yet, upon close inspection, this law will be found to consist of three kinds, which are clearly distinct from one another. These three kinds of law are, the judicial law, or the state law of the Jews; the ceremonial law, that is to say, that law which prescribed the religious rites and services of the Jews under the Old Testament dispensation; and the moral law, which prescribed their conduct, and our conduct, as men. It has been inferred that the moral law was intended to be perpetual from the very mode of its promulgation. Let not this be dismissed as trifling. Everything in the promulgation of the law was the effect of premeditation on the part of the Divine mind, who doeth nothing in vain. Every part of it had a signification attached to it. The judicial part of the law, and the ceremonial part, were delivered to Moses privately, during the forty days in which he was on the Mount; but the moral law was delivered from the mouth of God Himself, in the presence of the whole assembled camp. The ceremonial part of the law was written in a perishable book; the moral part of the law was written by the finger of God upon two tables of stone, the emblem of perpetuity; and after wards, when the first tables of the law were destroyed by the zeal of Moses, they were restored by the same finger upon two other similar tables. Now, we must be persuaded that every particular in that solemn event of giving the law was the result of design: and that the moral part of the law was intended to be perpetual, seems the most probable meaning of the distinction made in the mode of promulgating the ceremonial and the moral law. But we have conclusive argument to prove the universal obligation and perpetuity of the law. That it is intended to be universal is most evident, because it was only the republication of the law which was imprinted on the mind of Adam in Eden, and which was effaced from his mind by his disobedience. But, as Adam was the head and father of all, and as all that had been prescribed to him first was intended to be taught to all his posterity, we infer that the moral law was intended to be perpetual and universally binding. Again, it is one great requisition of the gospel, that it should be preached to every creature; and that its object should be to testify toward Jews and Greeks, repentance toward God. But, if repentance be required of every creature, it follows that every creature is a sinner. Yet, every creature cannot be a sinner by disobedience to the judicial law, which was only for the Jews as a nation, nor by disobedience to the ceremonial law, which was to cease at Christ’ s coming. But, by the disobedience of law, mankind became sinners, and consequently, the subject of the gospel must be the moral law; therefore, the moral law is universal. The precepts of the moral law have all of them respect only to the moral character of man, properly so called. They relate not to outward observances--not to the things which go into a man, but to the things which come out of him, namely, the thoughts and intents of his heart. Our Lord said, “ Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” This could not be the judicial law, which was to cease with the existence of the Jews as a nation. It could not mean the ceremonial law, which was done away by Christ. This declaration refers to the moral law, and there is ample reason for believing that his assertion should be true. (J. P. Denham, M. A.)Jesus Christ the true and only Mediator between God and man St. Paul commences his explanation of the use of the law of Moses, by saying that “ it was added because of transgressions.” It was added, therefore was not, so to speak, included in the original purpose of God--because of transgressions, not that the law made transgression, but that it was a test whereby transgression might be--1. Manifested and exposed;2. Avoided and corrected. Thus we find the use of the law to have consisted in being a witness to God between the patriarchal and the Christian dispensations. It was meant to be a standard of God’ s righteousness, and thus a means of convincing man of his own unrighteousness. It would appear, then, that the one great object the apostle had in view in this Epistle to the Galatians was to shew the temporary character of the law, and that it only filled a sphere of subordinate usefulness in the economy of the Divine government; and so, by lowering their ideas of its dignity, to exalt their impressions of the higher dignity of evangelical truth, and of the greater necessity of faith in the evangelical promises. And this object we find wrought out in the text, wherein he shows its fleeting character in the assertion that it was only added “ until the seed should come.” The word “ angels” is capable of two interpretations.1. The word translated “ angels,” and from which our English word angel is derived, in its simple sense means “ messengers.” It does not mean necessarily that spiritual and (to us) invisible messenger which we call an angel, but may mean any one entrusted with the performance of another’ s will, or the execution of a commission. Thus we may take the law in its fullest sense, comprehending the moral as well as the ritual observances enjoined by God, and revealed by Him at various times through patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, and ready scribes (like Ezra); and suppose these to have been the “ messengers” by whom it was “ ordained;” or (more literally) “ set in order,” until the time of the Mediator arrived, when all the ordinances alike of ceremonial and moral law were realized in Him, even Jesus Christ, who fulfilled all righteousness. 2. But I confess that this interpretation, however satisfactory it may appear in itself as explanatory of the meaning of the apostle’ s words, does not appear to me to elucidate the sense of the apostle upon the point in question. I prefer, therefore, to abide by the second interpretation, which, while it narrows its signification, applies more closely and explains more satisfactorily its meaning. St. Paul, you will bear in mind, was still dwelling on the temporary character of the law. This was the key-note of the whole chant in praise of the superiority of faith. He appears, therefore, in this expression to make a distinct allusion to the giving of the law to Moses, the mediator between God and His people Israel after the patriarchal times had ceased. I conceive hence that the law alluded to in the text was the ceremonial law ordained, or set in order by angelic ministers and conveyed to Moses in the Mount, when for forty days he was permitted to commune with Jehovah, and entrusted to his hands as the mediator appointed by God to convey His will to His chosen people Israel. Now, if, as I believe, this be a correct explanation of the meaning of the apostle, we shall find, on carrying out the idea contained therein, that it has a very important connection with the following portion of the text, “ Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.” This connection may not at first appear so clear as I hope to make it; but, if I understand the apostle’ s argument, his meaning was to this effect: “ I have shown you the real use of the law, have explained that it was not God’ s original covenant, but was only intended to fill up a gap, as it were, between the declaration and the fulfilment of the antecedent promise; that during that gap or interval, it was useful in convincing of sin, and thus leading to a necessity of faith, but had in itself no justifying power like the faith already illustrated in Abraham when he believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now, I have a still farther object in view: I wish to prove its inferiority, both in the mode of its revelation and in the person of its mediator.” He wished, I say, to prove the inferiority of the ritual law. First: in the mode of its revelation. The law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. How far superior then must have been that promise which came direct from God Himself. The law was calculated to depress the thoughts to earth by its carnal rites and burthensome observances. How far superior, then, must have been that promise which elevated the thoughts, hopes, affections at once to the throne and mercy seat of God. The law was intended only to have a typical efficacy by shadowing forth good things yet to come. How far superior then in their fulfilment must have been those abiding realities, those spiritual substances which were thus foreshadowed. Second: In the person of its Mediator. The mediator of the covenant of the law was Moses, the servant of God, but the Mediator of the covenant of promise was Jesus the Son of God, and that we may duly appreciate the special, the specific superiority, in this character of the latter over the former, let us consider what was the office of, and what was the necessary qualification for a mediator. A mediator is one who seeks to reconcile differences between conflicting persons. In order to do this successfully between man and man, he must be utterly unbiassed by the prejudices of either, while he must feel a sympathy with the affections of both. In the arrangement of human differences we know by experience that if a person attempts to mediate between two, while all his sympathies are enlisted on the side of one, his office is sure to fail, even if his mediation be not rejected. Therefore, when the apostle says, “ A mediator is not a mediator of one,” he at once shows the inefficiency of Moses for his office; because, being only man, he could not mediate on the side of Deity. He could convey God’ s commands to His people. He could even act out God’ s will in his own person. But not being a partaker of the Divine nature, he could not mediate as a Divine participator in the covenant. But contrast this with the Mediator of the covenant of promise, and regard His immeasurable superiority. Behold the development of the mystery contained in the concluding words of the text, “ But God is one!” But while thus congratulating ourselves upon an undeserved, and I trust richly appreciated mercy, it is necessary heedfully to avoid one dangerous error--viz., not to degrade our faith into a mere result of external evidences. The mind and intellect being convinced will not always influence the conduct, will certainly fail to change the heart, and cannot of itself sanctify the will. Holy Scripture tells us that it is “ with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” (Bishop Suffragan of Nottingham.)Law contrasted with promise 1. The law has no organic relation to the promise; was neither a new form of it, nor a codicil to it; did not spring out of it, but was superadded as a foreign and unallied element. 2. The law has functional connection with sin; the promise regards an inheritance. 3. The law was provisional and temporary only: the promise has no limitation of time, and is not to be superseded. 4. The law was given by a species of double intervention--the instrumentality of angels and the mediation of Moses; the promise was given directly and immediately from God’ s own lips, no one stepping in between its Giver and its recipient--neither angel ordaining it nor man conveying it. 5. The promise, as resting solely on God, was unconditioned, and therefore permanent and unchanging; the law, interposed between two parties, and specially contingent on a human element, was liable to suspension or abolition. 6. This law, so necessitated by sin, so transient, so connected with angelic ordinance and human handling, was an institute later also by far in its imagination. (John Eadie, D. D.)Inferiority of the law to the dispensation of grace Had the law then no purpose? Yes; but its very purpose, its character and history, betray its inferiority to the dispensation of grace.1. Instead of justifying, it condemns; instead of giving life, it kills; it was added to reveal and multiply, transgressions. 2. It was but temporary; when the seed came to whom the promise was given, it was annulled. 3. It did not come direct from God to man. There was a double interposition, a twofold mediation, between the giver and the recipient. There were the angels, who administered it as God’ s instruments; there was Moses (or the high priest) who delivered it to man. 4. As follows from the idea of mediation, it was of the nature of a contract, whereas the promise, proceeding from the sole fiat of God, is unconditional and unchangeable, (Bishop Lightfoot.)The uses of the law The law was never intended to be the means of conveying life. Its office was to bring home to men the necessity of seeking life elsewhere. It was subservient and preparatory to the gospel. The general reason for which it was given was “ because of transgressions.”1. To restrain sin. As a curb. It holds men in check wherever it is known. Without some such restraint this earth would soon become a hell. 2. To reveal sin (Romans 7:7-9). The sediment at the bottom of a pool is there, but its existence does not become apparent until the pool is stirred. The chamber may be full of all that is unseemly and unsightly, but the fact is not known so long as darkness prevails. So the law lets in the light of God’ s truth upon man’ s evil heart. 3. To provoke sin (Romans 5:20). The very fact that fruit is forbidden makes it to be more desired. The heart chafes at restraint. Just as a barrier thrown across a stream causes it, however smooth and quiet before, to rage and fret against the new obstruction, if perchance it may sweep it away; so does the law, with its demands, warnings, threatenings, stir up the enmity of the heart, and provoke it to rebel against God. 4. To condemn sin. “ the law, when it has once found a man, holds him fast in its grip. It has but two sentences--death or life. It reveals to man his own helpless misery, and leaves him in it. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The purposes the law was intended to serve Take a bird’ s-eye view of the works of the law in this world. Lo, I see the law given upon Mount Sinai. The very hill doth quake with fear. Lightnings and thunders are the attendants of those dreadful syllables which make the hearts of Israel to melt. Sinai seemeth altogether on the smoke. The Lord came from Paran, and the Holy One from Mount Sinai; He came with ten thousand of His saints. Out of His mouth went a fiery law for them. It was a dread law even when it was given; and since then from that Mount of Sinai an awful lava of vengeance has run down, to deluge, to destroy, to burn, and to consume the whole human race, if it had not been that Jesus Christ had stemmed its awful torrent, and bidden its waves of fire be still. Apart from Christ and His gospel, the law is nothing but the condemning voice of God thundering against mankind. So it is natural to ask the question in the text; and the answer to that question is--1. To manifest to man his guilt. Asleep on the edge of the precipice, God sends the law as a messenger to open men’ s eyes and show them their danger. 2. To slay all hope of salvation by a reformed life. Future obedience can be no atonement for past guilt, even if perfect obedience for the future could be guaranteed, which is far from the case. 3. To show man the misery which will fall upon him through his sin. 4. To show the value of a Saviour. As foils set off jewels, and dark spots make bright tints more bright, so does the law make Christ appear the fairer and more heavenly. How harsh and discordant is the voice of the law with its cure; how sweet and harmonious that of Jesus, saying, “ Come unto Me.” 5. To keep Christian men from self-righteousness. When we read the law we see our faults as in a mirror. If we would be saved, we must come with nothing of our own to Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Because of transgressions:-- Relation of the law to sin The “ transgressions” on account of which the law was added refer, I apprehend, to the criminal conduct of the Israelites, which rendered the introduction of such a system as the law necessary in order to the attainment of the great object of the covenant about Christ, and justification by faith through Him. This arrangement was first made known in the first promise, but from the prevalence of human depravity it seems to have been in the course of ages almost entirely forgotten. “ All flesh corrupted its way on the earth.” The deluge swept away the whole inhabitants of the ancient world with the exception of one family, among whom the true religion was preserved. In the course of no very long period, the great body of their descendants, the inhabitants of the new world, became idolaters. To prevent the utter extinction from among mankind of the knowledge of God, and the way of obtaining His favour, Abraham was called, and a plainer revelation made to him of the Divine purposes of mercy, and his decendants by Isaac and Jacob chosen as the depositaries of this revelation, till He should come to whom the revelation chiefly referred. In consequence of the descendants of Jacob coming down into Egypt, they gradually contracted a fondness for Egyptian superstitions, and were fast relapsing into a state of idolatry, which must soon have terminated in their being lost among the nations; and the revelation with which they were entrusted being first corrupted and then forgotten, God raised up Moses as their deliverer, brought them out of Egypt, and placed them under that very peculiar order of things which we commonly term the Mosaic Law--an order of things admirably adapted to preserve them a distinct and peculiar people--and by doing so, to preserve the revelation of mercy through the Messiah, of which they were the depositaries, and to prepare abundant and satisfactory stores of evidence and illustration when the great Deliverer appeared--evidence that He was indeed the Person to whom the hopes of mankind had from the beginning been directed, an illustration rendering in some measure level to human apprehension what otherwise would have been unintelligible. Every person acquainted with the principles of depraved human nature, and with the history of the Jews at and subsequent to their deliverance from Egypt, will see that their “ transgressions” rendered some such arrangement as the Mosaic law absolutely necessary, on the supposition that the Messiah was not to appear for a course of ages, and that the revelation of salvation through Him was to be preserved in the world by means of the Jewish people. We are not so much, if at all, to consider the Mosaic law as a punishment for the transgressions of the descendants of Abraham. We are rather to consider it as the means which their transgressions rendered necessary in order to secure the object of their being chosen to be God’ s peculiar people. To be preserved from being involved in the ignorance, and idolatry, and vice in which the surrounding nations were sunk, was a blessing, at whatever expense it might be gained. At the same time, had it not been for the transgressions of the Israelites, the more spiritual and less burdensome order of things under which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were placed might have been continued, and the law as a distinct order of things never have existed because never needed. (John Brown, D. D.)The law, then, was given for these two purposes 1. To show the people what actions were sins, that they might not fall into them without knowledge and without warning. 2. To restrain them from those sins against the law of nature and the covenant with God, through fear of the punishment which should follow, and thus root out from them those habits of wickedness which they had contracted in Egypt. In both these respects was the necessity of a mediator, a redeemer, kept before the eyes of the people. Their weakness taught them the need of a Saviour, who should strengthen them; the sight of their sinfulness directed them to a Redeemer, through whom they should obtain deliverance from present sin and forgiveness for the past. For the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners; and therefore, since the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. The inferiority of the law to the covenant of promise which was fulfilled by the gospel is considered in these particulars.1. The law represses outward transgressions through the fear which it excites; the gospel effects an inward transformation in man by love. 2. Instead of justifying, which is the work of the gospel, the law condemns; instead of giving life, it does but kill. 3. The law was temporary; it was only to continue until the coming of the seed. 4. The law did not come to man directly from the mouth of God as the gospel does, but by the intervention of angels. Until Christ came, man indeed was not brought face to face with God, but the will of the Father was revealed to the world by the ministry of angels. Only in these last days hath He spoken unto us by His Son. The law depended for its fulfilment on the observance of its conditions by the two contracting parties, whilst the promise of God to Abraham is absolute. (W. Denton, M. A.) Galatians 3:20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.I. The key to the apostle’ s argument--“ One.”1. (Galatians 3:16) One is the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise was made. “ In thee shall all the nations be blessed” (Galatians 3:8), was the proposition with which St. Paul started to prove (Galatians 3:14) that the blessing of Abraham was to come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. 2. (Galatians 3:28-29) The conclusion evidently reverts to the beginning, “ Ye are all one in Christ Jesus … then are ye Abraham’ s seed, and heirs according to promise.” 3. In Galatians 3:20, therefore, the oneness in the centre must refer to the same unity. When, in the intermediate argument, designed to refute the plea of the Jews that their covenant was the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, St. Paul insists on the non-unity or want of oneness connected with a mediator, the presumption is strong that it is to the Mosaic covenant and its mediator that he is denying the oneness which he claims to be fulfilled in the Christian covenant and its Mediator. II. The steps of the argument.1. (Galatians 3:16) One is the “ seed” of Abraham, to whom the “ blessing” which extends to all nations is promised. 2. (Galatians 3:20. The mediator must be a “ mediator of one” (seed), including all Jews and Gentiles! and making all one; and “ the God (of both) is One.” 3. (verses 28-29) But “ ye are all one in Christ Jesus; and therefore Abraham’ s seed and heirs according to the promise.” III. The conclusion of the argument.1. Moses, the mediator of the Jewish covenant, is not such a “ mediator of one” (Galatians 3:20), uniting all into one, making all one seed, one body, one with God, one with each other. 2. But Christ is exactly such a mediator. (1) He is the one seed in whom all find their unity. (2) In Him God and man are made one, for He is both in one Person. (3) In Him all men and all nations, the most diverse have become one. (1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 1:10). 3. Christ, as Mediator, is a Mediator of one in the fullest sense as making all one. “ God,” the author of the promise, “ is one” God of all, Jews and Gentiles (Galatians 3:20). 4. “ Ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28), being all “ baptized into Christ,” having “ put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), “ and if ye be Christ’ s, then ye be Abraham’ s seed and heirs,” etc. (Galatians 3:29). (Principal Forbes.)The law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator; but a mediator is not a mediator of one person, but of two--here, in the case under consideration, the mediator was Moses, and the two parties between whom he stood were God and the Israelites. But God is not a Mediator between two parties: He is one; in His promise God acts alone and independently--here, in the case under consideration, in the giving of a promise to Abraham by God, there was no mediator, it was absolute and unconditional, without the intervention of a third party. The covenant which God made with the Israelites at Sinai was given through a mediator, viz., Moses; but the covenant which God made with Abraham that in him and his seed all nations should be blessed, was given without a mediator. The one was conditional, and by law or contract; the other was unconditional, and by promise. (P. J. Gloag, D. D.)Mediation and God’ s oneness Perhaps no passage in Scripture has received so many interpretations as this--more than two hundred and fifty at least. Who does not see in this an illustration of the honour done to the Word of God? On what other book would the same amount of time, and mental labour, and literary attainment, have been expended for the illustration of an occasional remark? The causes of the diversity of sentiment are various Some suppose the apostle to speak in his own person; others consider either the whole verse, or at any rate the first part of it, as the words of an objector. Some by the “ mediator” understand any mediator; others, Moses; others, Christ. Some understand “ one” as a substantive; others as an adjective which requires a substantive to be supplied to bring out the sense, and that substantive they have supplied very variously: some, of one party; others, of one seed; others, of one law; others, of one race; others, of one thing, etc. Some understand the assertion “ is not of one” of the person; ethers, of the condition, others, of the design and business of the mediator. Some consider the last member of the sentence, “ God is one,” as philosophical or dogmatic; others as historical, looking to the times of Abraham, or of the giving of the law at Sinai. Luther’ s notion is quite singular--“ God offendeth no man, and therefore needeth no mediator; but we offend God, and therefore we need a mediator.” The mode of connecting the passage has also given origin to diversity of view respecting its meaning. Now, in any discussion of this passage, two things must be kept in mind:1. The repetition of the word “ mediator” is not in the original. The text reads literally thus: “ Now a” --or the--“ mediator is not of one.” 2. The words must contain in them some statement which lays a foundation for the conclusion deduced in the next verse, that the law is not against the promises of God. However plausible in other respects an interpretation may be, it cannot be the right one if it does not bring out a sense which justifies the apostle’ s inference. The almost innumerable opinions of interpreters may be reduced to two classes--those in which the words, “ Now a mediator is not of one,” are understood as a general proposition, true of all mediators, and applied by the apostle in the course of his reasoning to the subject before him; and those in which they are considered as a particular statement, referring exclusively and directly to the mediator spoken of in preceding verse. Those who are agreed in thinking the words are a general proposition, differ widely in the way in which they understand it, and in which they make it bear on the apostle’ s argument. One class consider the words as equivalent to--“ Now a mediator does not belong to a state of unity or agreement. The use of a mediator seems to intimate that the parties between whom he mediates are not at one.” This mode of interpretation labours under great difficulties. For, first, it is not true that the use of a mediator necessarily supposes disagreement. There are causes of the use of a mediator besides this. God continues to deal with those with whom He is reconciled through a mediator. And secondly, it breaks the connection between the two clauses of the verse, which obviously is very intimate. Another class consider the words as equivalent to--“ a mediator does not belong exclusively to one party; a mediator belongs to both parties;” and they consider the apostle as arguing thus: “ No man can be a mediator who is not appointed by both parties. There were two parties in the original agreement--God and the spiritual seed of Abraham. Moses was indeed appointed by God; but God was one of the parties, so that whatever such a mediator could do could not affect the interests of the other party.” This explanation is not satisfactory, because in the appointment of the Great Mediator of the better covenant, God alone was concerned. A third class consider the words as equivalent to--“ a mediator is not peculiar to this one dispensation. There have been various mediators, but there is but one God. The mediator may be changed, but God continues the same.” But the words do not naturally convey this meaning. The mediator of this verse is evidently the same as the mediator referred to in the preceding verse. The question still remains, then, Who is the mediator thus referred to? Some consider the mediator by whose hands the law was given, as Jesus Christ. But Christ is nowhere in Scripture called the mediator of the law; and surely if the reference had been to Him, the language in verse :19 would not have been “ a mediator,” but “ the mediator,” if not the expression elsewhere used, “the one Mediator between God and men.” This still further narrows the field of discussion. We have now only--taking for granted that the mediator is Moses--to seek for a meaning which the words of the apostle will bear, and which will support his conclusion, that the law is not, cannot be, against the promises of God. If the first part of the verse be read interrogatively, and if the word one be understood, not numerically, but morally, as signifying uniform and unchangeable, always self-consistent, a plain meaning may be deduced from the words, in harmony with the context. “ The law was given by the hands of Moses as a mediator. But was he not the mediator of Him who is one and the same for ever? Now God, who appointed Moses mediator, is one and the same--unchanged, unchangeable. Can, then, the law be against the promises of God?” (John Brown, D. D.)The Mediator God is one. He alone is to be considered in this transaction. It is all His doing. He not only mediates with us, but also for us; He is on our side; He takes part with us. It is His single hand which achieves the issue; the whole depends upon Him, and is consummated by Him. I. The parties supposed. God; man. These two at variance. II. The mediator. One who can take up both sides of the case. Necessary that he should receive power and deputation from both, and that each party abide by his determination. In God’ s stead, and yet man’ s substitute and surety. Where shall such an one be found? III. God provides the mediator. He acts for man, as well as for Himself.1. God originates the plan.2. God removes every obstruction.3. God secures man’ s co-operation.4. God alone is to be adored. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)Explanation of the verse Some two or three hundred interpretations go upon the misconception that the meaning is: “ A mediator is a mediator, not of one party, but of two parties, and God is one of those two parties.” This is, I strongly think, quite erroneous. The structure of the Greek excludes it. The word “ one” clearly points not to number, but to quality; and so the sense will be: “ A mediator has nothing to do with what is one, whatsoever be the number of individuals constituting that unit, but God is pre-eminently one--one with Himself, as in essence, so in will … one in His one method of dealing with all.” (Canon T. S. Evans, D. D.)St. Paul’ s view of the unity of God There is more than one sense in which unity may be understood. It may mean “ one and no more,” i.e., numerical unity; or, one and the same to all and always; or, union of many in a collective unit. We may say, there is one king, meaning that there are not two or more; or, there is one king, meaning that all have the same king, that he is the same to all his subjects; and we may say, the kingdom is one, meaning that it is not divided, that it is a collective unit in the monarchy. It is therefore important to observe in what sense St. Paul uses the word εἶς when in any passage he speaks of unity, and especially when he refers to the unity of God. Now it is plainly his habit to use the word in senses other than numerical. The following are instances: 1 Corinthians 3:8; 1 Corinthians 6:16; 1 Corinthians 10:17; 1 Corinthians 12:13; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 1:10; Ephesians 2:14-15; Philippians 1:27. And so, when St. Paul speaks of God being one, it is certainly not usually, if it is ever, in the numerical sense. The very word θεός, as he understands it, excludes the idea of polytheism; and against polytheism, as implying many actual gods, he is nowhere concerned to argue … Brought up in Judaism, he had imbibed, as it were with his mother’ s milk, the idea of one God only. “ Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God,” had been the central principle of his religion from the first, and expressed a self-evident truth which to his mind was unassailable. But he had been taught also to regard the One God as, in a peculiar sense, the God of Israel only; the whole Gentile world being to the mind of the Jew outside the circle of special Divine favour. Yet, as his mind became enlarged through familiarity with Gentile thought and literature, and through his own musings and his observation of the world, we may believe that he had long been perplexed by the limitation which his creed seemed to imply of the love of the universal Father. His mind craved a conception of God, as not only supreme, but as one in His own nature, one and the same to all, comprehending all alike in the embrace of His own essential unity. Further, it appears from his language in more than one passage, that he had been perplexed not only by the seeming partition between Jew and Gentile, but also by the discords and anomalies Apparent at present in creation generally. The general “ puzzle of this painful earth” had set him musing. Such comprehensive language (as that in Romans 8:19-22) cannot surely be interpreted as referring to humanity alone. It seems to mean that everywhere throughout known sentient creation there is now pain and evil, discordant with the idea of unity in God. But among all the apparent discords of creation those within himself came home to him especially, because personally felt. He was conscious of a “ law of God” within him, demanding his entire allegiance; but he was conscious also of another “ law in his members” --a “ law of sin and death” --warring against the law of his mind--such as to have wrung from him once the almost despairing cry, “ O wretched man that I am,” etc. Such inward experience clashed with his conceived ideal of “ One God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him.” And further, it is evident (as is especially seen in his Epistle to the Ephesians) that even beyond this mundane sphere of things his thoughts extended. His religious faith--confirmed doubtless by his observation of the mystery of spiritual evil among men--told him also of “ spiritual things of wickednesses in the heavenly places,” of a “ prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience;” and such dissonance in the heavenly places themselves was inconsistent with his grand ideal. For God was to his mind the one absolute existence, the one eternal Being, “ of whom are all things:” “ the Father (πατήρ) of whom every family (πατριά) in heaven and on earth is named;” and not only the Father, but also present in all creation still And the God of his conscience being to him Love and Righteousness as well as Power and Life, he craved in all creation a reflection of the whole Divine perfection--such as, in the present state of things, he did not find. Such grand conceptions we conceive to have had possession of St. Paul’ s mind--after his conversion certainly, as is evident from his writings, and probably long before. To a mind thus prepared, the revelation of God in Christ was as a sudden burst of light. It did not, indeed, show him the original source or purpose of existing evil … But the new light from heaven showed him Reconciliation, and discords resolved, in the fulness of time, into eternal harmony In this passage the apostle has been arguing against the notion that the Mosaic law had either fulfilled or abrogated the promise made to Abraham; and the thought that suggests the verse before us is, that in the giving of the law Moses had intervened as a mediator. In reference to this fact he says: “ Now a mediator is not of one; but God is one.” Viewed in the light of St. Paul’ s dominant conception, with all that it involves, of the unity of God, the following interpretation at once suggests itself to the mind: “ A mediator is not of one” (i.e., “ of that which is one” --whether singly or collectively--mediation has no place where there is unity); “ but God is one” (in the sense, with all that follows from it, ever present to St. Paul’ s mind when he says εἶςὁΘεός): therefore (the conclusion follows, though not expressed) the law, with its intervening mediator, did not manifest God’ s unity, and the consequent unity of all in Him. (J. Barmby, B. D.)That nothing should disturb our deep and settled repose in immutable love and faithfulness of God. That the most rigid enactments of law can never affect the promises of Divine grace, while the grace revealed in the promises mellows and modifies the rigour of law. That both the law and the promise shut us up to one only ground of dependence and hope of eternal life. That Christianity, with its personal Saviour and remedial scheme of mercy, is the only revelation suited to the moral and undeniable necessities of man’ s fallen nature. That the belief and reception of the Christian revelation is the one simple condition of endless life and blessedness. Such we deem to be the true exegesis of this confessedly difficult text, and such the profound truths involved in its interpretation. There are no various readings to perplex us; there is no necessity for taking a single word out of its ordinary and accepted meaning; there is no pretext for twisting or wresting the apostle’ s language, nor for interfering with the chain of his argument. His aim is to bring out the superiority of the gospel to the law: and this he does by showing that whatever methods God may adopt in the government of our world, nothing can interfere with His promise of grace, since that promise is founded on the immutability of His own nature, no less than on the depth and the exuberance of His own love. God is one, immutably and for ever the same; so that the promise which was given four hundred years before the law remains the same after the law--as rich in grace, and as pregnant with life. In this promise, or rather in Him to whom the promise refers, we can confide with calm and joyous repose, “ persuaded that neither life nor death, neither angels, nor principalities, etc.” (R. Ferguson, LL. D.)The one Mediator The argument is based on the fact that when God blessed Abraham, He used a singular and not a plural word, and said, not “ seeds,” but “ Seed:” “ to Abraham and his seed were the promises made.” “ The Seed,” therefore, must be One Individual. And who could that single Individual be, but Christ only? Therefore all the promises in the Old Testament are to Christ. Not primarily, nor chiefly, to Isaac, or to Jacob, or to Judah, or to any other earthly descendants; but to one, to Christ. Stop a moment, and consider what that assertion involves. All the promises in the Old Testament are to Jesus only. Nay more, all the promises in the Bible centre in Jesus. They pass to us only through Him. How often have we taken the comfort of some beautiful promise in Deuteronomy; or in the Psalms; or the Proverbs; or in Isaiah; or any of the Prophets, without thinking of this. But not one of those promises was originally made to us. They were made to Christ. How then, could we dare to appropriate them, or even to touch them? Where do we find a right or a title to any one of them? Only by a union to Him to whom they were made. You must have a part in Christ. You must be “ in Him;” a member in His mystical body. Thus and thus only, does any promise really belong to and to all that are in Him, what is the use of the law. “ Wherefore then serveth the law?” “ The law” is not “ covenant,” it was “ four hundred and thirty years” after covenant. The law does not give us the promises. “ Wherefore then serveth the law?” Our fallen nature, and our sins, made it necessary. “ It was added (after the covenant) because of transgressions,” to prevent transgressions; to punish transgressions; but not to give pardon, or peace, or salvation, or heaven. It was a beautiful and holy law; and if any law could have saved a man, that would have saved him. “ If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” But no law can give life. But now let us consider the mode of the giving of that law which St. Paul introduces as a further link in his chain of argument. “ It was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (see Deuteronomy 33:2). It is clear, therefore, that in some way, at the giving of the law on mount Sinai, “ angels” were employed for the ordering, disposing, and arranging the solemnities of that awful occasion. St. Paul introduces the fact to enhance the glory of the “ second” and better “ covenant” ; he goes on to a climax; the first covenant was very glorious, “ it was ordained by angels” ; but how much more glorious when Christ did all Himself, in His own Person, by His own act, alone! Then St. Paul passes--from “ the angels,” and the order of the solemnities on mount Sinai--to “ the mediator,” Moses, who was employed by God to communicate God’ s will to man, the Creator’ s law to His creatures. “ It was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.” And at that word “ mediator” St Paul (as is his custom), breaks off to the thoughts which that word “ mediator” suggested to his mind. “ A mediator!” --what is it? What does that word involve? And so we come to the text, “ Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one.” This short sentence is so difficult in its conciseness, so abstruse, and capable of so many meanings, that it is not too much to say that it has more interpretations than any other passage in the Bible. Amongst all the meanings, however, which have been attached to it, there are two which stand out so distinct, and are far superior (as far as I can judge) to all the rest, that the true understanding of the words must be, I think, in one or the other, or in both unitedly. The one is this. “ Now a mediator is not a mediator of one.” A “ mediator” implies that there are two parties concerned. There cannot be mediators unless there are two between whom ” the mediator” is to act. And the two must be, more or less, at variance, otherwise there would be no need, or occasion, for the mediation. Here, then, there must be two. Two? God is one of the two, one of those two between whom the mediation takes place. Then, who was the other? Man. In what condition, then, must man be? At enmity with God! Else, he would not need a mediation. The other interpretation is this. The words are intended to draw a contrast between the law and the gospel. The mediation of the law--which was conducted by Moses--was of the nature of a contract between two parties--God, on the one side, man on the other. And each must fulfil his part in the contract, or else it would not be valid. Therefore the contract of the law, observe this! leaves the issue uncertain--for it depended, on one side, on man’ s obedience, which was an exceedingly doubtful thing; it certainly cannot be depended upon! But just the contrary to that is the contract of the gospel. In that contract God is all in all. It depends on the will and power of God. It is all, from beginning to end, His work. He elects the soul: He makes the faith: He makes the obedience: He makes the holiness; and He has provided, and He Himself gives, and is, the reward. There is nothing but God in it. So the unity of God is complete. There is nothing but God. “ God is one.” The mediation is entirely different from the mediation of the law. There, the parties mediated, were two. Here, all are one. God the Author, God the Finisher; only God on either side, in His electing love, in the sinner’ s penitence, in the sinner’ s peace, in the sinner’ s eternal life. It is all God. One; alone. Of these two explanations I myself very much prefer the first. But why may we not embrace the two, reading the verse thus? Man is separate from God. The fact that there is a Mediator, the necessity of a Mediator, proves it. We are all at variance with God. A controversy between a man and God is, on reasonable and rational principles, hopeless. I am one and alone in my deep, sinful degradation. God is one and alone in the solitude of His infinite and unapproachable holiness. There is not the vestige of a hope for me unless there be a Mediator. “ But God is one.” One, up in heaven, in His foreordaining love; one, in my poor heart, working there in His grace and mercy; one, in His eternal sovereignty; one, in His power and will to make me all He would have me to be; one to plan, one to execute, His grand design. One to begin, and one to perfect, my salvation. One to save me and glorify Himself by my everlasting happiness. “ A mediator is not a mediator of one” --then God and I are at enmity. “ But God is one.” And, in His unity, I and God are one for ever. (James Vaughan, M. A.)A mediator I. His office--to act between two parties--needed betwixt God and man. II. His qualifications--friendly relations with both parties--strict justice and impartiality. III. His functions--to effect reconciliation-by bringing both together--on a common ground. IV. His authority--Divine, for God is one--consequently there is but one mediator, the man Christ Jesus--Moses was but a shadow of the true. (J. Lyth.)The mediation of Christ I. Effects reconciliation between God and man. II. Is the realization of the idea faintly depicted in the person of Moses--He gives the law of the Spirit--provides the true sacrifice--makes everlasting intercession. III. Is based upon the original promise (v. 21)--God is one, therefore supreme--unchangeable--almighty to effect His purpose of grace. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 3:21 Is the law, then, against the promises of God?The harmony between the law and the gospel I. The gospel gift of righteousness is not made of none effect by the law. Abraham was justified by faith.1. Which is God’ s old covenant.2. Resting on God’ s own promises.3. And still endures. II. The law is not made of none effect by the gospel gift of righteousness. The law is--1. For conviction.2. Discovers need for righteousness.3. Leads to righteousness by leading to Christ. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)If the law had been for the same end as the gospel, for man ruined and sinful to obtain life and salvation by it as well as the gospel, then they might have been supposed to contradict one another; but since they are given for different purposes, they are but different revelations of God which are happily subordinate one to another, and their different ends and designs are both obtained. (I. Watts, D. D.)The harmony of revelation There is a mighty growth in the discovery of God’ s nature and will, but never a point at which we are brought to a pause by a manifest contradiction of one part with another. In reading the Bible we always look on the same landscape, the only difference being that as we take in more of its statements, more and more of the mist is rolled away from the horizon, so that the eye can behold a wider sweep of its beauty. There is a vast difference between the New Testament and the Old, but it is the difference between two parts of one whole. It is no new landscape which opens on our gaze, as the town and the forest come out from the shadow, and fill up the blanks in the glorious panorama; it is no new planet which comes travelling in its majesty, as the crescent deepens into the circle, and the line of faint light gives place to the rich globe of silver; and it is no fresh religion which is made known as the brief notices given to patriarchs expand into the institutions of the law, under the teachings of prophecy, till at length in the days of Christ and His apostles they burst into magnificence, and fill a world with redemption. It is throughout the same system, and revelation has been only the gradual development of this system--the drawing up of another fold of the veil from the landscape, the adding of another stripe of light to the crescent; so that the fathers of our race, and ourselves, look on the same arrangements for human deliverance, though to them there was nothing but cloudy expanse, with here and there a prominent landmark, whilst to us, though the horizon loses itself in the far-off eternity, every object of personal interest is exhibited in beauty and distinctness. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The importance of the law Law, as law, can do nothing but enjoin the right, and then, justify on perfect obedience, or condemn on proved violation. A sinful man, hearing the law and nothing else, or hearing it more distinctly, and with more corroborating consciousness, than the provision for relief is perceived in its intention or experienced in fact, can only despair and die. Strength withers with the extinction of hope; effort is vain when performance is impossible (see Romans 8:3-4). The law was weak because corruption was strong; and corruption strong because the sense of guilt could not be removed. In proportion, in fact, to its anxiety to realize the ideal of virtue, and its spiritual insight into the inefficacy of ritual observances, humanity, while under the law, was disheartened and bewildered, and was thus made to long for deliverance and life. Sometimes it felt goaded and exasperated, and became desperate and reckless from the feeling of its helplessness (Romans 7:5). The gospel brings hope to the despairing and life to the dead, by its ample arrangements for both pardon and strength; by its atoning sacrifice and sanctifying spirit. Obedience becomes possible because it may be of another sort, and is to be presented for a different object. It is acceptable to God as the result of what He has done, not as a ground of what He is to do. The impulses and instincts of the Divine nature of which the saved are partakers, make duty a necessity, labour a delight, obedience a spontaneous service, conformity to the law a privilege and a joy. (T. Blarney, D. D.)The law useful No doubt the Jaw restrains us; but all chains are not fetters, nor are all walls the gloomy precincts of a gaol. It is a blessed chain by which the ship, now buried in the trough, and now rising on the top of the sea, rides at anchor, and outlives the storm. The condemned would give worlds to break his chain, but the sailor trembles lest his should snap; and when the grey morning breaks on the wild lee shore, all strewn with wrecks and corpses, he blesses God for the good iron that stood the strain. The pale captive eyes his high prison wall, to curse the man who built it, and envies the little bird that, perched upon its summit, sings merrily, and flies away on wings of freedom; but were you travelling some Alpine pass, where the narrow road, cut out of the face of the rock, hung over a frightful gorge, it is with other eyes you would look on the wall that restrains your restive steed from backing into the gulf below. Such are the restraints God’ s law imposes--no other. It is a fence from evil--nothing else. I challenge the world to put its finger on any one of these Ten Commandments which is not meant and calculated to keep us from harming ourselves or hurting others. (Dr. Guthrie.)Contrasts Up to this point the apostle has contrasted the promise made to Abraham, the fulfilment of which was in the gospel, with the law of Moses in these particulars:--1. The promise was made first four hundred and thirty years before the giving of the law on Sinai, and that which is given afterwards cannot weaken the older covenant. 2. The covenant of promise was one of blessing to mankind, the law regarded transgressions. 3. The promise is absolute and without limitation of time; the blessing will be for ever, the law is given until the coming of the Messiah. 4. The promise was made by God Himself, without the intervention of others. The law was ordained by the ministry of angels. 5. The promise was made without any mediator, the law was given to the people by the hands of Moses. The law here spoken of by the apostle is the ceremonial law; not that of the Decalogue; not the moral law, which was reimposed, but not for the first time given at Sinai. (W. Denton, M. A.) Galatians 3:22-23 But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin.A charge of sin I. The scripture statement of man’ s natural condition. And what now do you expect to hear? That man, though fallen and frail, has nevertheless many native virtues and excellences? that, if his conduct be sometimes amiss, yet his heart is good? These are, I know, the vain imaginations which multitudes indulge:--but they receive no countenance from Holy Scripture. No--if God’ s Word is to decide, you will find that--1. The Scripture brings against man a charge of sin. As preparatory to this, the Bible fully sets forth man’ s duty: sometimes dwelling on the several particulars of the ten commandments; at other times, comprehensively demanding “ Love” as “ the fulfilling” of the whole law; expanding this, again, into the two branches of that love--love to God, love to man; or pointing to still more special duties, arising out of special relations and situations in life. Furthermore, we are told, that “ whoso offendeth in one point is guilty of all” --he has broken through that hedge of the law, which should have kept him from all sin. After laying down a strict principle like this, it ceases to be surprising, that the Scripture invariably addresses man as a sinner. For man’ s own conscience must tell him that God’ s perfect law has not been kept. 2. On this charge the Scripture shuts man up as already sentenced and condemned. Man is not merely in danger of this sentence; it is passed on him already. Living in this world, he is but a prisoner at large. God’ s justice has got firm hold of him; and wander where he may, and vaunt as he likes, the day of execution is coming nearer and nearer--and he cannot escape. 3. All men, without a single exception, come under this charge. All nations. All ranks. All ages. 4. The charge is incessantly reiterated, and pressed again and again. II. The design with which this statement is so earnestly insisted upon. Why do the Scriptures thus shut up all men under the charge of sin. St. Paul replies--“ that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ may be given to them that believe.” The object aimed at, in the Scripture doctrine of man’ s sin, was--1. To show the reasonableness of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Though man be guilty, condemned, and under actual sentence; yet his condition, so long as life endures, is not hopeless. There is in the same Scripture a promise--a promise of salvation. 2. To compel sinners actually to accept the promise by believing in Christ. The terrors of God are really mercies; they are the wholesome rod by which the lost sheep are driven back to that gracious fold, where they may remain safe, under the care of the good shepherd, Jesus Christ. In conclusion, I ask, (1) Are you not sinners? Methinks there should be no doubt on this head. (2) Is salvation yet given to you? In other words, have you believed in Jesus Christ? (3) What will ye do in the end--that end which is shortly approaching--death--judgment? (J. Jowett, M. A.)The great prison How much is declared in these few words! They set forth the whole counsel of God with regard to mankind. They show us what man is by nature, and what he may become by grace: and they point out the only way in which it is possible for him to pass from one of these states to the other. God, speaking to man through His Holy Scriptures, hath concluded all under sin. He has, so to say, shut up all mankind together in the same great prisonhouse of sin. How has He done this? When a conqueror overruns a country, he will sometimes drive the inhabitants, or at least a large part of them, into bondage (e.g., Shalmaneser, Nebuchadnezzar). Now is this the way in which God concluded all mankind under sin? by driving them into sin, and shutting them up in it? God forbid! Satan does indeed draw and drive men into sin: this is the accursed work of his restless sabbathless life: and when he has got them there, he binds them fast, and will not let them flee from his toils. He builds a high wall of sin all round them, so that they shall not look over it into the goodly land beyond: and here he shuts them all up together, sinner with sinner, and sinner with sinner, a never-ending ghastly multitude, that they may encourage and pamper each other in wickedness, and that no example, no voice of holiness, may ever reach and startle them. This is the way in which Satan would conclude all mankind under sin, in which he does conclude all such as give themselves up to him, to work his bidding. But God never drove, never drew any man into sin. Throughout His Scriptures He is calling to us to come out from the deadly land, from the loathsome plague-breathing dungeon of sin. By His commandments, by entreaties, by threats, by promises, He calls us to come out from sin. So that, when the Scripture concludes, or shuts up all men together under sin, it is not by driving them into sin, but for the sake of calling them out from it. In order however that men should come forth from a place, in order that they should desire to come forth, it is necessary they should know that they are there, that they should know too what sort of a place it is, how dismal, how miserable, how terrible. How unwilling are we to be persuaded that the prison can indeed be a prison! To us at least, we feel confident, it is nothing of the sort. For how can it be a prison, we say to ourselves, when there are no bare walls to be seen? when the walls are all glittering with precious stones, and are far more like the walls of a palace? How can it be a prison, when it is so vast, stretching out to the furthermost parts of the earth, and all mankind are walking about in it: Nay, how can it be a prison, when all the people in it are doing just what they like, are following the lusts of their own hearts, are drinking and rioting and thieving and lying, without any fear of law, without any regard for truth, without any restraint to check them? And what is there to keep them from going out whenever they please? There are no bars, no locks, no chains, no jailor. For this is the craft and subtilty of the evil one,--that he makes us fancy we are free, when we are in prison: he makes us fancy that we are at liberty, when we are in bondage: he makes us fancy that we are our own masters, when we are his slaves: he blinds and cheats and stupefies us, until we deem we are doing our own will, and pursuing our own pleasure, when in fact we are drudging in his toils, and rushing into the jaws of destruction before his lashing scourge. Therefore, in order that our eyes might be open to the misery of our condition, that we might see our danger before it was too late, God was mercifully pleased to give us His Scriptures, wherein He declares in the ears of all mankind, that one and all are concluded under sin; that, however its appearance may deceive us, sin is not a palace but a prison, that in that prison we are all shut up, and that no earthly power can deliver us out of it. God, by the voice of His Scripture, hath concluded all under sin. Now suppose that you were to be carried before an earthly court of justice, and that one sweeping accusation were to be brought against you; suppose that you were to be found guilty to the full extent of that accusation, and that the very excuses you set up were the complete proof of your guilt,--what would follow: The judge would straightway pass sentence upon you; and you would all be condemned to suffer punishment, according to the measure of your offence. Such would be the course of things, if you were taken before an earthly court of justice. The verdict is followed by the sentence; and they who are found guilty are condemned. And must we not expect that the course of things should be the very same, when we are carried before a heavenly court of justice? Surely they who are found utterly guilty, whose own mouth declares their guilt, must likewise be condemned. And yet St. Paul assures us that God has concluded all under sin, not in order that He may stretch forth His arm, and take vengeance on His enemies, and sweep them away from the face of the earth; but in order that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. This has ever been the one great end of all God’ s ordinances, both at first in the creation, and ever since in the government of the world. His purpose was from the beginning to pour out all the blessings which infinite wisdom could conceive, and infinite power could bring to pass, upon His creatures. But why was it necessary that all should be concluded by the Scriptures under sin? Would it not have been enough to set the promise by faith in Jesus Christ before men, without saying anything about the sins by which they were bound? No, my brethren, it would not have been enough. Jesus Christ came as a Deliverer: and who will welcome and rejoice in a deliverer, unless he knows that there is something from which he needs to be delivered, unless he feels that he is in a wretched galling bondage, and that he cannot of himself burst his chains, that he cannot throw off his yoke? But when a man’ s eyes are opened to see the prison in which he is shut up, to see and feel the chains which are fast bound round his soul, and have eaten into it,--when he has learnt to see and to know that the pleasures, whatever they may be, of sin are only, like the fleshpots of Egypt, intoxicating drugs given to him to deprive him of all sense of his captivity,--then will he long for a deliverer, and rejoice on hearing of his approach, and hail him when he comes into view, and follow him whithersoever he may lead. The reasonableness of faith Let us try to realize what would have been Paul’ s line of argument with modern schools who construct their own methods of self salvation. I. The school of natural religion holds that men are bound to obedience. But this law has been and is constantly violated. What now? Is God to perpetually interpose with an act of oblivion? If so, what becomes of his admitted moral government? The very foundations of natural religion are destroyed by such a supposition. Then the only alternative is the gospel system of mediation by means of which sin may be forgiven and God justified. II. The school of classical morality aims at the exaltation of the individual by a species of moral accomplishment. But where has the ideal been realized outside of Christianity? If sincere, therefore, this school must be grievously disappointed as they are brought face to face with universal proofs of the Scripture doctrine of man’ s depravity, and so they are “ shut up” to the only means of its removal, the sanctification of the Spirit through faith. III. The school of fine feeling and poetic sentiment worships what is beautiful in human character. But look at the state of the world. That beauty is wanting, and so they are shut up to the operation of that Spirit who alone can produce what is pure, lovely, and of good report. (Dr. Chalmers.)The reasonableness of the gospel The gospel is a reasonable scheme, on the principle that whatever other way is divised is found on trial to be deficient: so that man is shut up to the gospel as his only resource. In demonstrating this Paul introduces the law as a successful general which outmanoeuvres man in his every attempt at escape, and so compels him to await the throwing open of God’ s method of deliverance. I. We must assume in man the workings of spiritual solicitude and anxiety. The crying sin of the day is apathy, and many men are shut up in the prison of their own moral listlessness. But, presuming an awakened state, we must examine the avenues through which he tries to enter heaven, and the tactics of the law in intercepting him. II. Repentance is one of these avenues: but in his attempt to escape:by it man is outgeneralled by the law, which refuses to admit the efficacy of sorrow and amendment, crying, “ do this and live,” “ fail to do so and die.” III. Forced back from this outlet, men endeavour to take refuge in the supposed mercy of god. But the law comes forward and dislodges them by showing that God has left no ground for the hope of unconditional forgiveness. IV. Thus men are shut up by the law to the need of a surety. It proves to the sinner--1. That his curse must be endured.2. That it has been endured by Christ the only Saviour. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The great jail, and how to get out of it We preach, at God’ s command, the way of salvation by mercy, not by merit; by faith, not by works: by grace, not by the efforts of men. I. A crowded prison. All are shut up under sin.1. The jailer--Scripture. (a) A lawful authority, for it is not the word of man, but of the Spirit of God. (b) A powerful authority, for it has the strength of the Almighty to support it. 2. The prisoners--all. (a) Heathen (Romans 1:18-21). (b) The outwardly moral. (c) The sincerely religious. 3. The prison. No escape from vengeance of broken law. One offence enough to keep a sinner bound for ever in misery and degradation. II. A glorious deliverance. Jesus opens the prison door, and all who will may go free.1. This deliverance by Jesus is complete. A slave before, a child now; no longer under the law, but under grace. Guiding principle formerly was, “ This do, and thou shalt live” ; it now is, “ I am saved, and so I love to serve my God.” The man now does not work for wages, and expect to win a reward by merit; he is a saved man, and he has all he needs; for Christ is his, and Christ is all. 2. This deliverance comes to men by promise. No bargain--the free gift of God’ s sovereign good-will. 3. The promised deliverance is not made to works, but only to faith. 4. The faith necessary for appropriating the promised deliverance, is faith in Christ. Not faith in yourself, or in a priest, or in sacraments, or in a set of doctrines; but you must believe that Christ the Son of God came on earth and became a man, took your sins upon His shoulders, bore them up to the tree, and suffered what was due for your sins in His own person on the cross; and you must trust yourself with Him, with Him fully, with Him alone, and with all your heart: and if you do so, the promise will be fulfilled to you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The true principle of salvation, and the importance of acting upon it In every work which we undertake, it is most important that we should act upon right principles; for if We are misled upon essential points, our efforts will be wasted, since success cannot possibly be the result. A man may study the stars as long as he pleases, but he certainly will not come to right conclusions if he calculates their courses upon the theory that they daily revolve round the earth as a centre. The alchymists were earnest even to enthusiasm, but the object of their pursuit was unattainable, and the theories which guided their investigations were absurd, and therefore they exhibited a sorrowful spectacle of perseverance misapplied, and labour thrown away. In mechanics the most ingenious contriver must fail if he forgets the law of gravitation. You must proceed upon right principles, or disappointment awaits you. Now, the greatest matter of concern for any one of us is the eternal salvation of our soul. We need to be saved, and, according to the Scriptures of truth, there is but one way of salvation; but that way does not happen to be in favour among the sons of men. The great popular principle, popular all over the world, no matter whether the people happen to be Protestant or Catholic, Parsee or Mahomedan, Brahminist or Buddhist, is self-salvation--they would reach eternal life by merit. There are differences about what is done, but the great universal principle of unregenerate man is that he is, somehow or other, to save himself. This is his principle; and the further he goes in it, the less likely is he to be saved. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Suitability of the Divine plan of salvation to man’ s necessities Objections are continually raised to the Divine plan of salvation. The world’ s plan of salvation is, “ Do” ; the Bible says, “ It is all done; accept it as a free gift.” The gospel way of salvation is, Christ has saved His people, and as many as trust in Him are His people, and are saved. Just think for a minute, is not this way of salvation the only one which would be suited to all sorts and conditions of men? Dear sir, you yourself may be a man of excellent disposition, and of admirable habits; I will suppose that the salvation to be preached by us was exactly such as would be suitable to such a person as you believe yourself to be, but would not this be a very unfortunate thing for many others? Are there not living within your observation many persons who are far below you in moral character? Do you not know of whole swarms of your fellow-creatures whose outward life is utterly defiled? Some of these are conscious of their degradation, and would fain rise out of it: would you have them left to despair? A way of salvation suited to the righteous it is clear would not suit them: are they to be overlooked? Would you have salvation put up to an examination like a place in the Civil Service, and only those allowed to pass who are as good as you are? Are all beneath your level to perish? I feel sure you love your fellow-men enough to say, “ No; let the plan of salvation be such as to save the most reprobate of men.” Then I ask you, what plan could there be but this one, that God freely forgives for Christ’ s sake even the greatest offenders, if they turn to Him and put their trust in His dear Son? (C. H. Spurgeon.)God must be accepted on His own terms A ship’ s crew mutinied against their commander, who was the king’ s son; and not only-refused to obey him, but threw him overboard with the intention of depriving him of life. Feeling their condition desperate, they commenced pirates, and while disorder and every evil work prevailed among themselves, they carried terror and misery over the ocean and into all the surrounding coasts. The prince, contrary to all probability, reached the shore in safety, and on arriving at his father’ s palace, instead of urging the punishment of those who meant to murder him, employed all his influence, and with success, to induce his justly-offended parent to lay aside all thoughts of vengeance, and even to despatch immediately heralds of mercy offering a free pardon to them if they would but acknowledge the prince as their saviour and ruler, and submit to be guided by him in all their future proceedings; but reminding them that if they did not accede to this overture of mercy, sooner or later they must fall into the hands of some of his war-vessels, and must count on being dealt with according to the rigour of the law. On the messengers of mercy approaching the vessel, some of the most determined villains were for treating them as they had done their commander, but this proposal being overruled, they were taken aboard, and their sovereign’ s proclamation was made in the hearing of the piratical rebels. Some mocked at it; others said it was a stratagem to get them into the king’ s power; and even the most sober thinking among them, though they were tired of this scene of discord and ravage, both in the vessel and when the.y were on the shore, said that really they could not give the king credit for such extraordinary kindness, nor bring their mind to acknowledge the authority of the prince, but that they would endeavour to behave better as individuals, to establish better order in the ship, and to restrain their companions from those excesses of cruelty and rapine in which they had formerly indulged, so that if the king’ s cruisers should lay hold of them, as they feared might be the case, the king might be induced to pardon them, perhaps reward them for their good conduct. The time dreaded by them all at last arrived. Their vessel is boarded by the king’ s servants in irresistible force, and the whole crew are safely lodged in prison, and in due time brought before the king for judgment. With a calmness of inflexible determination, more appalling than the most furious passion, the sovereign pronounces their sentence. “ You most causelessly violated your allegiance; you transgressed the law; you, in intention, murdered my son; yet, on his intercession, I proffered you forgiveness--free, full forgiveness. You refused to give me credit for the generosity I manifested, and dishonoured me by supposing me false and malignant like yourselves. You persisted in despising my authority and opposing my will. And even such of you as have not run to the same enormity of licentiousness and cruelty, have formed laws to yourselves which ye have observed; but my laws ye have not regarded. And you have trampled on my grace as well as my authority. You have spurned mercy on the only terms consistent with my honour to offer it; and you have had the insufferable arrogance of attempting to dictate to me in what way I should bestow my favour. You have had your choice, and you must abide by it. As for those men who would not that I should reign over them, bring them forth and slay them before me.” Let the self-righteous see, in a figure, the doom which awaits him if mercy prevent not. The law by which he must be judged” is none of the laws of human device, but the law of God. (John Brown, D. D.)All human nature sinful There is a well in Belgium which once had very pure water, and it was stoutly reasoned with stone and brick, but that well became afterwards the centre of the battle of Waterloo. At the opening of the battle the soldiers with their sabres compelled the gardener, William yon Kylsom, to draw water out of the well for them, and it was very pure water. But the battle raged, and three hundred dead and half dead were flung into the well for quick and easy burial, so that the well of refreshment became the well of death, and long after, people looked down into the well and they saw the bleached skulls but no water. So the human soul was a well of good, but the armies of sin have fought around it, fought across it, and been slain, and it has become a well of skeletons. Dead hopes, dead resolutions, dead ambitions. An abandoned well unless Christ shall reopen and purify’ and fill it as the well of Belgium never was. Unclean, unclean. Jesus our only hope It is a pretty thing which is told of the father of the Rev. Newman Hall, that his common seal was a crown with an anchor fixed into it, with just these words: “ Other refuge have I none.” Well, if you do not use that seal, if you do not write the words over the door of your house, yet take care that you hear their meaning in your hearts, and never hesitate on any occasion to confess that you are saved by faith in Christ Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The law and the gospel Faith, in my text, and in sundry places in this Epistle, seems to have a complex signification: it signifies the object of faith, revealed in the gospel, or the method of salvation through faith in the righteousness of Christ; and it also signifies the grace of faith in the soul, or a hearty compliance with this way of salvation, so that this expression, “ before faith came,” refers to the time before the doctrine of faith was revealed in the gospel to the Galatians, and before the grace of faith was wrought in their hearts. Here it may be proper to observe, that the members of the primitive church in general, and particularly that in Galatia, were brought under the gospel dispensation, and embraced the doctrine of the gospel by faith, at one and the same time. But they were not, like us, educated under the gospel dispensation; for part of them had been Jews, educated under the Mosaic dispensation, which by way of eminence is frequently called the law; and, as they were under the legal dispensation, they were generally under the influence of a legal spirit; that is, they sought for justification by their own works of obedience to that law. Another part of them had been educated heathens, and were destitute at once of the revelation of the gospel, and of faith in it. Of this sort the generality of the Galatians had been. And yet St. Paul represents them also as having been under the law, not the Jewish or Mosaic law, which the Gentiles had no concern with, but the law of nature, which is universally binding upon all mankind. And as they were under this law, they were also possessed of a legal spirit; that is, they sought salvation by their own obedience to it, as the only way which they knew, and which was natural to them. But, when the gospel dispensation was set up in the world, and the doctrine of faith preached to them, they immediately believed, and so were freed from the outward dispensation of the law, and from a legal spirit at once; and they heard the doctrine, and received the outward dispensation of the gospel, and savingly believed, “ at one and the same time.” My present design is to lay down some propositions for the explication of the apostolic doctrine concerning the law and the gospel, that you may see in what sense mankind are kept prisoners by the law, under condemnation, and shut up to the faith; or to the method of justification, through the righteousness of Christ, as the only way of escape. I. All mankind, in all ages, are under a law to God. This can be denied by none who grant there is such a thing as sin or duty; for where there is no law, there can be no duty or trangression. If murder or blasphemy are universally evil with regard to all mankind, in all ages, it must be because they are forbidden by a law universally and perpetually binding. II. This law was first of all given to man in a state of innocence, under the model of a covenant of works; that is, it was the constitution, by obedience to which he was to secure the favour of God, and to obtain everlasting felicity. It was his duty to observe it with a view to obtain immortality and happiness by it; and these blessings he was to secure by his own works of obedience. III. That this law has passed through several editions, and received several additions and modifications, adapted to the various circumstances of mankind, and the designs of heaven towards them. That you may more fully understand this, I would observe by the way, that the law is either moral or positive. By the moral law, I mean that law which is founded upon the eternal reason of things, and that enjoins those duties which creatures under such and such circumstances owe to God, and to one another, and which necessarily flow from their relation to one another. Thus, love to God, and justice to mankind, are moral duties universally binding upon mankind in all circumstances, whether in a state of innocence, or in a state of sin; whether under the revealed law, or the law of nature. There can be no possible circumstances in which mankind are free from the obligation of such duties, and at liberty to commit the contrary sins. These are more properly the materials of a moral law. But there is another set of duties agreeable to the circumstances of fallen creatures under a dispensation of grace, which I may call evangelical morals; I mean repentance and reformation, and the utmost solicitude to re-obtain the forfeited favour of our Maker. These are universally binding upon mankind in their present state, and result from their circumstances, and consequently partake of the general nature of a moral law. By a positive law, I mean a law not necessarily resulting from the reason of things, and our relations and circumstances, but founded upon the will of the lawgiver, and adapted to some particular occasion. Such was the appendage to the first covenant, “ Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge.” Such were the institution of sacrifices immediately after the fall, the ordinance of circumcision given to Abraham., and the various ceremonies of the law of Moses; and such are baptism and the Lord’ s Supper, and the institution of the first day of the week for the Christian Sabbath under the gospel. These ordinances are not binding in their own nature, and consequently they are not of universal or perpetual obligation, but they are in force when and where the lawgiver is pleased to appoint. IV. That the law of God requires perfect, perpetual, and personal obedience. This holds true with regard to every law of God, whatever it be. If it requires purely moral duties, it requires that they be performed exactly according to its prescriptions. If it requires evangelical duties as repentance or sincerity, it requires perfect repentance, perfect sincerity. If it requires the observance of any ceremonial or sacramental institutions, as sacrifice, circumcision, baptism, or the Lord’ s Supper, it requires a perfect observance of them. This, my brethren, is the nature of the law, of every law that God ever made under every dispensation of religion, before the fall, and after the fall, before the law of Moses, under it, and under the gospel. In all ages, in all circumstances, and from all persons, it requires perfect, perpetual, and personal obedience: to the performance of this, it promises eternal life: but the sinner, by every the least failure, falls under its dreadful curse, and is cut off from all the promised blessings. And hence it most evidently follows, V. That it is absolutely impossible for any of the fallen sons of men to be justified and saved by the constitution of the law. Take what dispensation of the law you please, the law of innocence, the law of Moses, or the moral part of the gospel, it is impossible for one of the fallen posterity of Adam to be saved by it in any of these views; and the reason is plain, there is not one of them but what has broken it: there is not one of them that has yielded perfect obedience to it: and, therefore, there is not one of them but what is condemned by it, to suffer its dreadful penalty. Thus you are held in close custody by the law; you are shut up under condemnation by it. And is there no way of escape? No; there is no possible way of escape--but one; and that shall be the matter of the next proposition. VI. That God has made another constitution, namely, the gospel, or the covenant of grace, by which even guilty sinners, condemned by the law, may be justified and saved by faith, through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. According to this constitution there is encouragement for sinners to repent and use the means of grace; and all who are saved by it, are not only obliged to yield obedience to the law, but also enabled to do so with sincerity, though not to perfection. They are effectually taught by it “ to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live righteously, soberly, and godly in the world;” and, in short, holiness of heart and life is as effectually secured in this way as in any other. VII. That all mankind are under the law, as a covenant of works, till they willingly forsake it, and fly to the gospel for refuge by faith in Christ. There are but two constitutions that God has set up in our world, by which mankind can obtain life, namely, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, or the law and gospel; and all mankind are under the one, or the other. We are all of us, my brethren, under one or other of these constitutions: for to be from under both of them is the same thing as to be lawless, and to be under no plan of life at all. And would you know whether you are set free from the law, and placed under the covenant of grace? St. Paul, who knew it both by his own experience, and by inspiration from heaven, will inform you.1. You have been made deeply sensible of sin and condemnation by the law (Romans 3:20; Romans 8:7). Has the law ever had these effects upon you, my brethren? Have you ever had such a conviction of sin and condemnation by it? If not, you are still under it. 2. If you have been delivered from the law, you have been cut off from all hopes of obtaining justification by your own obedience to it; you have given up this point as altogether desperate; or, in the strong language of the apostle, you have been slain by the law. “ When the commandment came, sin revived and I died” (Romans 8:9). 3. If you have been set at liberty from the law, and brought under the covenant of grace, you have believed in Christ, and fled to the gospel, as the only way of escape from the bondage and condemnation of the law. It is-the uniform doctrine of the apostle, that it is by faith only that this happy change is brought about in our condition. 4. If you are under the covenant of grace, then you are not willing slaves to sin, but make it your great business to live to God. “ I through the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God” (Galatians 2:19). And do you thus live to God, sirs? Is this the great business and constant endeavour of your whole life? If not, you are not under grace, but under the law, the Egyptian task-master, who demands perfect obedience, but gives no ability to perform it. (President Davies, M. A.)Works a hindrance to salvation I have heard of one who fell into the water and sank, and a strong swimmer standing on the shore did not at the same instant plunge in, though fully resolved to rescue him. The man went down the second time, and then he who would rescue him was in the water swimming near him, but not too near, waiting very cautiously till his time came. He who was drowning was a strong, energetic man, and the other was too prudent to expose himself to the risk of being dragged under by his struggles. He let the man go down for the third time, and then he knew that his strength was quite exhausted, and swimming to him he grasped him and drew him to shore. If he had seized him at first, while the drowning man had strength, they would have gone down together. The first part of human salvation is the sentence of death upon all human power and merit. (C. H. Spurgeon.).Under arrest I. The unhappy period--“ Before faith came.”1. We had no idea of faith by nature. It would never occur to the human mind that we could be saved by believing in Jesus. 2. When we heard of faith as the way of salvation we did not understand it. We could not persuade ourselves that the words used by the preacher had their common and usual meaning. 3. We saw faith in others, and wondered at its results; but we could not exercise it for ourselves. 4. We could not reach to faith, even when we began to see its necessity, admitted its efficacy, and desired to exercise it. The reason of this inability was moral, not mental. 5. We were without the Spirit of God, and therefore incapable. We do not wish to go back to the state in which we were “ before faith came,” for it was one of darkness, misery, impotence, hopelessness, sinful rebellion, self-conceit, and condemnation. II. The custody we were in--“ Kept under the law, shut up.”1. We were always within the sphere of law. In fact, there is no getting out of it. As all the world was only one prison for a man who offended Caesar, so is the whole universe no better than a prison for a sinner. 2. We were always kicking against the bounds of the law, sinning, and pining because we could not sin more. 3. We dared not overleap it altogether, and defy its power. Thus, in the case of many of us, it checked us, and held us captive with its irksome forbiddings and commandings. 4. We could not find rest. The law awakened conscience, and fear and shame attend such an awakening. 5. We could not discover a hope; for, indeed, there is none to discover while we abide under the law. 6. We could not even fall into the stupor of despair; for the law excited life, though it forbade hope. Among the considerations which held us in bondage were these: The spirituality of the law, touching thoughts, motives, desires. The need of perfect obedience, making one sin fatal to all hope of salvation by works. The requirement that each act of obedience should be perfect. The necessity that perfect obedience should be continual throughout the whole of life. III. The revelation which set us free--“ The faith which should afterwards be revealed.” The only thing which could bring us out of prison was faith. Faith came, and then we understood--1. What was to be believed. 2. What it was to believe. We saw that it was “ trust,” implicit and sincere. 3. Why we believed. (C. H. Spurgeon.).Law and gospel The law and the gospel are two keys. The law is the key that shutteth up all men under condemnation, and the gospel is the key which opens the door and lets them out. (William Tyndale.)Shut up unto the faith To let you more effectually into the meaning of this expression, it may be right to state that in the preceding clause, “ kept under the law,” the term, kept, is, in the original Greek, derived from a word which signifies a sentinel. The mode of conception is altogether military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one, and that one leads those who are compelled to take it to the faith of the gospel. They are shut up to this faith as their only alternative--like an enemy driven by the superior tactics of an opposing general, to take up the only position in which they can maintain themselves, or fly to the only town in which they can find a refuge or a security. This seems to have been a favourite style of argument with Paul, and the way in which he often carried on an intellectual warfare with the enemies of his Master’ s cause. It forms the basis of that masterly and decisive train of reasoning which we have in his Epistle to the Romans. By the operation of skilful tactics, he (if we may be allowed the expression) manoeuvred them, and shut them up to the faith of the gospel. It gave prodigious effect to his argument, when he reasoned with them, as he often does, upon their own principles, and turned them into instruments of conviction against themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as a Jew. He made use of the Jewish law as a sentinel to shut them out of every other refuge, and to shut them up to the refuge laid before them in the gospel. He led them to Christ by a schoolmaster whom they could not refuse; and the lesson of this schoolmaster, though a very decisive, was a very short one--“ Cursed be he that continueth not in all the words of the law to do them.” But in point of fact, they had not done them. To them, then, belonged the curse of the violated law. The awful severity of its sanctions was upon them. They found the faith and the free offer of the gospel to be the only avenue open to receive them. They were shut up unto this avenue; and the law, by concluding them all to be under sin, left them no other outlet but the free act of grace and of mercy laid before us in the New Testament. (Dr. Chalmers.)The law was meant to prepare men for Christ By showing them that there is no other way of salvation except through Him. It had two especial ends: the first was to bring the people who lived under it into a consciousness of the deadly dominion of sin, to shut them up, as it were, into a prison-house out of which only one door of escape should be visible, namely, the door of faith in Jesus; the second intention was to fence about and guard the chosen race to whom the law was given--to keep them as a peculiar people separate from all the world, so that at the proper time the gospel of Christ might spring forth and go out from them as the joy and comfort of the whole human race. (T. G. Rooke.) Galatians 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster. The law was our schoolmaster I. The condition of humanity and the ultimate purpose of God respecting it. The Jews a type of mankind. Humanity is the Son of God, legally disinherited by apostasy, and gross and sensual. The heart of the Father is set upon its restoration, by pure favour, by means of faith. The Divine purpose was spiritual, and man must be conducted to it gradually. So God put man to school that, by a course of preparatory discipline, he might have his senses exercised. II. The heir as long as he was a child was at school. The methods adopted were such as befitted his condition and age. The young mind is first made familiar with visible symbols, which for a time it mistakes for substance, but eventually learns the inner meaning. These methods were--1. Prophetic intimations which must be put together like a dissected map. 2. A large picture-book was put before the scholars in the Levitical institute. 3. In addition to this pupils were required to do something, which constituted another process of emblematical teaching; ceremonies for purification, e.g.III. These lessons of the schoolmaster became a preparation for the gospel. Christ was the end or scope of the law. The process of learning, however, was similar to what occurs in ordinary teaching. The mind of the scholar opens very gradually to that of the teacher.1. The map which the young pupil had to study, the earthly land secured to Abraham, and his seed, is found to expand into a higher region, and to associate itself with another race (Romans 4:13; Hebrews 11:8; Hebrews 11:13-16). 2. The pieces of prophecy are put together, and compose the majestic figure of the Messiah. 3. With new views of the centre figure the whole of the Levitical system assumes its Divine significance. (1) Its sacrifices become symbols of the better sacrifice.(2) Its purification of the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness.(3) Its feasts superseded by the spiritual privileges symbolized.(4) With all this comes a new and ennobling sentiment of obedience. The law is not now heard in thunder and as a terrible “ shalt not,” but a privilege and a joy. (T. Binney, D. D.)There was a time of the world’ s minority, and a time when it came of age. These times were marked--1. By two stages--bondage and liberty. 2. By two principles of action--law and faith. Moses was the world’ s schoolmaster, Christ became the world’ s higher teacher. This state of things obtains in natural life, and in the single heart’ s life. Observe-- I. The uses of restraint in the heart’ s education. The law to the Jews was a system of checks.1. To restrain from violence. The law is a schoolmaster to rule those who cannot rule themselves. In this stage it would be madness to relax from restraint. 2. To show the inward force of evil. Evil is unsuspected until opposed. 3. To form habits of obedience. Would you have your child happy, decided, manly? Teach him to obey. 4. To nourish the temper of faith. The use of all education is to form faith. The child does not know the reason of his teacher’ s command; he has to trust. II. The time when restraint may be safely laid aside.1. When self-command is obtained. To be brought to Christ is to have learned to deny self. 2. When the state of justification by faith has been attained. Justification is acceptance with God, not because a man is perfect, but because he does all in a large and generous spirit. In such a state a man acts on principle, and gets beyond enactments. Apply to parents and teachers. How is it that children of religious parents turn out ill? 1. Because there has been no restraint during the time of discipline. 2. Because restraint has been applied when there should have been an appeal to principle and faith. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)The law is a schoolmaster I. As giving precepts in which principles are involved but not expressly taught. Every wise teacher begins so, and the first duty of the pupil is a blind obedience. At length when the pupil discovers the principle he may dispense with the rule or not, as he pleases. II. As prescribing inadequate duties--a part instead of the whole, which was to develop into the whole.1. The institution of temple worship, by means of which the Jews were to be led into the truth that God is here, and therefore to be worshipped. But God is everywhere, and His true temples infinite space and the soul of man. 2. The institution of the Sabbath. But just as a right of way is often secured to the proprietor by shutting up a road one day in the year, not to declare it his only on that day, or more on that day than others, but simply to vindicate his right in it for every day; so did God shut up one-seventh part of time, that it might be understood that all belonged to Him. 3. The third commandment, which is not simply a prohibition of blasphemy, but was equivalent to “ thou shalt not forswear thyself, but perform thy oaths.” Learn:1. That revelation is education. What education is for the individual, revelation is for the race. 2. That revelation is progressive. 3. That the training of character in God’ s revelation has always preceded illumination of the intellect. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)The stern pedagogue I. The office of the law. Our guardian, ruler, tutor, governor.1. To teach us our obligations.2. To show us our sinfulness.3. To sweep away our excuses.4. To chasten our delinquencies.5. To watch us everywhere II. The design of this office.1. Not to conduct any man to despair, except of himself and it.2. Not to urge us to make an amalgam of works and faith.3. But to make us accept salvation as a free gift of God. III. The termination of this office. When we come to believe in Jesus, the pedagogue troubles us no more. We become, then, of age. The office of the law ends.1. When we ascertain that Christ has fulfilled it.2. When it comes to be written on the heart. The man can be trusted, the boy must be watched.3. When we take up our heirship in Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The law a guide to Christ I. The method of this guiding power is exercised-- 1. By completely shutting us out from every other hope. 2. By showing us the character and qualifications which we must find in the Saviour on whom we can entirely rely. (1) He must be one competent to fulfil all the provisions of the holy law.(2) But no creaturely being has ever accomplished this.(3) The Saviour, therefore, must be Divine as well as human.(4) These conditions meet in Christ. 3. By revealing the way in which we must be partakers of the Saviour’ s mercy, and be interested in His redemption. (1) It must be all of grace;(2) by faith;(3) issuing in justification. 4. By proclaiming its entire satisfaction with the provided Saviour. (1) All its demands are honoured;(2) its penalties borne;(3) its acquital secured. II. The object for which this guiding power is exercised.1. Justification before God is the great want of the rebel under the condemnation of the law. He must gain this blessing or perish. 2. This cannot be obtained by the works of the law, which involve the discharge of its obligations and the endurance of its penalty. 3. It must, and therefore is, to be obtained by faith in Christ. 4. This faith working by love manifests itself in righteousness. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)The pedagogue The pedagogue was a slave who had charge of his owner’ s children, And who led them to the porch of the one who was really to give them lessons. But his office was not merely to keep the children in the right path and out of danger; he was a sort of private tutor, who prepared them for the instruction they were to receive from the philosopher or the professor. These higher lessons were quite beyond the power of the tutor himself; but he could do something to remove the difficulties which prevented young people from understanding, but above all he could undertake that they should be punctually in their place when the professor began his work. (Canon Liddon.)Christ our schoolmaster You send your little child in the care of some one to school. The ward takes the little creature, and says, “ Come, I will take you to school,” and away they go to the place of instruction. Now the law was our care-taker, our companion, to take us to our schoolmaster Christ; Christ keeps a school, Christ calls those who go to His school His disciples, His scholars; Christ says, “ Learn of Me.” (J. Parker, D. D.)Life a school Men are brought into this world, just as children are taken to school, to learn their lessons. We are born into this world to be schooled for heaven. There are vacancies in heaven for a certain number of us, and all who pass a good examination when the time comes will have their cards of admission given them into the place marked which they are to take. This life the public school that prepares for the university which we call heaven; and the Bible the code by which our lives will be tested when we present ourselves as candidates for admission: this is all, literally, that our present existence was contrived for, or the Bible given. (E. S. Ffoulkes, B. D.)Love in the schooling of the law A written law of God being given to man, what is its further office? The fulfulling of that law is in one word, love; for God is its Author, and God is love. Can the will of man, by itself and unaided, fulfil that law? And hero observe two things. First, this is not a question of much or little--can man’ s will half fulfil the law, or nearly fulfil it, or quite fulfil it?--but it is an absolute question, which must be answered, yea or nay, from the very nature of man’ s will and of the law. It is not, “ Can man’ s will fulfil this or that part of it?” but “ Can it ever fulfil it at all, any single command of it?” What is man’ s will? A will diverted, in the fall, from its central object; a selfish will; a will which recognizes not, follows not, the law of love as its guide; and in this wandering away from love and from God, leads with it man’ s whole nature. Now you see our question is this, “ Can such a will again renew itself into love?” Manifestly not. It is powerless to give itself a new direction. What we want, then, is not a law to obey, but a Redeemer to set us free. Next, we may remark, that this question of the ability of man by his own will to keep God’ s law, must not be confused, by being mixed up with the entirely distinct question of the relation of God’ s absolute foreknowledge and foreordination to the free will of man. That relation did not begin with the fall of man at all; it would have subsisted just as much if he had never fallen: it subsists with regard to the holy angels in heaven, who have never sinned; it is an universal law of all created being. The incapacity of man’ s will of which we here speak, is not in consequence of any fettering of it by God’ s sovereign decrees, but in consequence of its own act and deed, by which it left God and the law of love in our first parent, and became subject to those lower desires and faculties which it was created to rule and guide. Now let me not be mistaken as to my present position. In saying that the will of fallen man is incapable of fulfilling God’ s law, let me be thoroughly understood. I am drawing no wild, exaggerated picture of depravity, but wish to keep to the strict letter of fact, and to build on it important consequences. There is much that the human will can do. It can choose between the outward objects which are presented to us in life--the objects of thought, of speech, of action. Nay, more; over all mere outward obedience to God’ s law the will has power. But the will has not power over the desires and affections; in other words, over the superior faculties, of which it is a servant. It can produce good deeds to a certain extent, but it cannot produce good tendencies. And so by the law it has been proved, that redemption is necessary for man. And more; it has been brought about that man should be receptive of redemption, prepared to welcome it, eager to avail himself of it. His very demonstrated helplessness has shown that he must be helped from above. The law was God’ s great instrument to prepare man for redemption by Christ. He used it in this way on a large scale in the history of the world. The Jewish people, who were placed under it, were by it not rendered a people acceptable to God, but proved incapable of pleasing Him. Its lower requirements became to them a substitute for its first and great commandment; and no restoration to the law of love was effected by it in them. In the course of history its threatenings were executed on them, its promises, and more than its promises, fulfilled to them as a people; and when the Redeemer came, they were for the most part a nation of hardened hypocrites. All its power was power to convict and find guilty--not power to save even by that conviction:--for man’ s depraved conscience might quench and annul the conviction. And He has ever made the same use of His law in the hearts of individuals. And now I would ask you to mark the wonderful course and progress of Divine love towards us. In mankind at large, as in individual men, there must be produced this knowledge and feeling of their own unworthiness and incapacity to save themselves; not indeed so as to make them universally cry out for the gospel, but so as to make them, when the gospel has come, on looking over the page of history, confess that God has manifested beyond a doubt the sinfulness of man. For the first many ages after the fall, the unwritten law took its course. The conscience became darkened--the earth full of violence--till the vengeance of God was drawn down upon it in the Flood. Again, the true knowledge and fear of him, in the family of Noah, was assumed as a starting-point for the new world; again, even from this more definite covenant did the nations of the world go astray as widely as ever. Out of them God selected Abraham, and entered into special covenant with him and his seed. And while in them was proved the powerlessness of His revealed law to renew or to save, among the Gentile nations a lesson not less remarkable was being taught to mankind. Of them God suffered some to advance to the very highest pitch of art, and science, and acuteness of the human intellect. Their philosophy has set the pattern for the world; their oratory, their poetry, have been since unrivalled. And that nothing might be wanting to the full trial of man, another people found its employment and pride in civil arts; in taming the nations, in sparing and consolidating by exquisite polity the states subjected to its sway; in laying the foundation of public right and justice for the latest age of mankind. And thus both by these, and in other parts of the inhabited world by other nations, the powers of man for good were fully and maturely tried. Every facility was given him which belonged to his fallen state. And the result of all was this: that neither by wisdom, nor by imagination, nor by individual or social power for good, nor by the revelation of God’ s will in the law, could man put himself back again into the path of love which he had left. O you who read ancient history, whether sacred or profane, read it to trace it in this design of God, to prepare the world for Christ; for this is the master-key to its secrets. (Dean Alford.)The use of the law A minister says, When I was a boy I ploughed a field with a team of spirited horses. I ploughed it very quickly, Once in a while I passed over some of the sod without turning it, but I did not jerk back the plough with its rattling devices. I thought it made no difference. After awhile, my father came along, and said: “ Why, this will never do; this isn’ t ploughed deep enough; there, you have missed this and you have missed that.” And he ploughed it over again. The difficulty with a great many people is that they are only scratched with conviction when the subsoil plough of God’ s truth ought to be put in up to the beam. The law and the gospel You never saw a woman sewing without a needle. She would come but poor speed if she only sewed wi’ the thread. So, I think, when we’ re dealing with sinners, we maun aye put in the needle of the law first; for the fact is, they are sleepin’ sound, and they need to be awakened up wi’ something sharp. But, when we’ ve got the needle o’ the law fairly in, we may draw as long a thread as you like o’ gospel consolation after it. (Lockhart.)The law a schoolmaster “ The method devised by Dr. Arnold at Rugby School, was to eventually raise the moral tone of the whole school by first raising the tone of a certain part. Is it irreverent to call the Israelites the “ Sixth Form” of the school of the human race, an elect nation for the sake of the non-elect, chosen neither for their own merits, nor principally for their own blessing (though their privileges were inestimable), but to hasten the coming of Christ, and thus in the end to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers?” (C. R. Lloyd Engstrom, M. A.)The law leading men to Christ “ The law!” It is one of a group of words round which the thought of St. Paul constantly moves; and he uses it in more senses than one. Here he means by it generally the five Books of Moses to which the Jews commonly gave the name; and more particularly he means those parts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, in which are contained the various rules which God gave to Moses for the moral, social, political, and religious, or ceremonial conduct of the people of Israel. This was the law in which, as St. Paul said, the Jew of his day made his boast; he was proud to belong to the race which had received it. This was the law, the possession of which made Israel a “ peculiar people,” marking it off by a deep-cut line of separation from all the other nations of the world. This was the law which it was the business of every Israelite to obey. Now St. Paul says bluntly, that the main purpose of this law was not present, but prospective; it was not to be so much prized on its own account, as for the sake of that to which it was to lead. It was really like those slaves who were kept in well-to-do households in the ancient world, first to teach the children of their masters roughly, or as well as they could, and then to lead them down day by day to the school of some neighbouring philosopher, at whose hands they would receive real instruction. This, then, was the business of the law; it did the little it could do for the Jewish people as an elementary instructor, and then it had to take them by the hand and lead them to the school of Jesus Christ. This it did: I. By foreshadowing him. This was especially true of its ceremonies. All the Jewish ritual, in its minutest details, was a shadow of good things to come. Each ceremony was felt to have some meaning beyond the time then present, and so it fostered an expectant habit of mind; and as the ages passed, these expectations converged more and more towards a coming Messiah; and so, in a subordinate but real way, the ceremonial law did its part in leading the nation to the school of Christ. II. By creating in man’ s conscience a sense of want, which Christ alone could relieve. This was the work of the moral law. Exact obedience to strict precepts was commanded; but who could render it? So the law, universally disobeyed, became like a torch carried into the dark cellars and crevices of human nature that it might reveal the foul shapes lurking there, and might rouse man to long for a righteousness which it could not confer. And this could only be found in Christ. III. By putting them under a discipline which trained them for Christ. God begins with rule, and ends with principle; begins with law, and ends with faith; begins with Moses and ends with Christ. In the earlier revelation God only said “ Do this,” “ do not do that.” In the later or Christian revelation He has done much more; He has said, “ Join yourselves by an act of adhesion of your whole moral nature to the perfect moral Being” --in other words, “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” This is justification by faith. So far from being moral anarchy, it is the absorption of rule into the higher realm of principle. In the experience of the soul, faith corresponds to the empire of principle in the growth of individual character and in the development of national life; while the law answers to that elementary stage in which outward rules are not yet absorbed into principle. (Canon Liddon.)The schooling of the law There were three systems of law delivered to the Jews, each leading, like a highway of the Lord, to Christ. I. The judicial law. This involved their civil policy as a state or nation, governed their conduct as between man and man, and determined their offences and penalties as citizens and subjects. II. The ceremonial law, determining their ecclesiastical polity. III. The moral law. Resolved by Christ into two commandments, and by St. Paul into one word--love. This law brings us to Christ(1) By convicting of sin;(2) by revealing our peril;(3) by its weakness through the flesh to save from death. (J. B. Owen, M. A.)Pedagogic character of the law A schoolmaster nowadays is not at all like the personage Paul intended. He speaks of a pedagogue, an official seldom if ever now seen among men. This was not a person who actually officiated as master in the school, and gave instruction in the school itself; but one--a slave generally--who was set to take the boys to school, and to watch over them, and to be a sort of general supervisor of them, both in school and Out of school, and at all times. A pedagogue was very generally employed in the training of the young; indeed, it was a common and customary thing for the sons of the Greek and Roman nobility to have appointed over them some trustworthy servant who took them in charge. The boys were entirely under these servants; and thus had their spirits broken in, and their vivacity restrained. As a rule these pedagogues were very stern and strict--they used the rod freely, not to say cruelly, and the condition of the boys was sometimes no better than slavery. The boys (as it was supposed to be for their good) were kept in perpetual fear. Their recreations were restricted; even their walks were under the surveillance of the grim pedagogue. They were sternly held in check in all points, and were thus disciplined for the battle of life. Now Paul, taking up this thought, says the law was our pedagogue, our guardian, our custodian, ruler, tutor, governor, until Christ came. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The Church to be governed by principle, not rigid law A Christian Church, from the necessity of the case, ‘ is based on faith--that is, on principle; it represents by its existence the definitive triumph of believing principle over mere outward Jewish rule; it does not discard rule, far from it, but it provides for the good that is to be achieved by rule, by insisting always on the higher influence of principle; and thus the true direction of the Church’ s life would seem to be adherence to principle, combined with freedom as to all that touches mere outward rule. In modern language, Holy Scripture, the three great Creeds which guard it, the essential conditions of the means of grace--that is, the governing and informing principles of the Church’ s life,--should all of them be defended to the very last extremity; but as to matters of mere ceremonial and the like, there should be as much freedom as is compatible with the very elementary requirements of order. Where the faith is held sincerely, the rules of outward observance should be largely left to take care of themselves; the margin of liberty within which devotional feeling at very different stages of its growth finds its congenial expression, should be as wide as possible. (Canon Liddon.)The gentleness of Christ’ s dominion Moses and the law is a rigid and severe schoolmaster, who by whips and threats requires a hard lesson of his scholars, whether able to learn it or not; but Christ and the gospel is a mild and gentle teacher, who by sweet promises and good rewards, invite their scholars to duty, and guide and help them to do what of themselves they cannot do; by which means they love both their Master and their lessons, and rejoice when it is nearest to them to direct them in their studies. (W. Burkitt.)Relation of the law to the gospel I. The whole law of god is one. God’ s law is the declaration of His will; and God’ s perfect will never changes, and, therefore, God’ s law is like Himself--the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It is essentially impossible that one part of God’ s law should ever contradict any other part; from beginning to end it is one. But this law may develop itself by successive stages, and manifest itself in different ways in these different stages. Under ground, among the rocks, among the subterranean springs, the tree develops in the form of roots. Above ground, we find the tree developing in the form of trunk. We go higher, and our tree is branches, and then leaves, and blossoms, and fruit. The tree is one. Fruit and root are the extremes of one perfect organism; yet what a difference between them. So God’ s law is one, whether we see it in its lower or higher stage. II. We are to distinguish between the substance and the form of the law. The Divine thought is the essential thing; not the mere formal precept or symbol by which it was conveyed. So, while the former must ever be retained, the latter may drop off; just as the tree drops off in the branches the mould which clings about the roots, and drops off in the blossom and fruit the bark of the trunk and branches, while root and trunk and branch and blossom yet continue to be one tree. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)Rule yields to principle Here is a boy who begins to study mathematics. The teacher gives him specific rules. “ Do thus, and you will add numbers. Do so, and you will subtract or multiply.” It is not a matter of principles or laws at all. The boy has, and can have, no conception of the great fundamental laws of numbers and of their relations. He takes his arithmetic and studies the rule for decimals or long division, and does his sums by the process laid down in the rule. But one day, the boy comes to the teacher with his sum worked out by a process not laid down in his arithmetic. He has thought it out by a process of his own. The rules he has been practising have led him unconsciously up to certain great mathematical principles which are not confined in their working out to the one little rule of the arithmetic, but are capable of a variety of expressions. Is the teacher angry because the sum was not done by the rule? Is he not rather delighted? He sees, in the lad’ s overstepping the rule, the very result at which he has been aiming. All the rules were directed to bring about this grasp of principles which he has obtained. Henceforth he will not be bound by the rules, but will he therefore violate the great laws of mathematics? Will “ he not be as much under law as ever, yea, under the same law, when he measures the orbits of planets or weighs suns, as when he repeated the multiplication table, or cast up the little columns in simple addition? So it is in moral development. You want to teach a child the great principle of order. You begin with specific rules. “ You must put your books in such a place, and your hat in such a place. You must study such and such hours. You may amuse yourself at such times.” The time finally comes when all thess rules drop off of themselves. They are no longer needed. He has got hold of the great truth of order, and its obligation has its grip upon him, and that was all that the rules were intended for. That being reached, he may be orderly and systematic in his own way. The great point is that, however his way may differ from that prescribed by his old rules, he is still under law, and under the same law--the law of order. So then, when God’ s law, the pedagogue, the law of commandments, precepts, prohibitions, hands a man over to Christ, it introduces him to a life which is just as much under the power of law and of the same law as ever. Law is not abolished, but whereas formerly the law was applied to the man from without, it now begins to work from within the man. In other words, he lives by the law of God written upon his conscience and wrought into his life. He is a law unto himself. He is no longer a moral schoolboy, but a man in Christ Jesus. The law of precepts has been silently preparing the man to be kindled and quickened into life by contact with Christ’ s life. You know how, at the sacred season in Rome, the workmen are engaged for clays in arranging the lines of lamps over the dome and portico of St. Peter’ s; and when at last the hour strikes, on a sudden the whole gigantic structure bursts into flame. Just so law draws the line of obedience and duty; but these, however symmetrical and sharp, are dead and cold until they feel Christ’ s touch; then the life kindles and glows. The lines of law are all irradiated. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)Christ supersedes the law If the law is done away, we are never henceforth under its tyranny, but are under Christ, and live in all security and joy, through Him who now reigns in us mildly and graciously by His spirit. Therefore, if we could rightly apprehend Christ, the dear Saviour, this severe and wrathful schoolmaster would not dare to touch a hair of our heads. From this it follows that believers, as concerns the conscience, are by all means free from the law; on this account the schoolmaster should not rule therein, i.e., he should not affright, threaten, or take the conscience captive, and though he should undertake it, the conscience should not care for it, but should behold Christ on the cross, who through His death had freed us from the law and all its terrors. Nevertheless there is sin still remaining in the saints, whereby their conscience is accused and plagued. Yet Christ helps it up again through His daily, yea, continual drawing near. (Luther.)The law a schoolmaster The law taught, as a schoolmaster teaches, the elements of true religion and right morals. It therefore prepared men for Christianity, or was the introduction to Christianity, which supposes and embraces those elements, though it carries them forward into further and higher developments, and surrounds them with more mature and heavenly sanctions than were before revealed; just as the schoolmaster prepares a pupil by the studies of the school-room, for the studies and pursuits of life, and furnishes the knowledge which is absolutely necessary for the attainment of the superior knowledge of future years, and which can never be entirely dispensed with. The pupil is not required to remain in the school-room, amenable to all the minor regulations of the school-room, and indeed would not be justified in doing so, when the time has come for his entrance upon the advanced discipline and broader duties and prospects of maturity and the world; and yet he must never slight or forget the real knowledge and true habits which have been instilled and formed within those humbler precincts, for these are always available and useful, and are indeed indispensable to his progress. “ The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” It could not have brought us unto Christ, unless it had taught us much that is intrinsically and permanently true and good, and of Divine authority. Such aa introduction could have been made by no unworthy or unauthorized hand. “ Holiness unto the Lord” must have been engraved upon the forehead of that instructor, who performed the high office of leading us into the presence of the Son of God. Let us see how this truth may be confirmed. Let us refer to what may be gathered of the mind of Jesus on this subject. First and chiefly, he always speaks of the God by whose commission Moses gave the law to the Israelites, aa his own God and Father, by whom he was sanctified and sent into the world. It is impossible for any man of common-sense and a clear and unprejudiced head, who shall read the Old Testament and then proceed to read the New, to entertain any other idea than that the Supreme Being and Almighty God of the one is the Supreme Being and Almighty God of the other, though more chiefly revealed and brought nearer to us in the second than in the first. Jesus refers also to the patriarchs and prophets of the former dispensation not as strangers, or belonging to a hostile order or communion, but as His own predecessors and forerunners, who had seen His day and intimated His coming, and He often repeats and applies their sayings and predictions. The proposition is further confirmed by a view of those characters of the law which are evidently intrinsic and unchangeable. The primary truth of the Unity of God is declared in it with a distinctness and a grandeur which no words and no imagination can surpass. The “ Hear, O Israel! the Lord our God is one Lord,” is a proclamation which sounds, as with trumpet voice, from one dispensation to the other, from the Tabernacle and the Temple to the Church, and from the Church into the depths of time. Those infinite attributes of God, which, when proposed to the mind, are in perfect conformity with the best exercises of our reason, and are yet so high that our highest reason cannot reach or measure them, are revealed in the law with all the clearness which human language can command, and with an original sublimity which is to be found nowhere else. As in the doctrinal, so in the ethical part of the law, there is a height and a purity which might fitly introduce the moral system of the gospel, and be blended and incorporated with it, because it is in unison with it, and speaks of a common origin. The ten commandments, which are the condensation of this part of the law, are unquestionably permanent and irreversible. Finally, two important inferences must be kept in mind.1. That we should never take one part of the conclusion, when the apostle is pressing it upon our attention with all his innate zeal, without a reference to the other part, which, under different circumstances, he would have pressed as warmly, and which was never really absent from his mind. He must be interpreted by himself; what he says at one time compared with what he says at another. 2. We ourselves are bound to pay becoming reverence to that ancient law, whose office it was to introduce men to the knowledge and enjoyment of gospel privileges and blessings. There is little danger at present of our falling back under the yoke against which St. Paul warns his converts; but there is some danger of our erring on the opposite side, and treating the law, and the books which contain it, with an undeserved and unbecoming irreverence. Let us remember that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and that, as such, its instructions were necessary and are still to be revered. Having entered a higher institution, we do not go back to school; but having been well taught in those elements which prepared us for that institution, we will remember the teacher with respect and gratitude. While the Saviour of men appears before us in all his transfigured glory, though we shall give to His person our longest and intensest regards, we shall not shut our eyes to the venerable forms of Moses, and Elias, who appear with Him and talk with Him. (F. W. P. Greenwood, D. D.)After that faith is come, Christian freedom and sonship I. To prove to ourselves that we have faith we must prove that we need not the law; II. To prove that emancipation and liberty we must prove that we are the sons of God. III. To prove that engrafting and adoption we must prove that we have put on Christ. IV. To prove that apparelling our proof is that we are baptized into Him. (Doune.)The superiority of Christianity to Judaism It was the happiness of the Jews to have had the law, but it is ours not to need it; they had the benefit of a guide to direct them, but we are at our journey’ s end; they had a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ, but we have proceeded so far as that we are in possession of Christ. The law of Moses binds us not at all as it is His law; whatsoever binds a Christian in that law would have bound Him though there had been no law given to Moses. (John Donne, D. D.)The law our schoolmaster I. The Holy Ghost employs the law as a servant. Salvation never came by the law, never could have come by the law, never can come by the law, through any obedience that fallen man can render either felts letter or its spirit. The law is the map; it is not the country. The law is the model; it is not the substance. The law is the picture; it is not the person. The law prophesies, prefigures, presents the fulness of the salvation which is wrought by Jesus Christ as the ground of the believer’ s security and the warrant of his faith. But under the ministry of the Holy Ghost another illustration is introduced, and the apostle says the law is the schoolmaster, or, to Anglicise the Greek word, is the pedagogue, to bring us unto Christ. And the parts of the figure are easily comprehended. The Holy Ghost is the parent of the soul; the law is the tutor to whose instruction it is committed until the time of majority, when all the tutors and governors of minority disappear, and the privileges of heirship in Christ become the possession and the enjoyment of those who have passed from the tutor’ s care. Now, the Spirit of God presents to us the law of God under this simile. Go where the sinner will, before he has come to the full age of faith, the law of God is his shadow. Oh I that men would remember this. They do not in darkness escape God’ s ever present detection; they do not by double dealing evade the inspection of Him who has established the law for their discipline to bring them unto Christ. Wherever the man goes before he has learned the fulness of his salvation in Jesus, he must be looking about him for the presence of the schoolmaster. When the law of God takes hold of a man, and he realizes his obligation under its commandment and his subjection to its penalty, then, of course, pleasures cease for him, for the presence of the schoolmaster destroys every circumstance of peace and enjoyment. Does he go to a place of frivolous amusement? The law of God whispers to his conscience, “ What if you should die here?” Does he go to his pillow and seek relief from remorse? He lays his head upon it without possible quietness, while the law of God recounts to him the condemnation he has justly deserved for every impurity of thought and defection in act. Does he go to church, and is the minister of God expounding the gospel of God’ s grace? Next to him in the pew sits the law of God, his inseparable companion, who tells him, in the midst of promises, “ These are not for you.” In the midst of all the descriptions of the pleasures of the saint, “ You have no part in these.” And when the dark cloud of Divine indignation which brings out in relief the grace of Jesus Christ rises before him, the awful menace of the law tells him, “ The storm will burst upon you, the condemnation of God will catch you, hell is yawning to receive you.” Oh! the horrors of this pedagogue-companion under whose discipline men are so ready to live. Now let us, having looked at their inseparable companionship, overtake them in their walk and listen to some of their conversation. The refrain of all that the law says is, “ Do.” “ Do this and thou shalt live.” And to this constant exhortation, which stirs up all the bitterness of the heart, there is a succession of apologies and pleas presented, which, for the time, will silence the voice of conscience, but which the law brushes away with ridicule as of offering chaff for wheat, brass for gold, currency for coin. “ Do this and thou shalt live.” “ I want to do it.” “ It is not wanting to do; it is doing,” saith the law. “ I will try to obey.” “ That will not suffice. It is not trying; it is obeying.” “ I have obeyed a great many of the commandments. I am reputed to be obedient. I think I have almost reached it.” “ Almost is not enough, child; altogether thou must do it.” Not a single defect must there be in either spirit or letter of prohibition or command. Oh, what a multitude of apologies does the pedagogue have to hear! “ I am quite as good as those about me.” “ Thou hast nothing to do with another;” “ Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” “ Yes, but I am ready to believe in Christ after I have done all I can.” “ Christ cannot help thee; as long as thou art under age thou must be under the law and thou must do all. When thou hast become of majority, then my office is at an end, and is passed away.” “ Well, I am praying for help to obey the commandment.” “ There will no help come to thee until thou dost come of age, child, and dost trust completely in Him who is the Saviour of the world.” Thou canst never compound and commingle and amalgamate the law and the gospel. The illustration might be indefinitely continued to cover all the possible pretexts of sinners before the law of God. But the whole story is told in this one statement, that the law of God never smiles upon a sinner. This schoolmaster always frowns. There is no pity in the law; there is no mercy under its ministration. The one office of the pedagogue was to drag the boy down. The one office of God’ s law, as the spirit employs it, is to humble every proud thought, every high look, every personal ambition and determination, until the man is willing to be a beggar and be saved by the blood of the Crucified One. II. The errand which is entrusted to this pedagogue. “ The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” The original reads, “ The law is our schoolmaster unto Christ.” When we reach Christ, then is the vocation of the schoolmaster at an end. It convinces men that they need Christ--that they need a free salvation. Christ has fulfilled the law. His obedience was perfect. Now we want to be justified by faith through His righteousness. III. The sign that the law has discharged his commission. Our boys come of age at twenty-one years. Under the Greek code, the child came of age at thirteen and a half years. And I know some boys in our congregation that it would greatly delight if that were the rule in America. We have very few children nowadays. They are all men and women. Under the Roman law, majority was not attained until twenty-five years, but when the day was reached at which the child, by the custom of the land and the constitution of the Government, was pronounced a man, he could laugh at the school-master, and his office had passed away. Up to that hour he was imperious. Now he was impertinent. Up to that day his sharpness of examination was only the fulfilment of the duty he had assumed. After that day, to assume any such relation to the man, was to bring himself under the law which would condemn him utterly. So, saith the apostle, when faith is come, when the child has passed up toward full majority by trusting in Jesus Christ, then the schoolmaster has gone, the believer is freed from the law as a discipline. Oh I dear friend, this is the mountain top from which we view the land of promise. This is the place of privilege to which every child of God is permitted to attain. We are not under the law, says the apostle, we are under grace. But the sign that this majority has been reached is the transference of the soul from the discipline of precepts to that of principles, which the apostle calls the law written on the fleshly tables of the heart. We are not free from this law. It never passes away; but now we delight in the law of God. There is no fear now as we remember the old commandments. (S. H. Tyng.) Galatians 3:25; Galatians 3:29 For we are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.Liberty, equality, and fraternity “ Liberty, equality, and fraternity,” is the three-fold watchword of the masses in modern society. These words are written up in large characters on public buildings, and even on some of the churches, in France; and the ideas represented by them are held and aimed after by vast numbers in nearly every European country. What is meant by them? (a) By “ Liberty” is meant perfect freedom for the people to govern themselves, This is attainable, and, so far as political government is concerned, it has been attained by France, Great Britain, and other countries. (b) By “ Equality” is meant the abolition o! rank and title, whether hereditary or otherwise; to many it means socialism or communism--the abolition of personal property--the State becoming the sole proprietor and apportioner of the means of subsistence. (c) By “ Fraternity” is meant the realization of the feeling of true brotherhood as between man and man. Such are the ideas represented by the “ liberty, equality, and fraternity” sought after by the world--a mixture of truth and error. True “ liberty, equality, and fraternity” are only to be attained through the gospel being accepted and acted on throughout the world. This alone will stop the seethings of dissatisfaction, the upheavals of discontent, and the outbreaks of revolutionary passion. I. True liberty is that which is enjoyed by the children of God.1. Freedom from the condemnation of the law.2. Freedom from the power of evil. II. Equality in Jesus Christ. Not an equality subverting natural relations; these remain, but with a new spirit of light and love, constituting essential equality under circumstantial inequalities, so far as these are not inlaid in the very constitution of man as a social being.1. In Christ there is no national inequality.2. In Christ there is complete equality between master and servant.3. Equality as between man and woman. III. True fraternity. This is unattainable by political methods. It never yet has been, and never will be, reached by these means. Neither ancient nor modern republics have been able to secure true brotherhood among the members of the State, e.g., Athenian democracy, French and American Republics. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can make us true brothers, as descended from the same parent, heirs of the same inheritance, and hence possessed of a spirit of true fraternal affection towards each other. Not necessarily do Christians always agree in their opinion on indifferent points; nor do they see fundamental questions always from the same standpoint--one seeing the matter according to his own God-given mental peculiarities, another according to his, and so on; but, amid all differences of opinion, they are one in true brotherly affection, sympathy, and aim. This is the real tendency and intention and aim of Christianity, however far we may at present fall short of it. What we can now see only “ in part,” will one day be perfected, for “ our citizenship, our commonwealth, is in heaven.” (W. Spensley.)True believers the children of God I. Consider the sonship of believers under the gospel.1. In common with the other intelligent creatures of God (Acts 17:29). 2. By external profession (Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15). 3. Their sonship consists chiefly in their regeneration and adoption. 4. This sonship is not a mere title or mark of distinction, but has privileges the most excellent annexed to it. There is no condemnation to them. They are His temples. Led by His spirit. Abiding in their Father’ s house, heart, love. They have a title to incorruption and immortality (Romans 8:23). They are born to a great inheritance (Romans 8:17; Psalms 16:5). 5. This sonship is equally the privilege of every believer in Christ. They may be distinguished from each other, as to external circumstances in life, spiritual gifts and graces, etc., but their filial relation is the same. 6. It is a privilege of which they are conscious, and hence they enjoy the comfort of it (Galatians 4:6). II. How it is that they attain to this privilege and dignity. The text says, by faith in Christ Jesus. To illustrate this, it may be proper to recollect--1. That in the state of primitive innocence, Adam was truly the son of God: he resembled God (Genesis 1:27). This resemblance was effaced by sin; his former relation of sonship to God then ceased, and he was turned out of God’ s family and garden as a rebel, while he and his numerous progeny became children of disobedience and wrath. 2. It is by faith, or a supernatural revelation only, that we are informed how this high prerogative may be regained. This surpasses the capacity of the wisest philosopher, and even of angels. It is brought to light by the gospel (Galatians 4:4-5). 3. We become the children of God, when we cordially believe in Christ: we are thereby brought into union with Christ and into a relation of sonship with the Father (John 1:12). Concluding exhortation: 1. Be astonished, ye heavenly principalities and powers, to see such base-born slaves and rebellious creatures taken into the family of God. Unmeasurable love! Infinite honour! 2. Forget not the love, duty, submission, and service, resulting from this relation. 3. How insipid, alas I are such themes as this to the generality even of gospel hearers. Show them how to acquire a fortune, etc., and they will be all attention; but publish the riches of God’ s gracious adoption, they relish it not. Blinded sinner, what a fatal choice! Naught can avail thee in the long run, but this. Claim thy adoption, and live as a child of God. (Theological Sketch Book.)All children of God by faith in Christ Jesus I. A wonderful and an inexplicable privilege. What an honour (Proverbs 17:6)! What an advantage (Romans 8:17)! In this name we have--1. A spiritual right to all the creatures of God (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). 2. An interest in God Himself (Isaiah 49:15-16; 1 John 4:16). 3. The service and guardianship of angels (Psalms 91:11; Matthew 18:10; Hebrews 1:14). 4. A certain and infallible claim to eternal glory (Colossians 1:12; Matthew 25:34). II. The means of the enjoyment of this privilege.1. This privilege is not natural to man. By nature we are (1) children of this world (Luke 16:8); or worse,(2) a seed of falsehood (Isaiah 57:4); or yet worse,(3) children of unrighteousness and darkness (1 Thessalonians 5:5); or yet worse,(4) sons of wilful disobedience (Ephesians 2:3); or worst of all,(5) children of wrath (Ephesians 2:2). 2. This enjoyment may be obtained by (1) Adoption (Ephesians 1:5); (2) Regeneration; not of water only, so we are all sacramentally regenerated; but of the Holy Ghost (John 1:12-13; John 3:5). 3. Union with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 Corinthians 4:15; James 1:18). 4. By means of faith as saith the text. III. How shall we know that we enjoy this privilege. Every child of God is--1. Like his Father (1 Peter 1:15-16); (1) He is merciful; are we cruel?(2) He is righteous; are we unjust?(3) He is slow to anger; are we furious?(4) He is abhorrent of evil; do we take pleasure in wickedness? 2. Bears a filial answering to a paternal love. 3. Reverences his Father (Malachi 1:6). 4. Is obedient to his Father. 5. But beyond this there is the witness and guidance of the Holy Spirit of our Father. (Bishop Hall.)The means of Christian sonship A man has faith in God as the Creator of the universe, as the Father of man, as the moral Ruler of the world; but that is not what is meant by the faith that admits into the saved family. A man may assure himself that he has scientific ground for his faith in theism, but that is a long way from the faith that saves the soul. To put faith in manhood, or kinghood, or pope, or progress, or church, or creed, as the object of faith is simply to divert the mind from that which saves. Faith in the beautiful, the good, the nobler aspects of the race, in the poetry and yearnings of the higher humanitarianism, are interesting things to talk about; but to put them forth as the dark passages through which men are to find their way into the family, is to shut the door of hope in the face of the great sinning, sorrowing, race. Not without meaning is Fichte’ s despair of raising men into the blessed life since they are so far beneath the reach of his philosophy. But Paul here opens the door of hope, and shows how any man may become a new child of God. (Mitchell.)The vastness of the Christian family No man ever wrought to make the world better that was not my brother. No man ever laboured to exemplify the coming manhood, that was not kindred to me. Whatever nation he belonged to he belonged to my nation. Whatever language he spoke, he spoke my language. Whatever sphere he wrought in was my sphere. Whether he was crowned or uncrowned, he was of my lineage. I own him; and if he is saved he owns me. And all over the world, there are no spirits bearing and enduring with fortitude and cheerfulness in obscurity that are not my unknown relations. My Father has an enormous family, for my Father is God. My eldest brother is named Jesus Christ, and the relationships which spring out of this Fatherhood and this Brotherhood--how many they are! Wherever men are denying themselves for rectitude, and enduring for that which is just and true, and living courageously for the right, and exemplifying purity and sweetness, and diffusing happiness-these are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, and our brethren. (H. W. Beecher.)Safety by trusting Christ A man was fleeing from some men who desired to rob and kill him. He came to a wide gulf, over which there was only a slender plank for a bridge. It looked too weak to bear him, so that there seemed only a choice of the kind of death open to him. What was he to do? Death behind! Death in front by a fearful fall! While his mind was wavering as to his right course, he saw a strong, heavy man on the opposite side, who shouted. ‘ Come over, man! I crossed the plank safely; I am heavier than you are. When it has borne me it will bear you’ : Similarly, Christ is our plank of safety across the gulf of damnation. He has borne my sins, therefore He can and will bear yours. Jesus the only Saviour A person asked me the other day whether I had seen a book entitled, “ Sixteen Saviours.” I answered, “ No, I have not, and I do not want to know of sixteen saviours, I am satisfied with one. If all who dwell in heaven and earth could be made into saviours, and the whole were put together, you might blow them away as a child blows away thistle-down, but there is this one Saviour, the Son of Man, and yet the mighty God, and He cannot be moved. Joy then, my brethren, and rejoice in your blessed Lord. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Galatians 3:27 Have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Baptized into Christ have put on Christ I. The clothing is twofold.1. The putting on of a garment. This is also twofold. (1) To take the outward name and profession. ‘ This doth no good (Haggai 1:6). It may be done to delude others, but God cannot be deluded. He will take off the garment of the hypocrite, and expose him to open shame. For this is an affront to Christ to put on an outward Christianity till noon, and be libertines after. If thou shouldst wear the prince’ s livery in scantier proportions or coarser stuff than belongs to thy place, will he accept thee? No more will Christ. (2) To put on His righteousness by imitation and conformity. We must put off our old clothes and appear naked before God, then we come to our transfiguration (Romans 4:4). 2. The putting on of a person. (1) We are not to put on Christ as a livery nor as a coin the image of a king. (2) But as a son doth his father in whom the same nature doth reside. (3) Then shall we so appear before God, as that he shall take us for His own Christ; we shall bear His name and person. (4) We shall every one be so accepted as if every one of us were all mankind, yea, as if we were He Himself. II. Its completeness. AS the garment Christ wore was seamless and entire, so this garment, Christ Jesus our sanctification, must cover us all over, and go through our whole life in a constant, even perseverance. We must not only be hospitable and feed the poor at Christmas; be sober and abstinent the day we receive the sacrament; repent and think of amendment in the day of sickness. No man may take the frame of Christ’ s merit in pieces. He that puts on Christ must put Him on all; and not only find that Christ hath died, nor that He hath died for him, but that he also hath died in Christ. (Doune.)The investiture of Christ I. The vesture is--1. Most beautiful.2. Most costly.3. Most rare. (1) In its purity.(2) In its capacity.(3) In its importance. 4. Most durable. II. The investiture is--1. Possible (1) from the character of the vesture Christ’ s an universal character--“ the Man” ;(2) from the nature of the investiture: the assimilation of Christ’ s character. 2. Necessary (1) for protection,(2) for adornment. 3. Accomplished by (1) faith,(2) love,(3) obedience. III. The invested will have--1. Comfort in trial.2. Invincibility in temptation.3. Confidence in the hour of death and day of judgment.4. Completeness of joy in this life and in that which is to come. Baptismal regeneration A child is to be baptized on a given day; but when that day arrives the child is unwell, and the ceremony must be postponed another week or month. Again a delay takes place--the day is damp or cold. At last the time arrives; the service is read; it may require, if read slowly, five minutes more than ordinarily. Then and there, when that ceremony is slowly accomplished, the mystery is achieved. And all this time, while the child is ill, while the weather is bad, while the reader procrastinates--I say it solemnly--the Eternal Spirit who rules the universe, must wait patiently, and come down, obedient to a mortal’ s spell, at the very second that it suits his convenience. God must wait attendance on the caprice of a careless parent, ten thousand accidents, nay the leisure of an indolent or an immoral priest. Will you dare insult the Majesty on high by such a mockery as this result. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Baptism without grace The Spanish converts in Mexico remembered not anything of the promise and profession they made in baptism, save only their names, which many times they also forgot; and in the kingdom of Congo, in Africa, the Portuguese, at their first arrival, finding the people to be heathens, induced them to be baptized in great abundance, allowing the principles of Christianity till such times as the priests pressed them to lead lives according to their profession, which the most part of them in no case enduring, returned again to their Gentilism. Such renegades are to be found in the midst of us this day, such as give themselves up to Christ in profession; but, when it comes to a holy life, they leave him in the open field, forsaking their colours, renouncing their baptism, and running away to the enemy. (Spencer.)Baptismal privileges The putting on of Christ, according to the gospel, consists not in imitation merely, but in a new birth and a new creation; that is to say, in putting on Christ’ s innocency, His righteousness, His wisdom, His power, His saving health, His life, and His Spirit. We are clothed with the leather coat of Adam, which is a mortal garment, and a garment of sin; that is to say, we are all subject unto sin, all sold under sin. There is in us horrible blindness, ignorance, contempt, and hatred of God; moreover, evil concupiscence, uncleanness, covetousness, etc. This garment, that is to say, this corrupt and sinful nature, we received from Adam, which Paul is wont to call “ the old man.” This old man must be put off with all his works (Ephesians 4:22), that of the children of Adam we may be made the children of God. This is not done by changing of a garment, or by any law or works, but by a new birth, and by the renewing of the inward man, which is done in baptism (Titus 3:5). For, besides that they which are baptized are regenerate and renewed by the Holy Ghost to a heavenly righteousness and to eternal life, there riseth in them also a new light and a new flame; there rise in them new and holy affections, as the fear of God, true faith and assured hope, etc.; there beginneth in them also a new will. This is to put on Christ truly. To be apparelled with Christ is not to be apparelled with the law nor with works, but with an incomparable gift; that is to say, with remission of sins, righteousness, peace, consolation, joy of spirit, salvation, life, and Christ Himself. This is diligently to be noted, because of the fond and fantastical spirits which go about to deface the Majesty of baptism, and speak wickedly of it. Paul contrariwise commendeth it, and setteth it forth with honourable titles. (Luther.)Putting on Christ This verse introduces us to some of the very central and most sacred doctrines of the gospel. It tells us what our condition is,--we who have been baptized into Christ;--and, telling us what our condition is, it opens to us so wide and wonderful a view of the duties, burthens, hopes, and helps that belong to that condition, as may well astonish us, and fill us with fear and trembling, with fearful hope, and with trembling joy. I need not linger much in explaining the first words of the verse of the text, “ as many of you as have been baptized” ; however many of the Galatians St. Paul may have comprehended under this description, there is no question that it comprehends all of us. We have all been baptized, have all been carried, in the faith of the Church, represented by our godfathers and godmothers, to the life-giving font, and have received the promises of God made to us in that sacrament. Again, he says, “ have been baptized into Christ.” On this point, too, there is no need to dwell at present; suffice it for the present purpose to say, that to be baptized into Christ signifies(1) to be baptized into the body of Christ; to be made by baptism a member of that sacred immortal body, whose head is the Lord in heaven, and whose bond of life and union is the blessed Spirit of God; and (2) to be baptized into the Holy Trinity, into that name, into that belief and profession, into that holy keeping, and into that mysterious communion. These points I will not enlarge upon at present; I will rather assume that we are acquainted with all the great things which are signified by the expression, “ being baptized into Christ” ; and, turning your attention to the remaining words, consider how it is said, that they who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. 1. First, then, we may regard the words as metaphorical, and understand them to mean, that we have put on, or assumed, the Christian profession of belief, or the Christian character, or the Christian duties, or the Christian hopes. “ Consider, therefore,” we may suppose the apostle to go on, “ how far your life really tallies with all this great profession which you have made.” 2. But this is not enough To interpret words like these merely metaphorically, is to interpret them very inadequately. To put on Christ can hardly be a less real phrase than to be baptized into Christ, or to be in Christ; and these phrases, as we know from many parts of Holy Scripture, express the wonderful and mysterious connexion which subsists between baptized men and their Redeemer, whereby they are living stones of a spiritual house or temple; living members of a sacred spiritual body; living branches of a holy spiritual vine; partakers of the death, and so of the life of Christ; already immortal in estate; and in right, title, and privilege, already assured of everlasting bliss, unless they forfeit it by impenitent and unholy living. To put on Christ seems to be correlative to being in Christ; it is the duty, while the other is the privilege. God has, of His great mercy, put us in Christ, made us to be baptized into Christ;--now let us pray for His Spirit, and work with His Spirit, and yield ourselves up to His Spirit, that we may put on Christ. In our baptisms we were planted into Christ, into His body, which is the Church; and there took place, by God’ s Divine power, the birth of the Spirit in our hearts,--the germinating of the little seed of Divine, spiritual life, the kindling of the little spark of holy immortal fire, which, unless it be smothered by sin unrepented, should be our earnest, and inalienable title to glory and salvation. This was the great baptismal blessing. But there is something else after this. Then Christ has to be formed in us. Then our own souls, in which, even after baptism, the infection of nature remaineth, have to grow up in Christ’ s likeness, to grow to the stature of a perfect man in Christ to become filled with the fulness of God. This is the work of our life after baptism; this is the reason why we live so many years after baptism; this is the reason why baptism is early, and death often late, why baptism is not the end, but the beginning of our lives. Our life after baptism should not be a falling back, but a rising and growing; not a declension from baptismal innocence, but a strengthening in Christ-like virtues. Herein then is the precise duty, stated in the lofty and mysterious terms of Holy Scripture, which we are living now to discharge; the putting on Christ,--the forming of Christ in our own separate souls, the growing up to the “ perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” For this cause, our bodies grow from the infant feebleness in which they received the regenerating washing of holy baptism, through their vigorous and lively youth, to the confirmed strength of manhood; for this cause, our minds naturally widen and grow strong, our imaginations vivid and inventive, our thought strong and deep, our memory firm and tenacious, and our judgment considerate and sound; for this cause, we are placed under training and discipline; for this cause, God has given us kind and loving friends; for this cause He allows us to see and know, in the examples of others, the aspect of sin, and the aspect of obedience, that we may be the rather helped to right, and deterred from wrong, by learning to love and hate them respectively, when exhibited in others; for this cause, He sends us joy or sorrow, takes us from those we love, or takes those we love from us; for this cause, He allows the various events of life to go on in their tangled, inscrutable order, trying us, testing us, proving us in ten thousand ways st every time; for this cause, He gives us His Holy Spirit, bids us pray, sets hopes and bright encouragements before us, leaves us alone, yet not alone, for He is with us, to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. For this cause, that, being in Christ by baptism, we may by degrees put on Christ; that we may copy Him, pray to Him, represent Him, love to be near Him, love His house, His people, His little ones; that we may believe in Him, have the thought of Him ever before our minds, read of Him, talk of Him, love His words; that we may think who and how great He is, ascend with Him, love to retire from other thoughts to be with Him, love His Church the place where His honour dwelleth, love His sacraments wherein He is nearest, His baptism wherein He giveth Himself first, His blessed Communion wherein He permits us more and more to be one with Him, to be of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. The Christian estate is glory, it is liberty, it is royal, it is priestly; nothing is too high for it, as the apostle sees it. A baptized Christian is reborn of the Spirit, sits in heavenly places, is companion of angels, has his citizenship in heaven, has his life in Christ. Living on in the flesh, he grows in grace, puts on Christ, Christ is formed in him, he grows to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. No; we must not lower our teaching, or our holding, below the lofty but most real sayings, the wonderful words, but words of most faithful truth and soberness, in which the inspired apostles have been taught to speak them. No; we must raise our lives. We must not speak lower, but we must live higher. The labour and the struggle is, to bring these high truths into the very midst of our daily lives and habits, to remember them when we lie down, and when we rise up, to remember them in our work and our play; to remember them and act upon them all through that endless diversity of little things, which, defying statement or description, make up our weekly, daily, and hourly lives. If your life be destined to be spent in the midst of secular business, let it accompany you, and your secular business will become sanctified to you; if you are hereafter to minister in the sanctuary, let it go with you to the sanctuary, and it will waken up a deeper devotion; if you are to remain among the homes of your fathers, or to do God’ s service in distant lands, wheresoever you be, and howsoever occupied, let the remembrance of this thought, the formation of Christ within you, the growing up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, be, by God’ s grace, never absent from your Christian minds! (Bishop Moberly.) Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free. The unity of true believers The Christian scheme is a uniting scheme, and all real saints are one in their glorious Head. I. There is a sense in which the saints are too much one, viz., in that which is evil. They spring from the same depraved original, and are partakers of the same corrupt nature. Though sin does not reign in them, it remains; and too frequently led away captive by it, they act in a manner displeasing to God. II. There are many respects in which the saints are not one.1. Natural capacity.2. Temper and disposition.3. External advantages. III. Yet they are really one in Christ Jesus. They are so by virtue of their union with Him, being thereby incorporated into one body, and animated by one spirit, also by virtue of their participation of Him.1. They are equally objects of the Divine love and favour. One saint may love God more than another; the same saint may love God more at one time than another; but God always loves all His people with the same everlasting, ardent, unalterable affection. Infinite love admits of no degrees. 2. They have the same spiritual privileges. The same gospel is preached, the same Spirit poured on them; they have one Lord, faith, baptism; justified by the same blood, adopted into the same family, regenerated by the same grace, and preserved by the same power. 3. They all hold the Head, Christ Jesus. Differing in circumstantials, they are united in essentials. Inwardly determined for God, they are outwardly obedient to Him. On the other hand, every unconverted man has more hearts than one, and more ways than one. 4. They have the same well-grounded hopes and expectations. As one Father begot them, so one heaven shall receive them. There they shall be one in those senses in which now they are not so, for they shall see eye to eye. (B. Beddome, M. A.)Unity and union If there be any truth in revelation, any efficacy to follow the Saviour’ s prayer, any power in the Word of God accompanied by the Divine Spirit, an age must come when the Church will both be and appear to be one. I. There is an essential unity in the church, independent of the purpose, will, schemes, and devices of man. Sincere and intelligent faith brings souls, without the medium of an ecclesiastical organization, into union with Christ, and therefore with all the members of His spiritual Body which is the Church. There can no more be two Churches than there can be two suns in the solar system. All believers are one, but their unity ought to be visible. II. Notwithstanding this essential unity, divisions exist in the church. To turn from the ideal Church to that which appears to view is like looking off from a peaceful and tranquil lake to an ocean tossed with tempest. These divisions are in themselves injurious, for by splitting up the forces they take away that combined strength which the Church ought to present to the world; and they also show that bitterness of feeling exists. The clouds that are exhaled from the waters of strife hang, like a thick veil, over the bright orb of religion; religion is seen through them, no doubt, but like the sun seen through a mist--shorn of its beams, diminished in its effulgence. Religion suffers in consequence. “ Divide and destroy” is the watchword of Satan, net of God. III. What kind of manifestation of this unity should we seek? Our differences of opinion are not trifles; they are serious matters. If one body of believers is right, then the others must be wrong. If all are wrong in some particulars, they should renounce their errors, and unite on the ground of the common truth. How is such a unity to be brought about?1. By cultivating personal godliness to a much greater extent. Errors of judgment arise, in great measure, out of the corruption of the heart, and soul, and mind, not yet brought into subjection to the mind of Jesus. 2. Unity of affection. External union will never be brought about until men’ s hearts are knit together as thread is interwoven with thread. 3. Unity of persons. Every Christian grace must be seen. Not sectarian love. 4. Unity of action. Working together as labourers in the same vineyard. The oxen must be yoked quietly together (to use a familiar illustration) before they san draw together; the horses must be harnessed, and stand quiet without kicking each other, before they can draw together; we must be harnessed and yoked in love before we can unite externally. IV. The means to be used to bring about this desirable union.1. We shall never obtain it unless we really do desire it. All must long and pray together for the healing of our unhappy divisions. 2. There must be a conviction abroad, that it is everybody’ s business to do what they can towards accomplishing it. Not ministers only, but lay people as well. The Church is made up of units; let all help. 3. The cultivation of personal religion. The olive branch can never flourish but in the rich soil of personal piety; let that soil be impaired, and the bitter aloe of contention, the thorn, the bramble, the briar, and the nettle of angry controversy will flourish luxuriantly. Man departs from his brother by departing from God; closeness to God will bring each one closer to his brother man. Only the constraining love of Christ can compress and concentrate the Church into a closer union. 4. Let each do what he can in his own narrow circle. Not necessary to wait for the working out of a huge scheme of general union. Heal up the little sores. 5. Be careful about controversy. Don’ t elevate secondary matters into primary. Study the unity of heaven, and try to realize it on earth. Pray for the Spirit’ s guidance. (J. Angell James.)Christ and the Church one I. The oneness of Christ and the Church. The Church is:(1) many;(2) manifold; and yet(3) from this very multitudinousness and manifoldness arises oneness. II. The truth of the unity and manifoldness of the Church is the basis of new testament morality. (Homilist.)Grounds of unity Here are the grounds and reasons for Christian unity. I. The great end of the gospel is not only to save, but to make one. One great fruit of sin is separation; the great object of the gospel is to bring about unity. Sin is extinguished by the cross; and Christ, the binding element, fills up the chasm between offended God and offending man--of twain making one new man, and so making peace. II. Our relationship to each other. All are sheep of the same fold. III. Christ’ s own command. “ Love one another.” “ That they all may be one.” IV. The safety of the whole body demands it. To be insuperable, Christians must be inseparable. The strength of the Christian Church, like that of Napoleon’ s army, lies in consolidation, presenting a united front. V. Necessary for the extension of Christ’ s kingdom. (J. Cumming, D. D.)Union with Christ and its results I. The fundamental fact.1. In Christ, as the stone is in the building.2. As the fugitive is in the city of refuge.3. As in a seed. II. The great consequences of this fundamental fact.1. Distinction of nations ceases.2. Distinction between man and man ceases.3. Distinction between strong and weak ceases. The native consequence of a fallen state is the mastery of ‘ the strong over the weak. Might makes right. And to the everlasting disgrace of the male sex the woman became the bond slave of the stronger man. The only shield of woman’ s natural rights is the principle here stated. Thus with one stroke of the pen St. Paul settles the national, personal, and sexual rights of men. By one short sentence he solves the three greatest problems of human society--peace, liberty, fraternity. When all men ate one in Christ, earth will once more be a province of heaven. (J. G. Murphy, LL. D.)Unity not necessarily uniformity Look around on all creation, and you will find what metaphysicians have called the “ monad,” that is, the ultimate principle of unity, pervading all, but diversity its continual development, characteristic of all. The cloud takes its multifarious shapes from the wind, its varied splendours from the sunbeam, but its substance remains continually the same. The fable varies in the incident and the story, but the moral is essentially the same; the music has many variations, but the old air, the original air or melody may be detected like a chord in the midst of all these variations. Animal life,. from the humblest zoophyte up to man, the very perfection of physical life, presents every variety of organization, and yet its essential characteristics are the same in the dog, the cat, the horse, and the man. Human life, again, has general characteristics of unity, but you will find the utmost diversity of development. It is to me one of the most extraordinary and inexplicable and mysterious phenomena of the world, that while in this assembly there may be 1,000 or 1,100 faces, with the same characteristic features in all, yet not one is the least like any of the others. The principle of unity pervades the whole; each face has the great, essential, elemental characteristics of a face; yet no two faces, for reasons we cannot explain, are so alike that one might be mistaken for the other. If, again, we take spiritual intelligence, we shall find the same characteristic unity with the same developed variety. For instance, man seems to me to be the lowest link in spiritual intelligence. He is the basis where soul or spirit is united to matter; the next grade is the angel, the next the archangel, then the cherub, and after that the seraph. Here are ascending-grades or diversities in heaven itself, and yet the fundamental characteristics of spiritual life are the same. If, again, I refer to the botanical kingdom, I find that every plant, tree, and flower, have each certain essential and elemental characteristics, and yet the utmost possible variety of development. The fragrance of a violet is perfectly distinct from that of a rose; the colour of a dahlia is totally different from the colour of a daisy. One flower differs from another in its shape, fragrance, appearance, stem, calyx, leaves, and yet all flowers have certain elemental and essential characteristics which distinguish the whole botanical kingdom. If I refer to the mineral kingdom, I find that all minerals are originated and guided by the same law; but one throws off its crystals in the shape of hexagons, another in the shape of pentagons; that is to say, the great law of crystallization in the mineral kingdom is the same, but the development of that law is as varied as variety can possibly be. The snowdrop, the raindrop, the snowflake, the buds of trees, and the blossoms of flowers--all things in the botanical kingdom, all things in the mineral, all in the animal kingdom, and all in nature, have each their own essential elemental characteristic unity, and yet in their developments we find the utmost possible varieties of that unity. And so, I would argue, there may be in the Church, where, I cannot but think, uniformity would be a blemish rather than a beauty. (J. Cumming, D. D.)Near Christ, near Christians Observing in a large circle a number of lines called by mathematicians “ radii,” we perceive that in proportion as each radius approaches the centre, it approaches the radius that is next to it; just in proportion to its nearness to the centre is its nearness to the others; and so it is with the Christian Church. It is one vast circumference, and just as we approach to Christ, in life and character, in the same proportion we draw near each other. (J. Cumming, D. D.)One in Christ There lies, deep down in the heart of mankind, not always read aright by the spirit of man which is in him, but always read aright by Him who has all hearts in his hand, a craving, yearning, thirsting desire for this reversal of the curse of Babel--for this re-gathering and re-uniting which is to be found only in Christ. We speak of rest as man’ s want. But what rest? Not a rest of dreamy or dreamless slumber; not a rest of indolent self-indulgence; not a rest of undisturbed self-contained isolation: this cannot satisfy the want of a spirit come from and returning to God; this cannot fill the capacities of a heaven-born, everlasting existence. Underneath the longing for rest lies another longing--and that is for union, unity, oneness; for a voice to recall God’ s scattered ones from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea, and make for them one blessed home, not by building upon earth a tower whose top shall reach heaven, but by bringing down out of heaven that holy city of which God, God in Christ, shall be at once the Light, and the Presence, and the Temple. The heart craves union: till it finds union it cannot know rest. And this craving for union is often ignorant, often impatient, often perverse, often sinful. It does not, all at once, even when it hears the gospel, submit itself to God’ s will, to Christ’ s direction, as to the end to be sought, or the manner of the seeking. One man, his heart all athirst for that rest which is union, will look out for himself some earthly object, which he may deck with every fancied perfection, and then bow before it as his idol. Another, of a less refined mould and making, will even find a gross, base, and perishing union in some companionship in sinning. For the moment he finds himself less alone; for the moment he has slaked the thirst of his soul at a muddy and a broken cistern--even in a counterfeit union, to be followed by a more aching loneliness than the former. And if men happen to have a different conception of the natural dispersion--either because their affections are less lively, or their ideas wider and more philosophical--then they frame projects, larger or smaller, of combination and fellowship; they will unite men in leagues, societies, associations, which are to reform nations or remodel Churches: disappointed of unity here, they will seek it there: a new sect shall give them that sense of perfect harmony which older creeds and communions have failed to inspire: even an excluding process has been tried, where schemes of comprehension have been found vain: still beyond, a little beyond, has lain the goal of absolute oneness, and still a weary and foot-sore multitude have plodded and tramped after it--in vain! And then, all at once, there enters this world of dispersion and disunion--enters it, as by a small wicket-gate, in remote, insignificant Palestine--One who represents Himself as possessing, for all mankind, for all time, not only the secret of rest, but the very rest itself--One who cries aloud in the temple-court, crowded for a great festival, in words absolutely unique, probably, in philosophy or in religion, “ If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink” --drink, as He explains Himself, a water which is absolutely satisfying, because it brings into the soul that kind of rest which is union, union with God, and so union with itself and with its brother. “ Ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” In Him the dispersion is regathered. All things, St. Paul says, in heaven and in earth are gathered together in Him. It seems as though even angels who never fell are in some manner interested and concerned in that regathering. Certainly the dead, equally with the living, are so. And I desire to say to you, this last night, how alone you and I can ever henceforward be at one. Each separately must enter into, must put on, must invest himself with Jesus Christ. Are the words ambiguous? You know what they say. They bid you to cast all your burden of guilt--is it not heavy? too heavy for you?--upon Christ as your atonement. They bid you to cast all your burden of sin and sorrow and conscious weakness--is it not heavy? too heavy for you?--upon Christ as your friend. Then are you inside Him. He includes, He contains you--and in the dread day of days, when the Avenger of blood looks for you, he shall find only Christ--only Jesus Christ and Him crucified, Him risen I In the exercise of that incorporation, of that union, of that oneness, will our true fellowship henceforth be found. You might detain me, you might pursue me, and yet we might not be one--not one person certainly! But if you and I are all inside Christ, then we must be at one. Then all minor differences, of place and intercourse, sink at once into nothing. Place and sight may make the difference of pleasure, of comfort, of expressed communion, of conscious unity. But they make no difference whatever, as to the reality, as to the essence of union. You may worship here, and I there--you may kneel at these rails, I at others--what then? We are all one person in Christ. In the face of such union, let us learn--it is a hard lesson--let us learn to despise and trample under foot all other. What is neighbourhood? What is co-existence? Men live next door to each other, and never meet--meet, and never commune--commune, and never are one. At last a call comes--one goes forth, at the summons of business, of necessity, of the gospel, to a distant shore--seas roll between--they never see, they never hear of each other more--yet, for the first time, they may be one--one person--in Christ. The communion of saints is between them--and therefore the life of life--the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting. Now first they are one. Days may pass, months, years, quarters of centuries--but that bond is fastened between them which cannot be broken. Now life is seen to be death, and death life. Now they know, or they shall know, that the Babel-dispersion is a Christ-gathering. They may have loved each other here, and trembled at the great parting. Now they know that that parting is the groat, the first, the final reunion. Or, it may be, here they have not loved equally, not happily, not without doubting. One loved more than the other--the lavished love seemed to be wasted. There was no felt reciprocity--it was all on one side. O, look forward! Spend all your thoughts upon the union in Christ! Make your friend love Him, then he will at last love you! (Dean Vaughan.)Oneness in Christ I. This is a doctrine insisted on throughout the New Testament. II. The ancient world did not recognize the oneness of the race.1. Savage tribes preyed on each other as they do now.2. Jew and Greek were at irreconcilable enmity.3. Philosophers taught that there was an immutable distinction between freeman and slave, male and female. III. Christianity came to change all that and--1. To teach the vivifying doctrines of the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man.2. To die that all might be gathered into His fold. IV. This unity in Christ makes us feel at one with the great and good;(1) of all ages;(2) of all climes;(3) of all denominations;(4) of all sorts of society. (Archbishop Taft.)Believers one in Christ On a sweet summer evening a traveller looked along the valley on this peaceful scene, when a shower of rain was falling. Suddenly the sun broke out, and flung a bright bow on the cloud, that, like that of mercy, discharged its showers on all. The rainbow encircled within its arms suburb and city, lofty church and humble meetinghouse. And was it not a true and happy fancy that saw in this heavenly bow an emblem of that covenant which, irrespective of minor differences, embraces all believers within the same arms of mercy? (Dr. Guthrie.)The oneness of believers Souls have no sexes and Christ is no respecter of persons. The servant paid the half-shekel as well as the master (Exodus 30:1-38). (Trapp.)All one in Christ There are two distinct thoughts in these most wonderful words. St. Paul affirms, first, that the greatest natural differences between men are, as we see them, only temporary, provisional, preparatory.2. This transformation of the circumstances of human existence has found already a pledge of its accomplishment. Deeper than all which divides you, stronger than all which comes from trine, and place, and circumstance, is this bond of one underlying life which has now been made known in the Son of Man, the Son of God. 3. We are to regard believers not as a family inspired by common affections and with common aims, but as one man, one body quickened by one Spirit, through which the one Lord is manifested to the world. But this doctrine that we men are one man, this doctrine, as it is called, of the solidarity of humanity, is no novelty to the Christian teacher. He finds in it part of the truth which the Incarnation proclaims. “ Ye all are one man in Christ Jesus.” This truth, as we reflect upon it, reveals to us the fulness of life, the promise of life, the motive of life. I. The fulness of life. When St. Paul declared the impossibility of distinctions between peoples and classes, he did not look to their destruction, but to their perfect use--to their consecration. Again and again it has happened in times of great conflict or peril that the thought of education, and rank, and sex, has passed away, and each one who has had to face the struggle has remembered only that he is an Englishman, or a man. All that he had, all that he was before, remained unchanged; every gift and every power was made to serve the immediate end; but larger interests asserted their supremacy, and the soul acknowledged the claim. So it is with the nobler conflict to which we are called as believers in Christ. We all bring to it the fullest offering of individual service; we keep back nothing, and we rest in nothing. Whatsoever we have that is special is the sign whereby God has revealed His purpose for us. But this is the common thought which hallows every effort, which nerves us for concentrated labour, which bears us beyond the narrow limits of personal aim, which binds together with the strength of their manifold energies the scholar, and the artist, and the craftsman, “ I am a Christian.” By that confession we know the vastness, the fulness of life in its unity in Christ. II. The promise of life. The unseen life is greater than we know; now and then the veil is lifted from some dark scene, and-through sordid and repulsive surroundings, light and tenderness and self-sacrifice flash out; revealed, not created, by the circumstances through which it is seen. A time of wide distress shows us what the heart of the vast masses of the people is--beating with the one life, and loyal beyond hope to truth and righteousness. Then, when the deep foundations are being laid open; then, when we remember how the Son of Man has fulfilled man’ s destiny--we are sure that there shall never be one lost virtue, sure that the one life with its purifying energy will not fail, sure that it is life and not death which is the seal of humanity. III. The motive of life. To work for ourselves is a necessity. If then, we can be enabled to feel that our true self is in Christ, who has taken humanity to Himself, the whole aspect of the world is changed. Can we imagine any motive for labour more inexhaustible or more inspiring than this conviction that the well-being of the whole is imperilled in the least member; that subtle influences pass ever over each one of us at every moment which must work for all time; that at every moment we are all entering on the inheritance of the one life, marred or made richer, as it may be, by the action of our fellows? “ Ye all are one man in Christ Jesus.” It is through us that Christ works. He is the vine, we are the branches; but where, without the branches, is the manifold fertility of the vine? He is the head, we are the members; but where without the members is the prevailing energy of the body? “ Ye all are one man in Christ Jesus.” As we ponder the words and follow them beyond this region of conflict and succession, they disclose a prospect in which our souls can rest. (Canon Westcott.)Unity in diversity There are three classes of obstacles to all union, and therefore to Christian union, and to the realization of the wondrous prayer of the Lord Jesus. These difficulties arise out of a threefold distinction that may be made among human beings. The Apostle Paul, in my text, does in three different ways divide mankind. He makes a threefold separation of the human race into two dissimilar classes, which, though here and there correspondent with one another, are by no means parallel the one to the other. This classification is governed by(1) the great intellectual differences and antagonisms among men; (2) the chief emotional and constitutional differences of character; and (3) the prodigious distinctions effected by external circumstances. It is true that St. Paul presents these three antitheses in a pictorial fashion, in a vivid and concrete form, before our consideration, but it is none the less obvious that he is thinking of more than the literal meaning of his own words. I. The first of these divisions was based on that great antagonism which was so admirably expressed in the apostle’ s day by the intellectual differences obtaining between the Jew and the Greek. The Jew, strictly speaking, was the member of the holy family, the descendant of Abraham and Israel, a representative of that well-known nationality which had better reasons: than any other Oriental people possessed, to believe that it was the special object of Divine care, and providence, and government. Thus the Jew became the type of all who, in every age of the Church, are, by their education, their mental habits, their strong dispositions, disposed to lay violent stress on the external sign, on the old tradition, even to the exclusion of the realities which are indicated by them. Now let us look at the other great type of intellectual character--the Greek. The term, even in the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere in the--New Testament, meant more than a Gentile proselyte to the faith of Christ; and the word “ Grecian” or “ Hellenist” meant more than a Greek-speaking Jew. It is capable of proof that there was in Judaism a Grecized party even before the time of our Lord, and it is quite clear that the Grecian converts to the faith of Jesus were rather characterized by the freshness of their ideas, the freedom of their speculations, the liberty which they claimed from oppressive rite and ceremonial, than by their mother-tongue. No classes of mind could be more directly opposed and dissimilar in their modes of working than those of the pure Jew and pure Greek. To Jewish conservatism the Greek opposed an incessant love of change; to the Jewish love of tradition and dependence upon the wisdom of the ancients the Greek offered endless speculation and elaborate guesses after truth; instead of the Jewish dogma the Greek luxuriated in the last logical puzzle. By the side of the stern exclusiveness of the Jewish Monotheism, the Greek prided himself in a Pantheon of deities, who were admitted on equal and easy terms to the reverence of the Hellenes. The mind of the Jew was hampered in its philosophical researches by a language of great metrical power, but of comparative rigidity of movement and excessive externality and objectivity; the Greek used the most flexible and delicate instrument of thought which human minds had ever fashioned. The Jew accepted the supernatural with child-like simplicity, and asked eagerly for more; the Greek sought after the causes of things, the meaning of words, the essence of government, the unseen and intangible realities. It is not a wonderful thing that St. Paul should have said, “ The Jew requires a sign, the Greek seeks after wisdom.” The unrestrained liberty of the Greek was not without its serious dangers when it was brought by Divine grace within the limit of the true Church. If the two types of mental character of which I have spoken be found within the Church of Christ, we may expect sharp and sustained antagonism. Even regeneration will not change these grave and fundamental differences of mental constitution. How difficult must it ever prove for these two kinds of men to feel the deep-hidden unity which is possible between them! To put the matter in a concrete form, how difficult for one who imagines religious life to be inseparably associated with form, ceremonial, priesthood, sacraments, liturgies, elaborate dogmatic creeds and transcendental propositions, even to believe in the Christianity of another, whose only notion of it is a holy life, free from all these restraints; who thinks, speculates, philosophizes, and tries to prove all things, and only to hold fast that which is good! Verily, if these tendencies are left to themselves unchecked and unchastised, very distant will be the day when Jew and Greek shall be one. II. The second of them is the great constitutional and emotional difference of character expressed by the antithesis of male and female. It is not merely the difference of sex of which the apostle is speaking, but rather of the great types of character, which, though not confined to either sex, are best expressed by the terms masculine and feminine. By masculine character, we mean the predominance over the passions of reason and conscience, the energy of will, the submission to law, the conscious pride of independence, strength, self-sufficiency, robust and vigorous life. By feminine character, whether seen in woman or man, we mean the predominance of the affections, the delight of dependence, the unreasoning consciousness of right, the strength of submission, the power of suffering, self-sacrifice, and waiting. In the one there is more power to act, in the other to endure. The strength of the one is energy, and of the other is rest. Both may be led to do what is good; but the one because it is right, and the other because it is lovely. The one looks at religion as a system of principles, the other as the expression of deep feelings. The one sees no religion in mere states of mind, devotional postures, strong sentiments; and the other cannot understand the religion of mere principle and energy. How shall these two types of character be harmonized? III. The third great decision is that due to differences arising out of external circumstances. The bond and the free are the terms which Paul used to describe this great contrast. But though formal slavery be abolished, the distinction between different classes of men is not obliterated. Caste still prevails in India; the difference between the black negro and the Southern planter or Northern merchant will still abide in America. The struggle between capital and labour, and the contrast between rank and wealth and power on the one hand, poverty, dependence, and obscurity on the other, are as vigorous and obvious as they ever were. How hard it is to bridge the gulf between the lordly owner of a county and the half-clad, unclean, besotted, diseased inmate of some hovel within sight of his palace! How difficult to make even Christian people lay down their pride, and their caste, and love one another with a pure heart fervently! Legislation, common griefs and joys, healthful literature, and free press, are bringing these separate classes into one another’ s view, and some of the reserve and mutual antipathy may be overcome in the foremost of the nations; but still within the Church, as well as outside its pale, there are the bond and the free. In the person of Jesus Christ is found the true point of contact for them all.1. That the intellectual antagonism between Jew and Greek, of every age and Church, finds in Christ its true counteraction. The modern representative of the Jew within the Church, when he looks through the form and the letter, and the medium and the visible sign, to the reality which makes him Christian, heartily confesses that it is Christ crucified who satisfies his search. The Jew and Greek of St. Paul’ s day meet before the cross. “ Come,” says the Hebrew of Hebrews to the sinner of the Gentiles, “ come, brother; thou who weft afar off art made nigh by the blood of Jesus. He is our peace, who has made both of us one, and hath broken down the wall of partition between us: Let thee and me clasp hands before the cross, for we two have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” And the Greek responds, “ I verily am no more stranger or foreigner, but a fellow-heir and of the same body, and partaker of Divine promise.” There is now neither Jew nor Greek; they are both one in Christ Jesus. 2. Christ Jesus is the mediating power between the masculine and feminine mind. Christ is the well-spring of the strong motives to right action and of the deepest passions of holy love. As the mountain torrent may leap with wild pomp and energy from the same water-shed from which, by a quieter transit, other and a gentle stream may wind its way to the great ocean, “ reflecting far and fairy-like from high the immortal lights which live along the sky,” so too from the same fountain of deep emotions and great purposes varied lives may flow. As the two streams of water mingle at length, to do ever after a united work, so the two classes of mind, when they learn the lesson that from the one Christ they both derive their life and hope, then, “ like friends once parted, grown single-hearted,” their love begins to abound. (H. R. Reynolds, B. A.)In Christ I. All distinctions are lost. II. All differences harmonized. III. All hearts united. IV. All personal accomplishments ignored. Christian unity I. Its foundation. II. Completeness.III. End. In Christ we have-- I. One foundation of hope. II. One pattern of imitation. III. One motive of action. IV. One object of triumph. Observe-- I. The test--if ye are Christ’ s, by faith--redeeming grace--holy consecration. II. The privilege--then are ye Abraham’ s seed included in the covenant--heirs of God, of every blessing, of heaven. III. The foundation of it--the free--unmerited--unchangeable promise of God. (J. Lyth.)Christ the centre of Christian union I. The great central truth of Christian union is the central truth of Christianity itself, which is Christ crucified. Destroy the centre of any system, you have destroyed the system itself. Now, beloved, a great and essential doctrine is placed before you here. All believers are one in Christ Jesus. They have a vital union with Jesus. That includes, too, this great and precious truth--accepted and justified in Christ Jesus. Again, this being in Christ involves our preservation. The child of God is kept not by any power of his own. II. The consequent unity of all believers in the Lord. The unity of the Church of Christ does not spring out of anything in that Church, but out of the oneness of that Church in Christ. Unity pervades all God’ s works and operations--unity, not uniformity. You will find a marvellous richness of diversity in all the works of God. There is unity and there is diversity. The family of God is essentially one, and yet constituted into different households. Now I would remind you, in the first place, beloved, that the unity of the Church of God grows out of the unity of all believers in Christ the one Head. All true believers hold Christ the one Head of the Church. Then, brethren, the essential unity of the Church consists in the indwelling of the self-same Spirit. Every believer is a temple of the Holy Ghost. All believers in Christ then are essentially one. And, brother, how much is there in the circumstances of a child of God to unfold the essential unity of the Church of God? We have the same trials, afflictions, temptations; we take, oftentimes, the same dreary, lonely, tiresome path. O, how much is there in God’ s providential dealings with us in our trials, our sorrows, our temptations, to knit the saints of God more closely to their Head! III. And now, in conclusion, let me remind you that there grows out of this great and precious truth some solemn obligations and precious blessings. I will, in the briefest manner, refer to this point; and, first, with regard to obligations set forth in the Scriptures. If we are in Christ, and Christ is the centre of our union, then we are bound to recognize the unity of God’ s dear ones. We are to recognize it. We are to hail a brother in Christ as a brother wherever we find him. My beloved hearers, the world is a keen observer of the Church of God. The world cares not one iota how we differ on points of Church government, or of doctrine, but the world looks at the Church of God in its union. It expects to find oneness, brotherly love, sympathy, co-operation. Therefore, I earnestly implore you, first to recognize the unity of all God’ s dear saints with one another, and then to express and manifest a loving spirit. Brethren, shall I advert for a moment to the blessings that will accrue from your recognition and manifestation of this great and glorious truth, the essential unity of the Church? Let me remind you that your happiness will be promoted by it. And not only your happiness, but your holiness will be promoted by your recognition of brotherly love. I will only add that usefulness is another blessing that springs from the recognition and manifestation of union. Beloved, we are useful, not as we stand out in our individual isolated condition. We are useful for Christ in combination--combination of judgment, of heart, of purpose. (Octavius Winslow, D. D.) Galatians 3:29 And if ye be Christ’ s then are ye Abraham’ s seed, and heirs according to the premise. Abraham’ s spiritual seed If the life we have in the flesh were all we had to provide for, they might be accounted the happiest of mankind who possess in the greatest abundance the means of sustaining it in health and comfort who can--as one of whom Jesus speaks in parable, proposed to do--take their ease, eat, drink, and be merry, because they have much goods laid up for many years. Who then is to be regarded as truly favoured and blest among the children of men? There is a class, few of whom may have been born to opulence in this world, or have any prospect of ever becoming rich in the goods of time; a class whose peculiar possessions may be little coveted or admired by those around them; for the world knoweth them not. Yet with them, if we were true for ourselves, we would desire to have our lot assigned; for they alone have an inheritance that can supply the wants of the immortal spirit, and endure while its being lasts. They are the persons spoken of in our text. Those who are Christ’ s, and therefore Abraham’ s seed, and heirs according to the promise. To be Christ’ s is to belong to Him, as those who have given themselves to Him, come under His government and guidance, placed themselves at His disposal, and whom He hath taken for His own, redeeming them from all iniquity, purifying them to Himself. But there is more than this. They are in Him, and He is in them, by a spiritual and vital union formed between them; so they may be regarded as members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. He that is thus joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Now, if ye be Christ’ s in this sense, then are ye Abraham’ s seed. They have an inheritance. All the promises of God, the promises of the covenant made with Abraham, are in Christ yea, and in Him amen; and they who are Christ’ s must therefore have an interest in them all.1. Their inheritance is one which is freely given them of God, or gratuitously bestowed. This may be said of all the gifts of God to His creatures. “ For who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” Angels do not possess their thrones of light as the merited reward of service rendered to the Great Supreme. Man in innocence, though he held that fair paradise in which he dwelt, and all its happy fruits, by the tenure of his obedience, could not have been said to have won for himself, as due for that obedience, even had he continued in it, that which was justly forfeited by transgression. It is still more manifest in regard to those of his fallen race, who are constituted heirs according to the promise of an eternal inheritance, that the change effected in their state and prospects must be wholly of grace. 2. It is an inheritance which is spiritual in its character. It includes in it, indeed, the means of temporal subsistence; the things needful for the body. But these, only in as far as they may be subservient to spiritual and eternal interests. The good promised, however, does not lie altogether without themselves, in the abundance of the things they shall possess in the land of their habitation. It is rather an exaltation and enlargement of their own being. The Spirit of promise is the earnest of the inheritance now; and there is nothing of an earthly or carnal nature in what He imparts as a pledge and foretaste of its delights. Wisdom, and purity, and love, are His fruits. 3. That it is yet future and unseen. They who are heirs according to the promise have the inheritance in prospect, not in full possession. They hope for what they see not. They are under tutors and governors, until the time appointed of the Father for their entering on the enjoyment of that for which His discipline is preparing them. 4. It will be satisfying and eternal. How striking in these respects is the difference between it and every earthly inheritance! The inheritance of those who are heirs according to the promise is “ incorruptible, and undefiled, and fadeth not away.” The gold and the silver which are so much coveted here are reckoned by the apostle among corruptible things, but this inheritance cannot be marred or vitiated; neither moth nor rust will ever tarnish its beauty or embitter its sweetness; nothing shall enter into that world, that better and heavenly country where it lies, that defileth, or that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie. Holiness and happiness shall there be felt to be but different names for the same thing, or shall be found in indissoluble and blissful union. 5. It is infallibly secured to those who are heirs according to the promise. He is faithful who hath promised it. He who cannot lie, the apostle tells us, promised it before the world began. We trust you have been already examining yourselves. Yet we may offer a few suggestions further on a subject which at no season can be without its interest to those who would know whether they be in the faith.1. We may say that they who are heirs according to the promise may be distinguished by the foundation on which they rest their hope of the inheritance. This is not any worth or goodness of their own, not any compensation they have to make for past offences, by contrition for sin and amendment of life, not any gifts or offerings they have to present to God in order to conciliate His favour. It is the promise itself which secures the inheritance to all who are persuaded of it and embrace it. But the promise is in Christ Jesus. 2. They may be distinguished by their regards to the inheritance itself. The character of that inheritance is spiritual, but we are by nature carnal, sold under sin. We have no delight in holy exercises; no desire to know, and see, and dwell with God. A great change must take place in our dispositions before we can derive any satisfaction from the society of saints in light, from fellowship with Jesus, the Holy One of God, from the felt presence of the Father of our spirits. He can no otherwise bless us but by turning us away from our iniquities. 3. They who are heirs according to the promise may be distinguished by the influence which the hope of the inheritance has on their tempers and conduct. (J. Henderson, D. D.)Christian privileges I. To be Christ’ s, i.e., to belong to Him as members of His body.1. The means. Faith makes us one with Christ. 2. The immediate benefits-- (1) love;(2) care;(3) protection (Ephesians 5:29-30). II. In Christ to be Abraham’ s seed.1. The Jews and all legalists have despised their birthright and broken away from Abraham. 2. Christ is the true seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:16), and those who are one with Christ by faith become the same through Him. Note (1) the antiquity;(2) the nobility of the Christian’ s ancestry. III. As Abraham’ s seed, to be heirs of Abraham’ s promise.1. Of the Spirit (Galatians 3:14), which is the earnest of the inheritance. 2. The full enjoyment of the inheritance in heaven. The Use: Believers should (1) Be content with any earthly estate. In this regard Abraham was content to forsake his country (Hebrews 11:8-9). (2) Be moderate in their earthly cares, and not live as drudges in the world. (3) Have a care for heaven in comparison with which the things of this world are trifles. This did Abraham (Hebrews 11:15-16). (W. Perkins.)Believers heirs of God When the Danish missionaries stationed at Malabar set some of their converts to translate a Catechism, in which it was asserted that believers became the sons of God, one of the translators was so startled that he suddenly laid down his pen, and exclaimed, “ It is too much: let me rather render it, ‘ They shall be permitted to kiss His feet!’” Galatians 4:1-2 Now this I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant. Reading life There is nothing final in the character of this world. But all betrays infancy. Everything is in a state of preparation. We move up and down amidst the reflections of the future. Certainly the material world has not reached its destination. The air we breathe--the sky we look on--the soil we tread--are only to go to make a “ new heaven and a new earth.” And the Divine government, which is now, is mainly to illustrate the government which is to come. We have churches now; but they are only to prepare us for a state where there shall be no church--because every spot shall be holy. This world, then, is one large training-school, where we are placed for a little while, to learn to fulfil the duties of that great service for which we were destined and created. Training consists of three things: instruction, which is the imparting knowledge, and giving new ideas; education, which is the drawing out, and directing, the powers of mind and heart; and moral discipline, which is the moulding character, and the formation of good habits. This is just what life is. I. We are here to get knowledge, and new ideas about the things of God. How shall we enter heaven without some previous knowledge of it: its conditions--its employments? And if there is no greater pleasure on this earth than to get a new idea, what must it be when the new ideas are these: to inform the mind about God; to see every day some new, fresh beauty in Jesus; to impregnate the understanding with the Infinite? II. But let me speak to you, secondly, of your education for another world--according to the strict meaning of the word education. You are probably aware that the word “ education” means “ to draw out,” “ to educe.” So that when we educate a child, it is, literally and properly, that we draw out what is in the child. The gardener does not make the branches and the tendrils; but he lays them out, he guides them, he gives each its proper place and order. He lops what is redundant; he fastens and makes sure what is good. But, be sure of this, there is that in you which, if you will, and if you will only let it, can expand into all that is happy, and all that is holy, and all that is useful, and all that is Divine, here and for ever. III. Now, thirdly, the way in which this is to be done, we call discipline, the third part of training. Selfdiscipline, and God’ s discipline. And yet they are not two, for God’ s discipline is to make and to take effect through self-discipline. Do not count discipline a hard word. In God’ s vocabulary, discipline is only another word for love. There cannot be discipline without friction--without struggle. But a victory over self is such a very pleasant thing. And the compensations are so accurate, and so great, that discipline itself soon loses to you its sterner sense, and becomes the element of all happiness. Discipline is to form habits. Do not forget that you are placed here mainly to form habits, to learn to do and be what you are to do and be eternally. To form a good habit must always involve the unforming a bad one. So you begin to hold yourself in hand, to exercise self-control, to cultivate pious thoughts--acts of devotion and religious communion, and a holy walk--which are the things you are to do for ever and ever. Meanwhile, all outward things are working for you, You will find yourselves in strange circumstances. But all to practise and increase some grace--and especially a lacking one. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The three estates I. Socially.1. The servant.2. The child under tutors and governors.3. The man come of age, liberated, and in possession of the inheritance. II. Ecclesiastically.1. The condition of servitude was that of the Church under the law, in bondage to beggarly elements. 2. The condition of the child already adopted but waiting for the inheritance is that of the Church under the gospel. 3. The condition of the man, full grown and enjoying his inheritance is that of the Church in glory. III. Spiritually.1. The state of servitude is that of the soul unconverted. “ He that committeth sin is the slave of sin.” Sin is “ bondage of corruption.” 2. The state of Sonship and liberty is that of the soul justified and sanctified (John 8:35; John 15:15). 3. The state of full manhood is where the glorifled saint enters the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and which fadeth not away. (E. Garbett, M. A.)The children at school I. The school.1. The period covered: from conversion to glorification--“ the time appointed of the Father.” 2. The necessity for the intermediate schooltime arises from the degree and effect of imperfect sanctification. 3. The school sphere, this world, is admirably adapted to the discipline of the soul. For moral lessons to be learned by heart and conscience differ from intellectual. Instruction may convey the latter, only practical experience the former. (1) Faith can only grow in the absence of perfect sight;(2) hope amidst disappointment;(3) love by opposition and sacrifice;(4) submission amidst contradiction; and(5) patience amidst prolonged trial. II. The schooling.1. The knowledge conveyed: God Himself. (1) The loftiest.(2) The most satisfying. 2. The books employed. (1) Nature.(2) The human heart. (3) Providence.(4) Scripture, which explains others. 3. The teacher. (1) Divine.(2) Perfect.(3) Gentle.(4) Patient. III. The discipline.1. necessity for this arises from our corrupt nature and constant temptations. 2. In the sense of discipline we must interpret the afflictions of this transitory state (Romans 5:3-5). IV. In view of the advantages of school life and the prospect of home.1. Be patient.2. Teachable. 3. Earnest.4. Obedient, as befits those who are “ under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father.” (E. Garbett, M. A.)Under tutors and governors This whole world is a training school, and all life is discipline. Understand your position. You are “ an heir,” an heir of an estate whose value no numbers can represent; an heir of a kingdom! But you are a “ child;” whatever age you be, you are in the infancy of your existence. And the great end of your being is preparation for your majority--which lies the other side the grave. And therefore, all is laid out here--by your wise and loving Father--for your education. You are at home in your own household, and all is going on day after day, in the ordinary round. You meet in the morning; you sit together at meals: you join in the evening circle. It all seems very commonplace. But what and if in all this you are placed, by God, to prepare yourself for “ the family” in heaven? Or, you go about in all the activities and businesses of your earthly calling. Have you bethought you that they are all to cultivate the accuracy, and the energy, and the faithfulness which will make you fit for higher trust and heavenly engagements, and more than angelic offices, in another stage of your immortality? Or, you walk among the beauties of God’ s creation: or you sit down and you study the pages of Divine lore: and what is the whole universe, what is it but a lesson book in which you are to read, day by day, something of the character, and the wisdom, and the love of God? Yet, all you read now, is only like a little child learning his alphabet. Those pains and troubles, what are they? Correctives. Not very general correctives that will do for every one. That would not be the way of a good “ tutor,” or a wise “ governor.” But the particular grief, the particular happiness, which is exactly suited to your special case, and still more to your destined place and portion which you are to occupy in another world. Are not the poor, and the sorrowful, the “ tutors” who are sent to prepare you for the higher exercises of heaven?--for the missions and the ministrations of the redeemed! (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Galatians 4:3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. The elements of this world The law was so called. I. In respect of the fuller and complete doctrine of the new testament. II. Because Jewry was a little school set up in a corner of the world and the law an A.B.C. or primer in which Christ was revealed in an elementary and obscure manner. Thus we see--1. That God’ s ancient people were heirs as well as we: the only difference is the manner which God used in dispensing His blessings. 2. That they were but children in respect of us; (1) as regards the Mosaic regimen: they were kept subject to more laws than we;(2) as regards revelation: God has revealed more to us than to them (Luke 10:24; Hebrews 1:1-2). 3. That we should increase in the knowledge and grace of God so as to be answerable to our condition. How sad that a Christian who should be a teacher is often a babe (Hebrews 5:12). 4. That we should rejoice in and live conformably to our privilege as sons. (W. Perkins.)Children cannot have presented to them pure intellectual conceptions They must first learn the import of external signs. They must learn language and letters. They must put together syllables and words. They must see thought through the medium of form, or learn to think of what is moral and spiritual by facts, parables, pictures, or such like appeals to the imagination and the senses. For a time words to the young mind are things--stories are facts. By and by the inward meaning of what has been learned comes to be understood. The outward ultimately falls off or loses its primary aspect and uses; and the man, with his fully developed and perfected faculties, is in immediate contact with the abstract and the spiritual. He then feels as if he apprehended it, and could reason about it, or at least meditate upon it, without the aid of words and signs. “ When I was a child,” etc. (1 Corinthians 12:11-13). Then I saw through a glass darkly--feeling after truth as reflected from a mirror, or presented in a parable; now I look upon it face to face. (T. Binney, D. D.)All mankind, the whole race of Adam, were until the Incarnation of Christ as children 1. Because of their want of knowledge of God and the feebleness of their intellect in the things of God. 2. Because of their condition as under the laws of nature or of ceremonies, so that they were no better than servants under the control of a taskmaster. But to the Jews especially does this word “ children” apply--1. As being ordinarily busied about small things, minute observances--the occupation of children. 2. Because of the littleness of their knowledge of Divine things. 3. Because of their fear of correction, their timidity as children, going ever in the fear of death (W. Denton, M. A.)The minor I. His position--one of restraint, subservience, dependence. II. His training--suitable (v. 3), wise, appointed and limited by the Father. III. His prospects--well grounded, magnificent, conditional. (J. Lyth.)Childhood is a period of-- I. Subjection. II. Instruction. III. Anticipation. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 4:4-5 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son.Christ’ s Advent in the fulness of time The question has often been asked, Why did not Christ come sooner? Why were patriarchs, kings, and prophets, left to experience the sickness of heart arising from hope long deferred? It was necessary that the world should be left to itself, in order that its own strivings being proved insufficient to the finding out God, there might be a standing demonstration of the need of a revelation. And this experiment demanded long ages for its development. Men must be tried under varieties of circumstance: whilst the traditions of a righteous ancestry were fresh in their keeping--when those traditions had been lost or corrupted, and natural religion had a clear stage to itself--when they had sunk into barbarism, and when through strenuous exertions they had wrought themselves up to a high pitch of civilization. It is, in a measure, a mistake which has been assumed as a truth in our foregoing reasoning--that mankind, with the exception of the Jews,. were abandoned by God, during those dark ages which preceded Christ’ s coming On the contrary, if you rest not satisfied with a superficial glance, you will perceive that God was working upon the world with a distinct reference to preparing it for the gospel. Besides, if you examine the period of our Lord’ s appearance on earth, you will not think it too much to say, that the season was made on purpose (so to speak) for the circumstances. The period was a most remarkable one--such as could only have been brought round by the revolutions and convulsions of many centuries. The Roman power had spread itself over all the nations of the then known world; and thus all those petty states, whose jostling and opposing interests might have withstood the propagation of Christianity, were swallowed up in one great empire. At the same time, the seat of that empire lay so distant from Judea, the cradle of our faith, that no opposition could thence suddenly arise to the infant religion. Christianity was sure to obtain a good footing before jealousy could be entertained, and, therefore, persecution appointed, by those who occupied the remote throne of the Caesars. Add to this, that in conformity with His character of the Prince of Peace, no breath of war ruffled the vast surface of the Roman empire, when the Saviour condescended to be born of a woman. The turbid waves of factious or ambitious policy had for a while settled into quiet, and the temple of Janus closed its doors that the Church of Jesus might throw open its gates. So that there was nothing to oppose the progress of the messengers of the gospel; the world stood free for their labours; they might pass from land to land; they might cross seas, and rivers, and mountains. It was, moreover, “ the fulness of time,” because many prophecies met in it, and received their accomplishment. The great marvel of the prophecies which bear upon the work and person of Jesus is, that they were delivered by a succession of men, rising up with long intervals between, and each becoming more minute in his predictions, as he stood more nearly on the threshold of the Advent. The day of Christ’ s birth lying a long way off from that of man’ s apostasy, might be made a kind of focus, into which should be gathered the prophetic rays of successive generations. You must readily perceive, that this collecting into one point the pencils of light emanating from successive ages, would mark out the birth-time of Messiah with a vividness and an accuracy which could not have been produced by a lesser combination. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The preparation of the world for the gospel Two principles should be borne in mind by those who would discover the Divine purposes in history,1. The first is that God has the supreme control of events--that He “ worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” 2. The other principle is that the operations of Providence should be studied in connection with any other disclosures which we may have of the laws and plans of the Divine workings. This rule is necessary if we would distinguish between those evils in our world which have been permitted and overruled for beneficent and holy ends, and those events which have been brought about either because in themselves excellent or for the accomplishment of good results. Let us spread before us the map of the world’ s affairs as they stood in the days of our Lord’ s appearance among men, and let us see the mighty hand of God in the disposition of them all, First, if we regard that age in its secular aspect, we find two great preparations for the successful diffusion of the gospel. The one of these was a general union and tranquility of the world, under Roman law; and the other a wide-spread civilization, accompanied by a well-nigh universal language, resulting chiefly from Grecian influence That of the one, if we may so speak, was negative, and was chiefly occupied in removing obstructions, so that a free course might be given to the Word of God. That of the other was positive, and furnished great facilities for the presentation and dissemination of the truth. It fact it would have mattered but little that the nations were kept in quietness under the compelling power of Roman law, had not the spirit of Grecian civilization, pervading the organization of Rome, exerted everywhere a beneficial influence. Let us now turn from the secular to the spiritual aspect of the ancient world if we would discover yet more convincing evidence of the workings of Divine wisdom. Here, again, the attentive reader of history can perceive two great preparations for the introduction of the gospel. The one of these was a deep consciousness of moral debasement and of religious darkness pervading the Gentile nations; and the other was a very general diffusion of the knowledge of the Jewish faith throughout the Roman Empire, accompanied by a recognition of its truth and excellence. The condition of the heathen world at the time of our Saviour’ s advent was truly deplorable. That dreadful description which Paul gives in the first part of his Epistle to the Romans is fully verified by the accounts of contemporary historians. The heathen were not without a knowledge of God, a sense of moral obligation and a perception of the distinction between right and wrong. In the discussions of their philosophers we find not only some of the most eloquent praises of virtue that ever were written, but also the clearest directions regarding the various duties of life. The taw of God was plainly written on their hearts. In proof of this we may cite the remarkable fact that the treatise of Cicero, “ Concerning Morals,” was long used as a text-book in seminaries of the Christian Church. Indeed, this treatise must ever give delight to those who can appreciate the wisdom and purity of its instructions. But it was the wretchedness and the condemnation of the heathen world that they knew their duty and they did it not. Their philosophy was utterly powerless to resist the influences which destroyed them; and their religion was worse than powerless. None save the lowest class of the people retained any faith in the polytheistic creeds; a general feeling a want regarding both the knowledge and the efficacy of religion pervaded the nations of the world. But there was yet another method in which a Divine Providence was preparing the nations for our Saviour’ s advent. This was, the diffusion of the principles of the Jewish faith throughout every part of the Roman Empire. All classes in society had some followers of Moses; even kings and queens did not blush to own themselves believers in the God of Israel. Then also multitudes of thinking men who made no profession of Judaism were familiarized with the conceptions of the ever-living Jehovah and of His promised Christ. In this way the ancient form of religion went before Christianity, heralding its approach and predisposing men for its clearer and more powerful revelations. There was then an external fitness for the successful impartation of the truth. Under the security and tranquility of Rome’ s imperial sway the gospel was committed to the language of educated and thoughtful humanity, and was borne on the life-currents of Grecian civilization to the various populations of the earth. There was, also, a deeper and spiritual preparation. Bitter experience had proved the worthlessness of the ancient superstitions, and had shown that extremity of wickedness and misery to which our race is tending, and from which there can be no deliverance save through the power of a Heaven sent faith. And, finally, the Jewish religion, containing in its bosom the essential truths of salvation, by its gradual diffusion, gave men a prophetic foretaste of Christianity, and a readiness to receive further; Divine instructions. From this whole subject we may derive two important lessons. First, let us learn to adore and love and trust that Almighty Being who rules, with purposes of mercy, over the children of men. That is an exalted conception of God which is presented to us in the Christian doctrine of providence. No evil genius presides over human destinies; nor a blind, unconscious fate; nor a stern God of justice who has forgotten to be gracious. It is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, from the beginning of the world till the present day, has been controlling the affairs of our globe to advance His compassionate designs. What a confidence have Christians here! In the midst of the revolutions, and disasters, and evils of earth, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let us, also, be taught by this subject, the inestimable importance of the religion of Jesus Christ. When the Roman procurator of Judea carelessly questioned the Galilean who stood before him, accused by the malicious Jews, he little thought that the very empire, in which he himself was but an insignificant officer, was brought into existence and built up into power to advance the mission of that despised and persecuted Nazarene. And when the light-minded Athenians mocked the unpretending preacher of the Cross, they were far from conjecturing that the chief object for which the language and the civilization of Greece had been developing for centuries, was to diffuse the gospel which Paul proclaimed throughout all the habitable globe. Yet, in the mind of the Supreme Being, this was a worthy end of a providential control of human affairs during a period of thousands of years. See how differently God and man view the same things! But if Christianity has received such care from Almighty God, how important should this religion be in the eyes of those for whose welfare it is intended! (E. J. Hamilton, D. D.)Christ obedient to the law 1. Christ’ s obedience to the law was not a matter of course, following upon His Incarnation. He might have lived and died, had it been consistent with His high purpose, in sinless purity--without expressly undertaking, as He did, openly to fulfil the law. 2. It was not only an integral, but also a necessary part, of His work of redemption. He came, as regarded this matter, not to stand beneath the law, but to stand above it; and this He could only do by fulfilling it, and carrying out its higher and more spiritual meaning, and causing God’ s truth and purity and holiness to shine through the outward veil of its commandments and ordinances. Moreover, He was the end of the law. It all pointed to Him. Its types and ceremonies all found their fulfilment in His person and work. All sacrifice was consummated by His suffering. And not less striking is the way in which the fact of Christ having been made under the law, unites and clears and justifies all God’ s dealings with man. God gave a law which was valid through whole generations of men; a law with various sanctions and ordinances and prohibitions. That law is done away. The Church of God seems to stand on other foundations; to have changed the ground of her obedience, and the warrant of her hope. But this is not so. Not a jot nor a tittle of that law has fallen away, or become void. All has been fulfilled. (Dean Alford.)Man in the light of the Incarnation The pivots on which the crises of history revolve are seemingly very minute. I. The incarnation implies the greatness of human nature. It is a fact, that God has been manifest in the flesh, in the person of His Son. God has expressed His attributes in many things. Men do the like in their works. In the Incarnation God did not embody mere qualities and perfections, but Himself. How closely must the nature of man be related to the nature of God; for God Himself became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth! It was through the points of similarity between the nature of God and the nature of man, involved in the Divine Fatherhood, that the Incarnation of Deity in humanity became possible. We revolt at the heathen idea, that a Divine being can be enshrined in an idol of wood or stone, because there are no godlike faculties through which the radiance of a Divine presence can stream forth on the kindred faculties of the worshippers who are to be illumined by the manifestation. If man be the offspring of God, the Incarnation becomes rational and credible. Of the grandeur of our nature, as set forth in this early announcement, the coming of the Son of God in the flesh is the demonstration. II. The incarnation indicates the high destiny of man. Christ Jesus was the sample of that moral perfection to which humanity may be raised by the power and grace of God. The nature of a thing discloses more or less distinctly its primary intention. In all departments of creation we argue from the adaptations of an organ to the uses for which it was designed. The eye is for light and for the objects of beauty and deformity which light unveils. The ear is for sounds--melodies, harmonies, and discords. Reason and conscience are faculties related to truth and duty. It is but an application of the same process to infer from the powers of man the purpose of his Maker.1. Our souls were evidently intended for fellowship with God. That we have faculties resembling the Divine attributes, is an intimation of this purport of our being. 2. Men were plainly framed to work with God as well as to commune with Him. We have benevolent activities resembling the beneficent energies of the Almighty. From our humble level we can pity and succour. We were formed for God-like thoughts, God-like motives, and God-like deeds. 3. Human beings were distinctly marked out for dominion and glory. III. The incarnation brings out in deepest hues and darkest shades the sinfulness of our race. But of this be sure, that the greatness of man’ s sin is inseparable from the greatness of man’ s nature. IV. The incarnation should inspire mankind with brightest hope. If our state had been without the prospect of deliverance, the Son of God would not have become flesh. He would not have appeared in our nature to mock our despair. The Incarnation is Divine testimony to our recoverability. V. The incarnation seems to suggest, that the moral and regal perfection of our humanity is unattainable unless God dwell in us. Life and beauty, stem and leaf, bloom and fruit, lie hidden in the seed. While there is nothing but the seed, the wonderful vegetable fabric, with its verdure, fragrance, and loveliness, is merely latent. So all the spiritual capabilities of our nature continue undeveloped while the soul subsists in vital and moral isolation from God. The Divine ideal of humanity cannot be fulfilled by humanity alone. There must be a Divine vivification of the dormant energies. The re-creating Spirit must brood over the chaos. VI. The incarnation demonstrates that your souls are very dear to God. How vast is God’ s interest in us! He has sent His own Son to us in the nature of one of our race, one of our very selves. If a monarch waives the pomp of majesty, lays aside the burden of empire, and crosses the threshold of some humble cottage, to minister to a sufferer among the lowly poor, how obvious and how touching is his concern for his obscure and afflicted subject! (H. Batchelor.)Preparation for the Advent Our Lord’ s appearance on the scene of human history corresponds with the general law so far as this--that He comes when a course of preparation, conducted through previous ages, was at last complete. But then He was not the creation, as we say, of His own or of any preceding age. What is true of all other great men, who are no more than great men, is not true of Him. They receive from their age as much as they give it; they embody and reflect its spirit. They catch the ideas which are in circulation--which are, as we speak, “ in the air” --and they express them more vividly than do others, whether by speech or by action. The age contributes much to make them, and the age is pleased with them because it sees itself reflected in them, and their power with it is often in an inverse ratio to that of their real originality. With our Lord it is utterly otherwise. He really owed nothing to the time or the country which welcomed His Advent. He had no contact with the great world of Greek thought, or of Roman politics and administration. He borrowed just so much rabbinical language and sayings as to make Himself intelligible to His own generation; but no rabbi, of whatever school, could have said, or could have omitted to say, what He did. The preceding ages only prepared His way before Him in the circumstances, in the convictions, in the moral experiences of men; and thus a preceding period marked in the counsels of God had to be run out. At last its final hour had struck. That hour was the fulness of time: it was the moment of the Advent. There was a threefold work of preparation for the Son of God, carried forward in what was then called the civilized world; and each portion of this preparation demanded the lapse of a certain period. I. The world had to be prepared, in a certain sense, politically for Christ’ s work.1. A common language. This was partly provided by the conquests of Alexander. He spread the Greek language throughout Western Asia, throughout Egypt; and when Greece itself was conquered, the educated Romans learnt the language of their vanquished provincials. And thus, when our Lord came, the Greek language, in which the New Testament is written, was the common tongue of the civilized world, ready to St. Paul’ s hand for the missionary work of Christianity. 2. A common social system, laws, and government. During the half-century which preceded the birth of Christ, the Roman Empire was finally consolidated into a great political whole, so that Palestine and Spain--so that North Africa and Southern Germany--were administered by a single government. Christianity, indeed, did not need this, for it passed beyond the frontiers of the empire in the lifetime of the apostles; and the earliest translation of the New Testament--that into Syrian, in the first half of the second century--showed that it could dispense with Greek. But this preparation was, nevertheless, an important clement in the process by which preceding ages led up to the fulness of time. II. Then there was a preparation in the convictions of mankind. The heathen nations were not without some religion--a religion which contained within various degrees certain elements of truth, however mingled with, or overlaid by, extraordinary error. Had it not been for the element of truth which is to be found in all forms of heathenism, heathenism could not have lasted as it did. Had there not been much true religious feeling in the ancient world, although it was lavished often upon unworthy and miserable objects, the great characters with whom we meet in history could not have existed. But the ancient religions tended from the first to bury God, of whose existence the visible world assured them, in that visible world which witnessed to Him. Those powers of nature which are, as we know, but His modes of working--which are but the robe with which he covers Himself--become more and more, when man is without a revelation, objects of devout veneration. The principle is the same in the fetishism which finds a god in some single natural object, and in the pantheism which, like that of India, looks forward to the absorption of the individual soul into the universal life of nature. The Greeks never knew, at their best time, of a literally Almighty God; still less did they know anything of a God of love; but it was necessary that their incapacity to retain in their knowledge the little they did know about Him should be proved to them by experience. Certainly, their great men, such as Plato, tried to spiritualize, in a certain sense, the popular ideas about God, but the old religion would not bear his criticism. It went to pieces when it was discussed; and philosophy, which he wished to take its place, having no facts, that is, no religious facts, to appeal to, but consisting only of views, could never become a real religion, and so take its place. The consequence was the simultaneous growth of gross superstition and of blank unbelief--a growth which continued down to the very time of the Incarnation. Never before was the existence of any Supreme Being so widely denied in civilized human society, as in the age of the first Caesars. Never were there so many magicians, incantations, charms, rites of the most debased and most debasing kind, as in that age. The most gifted of races had done its best with heathenism, anal the result was that all the highest and purest minds loathed the present, and looked forward to the future. It was the fulness of the time. The epoch of religious experiments had been closed in an epoch of despair which was only not altogether hopeless. III. There was also a preparation in the moral experience of mankind. There was, at times, much of what we call moral earnestness in the ancient world; but men were content, as a rule, with being good citizens, which is by no means necessarily the same thing as being good men. In the eyes of Socrates, for instance, all obligations were discharged if a man obeyed the laws of Athens. Plato, St. Augustine said, approached Christianity more nearly than any other; and yet Plato tolerated popular vices of the gravest description, and he drew a picture of a model State in which there was to be a community of wives. And the moral teachers whom St. Paul afterwards found at Athens were Epicureans and Stoics. They divided the ancient world between them, practically. The Stoic morality has often been compared with Christianity; it differed from it vitally. Every single virtue was dictated by pride, just as every Epicurean virtue was inspired by the wish to economize the sources of pleasure. “ Nowadays,” says a pagan writer, Quinctilian, “ the greatest vices are concealed under the name of philosophy.” And the morality of the masses of men whom the philosophers could not and did not dare to influence, was just what might be expected. The dreadful picture of the pagan world which St. Paul draws (Romans 1:1-32.), is not a darker picture than that of pagan writers--of moralists like Seneca, of satirists like Juvenal, of historians like Tacitus; and yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn average pagan practices. Man still had, however obscurely, some parts of the law of God written deep in his heart. Men saw and approved (they said it themselves) the better course, and they followed the worse; and the natural law was thus to them only a revelation of sin and of weakness. It led them to yearn for a deliverer, although their aspirations were indefinite enough. Still this widespread corruption, this longing for better things, marked the close of the epoch of moral experiments; it announced that the fulness of the time had come. (Canon Liddon.)Preparation of the Jewish people for Christ 1. Politically the Jews were expecting change. They retained the feelings while they had lost the privileges of a free people. Their aspirations looked to a better future, though they mistook its character. The sceptre had departed from Judah. Shiloh, they believed, would immediately come. 2. Their purely religious convictions pointed in the same direction. Prophecy had in the course of ages completed its picture of a coming deliverer. Beginning with the indefinite promise of a deliverance, it had gradually narrowed the fulfilment, first to a particular race, then to a particular nation, then to a particular tribe, and a particular family. And the birth, the work, the humiliations, the death, the triumph, of the deliverer had been described during the interval the nation had been particularly active in arranging, comparing, discussing the great treasures which it had received from the past; and there was consequently what the New Testament calls an “ expectation of Israel,” for which all good men in that age were waiting. 3. Above all, the Jews had a moral preparation to go through, too--the law, which they had not kept either in letter or spirit, and which was therefore to them nothing less than a constant revelation of their own weakness and sin. It showed them what in their natural strength they could not do; it showed them, like a lantern carried into a dark chamber of horrors which had never been lighted up before, what they had done. Thus the law was a confidential servant (which is the true meaning of pedagogue; not schoolmaster), to whom God had entrusted the education of Israel, to bring him to Christ. And this process of bringing him had just reached its completion; the fulness of the time had come. (Canon Liddon.)The Divine plan in human affairs This remarkable expression, “ the fulness of the time,” is with a slight variation elsewhere used by St. Paul. He calls the gospel, when writing to the Ephesians, “ the dispensation of the fulness of times” ; and it is easy to see that in both cases he really means by “ fulness” that which fulfils or finishes; he means the arrival of a given hour or moment which completes an epoch--the hour which thus makes its appointed measure and brings it to a close. It was in a like sense that our Lord and His apostles used the word “ hour,” as marking a particular point in His life, determined in the counsels of God (John 2:4; John 4:21; John 5:25; John 7:6; John 13:1; Matthew 26:45) All such language is only understood when we bear in mind that that succession of events which, looking at it from a human point of view, we call “ time,” is distributed upon a plan eternally present to the Divine mind, and that particular persons or particular characters are assigned, by this eternal plan, their predestinated place in the succession. “ To everything,” says the wise man, “ there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.” All the lesser incidents of our separate lives are really arranged in a preconcerted order. There is a fulness of time at which, and not before, we can understand particular truths or can undertake particular duties, because for these truths or these duties all that has preceded has been a preparation. “ My time,” we may say in this sense, too, “ is in Thy hand.” And this is peculiarly true of that last awful moment which awaits us all, and for which all that precedes it is one varied preparation--the moment of death. And in like manner it is true, generally, of those whom the world recognizes as its great men, that each appears in the fulness of time; each has his predestined hour, which he may not anticipate. He is in some sense the ripe product of the ages of thought, and feeling, and labour, which have elapsed before he comes: and that he should come when he does is just as much willed by the providence of God, as that he should be born at all. So it is with writers, with artists, with statesmen, even with discoverers and inventors. When such men as these are said to be before their age, it is only meant that the age has not yet taken its own true measure, and that they surprise it by a discovery. They really appear, one and all of them, in the fulness of time. (Canon Liddon.)The fulness of time “ The fulness of the time” means that moment which filled up the measure of the appointed time, which completed the number of the allotted days; it does not refer to the feelings of men, but to the predestination of God. Scripture tells us that the world was being educated for the coming of Christ, so as to be able to receive Him and to profit by His work. As the heir of some great house is during his childhood treated as a servant, and kept under tutors and governors, so were we under the elements of the world; if heathens, we were under the vague teaching of natural religion; if Jews, under the formal instruction of Mosaic ordinances. History tells us how all things were ripe for the Redeemer’ s coming just when He did come. God had prepared the civilized world for the reception of Christianity thus:-- I. By means of the Roman Empire He had reduced all the world under one government, so that there was free intercourse between all parts of the known world, and there was no political obstacle to the spread of the faith from one nation to another. II. By means of the Greek language, the most perfect instrument of thought ever known, He had made the earth to be (in a very great degree) of one tongue, and thus He had prepared the way for the apostles and evangelists of Christ. III. By means of the chosen people of the Jews--having still their religious centre at Jerusalem, yet scattered throughout the world--He had provided a nursery for the tender plant of the gospel, where it should be sheltered and fostered under the protection of an elder but kindred religion, until it was strong enough to be planted out in the world. IV. By reason of the general confluence and mutual competition of all kinds of heathen idolatries, He had caused heathenism to lose all its old repute and power over souls. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)Timeliness of the Advent It was the fulness of time. I. In reference to the giver. The moment had arrived which God had ordained from the beginning, and foretold by His prophets, for Messiah’ s coming. II. In reference to the recipient. The gospel was withheld until the world had arrived at mature age; law had worked out its educational purpose and now was susperseded. This educational work had been twofold:1. Negative. It was the purpose of all law, but especially of the Mosaic law, to deepen the conviction of sin and thus to show the inability of all existing systems to bring men near to God. 2. Positive. The comparison of the child implies more than a negative effect. A moral and spiritual expansion, which rendered the world more capable of apprehending the gospel than it would have been at an earlier age, must be assumed, corresponding to the growth of the individual; since otherwise the metaphor would be robbed of more than half its meaning. The primary reference in all this is plainly to the Mosaic law; but the whole context shows that the Gentile converts of Galatia are also included, and that they, too, are regarded as having undergone an elementary discipline, up to a certain point analogous to that of the Jews. (Bishop Lightfoot.)Shall we say that great events arise from antecedents or without them In the fulness of time, or out of due season; by sudden crises, or with long purpose and preparation? It is impossible for us to view the great changes of the world under any of these aspects exclusively. The spread of the Roman empire, the fall of the Jewish nation, the decline of the heathen religions, the long series of prophecy and teaching, are the natural links which connect the gospel with the actual state of mankind; the causes, humanly speaking, of its spread, and the soil in which it grew. But there was something else mysterious and inexplicable beyond and above all these causes, of which no account can be given, which came into existence at a particular time, because God chose that it should come into existence at that time. This is what the apostle calls “ the fulness of time.” (B. Jowett, M. A.)Christ’ s human birth a wonderful thing “ Is it not strange,” asked a thoughtful boy one day of his tutor, “ is it not strange that St. Paul should tell us that our Saviour was born of a woman? Everybody that I know is born of a woman, and it is hard to see why such a matter should be mentioned at all as if it were remarkable.”… There is, it is true, nothing remarkable in this circumstance, if we take human life simply as we find it. For us men to be born of a woman is not merely a rule, it is a rule to which there is no known exception. Since the first parent of our race, no human being has appeared upon this earth who has not owed the debt of existence to the pain and travail of a human mother. The rule holds equally with the wisest, with the strongest, with the saintliest. Millions there have been among the sons of men, who have been also by Divine grace made to become sons of God; millions who have been born again, and thus have seen the kingdom of God; but of these each one was also first born of a human mother. So that we are driven to ask why a circumstance which might have been taken quietly for granted should be invested by the apostle with such prominence in the case of our Saviour Jesus Christ. But observe, the question is whether in His case it could have been taken for granted? If St. Paul mentions it thus emphatically, it is because he, at least, will not at once presume that this is the case. If, indeed, the Christ whom St. Paul loved and served was only a Son of God by grace, while by nature He was only and purely a man, then to have written down that he was “ born of a woman” would have been an unmeaning truism. But if, in naming Him, St. Paul is thinking of Being whose nature is such as to make His appearance at all to the eye of sense, and in this visible sphere of things, in a very high degree extraordinary, then to say that He was “ born of a woman” is to make an assertion of startling significance. Now, that St. Paul is thinking of such a Being is clear, for when he says, “ God sent forth His Son,” he used the same word as when, just after, he says, “ God sent forth the Spirit of His Son.” It is a word which implies, not simply the action of God’ s providence, placing a created being on the scene of life; it is a word which implies a sending forth from the inmost life, from the depths of Deity itself, of One who shared the essential nature of the Sender. (Canon Liddon.)Woman exalted by Christ’ s birth The position of women in the ancient world was, as a rule, one of deep degradation. There are some great and saintly women in ancient Israel--Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah. There are women who are socially or politically great in paganism, without being at all saintly--Semiramis, Aspasia, Sappho, and the wives and mothers of the Caesars. But, as a rule, in antiquity woman was degraded; women were at the mercy, and the caprice, and the passions of men. They lived as they live to-day in the Mohammedan East, at least generally, a life in which the luxuries of a petty seclusion scarcely disguise the hard reality of their fate. And yet women were then, as now, the larger part of the human family; and one object, we may dare to say, of the Divine Incarnation, was to put woman’ s life on a new footing, within the precincts of the Kingdom of Redemption; and this was done when the Redeemer Himself God’ s Own Eternal Son, owning no earthly father, yet deigned to be “ born of a woman.” The highest honours ever attained by or bestowed upon the noblest or the saintliest members of the stronger sex, surely pale into insignificance when contrasted with this altogether unique prerogative of Mary. She herself, in the great hymn of the Incarnation, is already conscious of this. Let us think of the best man or woman we have ever known in life, and ask ourselves if it would be possible for him or her to say, without presumption, without absurdity, “ Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” But Mary--she utters these words, and from age to age Christendom verifies them. To have been the mother of the Divine Redeemer is a privilege unshared and incommunicable, and it sheds a glory upon all Christian women to the very end of time. It is this fact which has silently created that rare and beautiful feeling which in the Middle Ages took the form of chivalry, but which is wider and more lasting than to be identified with any one period of the Church’ s life; that feeling which, without the aid of legislation, without reducing itself to a theory or a philosophy, insensibly corrected the wrongs of centuries, and secured for woman that tender respect and deference which is the true safeguard of her commanding influence, and which alone secures it. The best guarantee of woman’ s liberty and influence is to be found in the fact that the Eternal Son deigned to be “ born of a woman.” (Canon Liddon.)The Immaculate Conception These words not merely affirm, they also deny. Their silence is as exclusive, as their positive import is significant. “ Born of a woman.” Nothing, then, is said of another earthly parent. No human father is named as the instrument of the Divine providence. The apostle is thinking, we may say with confidence, on our Lord’ s birth of a virgin mother. It is true that in St. Paul’ s writings there is no definite and unmistakable reference to the Immaculate Conception; but we must remember(1) that there is no one occasion in St. Paul’ s writings on which such a reference would seem necessary; and (2) that St. Luke’ s Gospel, written under St. Paul’ s direction and illustrating his teaching, gives the fullest account of the circumstances of our Lord’ s Conception and Birth which we have in the New Testament. The word “ woman,” then, is in this passage emphatic. It pointedly implies that our Lord had only one earthly parent. Observe the import of this. It was a prime necessity that the Redeemer of mankind should be sinless. If He was to help our race out of its condition of moral degradation, He must have no part in the evil which it was His work to put away (Hebrews 7:26). But, then, human sin was not merely actual, hut original; not merely a result of each man’ s separate life and responsibility, but a consequence of the withdrawal of God’ s first gift of righteousness after Adam’ s transgression. It was, in fact, a twist of the hereditary human will; it was a taint upon the native affections and intelligence of the race; it was a subtle ingredient of the common character; it was an entail from the obligations of which the generations could not of themselves hope to escape. Men have constantly resented, as they resent to-day, the very idea of such an inheritance of evil; but they act, I observe, at least in social and in public matters, upon the presumption that it is true. Man is ever upon his guard against his brother man, as if he were a disguised or a possible enemy. Society protects itself by laws against human nature, by laws which would be a superfluous and insulting libel upon it if human nature were not by instinct and originally sinful. And thus for the apparition of a Sinless Being, truly sharing in our common nature, yet absolutely free from its inheritance of evil, some striking irregularity in the transmission of natural life--some flaw, if we might say so, conspicuous and intentional--was plainly suitable, in order to mark the entrance upon the scene of human life of One who shared the inheritance of flesh and blood, without sharing the tradition of sin. This was the meaning of the Lord’ s Birth of a virgin mother. It was because He “ became sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,” that He was in this emphatic and exclusive sense “ born of a woman.” (Canon Liddon.)Christ’ s Birth of a woman consecrates family life The life of the family is indeed older than Christianity; it is grounded on facts and instincts of human nature. It is perhaps, in the last analysis, the product of the action of man’ s reason and man’ s conscience upon his rudimentary physical instincts. But the nature and sacredness of family life has been recognized with very different degrees of clearness in different ages and countries of the world. It has had to contend with selfish passions always threatening to break it up, and, in particular, with the widespread and degrading institution of polygamy. Those who have best understood the true well-being of our race have done their best at all times to insist upon and to uphold family life as the safeguard of pure human life, as the firmest foundation of social order. Now, when our Lord condescended to be “ born of a woman,” He became a member of a human family, and He bestowed upon family life the greatest consecration it has ever received since the beginning of human history, He had, indeed, no earthly father; but He was subject to His foster-father, St. Joseph, as well as to His own mother, Mary. He was subject, while yet He blessed them. In every age Christians have loved to dwell upon the picture of that incomparable home, first at Bethlehem and then at Nazareth, that home in which for a while Mary presided, and for which Joseph toiled, and in which Jesus was nursed and trained. No homestead, we may be sure, ever rivalled the moral beauties of that which was set up on this earth when the Son of God was “ born of a woman.” From that day to this, He has been the inspiring, regulating, combining influence in all Christian households. In the Christian faith we trace His moral authority, in the Christian mother His tenderness and love, in the Christian child His lowly obedience. (Canon Liddon.)The character of the Messiah I. Here is the character of the person sent into the world. “ God sent forth His Son.” The phrase is of the same import, with those other expressions we meet with in Scripture (John 3:16; Hebrews 1:1). The meaning is: God having of old established several forms of religion among men, by divers ways of revelation, by discovering Himself to the patriarchs, by the delivering of the law to Moses; He did at last in mercy and compassion to mankind vouchsafe to afford them one more clear and perfect revelation of His will, by the preaching of a person of far greater excellence and authority than any before; even by His own Son. The person here declared to be sent into the world, was in a peculiar manner the Son of God. The text also implies that He was with God, in the bosom of the Father, before He was sent into the world. II. Here is a description of this Divine Person’ s condition, and His manner of conversation in the world--“ He was made of a woman, made under the law.” He was made of a woman, i.e., He became truly and really a man; not taking upon Him only the similitude of our nature, but being really and truly such; subjected to all the infirmities of human nature, and tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15; see also Hebrews 2:17). III. Here is the end and design of his coming thus into the world; set forth in the last part of the words--“ To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” The same phrase the apostle again makes use of in the Epistle to the Romans (Romans 8:15). God deals not with us as a master with his servants, but as a father with his sons, requiring of us not any hard and burdensome service, but only a rational and sincere obedience. Our Lord came “ to redeem them that were under the law;” i.e., to abrogate the burdensome ceremonies of the Jewish institutions; “ That we might receive the adoption of sons” ; i.e., that He might establish with men a new covenant, which should be most easy to observe, and most sufficient to justify those that should observe it. Most easy to observe, is this covenant of the gospel; because its precepts are not positive and carnal ordinances, but the great duties of the moral and eternal law of God. Christ has suffered for us, that we might receive the adoption of sons; but if we continue not to live virtuously as becomes the children of God, it will nothing profit us to have received this adoption. “ They only who are led by the Spirit of God, are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14). (S. Clarke, D. D.)Of the fulness of time, in which Christ appeared 1. We may consider it with respect to God’ s fore-determination; and then it was therefore the fulness of time, because determined and foretold by the prophets. According to that ancient prediction of Jacob (Genesis 49:10), the Messiah was to appear before the total dissolution of the Jewish Government. Again; the prophecy of Malachi (Malachi 3:1), determines the coming of our Saviour to be before the destruction of the second temple. And that no less remarkable prediction of Haggai (Haggai 2:6-7; Haggai 2:9). ‘ Tis evident therefore that the incarnation of Christ was in the fulness of time; that is, exactly at the time foretold and fore-determined by the prophets. And indeed these prophecies were so plain, that about the time of our Lord’ s appearance, the Jews, and from them the Romans, and all the eastern parts of the world, were in great expectation of some extraordinary person to arise, who should be governor of the world. But-- 2. Though it be evident that our Saviour came into the world in the fulness of time, viz., at the time foretold by the prophets; yet the question may still return, Why was that time determined rather than any other, and accordingly foretold by the prophets; for, without doubt, it was in itself absolutely the fittest and the properest season. Now two reasons there seem to have been more especially, of our Saviour’ s appearing at that time: the first is, because the insufficiency of the Jewish dispensation, as well as of natural religion, was then, after a long trial, become sufficiently apparent: apparent; not to God, who knows all things at once, and makes accordingly provision for all things from the beginning; but to men, to whom the counsel of God is opened by degrees. The second reason, why we may suppose our Savior appeared just at the time He did, was because the world was at that time by many extraordinary circumstances, peculiarly prepared for his reception. Now, about the time of our Saviour’ s birth, it is observable that there was a concurrence of many things in the world, to promote and further the propagation of such a religion. The Romans had then conquered almost all the known parts of the world; they had spread and settled their language among all the nations of their conquests, and had made the communication easy from one part to another. They had, moreover, improved moral philosophy to its greatest height. Further; the great improvement and increase of learning in the world about this time (according to that prophecy of Daniel, “ Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” ) gave occasion to the Jewish books to be dispersed through the world: and particularly the translating of the Bible some few ages before the birth of Christ into one of the then most known and universal languages upon earth, which had before been confined in a peculiar language to the Jews only, was a singular preparative to the reception of that great Prophet and Saviour of mankind, whose coming was in that book so plainly and so often foretold. Indeed this seems to have been the first step of God’ s discovering Himself further than by the light of nature to other nations as well as to the Jews, and of His giving the heathen also the knowledge of His revealed laws, and remarkably instrumental it afterwards appeared to be, in the propagating the Christian religion through the Gentile world. (S. Clarke, D. D.)The Incarnation of Jesus Christ Four thousand years elapsed between the giving of the promise and its fulfilment. It is natural to ask--why? I. Consider the wisdom and propriety of delaying the fulfilment of the promise until what Paul here calls “ the fulness of the time.” St. Paul asserts that at any earlier period it would have been as unwise to have sent His Son into the world, as to make any young man master of his own property till he came of age.1. At no period before “ the fulness of time” would the Incarnation of Christ have been so proper, all things considered. Redemption was equally needed at all times, but taking into account Christ’ s doctrines, life, miracles, etc., it would have been untimely earlier. During the antediluvian age, there was no man living who could have written such an account of it as to interest future generations, and at the same time benefit those of his own time. From the Flood to the time of Moses the world’ s population was comparatively small and uncivilized. From the time of Moses to the prophets, the Jews required fuller instruction and discipline to fit them for Christ’ s teaching. During the four monarchies war was so rife that the religion of Christ would not have gained public attention; or, if it had, men would afterwards have asserted that Christianity was the invention of some political tyrant of that age. 2. In the Augustan age, when Christ did come, the world was prepared thoroughly to examine His claims, was able to appreciate His doctrines by comparison and contrast, and was in such a state as to afford facilities for the extension and propagation of Christianity. II. Consider the manner of His incarnation.1. Christ came as a child. Fit emblem of the mission of mercy which brought Him. 2. He was born in a lowly station. No fear, then, but that the poorest and humblest are welcome to Him and to all His benefits. 3. Obedient to the law, and under its curse. III. Consider the great design of His incarnation.1. To redeem from the curse, not the obligation, of the law. You cannot obey the law too much, but you must look for justification to Christ alone. 2. To confer on all men the adoption of sons. We must believe this before we can feel it. (R. Philip.)The Advent of the Redeemer The purpose of Christ’ s earthly manifestation cannot have been to effect any change in God’ s disposition towards us, to make Him placable or propitious, for it was the fruit and issue of His love. (1 John 4:10; John 3:16). I. The timeliness of the advent. Every event in the unfolding of the Divine plan has its proper place. Evidence of this is not wanting in regard to the advent.1. The proof of the world’ s need was complete. Philosophy and religion had been tried, and failed. Nothing remained but disappointment and despair. 2. The Jewish nation was prepared. Prophecy fulfilled. People expectant. The old system worn out. 3. The circumstances of the age were favourable. Peace. Civilization. One language. II. The subjection to human conditions which Christ’ s advent involved.1. His true humanity.(1) Identity of nature with all men.(2) Antecedent mystery of another and higher nature.(3) Progressive development.(4) Completeness of sympathy. 2. His legal obedience. He submits to the yoke under which all are bound. (Homiletic Magazine.)Christ, the Saviour of men A little above Niagara Falls there is a cluster of islets. The most considerable of these is called Goat Island, and between Goat Island and the shore there is a stream of some breadth, and of exceeding swiftness, crossed by a little wooden bridge. One day a man was painting that bridge, and while thus engaged he happened to miss his footing and slip into the rapids, and was carried down with terrible swiftness. Though he struggled hard to make for the shore, his struggles were all in vain; the current was far too strong for him. Down, down he went, and it seemed as if in a few moments he would take the fearful leap into the unbottomed abyss. But just as it appeared that all hope was gone, he was intercepted by a little islet of rock not very far from the edge of the precipice--you would scarcely have noticed it if you were looking casually on the stream, it was so small; it attracted attention only by the ripples the water made about it. That little islet happened to lie right in his way; it intercepted his progress, and gave him foothold and handhold for a time. There he clung, and cried out for assistance. By and by a crowd gathered on the shore, and they began to devise all sorts of means to save him. They tried one thing after another, and plan after plan failed, until at last one brave man got the idea of having a rope put round his waist; and, getting into the river at just about the place where the man entered the water, so managed to angle across the stream, and yet be carried down it, that he reached the little islet of rock, and grasped the man there with all the strength he had left. And now, firmly clasped in each other’ s embrace they set out back again on their perilous journey, and safely reached the shore. By this time a great crowd had gathered, and you may imagine the ringing cheer which went up from that large company when the two men came safely back. Take this story as an illustration of man’ s helpless condition in this world until Christ left the eternal shore to come and rescue him. If man was to be saved these six conditions must be fulfilled; and they were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. I. Some one from the shore must undertake to save him. II. The Helper must leave the shore and come to him so that he can grasp Him. Not enough to see in the distance One who has pity; must be actual contact. III. In order to reach him the Deliverer must come within the sweep of the law. No other way of reaching him, but through the current. IV. The Rescuer must bear the drowning man’ s share of the curse of the law if He would save him. Powerless to bear the strain himself. V. The Rescuer must have strength enough to get safely back. VI. The Saviour and the saved must be firmly bound together. Otherwise the; strain will fall on both, and the latter will inevitably be drowned. Hence the need of faith, which is the grasp of the soul. (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)The world’ s majority A doctrinal explanation of the birth and life of Christ. That event marked--1. The world’ s coming of age. All pre-Christian history anticipative and preparatory. 2. The character of the new relationship opened up to men. (1) Liberty.(2) Divine sonship. 3. The means whereby the spiritual maturity of men is brought about. (1) It involved self-sacrifice on the part of God.(2) The proper human nature of man is assumed by Christ.(3) The obligations of the law are voluntarily discharged. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The fulness of time Trench thinks it a very remarkable fact that God’ s prophecies concerning the advent of His Son seem to have spread athwart the habitable globe, and in the shape of traditional echoes to have been dispersed all over the world. The poet Virgil says in one of his poems that He would soon be born into the world who would, he expected, bring in the golden age. Suetonius, an ancient historian, states that a certain and settled persuasion prevailed in the East that the cities of Judea would bring forth, about this time, a person who should obtain universal empire. And Tacitus states that it was contained in the ancient books of the Jewish priests that the East should prevail, These were scattered lights that went out from Judea, their reuniting centre, and gave the heathen an anticipation and a persuasion that some great and illustrious Deliverer was about to be born into the world. God’ s gift to the world An epitome of the scheme of redemption--an outline of the gospel plan--an abbreviating system of Christian divinity. I. The important event stated.1. The illustrious Person spoken of. 2. This illustrious Person was divinely commissioned. 3. The nature which He assumed. 4. The obligations to Which He was liable. (1) He was subject to the ceremonial law. He was circumcised, and presented in the temple; He worshipped in the synagogues, went up to the feasts, etc. (2) He was under the moral law. He lived it; and in all He spake, and did, and thought, He honoured it. He kept it, in all its extent, perfectly. He also taught it, spiritualized and vindicated it. (3) He was under both the ceremonial and moral law in His mediatorial capacity. He was both the Victim for sin and the High Priest of our profession. 5. The peculiar period of His manifestation. (1) The time referred to by the prophets. (2) After the world had been sufficiently informed as to the event, in various ways and forms, from the first promise to the last prophecy given. (3) When all means for man’ s restoration had proved totally inadequate. (4) When the world was in a state of profound peace. (5) When there was a general expectation of Him, especially among the Jews. (6) At that particular time, fixed upon as the best, by the infinite wisdom of God. II. The grand ends contemplated in these events.1. That we might obtain redemption.2. That we might receive adoption.3. That believers might thus enjoy redemption and the adoption of sons. Learn:1. The way in which redemption has been effected.2. The invaluable blessings it presents before us.3. The importance of a saving, personal interest in them.4. Exhort the guilty and perishing to believe and have life. (J. Burns, D. D.)The first Advent of Messiah I. The time of His coming. He came “ when the fulness of the time was come.” And what time was that?1. It was the time appointed of the Father--the time fixed for His coming in the mind and counsel of God. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world, and even from all eternity. Nothing happens to Him by chance, 2. It was the time foretold by the prophets--those holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 3. It was a time peculiarly suitable for His coming, and is, therefore, called the fulness of the time. It was a time when events seemed to have gradually ripened for this glorious consummation. It was a time, lastly, when His forerunner appeared to prepare His way before Him, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and thus making ready a people prepared for the Lord. Such was the time of the Redeemer’ s advent. II. Consider the manner of His coming. “ When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” There are here three particulars for our consideration.1. God sent forth His Son. This expression evidently implies that the Son of God existed before He was sent forth. And does not the Scripture everywhere corroborate the truth thus implied? But where did He exist before His Divine mission? He existed with God in heaven. He was in the bosom of the Father. “ I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” Consequently, we are not to suppose, when God is here said to have sent Him forth, that it implies any inferiority of nature on the part of the Son; for “ such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such, too, is the Holy Ghost.” 2. The Son of God was made of a woman; and He was so made in accordance with the prophecies respecting Him. 3. He was made under the law. As a Divine person, a partaker with the Father in the Godhead, He was not subject to any law; nor as a perfectly holy man was he bound to submit to the ceremonial law, which in everything implied the sinfulness of man. Yet, for us men, and for our salvation, He humbled Himself to be made under the law. He was born of a Jewess, and was circumcised the eighth day, and thus was placed under the law as a covenant of works; that, as the surety of His people, He might in every way answer its full demands. III. Consider the object of His coming. This was to “ redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” By the law, we may here understand both the ceremonial and the moral law. And what is the adoption here spoken of? It is a blessing of which by nature we are utterly destitute; for by nature we are without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But when does God thus adopt us? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. The spirit and the cry of adoption I. The dignity of believers. Adoption gives us the rights of children; regeneration gives us the nature of children: we are partakers of both of these, for we are sons.1. This sonship is a gift of grace received by faith. (1) Faith brings us justification.(2) Faith sets us free from the bondage of the law.(3) Faith is the mark of sonship in all who have it. 2. Adoption comes to us by redemption. 3. We now enjoy the privilege of sonship. Not only sons, but full-grown sons. II. The consequent indwelling of the Holy Ghost in believers.1. Here is a Divine act of the Father. 2. He comes as the Spirit of Jesus. 3. He takes up His residence in the believer’ s heart. Coming into the central fortress and universal citadel of our nature, He takes possession of the whole. 4. This wonderful blessing is fraught with marvellous results. Sonship sealed by the indwelling Spirit brings us peace and joy; it leads to nearness to God and fellowship with Him; it excites trust, love, and vehement desire; and creates in us reverence, obedience, and actual likeness to God. III. The filial cry.1. It is the Spirit of God that cries. 2. It is literally the cry of the Son. 3. This cry in our hearts is exceedingly near and familiar. A cry is a sound which we are not anxious that every passer-by should hear; yet what child minds his father hearing him cry? 4. How earnest a thing is a cry. 5. The most of this crying is kept within the heart, and does not come out at the lips. At all times and in all places we can lift up our hearts and cry to God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The gain of adoption By adoption God gives us(1) a new nature (2 Peter 1:3);(2) a new name (Revelation 3:12);(3) a new inheritance (Romans 8:17);(4) new relations (Romans 8:15-16);(5) a new hope (1 Peter 1:3). (John Bate.)What is implied in adoption 1. Derivation of nature from God (John 1:13; James 1:18; 1 John 5:18). 2. Being born again in the image of God, bearing His likeness (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Colossians 3:10; 2 Peter 1:4). 3. Bearing His name (1 John 3:1; Revelation 2:17; Revelation 3:12). 4. Being the objects of His peculiar love (John 17:23; Romans 5:5-8; Titus 3:4; 1 John 4:7-11). 5. The indwelling of the Spirit of His Son; who gives an obedient spirit (1 Peter 1:14; 2 John 1:6), a spirit free from sense of guilt, legal bondage, fear of death (Romans 8:15; Romans 8:21; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1; Hebrews 2:15; 1 John 5:14), a spirit elevated with a holy boldness and royal dignity (Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Peter 2:9; 1 Peter 4:14). 6. Present protection, consolations, and abundant provisions (Psalms 125:2; Isaiah 66:13; Luke 12:27-32; John 14:18; 1 Corinthians 3:21-23; 2 Corinthians 1:4). 7. Present fatherly chastisements for our good, including both temporal and spiritual afflictions (Psalms 51:11-12; Hebrews 12:5-11). 8. The certain inheritance of the riches of our Father’ s glory, as heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17; James 2:5; 1 Peter 1:4; 1 Peter 3:7), including the exaltation of our bodies to fellowship with Him (Romans 8:28; Philippians 3:21). (A. A. Hodge.)Divine adoption contrasted with human 1. Men generally adopt when they have no children of their own. But God had a Son, His dear Son, His well-beloved Son. He also had angels. 2. Men generally adopt such as they think deserving; God adopts criminals, traitors, enemies. 3. Men adopt living children; God, those who are by nature spiritually dead. 4. Man generally adopts one only: God, many. (G. S. Bowes.)Privileges of adoption By adoption--1. God the Father is made our Father. 2. The incarnate God.Man is made our elder Brother, and we are made (1) like Him;(2) intimately associated with Him in community of life, standing, relations, privileges;(3) joint-heirs with Him of His glory. 3. The Holy Ghost is our indweller, teacher, guide, advocate, comforter, sanctifier. 4. All believers, being subjects of the same adoption, are brethren (Ephesians 3:6; 1 John 3:14; 1 John 5:1). (A. A. Hodge.)Heathen and Christian conceptions of God A Jew entered a Persian temple, and saw there the sacred fire. He said to the priest, “ How! do you worship fire?” “ Not the fire; it is to us an emblem of the sun and of his animating light,” said the priest. Then asked the Jew, “ Do you adore the sun as a deity? Do you know that he also is a creature of the Almighty?” The priest explained that the sun was to them only an emblem of the invisible light which preserves all things. The Israelite continued, “ Does your nation distinguish the image from the original? They call the sun their god, and kneel before the earthly flame. You dazzle the eye of the body, but darken that of the mind; in presenting to them the terrestrial light you take from them the celestial.” The Persian asked, “ How do you name the Supreme Being?” “ We call Him Jehovah Adonai; that is, the Lord who was, and is, and shall be.” “ Your word is great and glorious; but it is terrible,” said the Persian. A Christian approaching, said, “ We call Him Abba, Father.” Then the Gentile and the Jew regarded each other with surprise, and said, “ Your word is the nearest and the highest; but who gives you courage to call the Eternal thus?” “ The Father Himself,” replied the Christian; and with that he proceeded to expound to them the plan of redemption. Then they believed, and lifted up their eyes to heaven, saying, “ Father, dear Father;” and, joining hands, called each other brethren. (Krummacher.)I. The spirit sent.1. There are Three Persons in the Godhead who are often mentioned together as here (Matthew 3:16-17; Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 John 5:7). 2. The Spirit is the third Person because He proceeds from the Father and the Son (John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:15, and here). II. Who sent him?1. God sent His Son (Galatians 4:4).2. By the mediation of His Son. He sent the Spirit too (John 16:6-7; Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 2:1). III. why?, Because ye are sons.1. All believers are God’ s sons (John 1:12).2. There fore, because they believe, and so are His Sons, God gives them His Spirit. IV. Whither? Into your hearts.1. Because the heart is the fountain of life (Proverbs 4:23).2. The seat of true grace. V. What to do?1. To be a pledge of Christ’ s presence (John 14:16-18; Matthew 28:20).2. To teach us all things needful (John 14:26).3. To guide us into all truth.4. To comfort us (John 15:26; John 16:7).5. To seal our redemption (Ephesians 1:13-14; Ephesians 4:30).6. To uphold us under all afflictions (Psalms 51:12).7. To witness our adoption (Romans 8:15-16). VI. Uses. 1. Examine yourselves whether you have this Spirit. (1) He is a convincing Spirit (John 16:9-11)(a) of sin in ourselves, (b) of righteousness in Christ, (c) of Christ’ s power and judgment to come. (2) A renewing Spirit (Titus 3:5; John 3:3-5).(3) A quickening Spirit (Romans 8:2; John 6:63)(4) A leading Spirit (Romans 8:1; Romans 8:14).(5) A praying Spirit (Romans 8:15; Romans 8:26). 2. Use all the means to get the Spirit in your hearts. VII. Motives. Consider--1. Till then you are not Christ’ s (Romans 8:9).2. Can do no good thing (John 15:5; Romans 8:26).3. Are exposed to all sin.4. In continual danger of hell.5. Can have no true comfort. VIII. Means. 1. Pray to God for it (Luke 11:13).2. Frequent all public ordinances (Acts 2:1). (Bishop Beveridge.)The work of the Spirit I. The worker. The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of the Son because--1. Of His eternal procession from the Son. 2. He was given to the Son as Head of the Church for the unction, consecration, and sanctification of His human nature. 3. He is communicated through the Son to all believers. (1) Authoritatively, by virtue of the covenant of redemption (Acts 2:33; Acts 5:32).(2) Formally, in that all the graces of the Spirit are derived by us from Him (Colossians 1:19; Colossians 2:19; Colossians 3:1-4; Ephesians 4:16). II. The work. He enables God’ s adopted children to behave themselves suitably to their state and condition.1. Not as strangers, foreigners, or even servants, but 2. as children and heirs by becoming in them the Spirit of power, love, and sobriety (2 Timothy 1:7). III. The effects of the working.1. Freedom of access to the “ Father” is secured. 2. He becomes to us the Spirit of grace and of supplications, (1) by exerting graces and gracious affections in our souls in the duty of prayer: especially those of faith, love, and delight; (2) by enabling us to exercise those graces and express those affections in vocal prayer. (J. Owen, D. D.)Abba Father I. The first, a Hebrew word, and the second, a Greek, signifies the union of Jews and Gentiles in our Church. In Christ the corner-stone both are joined by becoming sons: circumcision from one place, wherefore “ Abba” --uncircumcision from another, wherefore “ Father” is named, the concord of walls being the glory of the corner-stone. II. The word “ Abba” is retained because it is full of affection; but “ Father” is added not only to expound the same, but the better to express the eager moving, the earnest and vehement desires and singular affections of believers in their crying unto God. (Brooks.)You are to look unto your experience, and try and find out whether there there be not working with your soul, working through it, working beneath it, distinct from it, but not distinguishable from it by anything but its consequences and fruitfulness--a deeper voice than yours--a “ still, small voice.” No whirlwind, nor fire, nor earthquake, but the voice of God speaking in secret, taking the voice and tones of your own heart and your own consciousness, and saying to you: Thou art My child, inasmuch as, operated by My grace, and Mine inspiration alone, there rises tremlingly, but truly, in thine own soul the cry Abba, Father.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)It involves that the Father and the child shall have kindred life--the Father bestowing, and the child possessing, a life which is derived; and because derived, kindred; and because kindred, unfolding itself in likeness to the Father that gave it. And it requires that between the Father’ s heart and the child’ s heart there shall pass in blessed interchange and quick correspondence, answering love, flashing backwards and forwards, like the lightning that touches the earth, and rises from it again. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The character and privileges of the children of God I. The distinguishing characteristics of the children of God. Believing Christians enter into a higher condition. The servant becomes a son. Everything which would obstruct the view of a God of love is done away in Christ.1. A spirit of filial confidence, as opposed to servile fear. 2. A spirit of holy love, as opposed to the bondage of sin. 3. A spirit of ready obedience, as opposed to the gloomy spirit of servitude. As love is the most powerful and self-devoted passion of our nature, it explains the character as well as the principle of Christian obedience. It is self-denying; for we no longer live to ourselves, but to Him who died for us and rose again (2 Corinthians 5:15). It is soul-absorbing; for it is not so much we that now live, as Christ that liveth in us (Galatians 2:20). It is devoted, for our will is swallowed up in His, and the cry of the heart is, “ Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to do?” Hence the bold assertion of St. Paul, “ For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:3-4). II. We now proceed to consider some of the distinguishing privileges of the children of God. It will be at once acknowledged that the characteristics which we have mentioned are also exalted privileges. To have a satisfactory sense of sin being pardoned; to walk in the light of God’ s countenance, with a secret assurance of His love and favour; to be freed from the degrading bondage of Sin, and the servile fear of a holy law; to possess the moral power of holy obedience, and to have this heavenly principle pervading the soul; these are distinguishing gifts of Divine mercy. Whilst the “ spirit of a son” has its characteristic endowments, the condition of a child has its peculiar prerogatives. The one is the family genius, the other the family privileges.1. The child of God has a part in the Father’ s love and care. 2. The child of God has a filial resemblance to his heavenly Father. In the households of earth there is what is termed a family likeness. Some distinguishing trait of feature often marks the countenances of all the offspring. However varied may be the form and hue of their faces, there is some identity of expression which makes them like their parent, and like to one another. So it is with the family of God, Being born from above, they possess the characteristics of a heavenly nature. They differ in the proportion and intensity of their spiritual graces, but they are all marked with the lineaments of virtue. One is more eminent for faith, another for zeal, another for wisdom; some excel in patience, or meekness, or fervid hope, or gentle love; but all have the fundamentals of these holy principles. They all bear the marks of a noble lineage. You might see in each of their hearts the peculiar traits of royalty. You might readily perceive that each inherits his Father’ s holiness. He is the child of a King, a prince of God (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6). 3. Children of God have the privileges of family communion and fellowship. It is not now granted to man to hold conversational intercourse with angelic or sainted members of the heavenly family. He must be satisfied with knowing that they have some communion with his spirit. This is often alleged in the Scriptures, And who can tell what benefits we receive from holy thoughts, counsels, and promptings, whispered to the soul by hovering spirits of an ethereal nature? But we are privileged with the “ communion of saints.” We may associate with the wise and good, the saints that are in the earth, and the excellent (Psalms 16:3). Above all, the Christian has access to the throne of grace, and holds communion with the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. 4. Children of God have a share in the family provisions. There is a common stock of mercies, of which all the children have a right to partake. A certain property in blessings belongs to the household of faith. Exceeding great and precious promises have been provided by their heavenly Father. There is a fulness in Christ out of which His Church are permitted to receive. Every one is exhorted to take largely of these Divine gifts. Unlike property of an earthly nature, these riches never diminish by using. There could, therefore, be no reason for withholding them from any seeking soul. All are at liberty to “ ask and receive, that their joy may be full.” 5. Children have a title to the future inheritance. “ If a son, then an heir of God through Christ;” or, as the apostle writes in another place, “ If children then heirs,” etc. “ Heirs of God” --it is a strange expression! What does it mean? (R. M. Macbraire, M. A.)Adoption I. In what does adoption consist? It is the translation of a person out of one family into another. The act of grace by which God takes the children of the wicked one out of the world, and makes them the sons and daughters of His spiritual family.1. Points of similarity between natural and spiritual adoption. (1) In adoption we cease to have our former name, and are designated after the name of God, who adopted us; then sinners, now saints; then enemies, now reconciled; then aliens and rebels, now brought nigh and the friends of God. (2) In adoption we change our abode. Once in the world, in the kingdom of darkness, in a far country; now in the Church, in the kingdom of God’ s dear Son, in the household of faith, and family of heaven. (3) We change our costume. Conform to the family dress. 2. Points of difference between natural and spiritual adoption. (1) Natural adoption was to supply a family defect. Because there was no son. God had hosts of sons--the angels, etc. (2) Natural adoption was only of sons. God makes no distinction as to sex, race, etc. (3) In natural adoption there was only a change of condition; the child never became really the son of the adopter. But God makes His children partakers of His own nature, and imprints on them His own image. (4) In natural adoption only one was adopted; but God adopts multitudes. (5) In natural adoption only temporal advantages were derived; but in spiritual, the blessings are eternal. II. The signs of adoption.1. Internal (see Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:14-16). The Spirit will produce within us (1) peace of mind,(2) comfort of heart,(3) spiritual joy. 2. External. (1) Language. Conversation such as becometh the gospel of Christ. (2) Profession. We shall appear as the sons of the family of God; have the family badge, be enrolled in the family book, be found in the family circle, and sit at the family table. (3) Obedience. God’ s family has its laws, its specific rules for the government of itself, and for the direction of its conduct towards those who are without, III. Its privileges.1. Deliverance from all the miseries of our pristine state. Poverty, rags, misery, ruin. 2. Investiture into all the benefits of Christ’ s family on earth. 3. A title to the celestial inheritance which Christ has bought and prepared for all who lave Him. Application:1. Learn the essential importance of this blessing. What would pardon and regeneration be without it? Let us seek the good of God’ s family. We are in it to labour as well as enjoy. 2. Invite strangers to become the sons and heirs of God. (J. Burns, D. D.)Sons by adoption Great indeed is the rank and privilege of a son of God. The son of Adam, that is taken to be the Son of God, is taken out of the company of the rebels against God, into the company of those that adore and bless His name with thanksgiving, and perform His service with diligence, in His glorious presence. But he always remembers whence he has been taken; that if as a son of Adam he was taken from the comparatively vile dust of the earth, as a son of God he has been taken into a spiritual nature out of the comparatively much viler fleshly nature. He remembers that he is not a real son, but an adopted. Now a real son is always a son to his father, happen what will. And having been born and bred in his house, he knows all that is required of him, and does naturally all the duties of a member of the family. But very different is the condition of an adopted son; he has been born and bred in another family, and therefore under different rules; and hence, however respectable his family may be, he cannot accommodate himself so freely and fully as he could wish, nor sufficiently know the mind of a father, whom he has not known from childhood. Much more then if he be taken out of a family whose habits are quite contrary, and disreputably contrary, to the habits of that into which he has been adopted, he must be in continual fear and perplexity. All is quite strange to him, and let him be ever so willing to accommodate himself to his new situation, still he is in continual doubt as to what he should do, and what he should not do, and is continually, notwithstanding all his watchfulness, letting out the secrets of the corrupt habits of his old family. But on the very account of this natural infirmity, God hath put him under an instructor, to give him the proper knowledge, to form his habits, to influence his will, and by such a thorough change, to qualify him for the duties of the new station to which he has been admitted. And this instructor is the Holy Spirit, called also, from this His very office amongst us, the spirit of adoption, as in Romans 8:14-15. (R. W. Evans, M. A.)Comfort of assurance Death, like the proud Philistine, comes marching out in his hideous shape, daring the whole host of Israel to match him with an equal combatant. The atheist dares not die for fear non esse,--that he shall not be at all; the profane dares not die, for fear male esse--to be damned; the doubtful conscience dares not die, because he knows not whether he shall be, or be damned, or not be at all. Only the resolved Christian dares die, because he is assured of his election; he knows he shall be happy; and so lifts up pleasant eyes to heaven, the infallible place of his eternal rest. He dares encounter with his last enemy, trample on him with the foot of disdain, and triumphantly sing over him, “ O death! where is thy sting? O gravel where is thy victory?” He conquers in being conquered; and all because God hath said to his soul, “ I am thy salvation.” (T. Adams.)Assurance of adoption In 1768 Mr. Wesley visited Glasgow, where the greatest part of the members had found peace with God. Three years before Thomas Taylor had been sent there, and had for his first congregation two bakers’ boys and two old women. He kept off preaching, and his hearers increased also to two hundred, but for want of means he never kept so many fast days in his life. He hired a room, formed a society, and paid a precentor fourpence for each service to lead off the psalms, but the money falling short, he had to dismiss both the psalms and the precentor; but he left a society of seventy members. One of these was old Janet, of whom John Pawson records this anecdote. Meeting the minister of the kirk she had long attended, she was thus accosted: “ Oh, Janet, where have ye been, woman? I have no seen ye at the kirk for long.” She replied, “ I go among the Methodists.” “ Why, what gude get ye there, woman?” “ Glory to God!” said Janet; “ I do get gude; for God, for Christ’ s sake, has forgiven me a’ my sins.” “ Ah, Janet, be not highminded, but fear; the de’ il is a cunning adversary.” “ I dinna care a button for the de’ il,” said Janet; I’ ve gotten him under my feet. I ken the de’ il can do muckle deal, but there is ant thing he canna do.” “ What is that, Janet?” “ He canna shed abroad the love of God in my heart; an’ I am sure I’ ve got it there!” “ Weel, weel,” said the minister, “ If ye have got that there, hold it fast, Janet, and never let it go.” Benefit of assurance:--Latimer writes to Ridley, “ When I live in a settled and steadfast assurance about the state of my soul, methinks I am as bold as a lion; I can laugh at all trouble; no affliction daunts me; but, when I am eclipsed in my comforts, I am of so fearful a spirit, that I could run into a very mouse-hole.” Sonship of the believer I. The true position of the Christian. “ Sons.” Many fail to see it. They admit “ believers,” “ Christians,” “ disciples,” “ soldiers,” “ servants.” True. Each has a truth. Just as “ Jesus,” “ Christ,” “ Master,” “ Lord;” but “ Emanuel” reveals a new connection. So with the believer. “ Son.” Christ took our nature, and we receive His in degree (2 Peter 1:4). This is often urged in Scripture. Romans 7:1-25. plainly describes “ law of nature” and “ law of grace.” Why urge this?1. Because of privileges, of which we shall speak soon. 2. Because it is a necessity of life. Many fail in efforts. They “ try to be good,” and fail. Because they begin wrongly. Must be so. Ostrich cannot soar as eagle. Nature is fitted to habits. So in grace. God requires great things. A new life begins. How? Not by laws or precepts--it is a new gift. Adoption transfers from Satan’ s family to God’ s, and then a new nature is given. II. The power by whom this adoption is wrought. By “ God’ s Spirit.” In every aspect--redemption, sanctification, preservation, fruitfulness--the believer is a Divine work. Often forgotten. We are surrounded by human instruments, and the agent is not seen. Insufficient. Only the statue, not the man. Form without life. Both solemn and assuring. III. The necessary results of this indwelling. “ Whereby,” etc. Immediate connection between life and action. The means may lie dormant, but the grace never. What results?1. God is known. In daily life such knowledge must be imparted. Very true of spiritual things. This knowledge surpasses that imparted by Scripture or human teachers. Examples: 1 Samuel 3:7; 2 Corinthians 4:6; Galatians 3:16-17. Samuel and Paul both taught by man, and yet they were spiritually ignorant. So, however much we may study, prize, increasingly value the Bible, each must go beyond it. 2. Confidence is enjoyed. Point of argument lies in “ son” and “ slave.” The difference, the unwavering confidence of “ son.” So boldness in prayer, conflict, work, is believer’ s privilege. The Father never deserts His child. 3. Consistent life. A great name should never be disgraced. What so noble as this? where else is such honour entrusted? “ Be imitators of God.” (H. T. Cavell.) Galatians 4:7 Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son. Servitude and sonship I. Sonship is here contrasted with servitude.1. It is a change from ignorance to knowledge.2. A change from bondage to self-control.3. A change from a temporal relationship to an eternal one. II. This sonship is the gift of God.1. God intervenes with the offer of sonship at the fitting time.2. God sends the only Being who can win us to sonship.3. God accompanies the gift of sonship with the only infallible witness--the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. III. This gift of sonship makes us heirs of God. (S. Pearson, M. A.)The Christian’ s inheritance For what purpose did God make the worlds? Not that He might in solitary joy behold their glittering brightness; but that they might minister to our sense of beauty, and cast lights on our devious way. If we truly understood our relation to the world in which we live, and indeed to the universe of which we form a part, we should see that the material has been made for the sake of the moral, that all things have been put under our feet because we are sons of God Who has more right to the world’ s riches and wealth than a child of Him to whom the world belongs? Let him erect his machinery, carry on his transactions, dive into the mine, cross the ocean, span yawning gulfs, and pierce hard rocks, assured that He is doing his Father’ s will in thus obtaining and using his leather’ s wealth “ All things are yours--things present and things to come.” “ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” But higher things are ours if we are children of God. We become partakers of the Divine nature. That nature is spirit, and our spirits overcome and subjugate the grosset part of our being. That nature is righteous, and we become pure in heart, single in purpose, simple in behaviour, lust toward all men. That nature is mercy, and we, having ourselves obtained the blessings of Divine pity, look with compassion on the fallen, and long to win them to the home from which they have been so long exiles. That nature is changeless power, and our weakness becomes strength, and an inward energy is granted enabling us to triumph over time, the world, and self. That nature is infinite wisdom, and by dwelling ever in the presence of God we see the world’ s troubles and our own in the light of higher purposes, and when we cannot understand we learn in quiet repose to trust in Him who doeth all things well. That nature is world-embracing and unquenchable love; He takes away the patriarchs when their weary pilgrimage is finished, that He may give them perfect rest. He makes us ask, “ The fathers, where are they?” because He wants them home with Him; and soon the doors of His presence-chamber will open for us, new visions of bliss and joy will open upon us, and we shall see God as He is, and be like Him. In the meanwhile our rejoicing is, that “ now are we the sons of God.” (S. Pearson, M. A.)The Christian’ s scorn of the world Whoever could believe without any doubt that it were true, and certainly comprehend how immeasurably great a thing it is, that one should be God’ s child and heir, such an one would without doubt take little account of the world, with all that therein is esteemed precious and honourable, such as human righteousness, wisdom, dominion, power, money, possessions, honour, pleasure, and the like; yea, all that in the world is honourable and glorious, would be to him loathsome and an abomination. (Luther.)Sons and heirs I. No inheritance without sonship. Spiritual blessings are only for those who are in a spiritual condition.1. The lower orders of creatures are shut out from gifts which belong to the higher forms of life because they are so organized that these cannot enter into their nature. 2. So the soul must be adapted to the enjoyment of spiritual salvation. 3. The final inheritance depends on character. To possess God for ever we must love Him for ever. II. No Sonship Without A Spiritual Birth.1. We are sons in some sense by nature.2. But we become spiritual sons by grace. III. No spiritual birth without Christ.1. The very figure shows us that the process of becoming sons does not; lie within our own power.2. Christ has come to give the spirit of adoption and regeneration. IV. No Christ without faith.1. Ceremonies are nothing.2. Trust in Christ is everything. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Sonship through Christ Christ has effected an actual change in the possible aspect of the Divine justice and government to us; and He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and the urn was broken on the Cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out, and whithersoever that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not there is death. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Adoption and confidence A train dashed into a tunnel with a warning whistle. The whistle and darkness startled a child in his mother’ s arms, and caused him to scream with fear; but directly the mother’ s voice was heard, and he felt the soothing hand upon his face, all fear vanished. Yet the child knew not why the train went through the darkness, but immediately the parent’ s voice reached him, he trusted. When we go through any dark or laborious way, let us also trust our Father in heaven, and nothing will harm us. “ The darkness and the light, O Lord, are both alike to Thee.” Privileges of adoption By it God the Father is made our Father. The incarnate God-man is made our Elder Brother, and we are made--1. Like Him. 2. Intimately associated with Him in community of life, standing, relations, and privileges. 3. Joint-heirs with Him of His glory. The Holy Ghost is our Indweller, Guide, Advocate, Comforter, and Sanctifier. All believers being subjects of the same adoption are brethren. (A. A. Hodge.)The Christian a Son of God I. Then we are to notice the gracious relation in which good men stand to God. They are not servants, but sons. As I have before intimated, this privilege belongs to believers alone; they only can properly be called the sons of God.1. That true believers are the sons of God by a new creation. By nature they are the children of wrath even as others. They are the offspring of degenerate, fallen man, the posterity of Adam, the sinful representative of mankind. The temper of the mind is renewed, and the outward conduct is reformed. A spiritual and vital influence is felt, and a spiritual and vital principle is imparted. 2. Believers are the sons of God, by their union with Christ. “ Wherefore, my brethren,” says the apostle to the Romans, “ ye are also become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him that is raised from the dead, that ye should bring forth fruit unto God.” 3. Believers are the sons of God by adoption. Adoption was an act frequent among the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. II. The happy consequence which results from the privilege of our being the sons of God. If a son, then an heir of God, through Christ. They are heirs of all that God possesses. The treasures to which they are entitled are vast and immeasurable. Believers, too, are heirs of all that God has promised. Christians are said to be heirs of the promise. If they have but little in possession, they have much in prospect; if not rich in enjoyment, they are rich in faith and hope. Believers, too, are heirs of the righteousness of Christ. Believers, too, are heirs of salvation, and angels are their ministering spirits. Those happy beings have charge over the people of God, and minister to them in their path to glory. They are called, too, heirs of the grace of life. Salvation is all of grace. Believers, too, are heirs of the kingdom. God has provided a kingdom for them that love Him, and of this kingdom they are heirs. They are also heirs of the world. This promise primarily refers to the land of Canaan, which Abraham and his seed were to possess; but here heaven is typically promised and represented. III. Notice the means by which this privilege is obtained. If a son, then an heir of God, through Christ. Now we are heirs of God through Christ, because he has purchased this privilege for us. Christ, too, can only give this glorious privilege. He is the Head and Representative of His Church. Believers are the members of His body, and receive their spiritual nourishment from Him. It is through Christ we obtain this privilege as joint-heirs with Him. To Him the birthright blessing properly belongs. The Father loved the Son, and hath given all things into His hands. In conclusion, let me inquire--If not heirs of God, what are we? We are heirs of Satan--that prince of darkness, who now employs us in the drudgery of sin in order that he may reward us with the damnation of hell. (Isaac Clarkson.)A servant or a son The apostle had laid down some broad, simple rules of the gospel (verses 4, 5).Here he points out I. The believer’ s change: he was a servant; he is a son.1. A servant to sin (Romans 6:16). Unconverted man’ s virtues are splendid sins. Servants in a large house have different work, but if well done, master is satisfied. 2. Slave to the world--its fashions, opinions, pleasures. 3. In bondage to the law. He cannot see the freeness of the gospel (Romans 3:28; Romans 5:1). But there is a change (verse 6; Romans 8:15). There is now an interest in God; filial affection to Him; freedom of access (Ephesians 2:18; Proverbs 15:8); an abode in the Father’ s house (John 8:34-35; Ephesians 2:19-22). II. The believer’ s hope. An inheritance is not purchased by ourselves--it descends. It implies--1. Full forgiveness. One unpardoned sin is certain hell (Ezekiel 18:4; 1 John 1:7). 2. Inward righteousness--imperfect, but improving (Luke 23:41; Hebrews 12:14). 3. That God Himself will be the portion of His believing people (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). Whatever Christ has, we have. In conclusion--1. Is it not a wonder that privileges such as these should be so much overlooked, undervalued? Can every one here say; “ I was a servant of sin, but I am now a son of God?” (Romans 10:10). 2. If not a son of God, what is the alternative? (Galatians 6:7-8). An heir of the one or of the other is every one present at this moment. We must expect opposition, but we are well led, supported (2 Corinthians 12:9; Revelation 21:7). (H. M. Villiers.)“ No more a servant, but a son:” He simply reminds those Christians of their early state, and calls them to consider their present condition. Once they were servants, now they are sons; once in bondage, now free. I. Every believer will find it to his advantage occasionally to recall his former condition under the Divine law, previous to the glad day in which grace came to him with full redemption. They say it is the custom in the city of Munich to arrest every mendicant child that is caught begging in the street, and put him immediately at school under some proper supervision until he is able to obtain a moderate support. As he enters the institution, his portrait is taken by an artist precisely as he appears in his uncleanliness and rags. This picture is always carefully preserved, so that when he is educated and matured enough to appreciate his position it may be shown to him. Then he will know how much has been done for his good, even while he was thinking unkindly of the restraint he resisted. Furthermore: he is made then to promise that he will keep She likeness ever afterwards, in order not only that it may remind him of his abject career as a beggar, and so keep him humble, but also make him think of others as companions in misfortune, and so render him charitable to the poor. And it is said in the reports that some of these castaways thus saved to usefulness, make the strongest and the most hopeful friends for the recovery and rescue of any young lad, however unpromising he may at first sight appear, a mere waif and wanderer in the world. Here in our lesson the apostle seems to have a very similar purpose in mind. For he begins with the description of men in a state of nature (verses 1-3), and having shown how deeply in “ bondage” they are, he proceeds to set forth the glorious interposition of grace in the gospel (verses 4-6), by which they might receive the “ adoption of sons.” It is as if we all looked steadily back for a moment to see what we were once, and in the height of our gratitude looked around to see what we now have become, and to inquire how best we could glorify our Saviour. II. In the next place, the apostle dwells upon the lofty position of those who are the children of God. They are not any more bound by the drudgeries of service; they are not under “ tutors and governors” any longer; they are “ sons.” It remains for us only to understand what adoption implies, and then this liberty will be defined, and this relationship established.1. A son by adoption takes the name of his new father for all the future. No matter how honourable that may be; no matter how clear the aristocratic blood may have run in the ancestral veins; no matter what the world’ s heraldry has to say of ancient prowess or feudal right; any one who is legally adopted bears the same proud designation. Although the forefathers never knew him, the Children of this generation must hereafter call him a brother, the mother must consider him the same as her son. The analogy holds perfectly here. To be sons of God means to bear His name. Christians are called such after Christ; it is said that the Germans often call a true believer a “ Christ.” 2. An adopted child receives the care of his father. The privileges bestowed upon the other children are exactly the privileges bestowed upon him. Indeed, a son by adoption is often more likely to want peculiar help, simply because on entering an entirely fresh line of relations and duties he has everything to learn and much to unlearn. He hardly knows the first rules of the house, and he does not at all understand the dispositions of those within the family circle. He cannot be expected to arrive at once, as if by a flash of intuition, at a full apprehension of even his father’ s will; he will need time to be instructed in the delicate solicitudes of watchful obedience. Hence, he must have more forbearance, more patient instruction, more provident guardianship, perhaps than all the rest together. To be the adopted sons of God means just in this way to share His peculiar parental care. Jesus our Lord left on record an engagement of it for His brethren (John 16:27). Even the Father Himself has made a covenant promise for help (2 Corinthians 6:17-18). 3. An adopted child takes the honours of his father. The child goes away from the old condition wholly into the new. A prince might bring a peasant’ s son into a royal household; then he will be a peasant-boy no longer; he is a king’ s son. That sets him on a level with the nobles of the realm; for he takes the condition of his parent as if he had been born under the same roof. 4. A child by adoption receives an appropriate share in the wealth of his father. Numbered in the household, bearing the common name, he can also draw on the joint resources. Former poverty is forgotten. Avenues of influence are suddenly thrown open to him. 5. An adopted child receives at last the inheritance of his father. “ What God has laid out for His people is much, what He has laid up for them is more. “ The Saints’ Inventory” contains a list of spiritual possessions, most rare and valuable (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). III. It would seem now as if there could be no need for the apostle to press his closing consideration. How could any one wish to go back into service after he had experienced these advantages of sonship? How could he “ desire again to be in bondage” ? We are told that the Israelites, even when they had manna, wished for onions and leeks of Egypt; and, even when God was feeding them, sighed for garlic. But what is this beside the folly of those who accept times and seasons in the place of the “ blessedness” of a sonship of God with Christ! (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)Son and heir I. What we were--servants. The idea of bondage is implied, and refers to the twofold influence of sin.1. Its entire sway over ourselves. The language of Scripture is decisive on this matter. Sin has not only affected a part of human nature, but the whole. 2. Its power to exclude every good influence. The slave has no intercourse with the outside world. Others must not speak to him, or offer him any counsel. His master will not allow any foreign influence. Sin keeps out the light; the sinner does neither see himself nor his surroundings. II. What we are--sons, Adoption is the term used by the apostle to designate the change. No comparison, however, will exactly represent the altered state.1. As sons we are partakers of the Divine nature. The Spirit of God has imparted a heavenly disposition to our hearts. 2. As sons we are partakers of God’ s care and government. Correction is a necessary part of the relationship. III. What we shall be--heirs. There is a present right, but minority excludes full possession for want of fitness.1. Maturity There is a stage in our experience when restrictions and limitations will be removed. We now only know in part. 2. Indebtedness--“ through Christ.” He is the!ink between us and the inheritance. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Galatians 4:8 Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.The three estates of the Galatian Church I. Before their conversion.1. Ignorance of God. There is a twofold knowledge of God. (1) Natural (Acts 14:17; Romans 1:20), but this is (a) imperfect, (b) weak. (2) Revealed: of the Father in Christ; neither of which did the Galatians possess. 2. Idolatry. (1) False gods are set up in two ways, (a) when that which is not God is worshipped as God, (b) when men acknowledge the true God but do not conceive of Him as He will be conceived. (2) There is a spiritual idolatry. What a man loves most is His god--wealth, pleasure, sin. (3) That the sin of idolatry be rooted out there must be (a) an illumination of the mind, (b) a renovation of the heart. II. In their conversion. 1. They knew God. (1) The foundation of this knowledge: the revelation of God in Christ (Hebrews 1:2; 2 Corinthians 4:6). (2) Its properties (a) special: whereby we acknowledge Him to be our God in Christ through faith; (b) distinct, not confused: His presence with us, providence over us, will concerning us; life is as (c) effectual (1 John 2:4; 1 John 3:6). 2. God knew them. 1. This knowledge is the root of ours. We know Him because He first knew us.2. The ground of all our hope and comfort (Isaiah 49:15). III. In their apostasy, which was--1. An intolerable sin.2. A voluntary sin.3. A senseless sin.4. A common sin. (W. Perkins.)Idolatry: its commonness Many people have their own god; and he is much what the French mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,--very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such-a god is as much an idol as if he were an image of wood or stone. (Archdeacon Hare.)Idolatry: misrepresentation of God It is, as it were, putting a mask on the face of God. Now if we do not make idols, still we may misrepresent God. We often speak as though God did not rejoice to see us enjoying ourselves. (T. T. Lynch.)Idolatry: its power Idolatry is one of the most unconquerable of all the corrupt propensities of the human soul. Miracles under the new dispensation had scarcely ceased, the apostolic fathers were scarcely cold in their graves, before idolatrous forms were superinduced upon the pure spirituality of the holy gospel. (J. B. Walker, M. A.)Idolatry: its folly How senseless it is! We should think that artist beside himself who would undertake to draw a likeness of something which he had never seen, nor ever could see; to paint a portrait of the air, the wind, the fragrance of flowers. And God is a Spirit. To what shall we liken Him? (D. Thomas, D.D)The testimony of idolatry It is a very important truth that the prevalence of idolatry is in itself a strong testimony for the existence of one supreme God. For we find idolatry in some form amongst all but the most degraded and debased of nations, such as are some of the African tribes, and it is not certain that its remnants are not traceable there. As Luther puts it: “ All idolatry in the world arises from this, that people by nature have had the common knowledge that there is a God, without which idolatry would remain unpractised. With this knowledge engrafted in mankind, they have (without God’ s Word) fancied all manner of ungodly opinions about God.” (Biblical Treasury.) Galatians 4:9 But now, after that ye have known God. Knowledge of God That is not the best and truest knowledge of God which is wrought out by the labour and sweat of brain, but that which is kindled within us by a heavenly warmth in our hearts. As, in the natural body, it is the heart that sends up good blood and warm spirits into the head, whereby it is best enabled to perform its several functions; so that which enables us to know and understand aright in the things of God, must be a living principle of holiness within us. (John Smith.)God’ s knowledge of us I. Its basis.1. His omniscience. 2. His intimate connection with us through all the st.ages of our life. (1) Physically.(2) Spiritually: as our Maker, Preserver, Redeemer, Sanctifier. II. Its wide embrace.1. God knows every one of us2. Our innermost thoughts.3. Our secret wants.4. Under all disguises:5. In all circumstances. Conclusion:1. A warning to the sinner;2. An encouragement to the believer. However doubtful may be our estimate of ourselves or that of others, there is no doubt as to God’ s estimate of us being the right one (T. T. Lynch.)Weak and beggarly elements I. Weak, because they have no power to rescue man from condemnation. II. Beggarly, for they bring no rich endowments of spiritual treasures. A passionate and striking ritualism, expressing itself in bodily mortifications of the most terrible kind had been supplanted by the simple spiritual teaching of the gospel. For a time the pure morality and lofty sanctions of the new faith appealed not in vain to their higher instincts, but they soon began to yearn after a creed which suited their material cravings better, and was more allied to the systems they had abandoned. This end they attained by overlaying the simplicity of the gospel with Judaic observances. This new phase is ascribed to the temper which their old heathen education had fostered It was a return to the “ weak and beggarly elements” which they had outgrown, a renewed subjection to the “ yoke of bondage” which they had thrown off in Christ. They had escaped from one ritualistic system, only to bow before another. The innate failings of a race whom Caesar (Bell. Gall. 6:16) describes as “ excessive in its devotion to external observances” was here reasserting itself. (Bishop Lightfoot.)The use and abuse of ordinances Ordinances may be considered three ways. I. With Christ.1. As types and figures of Christ to come.2. As signs of grace of Divine institution. II. Without Christ. As mere customs whether before or after Him. III. Against Christ. As meritorious causes of salvation. (W. Perkins.)The difficulty of not believing I have been thinking how difficult it would be for us not to be Christians. It is hard, we say, to have faith; but do we realize what a task a man imposes upon himself if he attempts to live without faith? Is not some faith one of the first vital necessities of the human reason and heart? I wish, then, this morning, to invert a very common way of reasoning about religion among men. Instead of treating a religious faith as though it were a good thing to be added to a man’ s moral capital in life, I would raise the question rather, whether a man will have capital enough for life left if he lets a Christian faith go from him? I. In order not to have faith, one must vacate a considerable portion of his own mental experience.1. There is a large part of every man’ s self-conciousness which is bound up with faith in realities beyond this present world of sights and sounds. It would be almost an impossible task for us to disentangle all faith in things Divine and eternal from the elements of our self-consciousness. Our reasons have their roots in the Divine. If these primal beliefs in God and immortality were simply results of argument, we might reason ourselves out of them: but they are elements, rather, of our rational and conscious life, so that we cannot separate them wholly from ourselves. Atheists, after all, can only make believe not to believe. 2. There is another tremendously present thing which would have to be put away from us in order that we might be able to live without faith, and that is the Divine imperative of conscience. Something higher and better than we lays hold of us in conscience. There are several other vital elements which must be sacrificed in the vain effort to live without faith. 3. One will have to leave out some of the most marked experiences of his life. The simple fact is, that the invisible powers are constantly laying hold of the life of man in the world. It would be an impossible task for us to account wholly for our own lives simply and solely upon natural causes. Super-sensible influences do mingle and blend with the sensible; providences are realities of human experience. 4. There is another side of our experience, which I will just mention, from which one must cut himself loose, if he would have any success in not belonging to a Christian world; he must break off his fellowship with the truest and best life of humanity. The history of man is not merely, nor chiefly, political; it is religious. The history of the kingdom of redemption is the paramount part of human history. Other history, what we call profane history, is the form and shaping of events only; the substance of history is its spiritual progress; the issue of it, and the main thing in it all along, is redemption. If, then, one wants not to be a Christian believer, a citizen of a world becoming Christian, he will have to begin by denying himself a goodly fellowship. II. Let us consider further how much one will have to believe in order not to be a christian, in relation to some particulars of the Christian life.1. One vital element of the Christian life is trust in the goodness of the heavenly Father. We do not conceal from ourselves, we cannot, that this is a trust written often across the face of events in our lives which seem to contradict it. As Christians we believe in the sunny side, that is, in the Divine side, of everything. We say it is only our present position in the shadow, or under some cloud, which prevents our seeing the bright and eternal side of it. Wait, and we shall see the goodness of the Lord. We were sailing one afternoon with the broken coast of Maine in the distance projecting upon our horizon. A black thundercloud gathered in shore over the hill-tops. We could see the play of the lightnings, and the waters breaking from the cloud. That was all that the villagers and the fishermen along the shore could have seen. But we, at our distance, beheld also the untroubled sun in the clear sky above; its beams struck the edges of that heavy mass of vapours, and above the darkness and the lightnings we could see the upper side of the cloud turn to gold; and, even while it was blackness and fear to those below, its pinnacles and towers were shining before our eyes like the city of God descending from heaven. Thus Christian faith beholds also the heavenly side of this world’ s storm and darkness. 2. Take as another instance the Christian belief in our personal sinfulness and need of forgiveness. How many thoughts of the heart must one forget not to believe that? I pass to two other examples. 3. Men say it is hard to believe in an atonement. Perhaps it may be in some of our human philosophies of God’ s method of reconciling the world; but not to believe in Jesus’ word that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sin, would require us to believe some things about God which it would be very hard for us to hold of the Creator of our hearts. Even a human government would be incomplete unless, in some hand, there should be lodged some power of pardon. Not to believe in the authority of God Himself over the execution of His own law is to believe that God’ s government is not so perfect as man’ s. Or, to take the subject up to a higher plane, where I much prefer to study it, our human love can sometimes find for itself a way of forgiveness which it will follow without dimming its own purity, or losing its own self-respect, though it be for it a way of tears. To believe, then, that the God of love can find no way of atonement for sin, though it be the way of the Cross, is to believe that man’ s heart is diviner than God’ s. 4. The other remaining point which I will mention is the Christian belief in the last judgment. Surely everything in this world would be left at loose ends, and all our instincts of justice, righteousness, and love thrown into confusion, if we should attempt to wrench the substance of this Christian faith in the judgment to come from our experience of this present life. Not to believe in it requires a great task of reason and conscience; for then one must believe that there is no moral order, as there is plainly a natural order of things; one must then believe that the one constant undertone of justice in man’ s consciousness is a false note of life; that the first laws of things are but principles of eternal discord; that man’ s whole moral life and history, in short, is meaningless and worthless. You say it is a terrible thing to believe in the judgment to come; yes, but it is a more fearful thing not to believe in it. (Newman Smyth, D. D.)How a faithful minister seeks to recover the erring He appeals-- I. To the conscience--reminding them of the gracious change God had effected in them (Galatians 4:8-9). II. To the understanding--remanding the reason of their instability--exhibiting its folly (Galatians 4:9-11). III. To the heart--by affectionate entreaty--tender and happy reminiscences (Galatians 4:12-15). IV. To their regard for the truth--which he faithfully preaches--others have perverted--should be zealously maintained (Galatians 4:16-18). V. To his own sincerity--he is anxious for their happiness--to have the assurance of it. (J. Lyth.)The folly of returning to the world I. It is to act in opposition to knowledge. II. To abuse the grace of God. III. To seek happiness in that we have already proved unsatisfactory. IV. To subject ourselves to a new bondage. (J. Lyth.) Galatians 4:10 To observe days and months The observance of days and seasons I. Natural. When days are observed according to the course of the sun and moon. Thus night follows day, and every year hath four seasons. II. Civil. When set times are observed in husbandry, for household affairs, for matters of the commonwealth, and for business. III. Ecclesiastics. When set days are observed for order’ s sake, as days of thanksgiving, and days of humiliation. IV. Superstitious.1. Jewish: when made compulsory on the conscience. 2. Heathen: when good and bad success are dependent on them. From this last the Sabbath is excluded because (1) it is the Lord’ s day, and(2) a moral commandment. Apply against--1. Romish festivals.2. Lucky or unlucky periods. (W. Perkins.)St. Paul is not here dealing with the Sabbath The apostle is dealing with some of the difficulties which had arisen out of their former heathenism. The Galatian had worshipped “ them which by nature were no gods,” the powers of nature and celestial objects, which indicate and influence the changes of seasons, months, and days, and were returning to these “ weak and beggarly elements.” They were in danger not only of taking up with the Judaistic doctrine of justification by works, but also of relapsing into the heathen custom of calculating lucky and unlucky days and auspicious seasons by methods of astrology. Against this the apostle enters his protest. There is no evidence that he had any idea of the Jewish Sabbath in his mind. (W. Spiers, M. A.)Christian festivals not prohibited If it be objected that we are accustomed to observe certain days--as, e.g., the Lord’ s Day, the Preparation, the Passover, or Pentecost, I have to answer that, to the perfect Christian--who is ever in his thoughts, words, and deeds, serving Christ--all his days are the Lord’ s, and he is always keeping the Lord’ s Day. He, also, who is unceasingly preparing himself for the true life, such an one is always keeping the Preparation day. Again, he who considers that “ Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us,” and that it is of his duty to keep the feast by eating of the flesh of the Word, never ceases to keep the Paschal feast. And, finally, he who can truly say: “ We are risen with Christ,” and “ He hath exalted us, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places in Christ” is always living in the season of Pentecost. But the majority of believers are not of this advanced class; but from being either unable or unwilling to keep every day in this manner, they require some sensible memorial to prevent spiritual things from passing altogether from their minds. (Origen.)Superstition respecting days The superstitious belief in good and evil days has prevailed in all ages and countries. No season of the year, no month, no week, has been free from them. From Egypt unlucky days have received the name of Egyptian days. The Romans had their dies atri, which were pointed out on the calendar with a black character denoting a day of bad luck, and their dies albi, pointed out with a white character denoting good luck. In commenting on the text Augustine says: “ Those whom the apostle blames are those who say” “ I will not set forward on my journey because it is the next day after such a time or because the moon is so; or I’ ll set forward that I may have luck, because such is just now the position of the stars. I will not traffic this month because a star presides, or I will because it does.” Lodge (1596) tells us of those “ who would not eat their dinner before they have lookt in their almanacke.” Aubrey, the antiquarian, later on, in dealing with the same subject, says: “ I shall take particular notice here of November 3rd, both because ‘ tis my own birthday, and for the remarkable accidents that have happened thereupon. Constantius, son of Constantine the Great, died on this day, Exveteri calendaris penes me. Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, that famous commander under Henries IV., V., and VI., died this day from a cannon shot received at Orleans. So also did Cardinal Borrhomes, and Sir John Perot, Lord deputy of Ireland, son to Henry VIII., and extremely like him; grief of the fatality of the day killed him. Stow in his annals says, November 3rd, 1099, the sea broke in on Scotland and England, drowning divers towns, and much people and cattle, submerging the lands once belonging to Earl Godwin in Kent, now called Godwin Sands, My father died in 1643, and within a year and a half of his decease such changes came upon my marsh lands in Kent by the influence of the sea that it was never worth one farthing to me; so that I often think this day being my birthday hath the same influence upon me that it had five hundred and eighty years since upon Earl Godwin and others. The Parliament so fatal to Rome’ s concerns here in Henry VIII.’ s time began on November 3rd. The 3rd of November, 1640, began that Parliament so direfully fatal to England and its King.” After the Reformation the unlucky day seems to have been Friday; fishermen and sailors would not go forth on that day, or servants take a place. No one on that day would get married, or begin a journey, or open a house of business on that day A similar superstition prevails among the Brahmins. In Japan a particular table is employed by travellers, which, it is said, has been observed to hold true by a continued experience of many ages, and wherein are set down all the unfortunate days of every month. A copy of this table is printed in all their road books. The Siamese observe the feasts of the new and full moon, and think the days that from the change precede the full are more fortunate than those that follow it. Their almanacks are marked with lucky and unlucky days. Neither prince nor any one who has means of applying to the astrologers will undertake anything without consulting them The Mexicans predicted the good or bad fortunes of infants from the sign under which they were born, and the happiness or misfortune of marriages, the success of wars; and of nearly everything from the day on which they were undertaken Nor are these notions confined to heathen countries. The newspapers frequently bring to light the credulity of Englishmen. “ Such an extravagant cast of mind,” truly says The Spectator, “ engages multitudes of people not only in needless terrors but in supernumerary duties, and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. Wise men concern themselves to retrench the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy; fools seek to multiply them by the sentiments of superstition. God’ s providence overrules all things. We should do our part faithfully, and leave the event with Him.” The advantages of a fixed Sabbath There are two distinct grounds on which works in religion are appraised at a low or rather worthless valuation in the Bible, and either rejected or denounced accordingly. The first is when they are offered as the price of our justification in the sight of God; as an equivalent upon which the Lawgiver is challenged for the honour and the regard that are due to righteousness; then does the Bible utterly hold at nought the most laborious, and, perhaps, when looked to in another view, the most holy and estimable of all human performances. The other ground on which works are computed at a low valuation in the Bible, is where, either in themselves they are devoid of tree moral excellence, or serve not in their tendencies to refine and to strengthen the principles of our moral nature. But let a good work be delivered of both these ingredients--let there be neither an arrogated merit nor an inherent meanness in it--free of all pettiness and abject timidity--And we say of works like unto this, that, so far from the gospel lifting a voice of hostility or casting a look of discountenance towards them, the very aim of the gospel is to raise and to multiply them over the face of a new moral creation. Now, in the text there is a certain scrupulous observation referred to by the apostle, which his converts adhered to as a duty, but which he charges them with as if it were a delinquency. They observed days and months and times and years, annexing a religious importance to the stated acts and exercises of stated periods; and we have no doubt, labouring under distress of conscience, at any misgiving from the prescribed and wonted regularity. It is likely enough, that both of those ingredients which go to vilify a work, and to render it null and worthless, entered into this outward formality of the Galatians--that it gave them a feeling of security as to their meritorious acceptance with God, which nought but the Redeemer’ s merits ought to inspire; and that it further degraded the character of man, by reducing morality to the level of mechanism, and substituting for the obedience of a rightly strung and rightly actuated heart, an obedience like that of a galley-slave who plies at his unvaried oar, and moves in the one and unvaried circuit that is assigned to him. But there is another side to this question, which must not be left out of sight; for, though it be true that man was not made for the Sabbath, yet let it never be forgotten that the Sabbath was made for man. Man was not made to move in a precise orbit of times and seasons; yet times and seasons may be arranged, so as to subserve his use, and be the ministers of good both to his natural and moral economy. Were the keeping of the Sabbath a mere servitude of the body, which left the heart no better than before, it would be a frivolous ceremonial and ought to be exploded. But if it be true that he who sanctifies the Sabbath sanctifies his own soul, then does the Sabbath assume a spiritual importance, because an expedient of spiritual cultivation° It is not that the virtue of man consists in these things, but that these things are devices of best and surest efficacy for upholding the virtue of man. If it be true of man, that he can attain a loftier communion with his God, at those hours when the din and urgency of the world are away from him; and that a season of reading, and contemplation, and prayer acts as a restorative to the embers of his decaying sacredness; and that the voice of a minister, when prompted by the Spirit from on high, and aided by the sympathies of all who are around him, can often send the elevation of heaven into his soul; and that it is on those evenings of deep and lengthened tranquility which the footstep of intruding companion-ship does not violate, when the nurture and admonition of the Lord can descend more abundantly on the hearts of His children, and when the calm and the unction of a holy influence may be most felt in His dwelling-place--then Sabbath, which, from one end to the other of it, teems with these very opportunities, instead of ranking with the holidays of idle superstition, will be dear as piety itself to every enlightened Christian; and to it, in the most emphatic sense of the term, will he award the obeisance of a Divine and spiritual festival. And on this principle, too, may the Sabbath be rescued from that contempt which the text, in denouncing the observation of days and of times, would appear to cast on it. It is true, that it is a periodic festival, and that man was not made for periods. But this does not hinder that periods may be made for man. Does sacredness so keep at all times its undisturbed place and pre-eminence, amid the turmoil of those many secularities by which you are surrounded, that any one set and specific time is not needed, on which, at a distance from the besetting world, you might relume that lamp of heaven in the soul which was ready to expire? Or if the time were left to your own discretion, are such your longings after a spiritual atmosphere, that you would be ever sure to make your escape to it, when like to be lulled or overborne in an atmosphere of earthliness? It is true you may lift up your hearts to God when you please--and even amid the thickening occupations of the market and the counting-house, is it possible that many a secret aspiration may arise to Him. But how often is it that you would so please; and tell us, on your experience of the past what, if all days were alike, would be the fervour or the frequency of such aspirations? To whom much is given, of them much will be required; and on this principle your Sabbaths, these precious gifts of God to man, will have to be accounted for. And oh, forget not, that if these have been nauseated in time, heaven, if you e’ er were admitted there, would be nauseated through all eternity. Sabbath is that station on the territory of human life, from which we can descry with most advantage and delight the beauties of the promised land; and it is there, as if at the gate of the upper sanctuary, where we can command one of the nearest approaches whereof our nature is capable, to the contemplations and the doings of the saints in blessedness. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Galatians 4:11I am afraid of you.A minister’ s fears I. What are those fears?1. Lest his word should not issue in conversions.2. Lest the converted members of his flock should not adorn their profession.3. Lest his converts should apostatise. II. What is his duty in the presence of these fears?1. To labour on in spite of them. (1) They may be groundless,(2) or if only too well grounded, he is not responsible. 2. Not to allow them to generate despair. The worst sinner may yet be converted and the worst backslider reclaimed. 3. To do all he can, with God’ s help, to prevent failure. III. What are his encouragements in the face of these fears?1. That he has been working for God’ s glory.2. That God is responsible for results.3. That in spite of appearances to the contrary God’ s word will not return unto Him void. Conclusion: How sad to be the subject of these fears.1. Unconverted.2. Inconsistent.3. Backsliding. At one point in Dr. Bang’ s ministry he became greatly discouraged, and attempted to leave his work. A significant dream relieved him. He thought he was working with a pickaxe, on the top of a basaltic rock. His muscular arm brought down stroke after stroke for hours, but the rock was hardly indented. He said to himself at last, “ It is useless; I will pick no more.” Suddenly a stranger of dignified mien stood by his side, and said, “ You will pick no more?” “ No.” “ Were you not set to do this task?” “ Yes.” “ Why then abandon it?” “ My work is in vain; I make no impression.” Solemnly the stranger replied, “ What is that to you? Your duty is to pick, whether the rock yields or not. Your work is in your own hands; the result is not. “ Work on.” He resumed his task. The first blow was given with almost superhuman force, and the rock flew into a thousand pieces. He awoke, returned to his work, and a great revival followed. (A. Stevens, LL. D.)Pain of fruitless labour Dr. Talmage says, “ I remember visiting a military prison where they punish men by making them carry cannon-balls from one end of the yard to the other, and the sergeant who accompanied me said: ‘ When we made the men carry the balls from this end of the yard to the other to make a pyramid at the other end there was a kind of amusement in it, because they were building up this pyramid; and so we made an alteration, and the man has to carry the ball from this end of the yard to the other and back again, and his toil seems to be so altogether fruitless, that it becomes a double punishment to him.’“ Even so it is a source of bitter pain to an earnest minister to feel that his laborious efforts for the good of his hearers are after all in vain. Galatians 4:12 Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am. The call to Christian liberty I. The call is based on personal example. “ I am.” Paul, an exemplification of Christian liberty. He could afford to contrast himself with the Judaisers in point of piety, labour, and Divine blessing on his work. Christian liberty stood approved of God in his person and ministry. There was no risk to run, he himself being witness, in this glorious liberty. A grand thing when a teacher can make such an appeal on the ground of his own character. II. The call is founded on self-abnegation. Paul renounced all his Jewish rights and privileges, and became “ as without law to them that were without law,” that he might liberate the Gentiles and keep them free. “ Will you abandon me, when I have abandoned all for you?” The teacher must stoop to conquer, and place himself in the position of the taught. III. The call is based on the past relationship of the two. “ Ye have not injured me at all; you never disobeyed me; don’ t do so now.” Happy the teacher who has such a ground of appeal. IV. The call is based on its own merits. There was no personal ground of complaint. Any grief the apostle might have had for the wreck of his own work was altogether subordinate to the thought of spiritual disaster. In the last resort every appeal must rest here. Other grounds are helpful, but gospel freedom must win its way on its own merits. The spirit of liberty is not merely a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be trampled under foot. (Channing.)Liberty is the soul’ s right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girded too tight. Without liberty man is in a syncope. (H. W. Beecher.)A minister’ s appeal to his people What motives, what insinuations, what reasons, what wise pre-oecupations and preventions, what art, what humility, what love is here! “ Brethren, I beseech you,” etc. We have1. a loving compellation--“ Brethren.” 2. A submissive address by way of comprecation--“ I beseech you.” 3. A request most reasonable--“ Be you as I am; for I am as ye are.” 4. A wise and prudent preoccupation or prevention, which removes all obstructions, and forestalls those jealousies, those surmises and groundless suspicions, which are the bane of charity, and the greatest enemies to peace--“ Ye have not injured me at all.” Of these the request is the main. We shall at this time speak only of the first part, that adducing, persuading, powerful name of “ brethren.” I. Nature herself hath made all men brethren. “ Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). There is great difference indeed in other respects. Some are high, others low; some fair, others foul; some learned, others unlearned; some rich, others poor. But in respect of original and extraction there is no difference at all: we are all branches of the same root, all hewn out of one rock, all digged out of one pit.1. And therefore, to make some use of that which we have learnt concerning our brotherhood by nature, this may serve, in the first place, to condemn all those who look upon men under other consideration than as men, or view them in any other shape than that of brethren. And the very name of “ man” and of “ brother” should be an amulet for all mankind against the venom of iniquity and injustice. 2. Therefore, in the second place, by this light of nature we may condemn ourselves when any bitterness towards our brother riseth in our hearts and allay or rather root it out with this consideration, that it is inhuman and most unnatural; that we cannot nourish it in our breasts, and not fall from our creation, and leave off to be men. II. And further we carry not this consideration, but pass now to view the Galatians as brethren in that other capacity, as they were Christians, professing the same faith: which our apostle in this place might more particularly and especially mean. There is such a relation, such a brotherhood, betwixt all those who profess the same faith, that neither error, nor sin, nor injury can break and dissolve it. For if any or all of these had been of force enough to do it, then certainly our apostle would never have been so free as to have called the Galatians “ brethren.”1. And, first, to error: though it have a foul aspect, and bear a distasteful and loathed name, yet it carrieth no such monstrosity, no such terror with it, as to fright brethren so far asunder as not to behold one another in that relation, not “ to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). 2. But, in the next place, if error cannot break and dissolve this relation of brotherhood which is amongst Christians, being of itself venial and easy to be pardoned, especially of those who are subject to error themselves; yet sin hath a foul aspect, and is of the most ugly and deformed appearance of anything in the world. We should never ask this question, if we would distinguish (which is easy to be done) between the nature of our brother and his fault; between that which he received from God, and that evil affection [which] he hath from himself; between that which is from heaven, heavenly, and that which is from the earth, nay, from the lowest pit of hell; if we would consider him in his rational nature, the image of God; and in that other capacity, as he is one for whom Christ died, and so capable of eternal life; and that though he seemed dead, yet his life may nevertheless be “ hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). For why judgest thou thy brother? (Matthew 7:1-3). “ Judgment is the Lord’ s” (Deuteronomy 1:17), who seeth “ things that are not as if they were” (Romans 4:17). Look not upon thy brethren as grasshoppers, and upon thyself as a strong and perfect man in Christ; as if thou weft spiritual, heavenly, impeccable, and as far removed from sin as God Himself. But rather, as St. Paul was made a Jew to the Jew (1 Corinthians 9:20), so be thou as a sick man ministering to the sick, handling another with the same compassion thou wouldst have extended to thyself, if thou thyself shouldst be in his case. If thou despise and reproach him, I am sure thou art in a far worse. 3. So, then, neither error nor sin can untie this knot, can dissolve and break this relation of brethren. I named a third, but I am well-near ashamed to name it again, or bring it in competition with error or sin; because an offence against God should more provoke us than any injury done to ourselves: which our apostle here sets so light by, that although the Galatians had even questioned his apostleship, and preferred Peter and James and John before him, yet he passeth it by as not worth the taking notice of; like Socrates, who, being overcome in judgment, professed he had no reason to be angry with his enemies, unless it were for this, that they conceived and believed they had hurt him. And here St. Paul saith, “ Ye have not hurt me at all.” And indeed no injury can be done by a brother to a brother. For the injury is properly done to God, who made them brethren and fellow-servants, and who reserves all power of revenge unto Himself, who is their common Master and the God of revenge. Bat we shall no further prosecute this, because it will fall in with our last part. We will rather, having, as ye have read, secured and fortified the brethren, walk about yet a while longer, and tell the towers and bulwarks which the God of love hath raised and set up to uphold them. And they are-- 1. Pleasure, excessive pleasure.2. Profit, great profit.3. Necessity, extreme necessity. All these serve to maintain and uphold this brotherhood. For brotherly love is--1. Pleasant and delightful.2. Profitable and advantageous.3. So necessary, that it had been better for us never to have been than not to love the brethren. (A. Farindon, D. D.)Live above injuries When an inconsiderate fellow had stricken Cato in the path, and afterwards cried him mercy, he replied, “ I remember not that thou didst strike me.” One having made a long and idle discourse before Aristotle concluded it thus: “ I doubt I have been too tedious to you, sir, with my many words.” “ Indeed,” said Aristotle, “ you have not been tedious to me, for I gave no heed to anything you said.” Momus in Lucian tells Jupiter, “ It is in thy power whether any one shall vex or wrong thee.” St. Paul here shakes all the affronts offered to him with as much ease as he did the viper. (Trapp.)Forget injuries It was a noble testimony borne to Henry VI. that “ he never forgot anything but injuries;” and even still nobler to Cranmer, “ To get a favour, do him wrong.” The noblest worship of the Power above Is to extol and imitate His love; Not to forgive our enemies alone, But use our bounty that they may be won. (Waller.) Galatians 4:13 Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh.Preaching in the infirmity of the flesh I. That we might not exalt our teachers unduly, who are only instruments of grace (Acts 14:15). II. That we might ascribe the whole work of our conversion to God alone (2 Corinthians 4:7). III. That God might by this means confound the wisdom of the world, and cause men that would be wise to become fools that they might be wise (1 Corinthians 3:18). IV. That we might be assured that the doctrine is of God because it prevails without the strength and policy of man. (W. Perkins.)The Gospel I have been delighted, on a calm summer’ s evening, to hear the tones of a sweet human voice borne to my ears from the other side of the valley. The shadows of the evening were around me, the birds had gone to their rest, a sadness was over the land; not a sound was heard save that voice, singing some tender Welsh air. The voice wandered among the hills, or seemed to linger in the eaves; then it trembled among the branches; by and by it became more powerful as it passed over the clear plain below. There was in it an indescribable pathos--it was a sigh swelling into a song--and it created in me unutterable longings for the perfect good, for that state in which life is musical, harmonious, and not filled with wild, discordant notes, as our present life is. The gospel resembles that voice, it comes to us trembling with Divine love; a tender, melting, pathetic voice, speaking of God and His love and His heaven, and the blessedness that shall be revealed. (Thomas Jones.)Why no record of Paul s preaching While we have more or less acquaintance with all the other important Churches of Paul’ s founding, not a single name of a person or place, and scarcely a single incident connected with the apostle’ s preaching in Galatia is preserved in either the Acts or the Epistle. This may partly be accounted for by the circumstances of the Church. The same delicacy which has concealed from us the name of the Corinthian offender may have led the apostle to avoid all special allusions in addressing a community to which he wrote in a strain of severest censure. And the historian would seem to have purposely drawn a veil over the infancy of a Church which swerved so soon and so widely from the purity of the gospel. (Bp. Lightfoot.)The indisposition of St. Paul Nothing is more natural than that the traversing of vast distances over the burning plains and freezing mountain passes of Asia Minor--the constant changes of climate, the severe bodily fatigue, the storms of fine and blinding sand, the bites and stings of insects, the coarseness and scantiness of daily fare--should have brought on a return of his malady to one whose health was so shattered as that of St. Paul. (Farrar.)The climate and the prevailing maladies of Asia Minor may have been modified by lapse of centuries; and we are without the guidance of St. Luke’ s medical language which sometimes throws a light on diseases alluded to in Scripture; but two Christian sufferers, in widely different ages of the Church, occur to the memory as we look on the map of Galatia. We could hardly mention any two men more thoroughly imbued with the spirit of St. Paul than John Chrysostom and Henry Martyn. And when we remember how these two saints suffered in their last hours from fatigue, pain, rudeness, and cruelty, among the mountains of Asia Minor which surround the place where they rest, we can well enter into the meaning of St. Paul’ s expression of gratitude to those who received him kindly in the hour of his weakness. (Conybeare and Howson.)Personal suffering a means of the world’ s progress The hopes of humanity do not lie in the fulness with which science discovers and employs the forces of nature. On the contrary, there is no danger which is more imminent than the appropriation of those powers by the coarsest despotism which can enslave and corrupt its subjects. It does not consist in what is called culture, because art and poetry are easily made slaves of that wealth which is willing to have its existence certified and its power acknowledge by the homage of cultivated parasites. It is not learning that can save man; for at best learning only influences a few, and is apt, in those who possess it, to degenerate into self-sufficiency and ease. Least of all do the hopes of man lie in the aggregation of wealth; for experience tells us that wealth is not only apt to be arrogant and domineering, but to form a coarse and harsh oligarchy, degraded by low tastes and prone to ferocious fears. Nor, finally, do the hopes of humanity reside in any form of polity. It may be that one form of administration is better than another, because it offers least resistance to the influence which ought to leaven society, gives a freer course to those forces which can chasten and exalt mankind. Despotism degrades us, but it does not follow that liberty purifies us. The atmosphere is cleared of its accumulated poisons by some furious storm, which does in the end bring health to the many, but bestows its benefits amidst the waste and the rain of those whom it smites. And so the moral purification of society is affected by the suffering of those whom the cleansing storm catches in its course; the victory of the most righteous cause demands the suffering and death of some among those who enter into the battle. When the stronghold of truth and virtue is to be built, the foundations are laid in the firstborn, and the youngest perishes before the walls are finished. (Paul of Tarsus.)Affliction a means of moral influence The sunlight falls upon a clod, and the clod drinks it in, is itself warmed by it, but lies as black as ever, and sheds out no light. But the sun touches a diamond, and the diamond almost chills itself as it sends out in radiance on every side the light that has fallen upon it. So God helps one man to bear his pain, and nobody but that one man is a whir the richer. God comes to another sufferer--reverent, unselfish, and humble--and the lame leap, and the dumb speak, and the wretched are comforted all around by the radiated comfort of that happy soul. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Galatians 4:14 And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not. Ministers and people Here we see-- I. The goodness of God, who does not speak in His awful majesty, but sends ambassadors to beseech us to be reconciled to Him. II. The responsibility of pastors, because they stand in the stead of Christ Jesus, and must, therefore,(1) only declare what they know to be His will; and(2) have a special care to maintain that holiness of life which befits their position. III. The duty and privilege of the Church1. Not to despise their minister’ s weakness.2. To treat him with reverence and love, because a messenger of God and of Christ. IV. The comfort of believers. Sure and certain, as though administered by an angel or by Christ Himself. (W. Perkins.)The superficiality of Galatian religious life If we picture to ourselves the apostle as he appeared before the Galatians, a friendless outcast, writhing under the tortures of a painful malady, yet instant in season and out of season, by turns denouncing and entreating, appealing to the agonies of a crucified Saviour, perhaps, also, as at Lystra, enforcing this appeal by some striking miracle, we shall be at no loss to conceive how the fervid temperament of the Gaul might have been aroused, while yet only the surface of his spirit and consciousness was ruffled. For the time, indeed, all seemed to be going on well. “ Ye were running bravely;” but the very eagerness with which they had embraced the gospel was in itself a dangerous symptom, A material so easily moulded soon loses the impression it has taken. The passionate current of their Celtic blood, which flowed in this direction now, might only too easily be diverted into a fresh channel by some new religious impulse. Their reception of the gospel was not built on a deeply-rooted conviction of its truth, or a genuine appreciation of its spiritual power. (Bp. Lightfoot.)St. Paul’ s infirmity The right reading and rendering is: “ But ye know that by reason of an infirmity of my flesh I preached the gospel to you on the former visit; and your temptation in my flesh ye did not utterly despise (set at nought) nor loathe.” The drift of the first of these clauses is that on the former of two visits, he had not purposed preaching in Galatia, but did so because he was detained there by his peculiar affliction. The drift of the second clause, which is rather irregularly expressed, is that the Galatians did not scorn his infirmity nor regard it with abhorrence, although it constituted a temptation to them to repudiate the gospel, when preached by one so afflicted. This passage and 2 Corinthians 12:7 taken together point to the following results:1. The affliction was bodily. “ In my flesh.” The effect of shocking and revolting those who witnessed it, which is pointed to in the word “ loathe,” could only be produced by visible symptoms. “ Infirmity of my flesh” also suggests most naturally, although not necessarily, that the infirmity attached to the body. From its tendency to bring him into contempt, the apostle looked upon it as a grievous impediment to his ministry. The words “ smite with the fist” (2 Corinthians 12:7) indicate the violence and the suddenness of its approaches; and his detention in Galatia, where he had not meant to stay, shows that he could not forecast its coming on, and apparently also that its after-effects were of some duration. The current impression that it was attended by agonizing pain is not positively justified by anything that is stated. It was probably humiliating rather than painful. 2. It was an adjunct of his visions and special revelations in two ways. (1) It served a disciplinary purpose in connection with them.(2) Its particular visits were the immediate antecedent, if not the conditional, accompaniments of the visions and revelations themselves. This last relation is not only indicated by the apostle’ s general statement, but appears more distinctly from the fact that the answer, “ My grace is sufficient for thee” is exactly one of the special revelations in question, and it is reasonable to suppose that it was given in direct reply to the third prayer for deliverance, uttered at a moment when he was painfully sensible of the pressure of his bodily trial. It is to be borne in mind that he is speaking in 2 Corinthians 12:1-21. of visions and revelations experienced by him while in an ecstatic condition, i.e., when the connection between the inner spiritual man and the body was either in complete abeyance or actually for a while severed, and this strongly commends the supposition that the abnormal state of body was a transition-stage to the ecstasy. The three petitions would, in this case, be made when the apostle, under some painfully humbling physical conditions, felt his conscious union with his material organism dissolving, and the Lord’ s answer to the third petition would be heard by him when one of the ecstatic states had set in. The ecstasy, the visions and revelations, and the peculiar affection of the body, would thus be coincident in time, possibly of the same duration, and, in a certain sense, the complements of each other His conversion (Acts 26:11-18) furnishes a most striking illustration of the manner in which he may have received his supernatural communications at the precise time when he was under the actual application of the “ stake for the flesh.” Its close conjunction with the visions and revelations does not justify the conclusion that the suffering which it brought and the Divine communications alternated with one another during the ecstasy, so that the ecstatic, like the waking life of the apostle was a copy of the life of his Master in its contrary aspects of humiliation and suffering and of exaltation and glory. If the stake for the flesh was felt during the ecstasy, he could not have said that he did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body, for a sense of bodily suffering must imply the presence of the body One clear result of the intimate union of the stake with the visions and revelations is that the occasions of his suffering from it cannot be regarded and spoken of as if they came on like the attacks of a malady. They coincided with the times at which he stood in need of special disclosures of the Divine will. The date, “ fourteen years ago” (2 Corinthians 12:2), points to directions given-him previously to quitting Arabia for a new province of ministerial work.3. When St. Paul ascribes to the stake a twofold relation to the invisible world, and sees in it a concurrence of Divine and of Satanic agency, the latter controlled by the former, he is neither speaking figuratively, nor merely stating his own personal impressions in accordance with popular views, but affirming what he knew to be a truth, and his statement is amply supported by other representations in Scripture. This admixture of Satanic action makes the attempt precarious to identify the stake with any known malady or ailment, such as acute headache, earache, a complaint in the eyes, or epilepsy. The view which chiefly claims consideration under this head, although there is an ancient and sustained tradition in favour of headache, is that it was epilepsy. Both Jews and pagans deemed epilepsy a supernatural visitation, and hence its name morbus divinus, or sacer. Another designation of it, morbus comitialis, rested upon the same idea, for if any one was seized with it in the Roman Forum during an election it was supposed to be the intervention of a god, and business was suspended. The original for “ loathe” in this verse means literally to “ spit out,” and it is curious that epilepsy was also called morbus que sputalur, because those present were “ accustomed to spit upon the epileptic or into their own bosoms, either to express their abomination, or to avert the evil omen for themselves.” Persons may become subject to epilepsy at middle age by a great shock, physical or moral, or both, such as St. Paul’ s conversion was. Almost all medical writers on epilepsy mention a patient who before a seizure imagined that he saw a figure approach and smite him a blow on the head, after which he lost consciousness. This has a resemblance to the expression “ smite with the fist,” which might well represent the suddenness of epileptic attacks. Those who happen to have seen a person seized with epilepsy while officiating in Divine service, will comprehend how natural it would be for St. Paul to regard any bodily liability at all resembling it as a terrible hindrance to his ministry. After epileptic convulsions have ended there often ensues an insensibility, and patients sometimes fall into a profound stupor or coma, which has been known to last as long as a week. This symptom would harmonize with the apostle’ s forced stay in Galatia. Still it is doubtful whether any of these points are more than superficial agreements. An epileptic remembers nothing of what passed during the fit, whereas St. Paul had the most vivid recollection of everything. Epilepsy, frequently suffered, generally impairs the intellect, and the cases of Julius Caesar, Mahomet, and Buonaparte, who are quoted as instances of high intellectual power remaining in spite of epilepsy, are not deemed by medical authorities to be of much value. 4. An attempt has been made to find an analogy of nature for the apostle’ s cross from a different point of view, viz., by taking his visions and revelations for the starting-point. A large number of instances are upon record of religious visionaries, as they are called, and ecstatical persons, who have seemed to themselves to be translated into the invisible world, and to have seen and heard its inhabitants and transactions as sensibly as they could have seen and heard anything with their bodily organs. They have for the most part a strong conviction that they are under the immediate guidance and influence of spiritual beings during the disclosures made to them. The body is in many cases in a state resembling that of catalepsy, in which the will exercises no power over it; the expression of the eyes, though open, is extinguished; the limbs are like those of an automaton, and remain unaffected by the law of gravitation in any attitude in which they may be placed; and the face is like that of a dead person. 5. It may be questioned whether such inquiries and speculations as these, although interesting, can lead to any solid results, on account of the perfectly exceptional character of the apostle’ s case. There is reason to think that no malady or bodily disorder brought about by demoniacal agency is ever identical with ordinary disease. If similarities are traceable, they are rather symptomatic than essential affinities. There are not sufficient data for determining what peculiar ingredient characteristic of Satanic malignity there was in the apostle’ s affliction, but it would seem to have been something calculated to overwhelm him with ignominy rather than to excruciate him with pain. It is consolatory to know that, however hard it was to bear, the grace of Christ enabled him ultimately to rejoice and glory in it as a means whereby the power of the Lord more fully tabernacled upon him and invested him with the true strength for doing his Master’ s work. (Canon Waite.) Galatians 4:15 Where is then the blessedness ye spake of?Instability I. Their past religious experience was one of blessedness.1. Blessedness is one of the earliest notes of religious life. Christ’ s first miracle was at Cana: amongst His first words were the beatitudes. The earliest religious experience is that known as “ first love.” 2. There is a danger of this being lost through the truth on which it is based losing its freshness. The vision of Christ crucified had faded, and the Galatians were now seeking perfection in another way than that by which they had attained blessedness. 3. Blessedness can only be maintained by the constant realization of Christ as Saviour. II. Their present example is one of religious instability.1. They were of a fickle and changeable temperament. 2. Religion had entered them chiefly through the emotions. They had not fairly grasped the doctrines of Christianity. Hence they became an easy prey to false teachers. 3. They regarded the teacher rather than the truth he taught. 4. Influences were at work calculated to draw them away from their faith. (1) Learned teachers whom it was hard to refute.(2) Gorgeous ceremonial for which they had a predilection.(3) Old worldliness and heathenism so recently renounced. III. The remedy.1. Recognize the evil.2. Return to Christ. (S. Pearson, M. A.)A missing treasure 1. Nothing is easier than to show that blessedness is the privilege of every Christian.2. But where is it in many an average Christian life?3. If it be amissing, something must be wrong.4. Its sole source is God, but it is dispensed at sundry places and by sundry channels. I. The Cross of Christ. By this(1) a curse is removed;(2) a blessing conferred. II. The throne of grace.1. A reconciled God2. A sympathetic High Priest. III. The wells of salvation.1. The Bible.2. The Lord’ s Supper. IV. The ways of Christian good-doing (Acts 20:35). V. Mount Pisgah, with its views of the promised land. When all is gloomy elsewhere, all is bright there (John 14:1-3; Romans 8:18-21; Hebrews 12:22-24; Revelation 22:1-5). In conclusion, where is this blessedness?1. How strange not to have it!2. Stranger still to have had it and lost it. (Norman Macleod, D. D.)Happiness and duty I. To make happiness the chief end of life is a mistake as well as a sin, for it must meet with failure. II. The end of our being is holiness: and when this is attained, happiness is the certain result. III. The blessedness of religion is the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible grace, just as good health is a token that our physical employments are conducive to our well being,1. Those forms of religion which induce melancholy bear no stamp of Divine origin. 2. Man’ s greatest miseries have been produced by such a religion. 3. Happiness shows the worth of true religion, for “ the fruit of the Spirit is joy.” (S. Pearson, M. A.)Blessedness is not the foundation or warrant of Christian life, but its crown and glory, like the tuft of green that adorns the palm tree: like the rich capital that wreathes the Corinthian column; like the crown that sparkles on the brow of a king. Without it the Christian is like a king without a crown, a column without a capital, a palm tree with a headless stem, (N. Macleod, D. D.)Mere feeling: its worthlessness Feeling, even when directed to heavenly objects, may be in its substance partly physical; and there is no necessary connection between feeling so originating and moral earnestness or right morality. Nay, it is very possible for those who feel warmly to imagine, mistakenly enough, that warm feeling is the same thing as, or an adequate substitute for, acting rightly. He who said, “ If ye love Me, keep My commandments,” implied that there are forms of religious passion which may co-exist with disobedience, and may even appear to compensate for it. The Galatians had not been less willing to “ pluck out their own eyes” out of devotion to St. Paul, at the time of their conversion, because they afterwards looked on him as a personal enemy for telling them the truth about the Judaizers. The apostle was not insincere who protested, “ Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee;” albeit a few hours later, at the crisis of danger, he could exclaim, “ I know not the man.” Feeling is not necessarily moral purpose; and its possible deficiencies show that we cannot regard it as alone forming the material of Christian life. (Canon Liddon.)Feeling: its place and power in religion Feeling is of as much use in religion as steam is in an engine--if it drives the engine it is good; but if it does not it is no good for anything but to fizz and hiss and buzz. (J. Parker, D. D.)Lost blessedness At the Governor’ s banquet in California State, where wine was flowing freely, one of the speakers, while making an excited speech, said: “ If there is any one present who was ever happier in his life than he is here to-night, I call upon him at once to arise and say so.” A young man sprang to his feet and said: “ I was very much happier in one of Mr. Hammond’ s meetings than I am here.” it produced a profound impression upon that gay audience. The backslider’ s misery A number of persons were once relating their misfortunes to each other. One told of his whole substance entrusted to one vessel, having perished in the ocean; another of an only and beloved daughter recently ]aid in the grave; another of a son breaking loose from restraint, and plunging like the prodigal into the wickedness of a great city. It was agreed that these were sore afflictions, and it was wondered whether any could produce sorer. One who had hitherto been silent now spoke. “ Yes,” said he, “ I can tell of something sadder than all these, a believing heart has gone from me.” There followed deep silence at thess words, and when the little group spoke again it was agreed that the last was the heaviest sorrow; that there was no calamity like it. (British Messenger.) Galatians 4:17 They zealously affect you, but not well. False zeal Paul suggests-- I. That things which are good in their kind may be done for wrong ends.1. In preaching, (1) some do it for envy and strife;(2) some to gain personal or pecuniary ends. 2. In embracing the gospel, some do it, not for its own sake, but for (1) honour;(2) profit. 3. This must teach us not only to do good, but to do it well. For which end-- (1) We must set before us the will of God as our main motive.(2) The outward action must be conformable to the inward motion. II. That nature can counterfeit grace. Thus men feign--1. The experiences and life of religion. 2. The activities of religion. How hard to detect the hypocrite, and yet how easy to become one. III. The envy and ambition of the deceivers. Paul must be excluded from the love of the Galatians that they alone may be loved. Thus Joshua (Numbers 11:29); John’ s disciples (John 3:30); our Lord’ s disciples (Luke 9:49). IV. The divisions between pastors and people created by the false teachers. (W. Perkins.)The spirit of religious faction I. Its prominent characteristic. Clever imitation of religious zeal.1. In its apparent motives What other end could they have in making the sacrifices their work involved. 2. In the deep interest it seems to take in its objects. 3. In the undoubted earnestness with which its work is done. II. Its method of operation.1. To create a schism between pastor and people. Paul’ s apostleship was denied; his character traduced; his motives impugned. 2. To create a schism between one Church and another. The Judaizers sought to divorce the Galatians from the fellowship of Gentile Churches which were based on liberty. 2. To create a schism between the believer and his Lord. How often is this effected, not precisely in this way, but by the passions engendered by religious strife. III. Its object.1. To gain personal ascendancy.2. To secure the deference and zeal of the Galatians. Schism To separate from the Church in some one or few essential articles while you pretend to hold Christ the Head is heresy; to separate from it in spirit, by refusing holiness and not loving such as are holy, is ungodliness; to differ from it by any error of judgment or life is sin; to magnify any one church or party, so as to deny due love and communion to the rest, is schism. To limit all the Church to your party, and deny all or any of the rest to be Christians, and parts of the Universal Church, is schism by a dangerous breach of charity, and the principal schism that you should avoid. It is schism also to condemn unjustly any particular Church as no Church, and it is schism to withdraw your bodily communion from a Church that you were bound to hold that communion with; and it is schism to make divisions or parties in a Church, though you divide not from that Church. (R. Baxter.)Zeal I. Consider the nature of zeal in general. Zeal is a strong and ardent affection of the heart towards some distant and desirable object. It is not a simple, but complicated, emotion, which admits of different degrees of ardour and sensibility, accordingly as its object appears more or less agreeable, more or less distant, or more or less important. Zeal always supposes a fixed and steady attention to the object upon which it terminates. A slight and cursory view of any agreeable objects never excites in our breast the least degree of zeal to make them our own. But it is a law of our nature that a close and continued attention to any desirable object should draw all the affections of the heart towards it, and, of consequence, should produce the emotion of zeal Whatever agreeable subject seizes and absorbs the mind will naturally enkindle the fire of zeal. Zeal is one of the first and strongest emotions which we discover in children. The reason is, the smallest trifles are sufficient to fill their minds and engross their whole attention. And when greater trifles fill greater minds they produce the same effect. Even philosophers and politicians often suffer the most vain and imaginary schemes to take the entire possession of their thoughts, and to fill their minds with a flame of zeal, which is astonishing to all who have never paid the same attention to the same ideal or trifling subjects. But whatever be the object of zeal, it always appears to the person who feels this lively emotion to be a matter highly interesting, either on its own account, or on account of its supposed connection with some valuable end. II. Distinguish false zeal from true. There is a zeal which forms a beautiful moral character. A strong and ardent desire to promote the public good justly commands universal approbation and esteem. This the apostle observes in the verse immediately succeeding the text. “ But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing.” It is the goodness of its ultimate object which renders zeal virtuous and amiable. When it ultimately seeks the promotion of a good cause, it is according to knowledge, it is agreeable to the dictates of reason and conscience, it is of a godly sort, and it resembles the zeal of the Lord of Hosts. But false zeal has a diametrically opposite object, and ultimately seeks a selfish end. III. How false zeal will dispose men to act. It is a powerful stimulus to action, and will dispose all men to act in the same manner, unless restrained by soma different passion, or by some insurmountable obstacle.1. It will dispose them to combine together in carrying on their destructive designs. This false fervour, like electrical fire, will easily and instantaneously spread from breast to breast among those who are ardently engaged in the same cause. 2. False zeal will hurry men on to act without regarding or even consulting the sober dictates of their own reason. It will not suffer them to make a proper use of that noble faculty which God has implanted in their breasts to direct them in all their private and public conduct. Zealots who do not give a reason to themselves for their own opinions and conduct are still more averse to giving a reason to others. 3. While men are under the influence of false zeal they are prone to act, not only without consulting their own reason but without hearkening to the reason of others. They are inclined to shut their ears against the most plain and conclusive arguments which can be offered to their cool and candid consideration. 4. Those whom a false zeal has united together in a bad cause are extremely fond of increasing their strength by bringing over as many as possible to their views and feelings. A false zeal is no less a proselyting than an infatuating spirit. Those who are deceived, as are all who are actuated by a blind zeal, have a strong inclination to deceive others. The Scribes and Pharisees, whom our Saviour calls “ blind leaders of the blind,” would compass sea and land to make proselytes to their own errors and delusions. But zealots are no less artful than indefatigable in their efforts to attach others to their persons and pursuits. 6. It is the nature of false zeal to embolden and stimulate men to acts of violence and cruelty in effecting their sinister and selfish purposes. A bear robbed of her whelps is not more fierce and cruel than those who are zealously engaged to accomplish a base and cruel design Their fiery zeal sears their consciences and hardens their hearts, which prepares them to sacrifice without remorse either friends or foes, who stand in their way and oppose their views. It only remains to make a proper application of-this subject.1. What has been said upon the nature and effects of false zeal may help us to determine who are under its governing influence at the present day. 2. It appears from the description which has been given of false zeal that these who feel it and act under its influence are altogether criminal. 3. False zeal is the most dangerous, as well as the most criminal, passion that can possibly reign in the human heart. It has been the primary source of innumerable murders, massacres, persecutions, conspiracies, revolutions, wars, and desolations among the nations of the earth. A single spark of false zeal may spread from the breast of one popular influential character through a whole nation, and involve them in the heaviest calamities. Of this we have a late and memorable instance. About a half-a-century ago the malignant heart of Voltaire swelled with impetuous zeal to crush Christianity and all its votaries. From him the flame spread among his learned friends; from these it spread among the French philosophers and nobility; and from these it spread among a vast number of secret societies in France, in Germany, and in several other parts of Europe. In this rapid progress it employed a thousand pens and ten thousand tongues to plead its cause and proselytize millions to atheistical and sceptical infidelity. Strengthened and encouraged by their numbers, these zealots pointed their virulence against the throne as well as the altar, which spread anarchy and destruction through France, and involved a great part of Europe, Egypt, and Syria in all the terrors and miseries of a long and cruel war. Such have been the genuine fruits of false zeal in our own day; and such we have reason to believe it will continue to produce wherever it rages without restraint. Let us therefore endeavour to undeceive those who are deceived, and in this way effectually check the further spread of false zeal. 4. In the next place, it is our immediate duty to cherish in ourselves and others the spirit of true zeal in opposition to false. Our cause is the best in which we can possibly be engaged. The defence of our religion and government calls for our most zealous exertions. (N. Emmons, D. D.)Unchristian zeal A false zeal in religion is always, in some respect or other, a misdirected zeal, or a zeal not according to knowledge; a zeal seeking some false end, or, while proposing to itself a good end, seeking its promotion in some unauthorized way. Jehu had a good zeal, which he called zeal for the Lord of Hosts. His fault was not that he was too zealous, but that his zeal was really directed to his own advancement. The Jews, in the days of Christ, had zeal for God, but it was so misdirected as to fire them with a frenzy to destroy the Son of God, and extinguish the Light of the world. There are countless forms of false zeal now at work, but, in all cases, they sin, not by excess, but by misdirection. Some are flaming with a zeal to spread some of the corruptions of Christianity, and to carry men away from its great and cardinal truths. Some are equally zealous to build up a sect or a party on other foundations than those which God has laid in Zion; and that which taints their zeal is the purpose to which they employ it, and not any excessive fervour of their zeal itself. (Bonar.)True and false zeal Let us take heed we do not sometimes call that zeal for God and His gospel which is nothing else but our own tempestuous and stormy passion. True zeal is a sweet, heavenly, and gentle flame, which makes us active for God, but always within the sphere of love it never calls for fire from heaven to consume those that differ a little from us in their apprehensions. It is like that kind of lightning (which philosophers speak of) that melts the sword within, but singeth not the scabbard; it strives to save the soul, but hurteth not the body. (Cudworth.) Galatians 4:18 Zealously affected always in a good thing. Value and importance of Christian zeal I. Examine the Christian quality spoken of.1. Its foundation. Supreme love to Jesus Christ, the fruit of spiritual regeneration, is the only solid basis of true zeal. 2. Its nature. Sincere and warm regard for God’ s glory. A compound of strong faith and disinterested regard, manifesting itself by patient endurance and constant exertion. 3. Its objects. (1) Plain acknowledged truths, such as man’ s ruin by nature, his redemption by Christ, his renewal by the Holy Spirit. (2) Matters of real importance. Not the shell or garment of religion, but the life and heart of it. (3) The advancement of the Divine glory is the object nearest every true believer’ s heart, and he will use all his influence to uphold and support the means calculated to promote it. The instruction of the young, the distribution of the Scriptures, the propagation of the gospel at home and abroad, etc. 4. Its properties. (1) Enlightened and prudent.(2) Mild and gentle.(3) Modest and humble.(4) Warm and active. II. Its value and importance in the Christian cause.1. It facilitates the progress of those who possess it in their Christian course. 2. It makes the practical part of religion easy and delightful. 3. It promotes a Christian’ s usefulness. He feels a desire to do something for the interest and benefit of his fellows. Application:1. Let those who possess this Christian quality cultivate it.2. Let strangers to Christian zeal seek to become partakers in it. (T. Lewis.)Definition of zeal Zeal may be defined as the heat or fervour of the mind, prompting its vehemence of indignation against anything which it conceives to be evil--prompting its vehemence of desire towards anything which it imagines to be good, In itself, it has no moral character at all. It is the simple instinct of energetic nature, never wholly divested of a sort of rude nobility, and never destitute of influence upon the lives and characters of others. The word “ zeal” is used indiscriminately in Scripture in order to denote a strong feeling of the mind, whether bent upon evil design or on cultivating the things which are of good report and lovely. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)True zeal True zeal is like the vital heat in us that we live upon, which we never feel to be angry or troublesome. (Cudworth.)Heavenly zeal Our zeal, if it be heavenly, if it be true vestal fire kindled from above, will not delight to tarry here below, burning up straw and stubble and such combustible things, and sending up nothing but gross earthly flames to heaven; but it will rise up and return back pure as it came down, and will be ever striving to carry up men’ s hearts to God along with it. (Cudworth.)Constancy of zeal We do not value an intermitting spring so much as the clear brooklet which our childhood knew, and which has laughed on its course unheeding, and which could never be persuaded to dry up, though it has had to battle against the scorchings of a jubilee of summer’ s suns. We do not guide ourselves by the glow-worm’ s bead of light, or with the marsh-lamp’ s fitful flame. No, we look to the ancient sun, which in our infancy struggled through the window, and danced upon the wall of the nursery, as if he knew how much we delighted to see him light up the flower-cup and peep through the shivering leaf. And, for ourselves, we do not value the affection of a stranger awakened by some casual congeniality, and displayed in kindly greeting or in occasional courtesy. Our wealth is in the patient bearing, and the unnoticed deed, and the anticipated wish, and the ready sympathies, which make a summer and a paradise wherever there is a home. And not only in the natural and the social relations, but in the enterprise of the world, in the busy activities of men, the necessity for uniformity in earnestness is readily acknowledged. Society very soon brands a man if he has not got a perseverance as well as an earnestness about him. The world has got so matter-of fact now, that it jostles the genius off the footpath, while the plodder, whose eye sparkles less brilliantly but more evenly, steadily proceeds on his way to success. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)Interest in holy work to be maintained It is of the utmost importance to keep up our interest in the holy work in which we are engaged, for the moment our interest flags the work will become wearisome. Humboldt says that the copper-coloured native of Central America, far more accustomed than the European traveller to the burning heat of the climate, yet complains more when upon a journey, because he is stimulated by no interest. The same Indian, who would complain when in botanizing he was loaded with a box full of plants, would row his canoe fourteen or fifteen hours together against the current without a murmur, because he wished to return to his family. Labours of love are light. Love much, and you can do much. Impossibilities disappear when zeal is fervent. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Quality of action The Hebrews have a saying that God is more delighted in adverbs than in nouns; ‘ tis not so much the matter that’ s done, but the matter how ‘ tis done, that God minds. Not how much, but how well! ‘ Tis the well-doing that meets with a “ Well done!” Let us therefore serve God, not nominally or verbally, but adverbially. (Venning.)Zeal and prudence Two ships were aground at London Bridge. The proprietors of one sent for a hundred horses, and pulled it to pieces; the proprietors of the other waited for the tide, and with sails and rudder directed it as they pleased. (C Simeon.)Zeal and discretion Zeal and discretion united together are like the two lions which supported the throne of Solomon; and he who has them both is like Moses for mildness and like Phineas for his service; therefore, as wine is tempered with water, so let discretion temper zeal. (H. Smith.)It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing I. What is the nature of true Christian zeal?1. The original word means heat. When the passions are strongly moved to good and against evil there is religious zeal.2. Love is the chief ingredient in its composition. But it is love in the highest degree--“ fervent love.” II. It follows, therefore, that the properties of love are the properties of zeal (see 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.).1. Humility.2. Meekness.3. Patience.4. Permanence.5. Proportioned to that which is good. (1) For the Church.(2) More for Church ordinances.(3) More still for works of mercy.(4) Most for love itself. III. Practical inferences. If this be true, then--1. Christian zeal is inimical to-- (1) Hatred, bitterness, prejudice, bigotry, persecution.(2) Pride.(3) Anger.(4) Murmuring and impatience. And, 2. Is not fervour for (1) Any evil thing.(2) Indifferent things.(3) Opinions. (J. Wesley.)Zeal I. Its objects--“ Good things.”1. Acts of worship.2. Acts of our secular calling.3. Acts of righteousness.4. Acts of charity and mercy. II. Its nature.1. Forward and cheerful.2. Resolute in spite of discouragements.3. Diligent and earnest.4. Constant. III. Its place in religion.1. It is a note of God’ s people.2. It is the fruit of Christ’ s death. (1) By way of obligation.(2) Because Christ has purchased for us the Spirit of power. IV. Application.1. How earnest men are in sin--shall Satan be served better than God?2. Consider how zealous you once were.3. We cannot afford to be lukewarm. (1) Time is short.(2) The enemy is earnest. 4. The object deserves the warmest zeal.5. Coldness is dangerous to ourselves and others.6. Christian comfort depends on zeal.7. The want of zeal is odious to God and dishonourable. (Manton.)Christian zeal I. Its nature.1. In general the heat or fervour of the mind prompting its vehemence of indignation against evil, of desire for good; the simple instinct of energetic nature, never wholly divested of a sort of rude nobility, and never destitute of influence upon the lives and character of others. 2. Christian zeal-- (1) Springs from a Christian motive. If it does not spring from love it will be a blind distempered emotion. (2) Is displayed in a Christian manner--merciful and tolerant. (3) Is used for Christian ends--peace and good-will. II. Its permanence--On which rests its main value.1. We see this in nature, social relationships, business. 2. The temptations to make it fitful. (1) Religious lukewarmness.(2) The race for wealth.(3) Ministerial preferences. But if religion is a “ good thing,” it is always so. III. Its profitablness. It is good--1. In itself.2. In its influences.3. In its effects. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)The reasonableness of Christian zeal The world applauds the zealous in everything but religion. The warrior whose breast shall shine with stars, the scholar who makes a hush as he appears--they are those who set an object before them and strive for it through the hazard of years, and would deem it a shame if they did not put heart into their work. And shall not the Christian be in earnest with a cause that ennobles, with a responsibility which he may not transfer, with the destinies of his fellows for ever trembling in the balance, and in some sort committed to his fidelity as a witness for God? With the solemn concerns of the soul shall there be trifling? When a moment’ s opportunity welcomed or slighted may decide the fortunes of an eternity, shall languid counsels prosper or faint desires prevail? When a real strife is waged, fiercer far than the fabled battle between the giants and the gods, and heaven and hell are in earnest for the possession of the man, shall those who have been won for God be craven or traitorous in the fight? (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)The causes of declining zeal Commercial prosperity and business cares, the eagerness after pleasure and the exigencies of political life, diffused doubt and wide-spread artistic and literary culture, eat the very life out of thousands in our Churches, and lower their fervour till, like the molten iron cooling in the air, what was once all glowing with ruddy heat is crusted over with foul black scoriae, ever encroaching on the tiny central warmth. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Zeal illustrated During the battle of Gettysburg, Chaplain Eastman was so badly injured by a fall of his horse as to be compelled to lie down on the field for the night. As he lay in the darkness, he heard a voice say, “ Oh, my God!” and thought, “ How can I get at him?” Unable to walk, he started to roll to the sufferer, and rolled through blood, among the dead bodies, till he came to the dying man, to whom he preached Christ. This service done, he was sent for to attend a dying officer, to whom he had to be carried by two soldiers. Thus he passed the long night; the soldiers carrying him from one dying man to another, to whom he preached Christ, and with whom he prayed, while he was compelled to lie upon his back beside them. (Foster.)Christian zeal At a missionary meeting in Edinburgh, the Rev. W. C. Bunning related that a friend of his was once riding between Glasgow and Greenock, when the train began to flag, and at length stood still. The gentleman got out, and going up to the engine, said to the driver, “ What’ s the matter? Have you run out of water?” “ No,” was the reply, “ we’ ve plenty of water, but it’ s not boiling.” (R. Brewin.)Zeal the need of the Church A fearful storm was raging, when the cry was heard, “ Man overboard!” A human form was seen manfully breasting the furious elements, in the direction of the shore; but the dominant waves bore the struggler rapidly outward, and, ere boats could be lowered, a fearful space sundered the victim from help. Above the shriek of the storm and roar of the waters rose his rending cry. It was an agonizing moment. With bated breath and blanched cheek, every eye was strained to the struggling man. Manfully did the brave rowers strain every nerve in that race of mercy, but all their efforts were in vain. One wild shriek of despair, and the victim went down.A piercing cry, “ Save him, save him!” rang through the hushed crowd; and into their midst darted an agitated man, throwing his arms wildly into the air, shouting, “ A thousand pounds for the man who saves his life!” but his starting eye rested only on the spot where the waves rolled remorselessly over the perished. He whose strong cry broke the stillness of the crowd was captain of the ship from whence the drowned man fell, and was his brother. This is just the feeling now wanted in the various ranks of those bearing commission under the great Captain of our salvation. “ Save him! he is my brother.” (Biblical Treasury.)Zeal in religion Reasons why we should be zealous in Christ’ s service.1. Manliness requires it. 2. The character and services of the Master render anything short of this a crime and a betrayal of an infinite trust. 3. The reward promised may well tax every power of our being to its utmost capacity. (American Homiletic Review.)Work aids zeal When Dr. Kane was in the Arctic regions he one day wanted to light a fire, and being away from camp where he could not get matches, he took a piece of ice, clear as crystal, and cutting it into the shape of a convex lens, he held it up to the sun, and in a few moments kindled a pile of dry leaves and sticks into a blaze. I presume the ice in its turn was melted in the fire it had kindled. If any one of us are in a cold state religiously; if in the place of a heart glowing with the love of Christ which we once had, we have only a frozen lump of religious respectability in our bosom, I wish we could go among the lost and sinning and impenitent, and just tell them as best we can how Christ died to save them, and I believe it would open their hearts as the sunlight opens the frozen bulbs. And in Him our own hearts would be thawed and melted. (A. J. Gordon.)The military value of enthusiasm “ It is good to be zealously.., with you.” A good general, a well-organized system, good instruction, and severe discipline, aided by effective establishments, will always make good troops, independently of the cause for which they fight. At the same time a love of country, a spirit of enthusiasm, and a sense of national honour, will operate Upon young soldiers with advantage. (Maxim Leviticus 1:1-17.)An object unworthy of zeal An eccentric writer tells this story about a man who was more eccentric than himself:--“ Being still ignorant, he took a vow upon him not to wear a hat, because he had heard that Sir Isaac Newton took off his hat when he thought upon God. Thomas B--thought he would outdo Sir Isaac, for he would not wear a hat at all, and kept his vow faithfully for eight years under the bitterest persecution, In his own strength he took his legal bondage upon him; and, self-will being his ruling passion, he would go through fire and water for the Lord and his own way, more under law than gospel.” What a useful man he might have been if his zeal had been well directed! If he had suffered persecution on account of his devotion to religious duties, and in obedience to authority ordained by God! Christian zeal I. The nature of christian zeal.1. A spiritual principle, and therefore Divine in its origin. A man may be zealous in sin; he may be a zealous bigot or sectarian; but no man can be spiritually zealous, until he is a spiritual man. 2. Christian zeal is an intellectual principle, and therefore the result of knowledge. It not only warms, but it illumines. 3. Christian zeal is a modest and humble principle. 4. Christian zeal is a constant, enduring principle. Not the feverish heat of a diseased body, but regular, constitutional warmth. 5. Christian zeal is an active, vigorous principle. It loosens the tongue, opens the hand, swiftens the feet. It prays, as well as believes; it labours as well as hopes. 6. Christian zeal is an affectionate principle, and is always connected with fervent love. No anathemas; no shibboleths. It is not suspicious, but open; not narrow, but broad, liberal, generous. II. The object of Christian zeal. A twofold sphere for the exercise of Christian zeal.1. In securing the greatest possible amount of good to ourselves. Zealous in seeking extensive knowledge. Zealously labouring after more of the spirit of Christ. In communicating all the good in our power to those around us. What aa enlarged sphere! The world itself is our field. But especially those in our immediate neighbourhood. III. The excellency of Christian zeal1. It is good to the soul which is under its influence. The same as exercise to the body. It produces energy, buoyancy, safety, happiness. 2. It is good for the Church. 3. It is good for the world at large. 4. It is good, as it associates us with the highest intelligences of the heavenly world. The angels are distinguished especially for zeal. And how zealous was our blessed Saviour! IV. The importance of Christian zeal.1. It is pre-eminently important when the object contemplated is great and glorious. 2. It is pre-eminently important when difficulties are numerous. 3. It is pre-eminently important when the time of action is limited. 4. When the responsibilities are momentous. It is not a secondary concern. Not optional. It is imperative that we be zealously affected in every good work. Our destiny awaits us according to the spirit and practice we have pursued on earth. Application:1. Let Christians cherish this holy principle.2. Let unpardoned sinners zealously seek the salvation of their souls.3. Let the Church be zealous for the instruction of the rising age. (J. Burns, D. D.)Religious zeal Zeal about religion may be very far from religious zeal; and as the abuse of the best thing is proverbially the worst, there are few passions that have proved more truly Satanic in their operations and consequences, than a blind and misguided zeal about God and divine things. I. We must be sure that its object is the true one. Personal religion. There may be a great deal of profession, with little life or spirit. It must have the heart, as well as the mind in it. II. It must always be in a good thing.1. A truth. 2. A duty. III. The principle or motive of zeal must be good. God’ s glory, not our own advantage or comfort. IV. It must be properly proportioned. Every truth and every duty is good, and ought to be attended to in its proper place; but truths and duties have various degrees of importance, and we must not prosecute the lower to the neglect of the higher. V. It must be consistent, uniform, and persevering. It does not burn and shiver alternately, nor pass with uncertain and capricious mutability from the torrid to the frigid, and from the frigid to the torrid zone of feeling. It is not the sudden and flickering flame, however brilliant; and lively, that fuses the hard ore, but the glowing heat of the well-regulated furnace. VI. The means, as well as the object, of christian zeal must be good. Nothing may be used that is at variance with any of the great principles of moral rectitude. We cannot advance the Divine honour by first doing dishonour to the Divine law. No fighting or persecuting zeal, no indulgence of passion, can be tolerated in this hallowed cause. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)Temporary zeal This is a human feeling, which exists in many, even pious souls. They are zealous in good, when faithful teachers are present, but when they are absent, or it may be dead, they slacken in their zeal. (Starke.)Christian zeal Many things must be attended to, in order that our zeal may be as efficient as possible; that it may not be injurious, but acquire a proper tone, and be made useful to ourselves and others. I. It should be real and conscientious.1. There are many kinds of zeal which do not stand this test. (1) Zeal of sympathy, which is only that of a soldier, who, though himself a coward, is urged on to battle by the example of the general. (2) Constitutional zeal, mere animal warmth, no more allied to our spirit than are our arms or feet. (3) Zeal of sentimentality, requiring some powerful excitement, and dying away when that is gone. (4) Zeal of affectation, which is in fact hypocrisy, only put on for the sake of appearances. 2. The zeal that is proper is a fair demonstration of what is felt within us. It seeks not the eye of man, but acts under the keen, all-searching eye of God. It is influenced by what is real and true; it is fed by the real and great blessings which Christianity has to bestow; and then it becomes a constituent part of the character, and maintains its dominion in the soul. II. It should be intelligent, accompanied with knowledge. That it be sincere alone, is not enough. It may be that, and yet mistaken. So we must take care to be fully instructed in that on behalf of which we put forth zeal. III. Prudence in the exercise and manifestation of our religious zeal. Prudence does not clamp our zeal, but enables us better to accomplish our object. You cannot be too zealous in obtaining personal religion, but you cannot be too prudent in the means you adopt to promote it. IV. Its exercise must always consist with moral integrity. V. It must be under the influence of charity. (Dr. Thomson.)The duty of Christian zeal The word zeal refers to fire; to be zealously affected is to be warm, to glow, to burn. It implies an ardour which agitates our whole being, rouses every dormant faculty, touches every spring of sensibility, and calls forth-all our energy in vigorous exertion towards the object to which our efforts are directed. The heart of the true Christian is the altar where this holy flame glows and burns, and to fan this pure flame of love into a brighter blaze was St. Paul’ s design when he wrote this passage. I. Let us adduce a few considerations illustrative of the truth of the proposition in the text.1. An object really and pre-eminently good, deserves and demands aa ardent continuous zeal in its promotion. And is not Christianity such? 2. An object really and pre-eminently good, is not ordinarily to be attained without an ardent persevering zeal How readily is this recognized with respect to worldly affairs. And shall those in pursuit of a soul’ s salvation fold their hands in idle self-complacency? Are not the angels zealous? Was not our Lord consumed with zeal? What but this brought Him down to earth--from a throne of glory to an ignominious Cross? 3. Zeal, in promotion of an object really and pre-eminently good, is sure, sooner or later, to be crowned with success. Truth is indestructible, cannot die, must prevail. There are no difficulties that cannot be conquered by ardent, persevering zeal; there is no work which it cannot achieve. II. Let us learn some of those lessons of practical instruction which the maxim of the text is well calculated to teach.1. Let us always see to it that the object of our zeal is really good. 2. How can any persons professing religion justify their claim to the Christian character while destitute of zeal? 3. Let us see that our zeal be constant and stable. 4. Those who are thus zealous are not the fools, but the wise men. (R. Newton.)Excellency of Christian zeal To be zealously affected as to spiritual things will be found to be “ good” --1. As an evidence of the liveliness of grace in our own souls. 2. Because it is a most suitable means of preserving and increasing Divine grace. 3. Because of its beneficial tendency to arouse the zeal of others. 4. Because of the usefulness accomplished by this excellent quality in the welfare of mankind at large. 5. Because of the especial glory which is thereby brought unto God. (John Garwood, M. A.)Holy and unholy zeal contrasted Fire may be employed for good or evil. Heat is essential to life, yet may prove the forerunner of widespread consumption. If on the one hand it is genial, restorative, purifying; on the other it is devastating and destructive. So we speak of the warmth of love, the heat of passion, the fire of persecution, etc., to describe various affections and emotions of the mind. Zeal is a word invented by the Greeks to express the glowing intensity of any mental affection, whether usefully or perniciously directed. Observe-- I. The zeal that is reprehensible.1. A zeal for rites and forms and ceremonies, as if they were of any value in themselves.2. A zeal for tradition.3. An ignorant zeal.4. A persecuting zeal. This always defeats its own end. II. The zeal that is commendable.1. That which proceeds from true love to God.2. A zeal for God’ s spiritual worship.3. A zeal for good works.4. Zeal for the edification of the Church. (J. D. Sirr, D. D.)Motives of Christian zeal 1. The command of Christ.2. The example of Christ.3. The love of Christ in the heart.4. The examples of holy men.5. The personal advantages derived from it.6. The good which it may accomplish.7. The commendation which is given of it, and its examples in the Scriptures. (John Bate.)The profitableness of Christian zeal “ It is good” ; no higher praise than that can be given to it. “ It is good” --the very thing that was said of the fairly finished earth, on the morning of Jehovah’ s rest and pleasure. “ It is good” --the very thing that is spoken of God Himself: “ Thou art good, and doest good.”1. To be always zealously affected in a good thing is good in itself. Where the heart preserves the ardour of devotion, it will preserve the ardour of enterprise. It will be always at work for the best interests of men. There will be no time for dalliance with temptation, or for the misgiving of unbelief. The active love and the loyal heart will be mutually helpful to each other, and the man will grow like a cedar--his roots wedging themselves close and firm into the Rock of Ages, his branches flinging themselves upward with such graceful aim that no tree in the garden of God shall be like unto him in his beauty. 2. Good in its influences. Who shall estimate the effect upon the progress of the Redeemer’ s Kingdom, when the Church is filled with the spirit of Christian zeal? Oh! a prospect of ineffable spiritual beauty rises up before the prophetic eye, informed by the spirit of the Master. Each member of the Church becomes a missionary of the truth, and there is neither silence nor faltering in the testimony; the cords of love, which are the bands of a Man, enclose thousands in the gospel fellowship; the Church itself, in growing purity and strength, becomes the dominion of ever-ripening authority; the world, charged by the Word as the living epistles speak it, bows its rank, and its intellect, and its pride, before the feet of Jesus; He reigns whose right it is, over a regenerate people, made willing in the day of His power.; and then cometh the end--the finished mystery of the Cross, the consummated glories of redemption. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)Objects of Christian zeal 1. The salvation of the soul of him who is the subject of it.2. The House of God in its worship, its word, its attendance.3. Promotion of family religion.4. The conversion of sinners.5. The general welfare of all the means, ordinances, and institutions of the Church.6. Whatever concerns the real welfare of mankind. (John Bate.)Obligation to Christian zeal 1. The value of personal salvation.2. The difficulties in the way of its exercise. 3. The duties and privileges of religion.4. The claims of the Church.5. The condition of the world.6. The glory of Christ. (John Bate.)Regulation of Christian zeal 1. It should be guided by charity.2. By the wisdom which cometh from above.3. By a due regard to times, circumstances, places, and persons.4. By the relative claims of each object.5. By an aim to the glory of God. (John Bate.)False zeal A false zeal in religion is always, in some respect or other, a misdirected zeal, or a zeal not according to knowledge--a zeal seeking some false end, seeking its promotion in some unauthorized way. Jehu had a good zeal, which he called zeal for the Lord of Hosts. His fault was, not that he was too zealous, but that his zeal was really directed to his own advancement. The Jews in the days of Christ had a zeal for God, but it was so misdirected as to fire them with a frenzy to destroy the Son of God and extinguish the Light of the world. There are countless forms of false zeal now at work; but in all eases they sin, not by excess, but by misdirection. Some are flaming with a zeal to spread some of the corruptions of Christianity, and to carry men away from its great and cardinal truths. Some are equally zealous to build up a sect or party on other foundations than those which God has laid in Zion; and that which taints their zeal is the purpose to which they employ it, and not any excessive fervour of their zeal itself. (H. Bonar, D. D.)Zeal I. As to the true nature of Godly zeal, in the general it is a great vehemency and ardency in religion. It is a fire of the sanctuary, not a profane flame. It is the warmth and vigour of holy persons in their prosecution of what is good and virtuous. More particularly, this zeal is either internal or external. I will speak first of that which is internal, and hath its seat in the mind and soul. This is no other than the vehemency and fervour of the affections, or it is the affections inflamed with religion. It is a burning of all the passions, namely, a fervent desire of God and goodness; it is a holy anger for sin stirred up to a great height; it is an exalted love of whatever is good; it is a perfect hatred and detestation of vice; it is vehemency of grief, because God is offended and religion despised; it is a seraphic joy and gladness springing from the delight which is taken in holiness. But though zeal be the utmost intention and fervent acting of all the affections, yet it is chiefly the heat and earnestness of these two, namely, love and anger. First, it is an ecstasy of love: and that love respects both God and man. He that doth not love God dearly can’ t be zealous: for zeal is an inflamed love of the beauties and excellences of the Divine nature, and (as the consequence of this) it is a passionate longing to exalt God’ s glory in the world. Again, he that ardently loves God, will love those who bear His image. Wherefore an earnest love of the brethren must needs be an inseparable attendant of godly zeal, according to that of St. Peter, “ Love one another with a pure heart fervently.” Thus zeal is the flame of love. And from this love flows anger and indignation against sin, and the doers of it; for he that loves God will show his wrath against that which offends and displeaseth Him. We find ourselves incensed and exasperated to a very high degree when we see affronts and injuries offered to our parents, and those whom we love most; much more, when our heavenly Father is affronted and injured, our hearts must needs rise within us, and we cannot but feel them stirred with anger and a holy revenge; for zeal is an indignation conceived for the wrong done to those whom we dearly love. Thus zeal is no other than love angered. Secondly, this godly zeal is not only inward, but outward. First, the Christian zeal manifests itself by words, as it is said of Apollos, that “ being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord” (Acts 18:25); and, “ he spake boldly in the synagogue” (verse 26). So the apostles, “ We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Zeal gives utterance, and will not suffer the truth to be stifled and concealed; for truth is of absolute necessity, and error is damnable as well as vice. Secondly, zeal displays itself in all religious actions and performances. But to let you see that zeal manifests itself in outward actions, and never wants ways of expressing and openly displaying itself, I will mention some of the chiefest duties required in Christianity. The first I will name, is repentance. This and zeal must go hand in hand, according to that advice given to the Church of Laodicea, “ Be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19). And St. Paul, speaking to the Corinthians of the several effects and concomitants of repentance, demands of them “ what zeal it wrought in them” (2 Corinthians 7:11). Again, true evangelical charity is never void of this; wherefore you hear St. Peter exhorting the Christians thus, “ Have fervent charity among yourselves” (1 Peter 4:8). And hence the Corinthians’ forwardness in alms-deeds, in distributing and ministering to the saints, is called “ zeal” (2 Corinthians 9:2). Moreover, the zeal of Christians must be discovered in prayer, that most necessary duty of our religion. This is called by St. Paul “ labouring” (or striving) “ fervently in prayer” (Colossians 4:12). In the next place, hearing the Word ought to be with zealous attention and vigour, because it is for our lives, or eternal welfare is concerned. Farther, I might show you that an extraordinary fervour and zeal must accompany the partaking of the holy communion. Here, if ever, our life and heat must display themselves. There must be fire on this altar: our hearts must be a burnt-offering. Zeal is when our graces are in their zenith or vertical point. Zeal is heroic virtue in the Christian philosophy: it is the highest pitch and most exalted degree of every endowment, grace, and duty. I will now (according to what I proposed) annex the properties of it, which are these: First, this zeal which I have described, is real and sincere, in opposition to counterfeit zeal. And we may know the sincerity of it--1. By this, namely, if we are most offended and incensed because God is dishonoured and injured; for zeal shows itself in the things that belong to God’ s glory. Thus Christ showed the truth of His zeal for His Father’ s house (John 2:17). This is one way to try the sincerity of your zeal, viz., if you signally show it against God’ s enemies, whilst in the meantime you discover a great deal of clemency to those who are your own, and have particularly injured yourselves. 2. The right genuine zeal may be known by this; that it spends not itself about lesser matters, and things that are wholly indifferent. Some men’ s zeal runs out into this one main thing, viz., to uphold some doubtful opinion, and to defy and detest all that are not of their persuasion as to that particular. But a wise, good man proportions his zeal according to the worth dud importance of the matters he is conversant about. And because indifferent things are not important and weighty, he knows that they deserve not his zeal. All was not massy gold that Solomon’ s merchants brought over in their ships: apes and peacocks were part of their cargo. Thus in our merchandising for truth, we meet with some slight and trifling things, nice points, notions for embellishment only. And next to these, are external ceremonies and rites, particular modes and circumstances in religious worship But we ought to lay out our zeal on those things which are in their own nature worthy, necessary, and indispensible. 3. This is another trial: if your zeal be accompanied with love and charity, you may infer it is sincere; but if it be so fierce and greedy as to devour these, and to stir you up to be cruel and implacable, then conclude that your zeal is not the evangelical zeal. 4. Sometimes gain and profit are the only spring of men’ s zeal, and then you may conclude it to be false and counterfeit, and not the true religious zeal. Those who make gain their godliness are no true zealots. 5. When zeal proceeds from pride and ambition, there is reason to believe that it is not sincere. Secondly, this is another property of zeal, that it be accompanied with, and guided by knowledge, in opposition to blind zeal. St. Paul bears record of the Jews, that “ they had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2). And of himself he saith, that he had formerly been “ exceedingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers” (Galatians 1:14), which were a medley of ignorance and superstition. But he tells us in another place how pernicious that zeal proved to him, and what vile enormities it excited him to. But true zeal is built on knowledge. This heat doth not want light, but is conducted by judgment and wisdom. Thirdly, there ought to be this property of our zeal, that it be according to a rule, and that it keep within its due limits, in opposition to irregular and lawless zeal. Zeal must have its certain limits and boundaries. This fire must be kept on the hearth, in its due place. We ought to act in religion by certain rules and measures, for it is a regular and well-guided zeal that God accepts. Fourthly, I will add this as another property, it must be peaceable and well-tempered, sedate and discreet, in opposition to turbulent and rash zeal. This carnal zeal is an immoderate heat, an exorbitant commotion of the mind, an excess and transport, whereby men disorder both themselves and others. Between this zeal and the other, there is as much difference as between the quick and fierce lightnings which are observed sometimes in the skies, and the sun’ s mild, yet active flame. False zeal is full of noise and clamour, and violent motion. They who are acted by it think that it is of the nature of some rivers, which are never so useful as when they overflow. Christian zeal is a natural and kindly heat, not a burning fever or calenture. The mind or soul of man with all its functions and faculties, is in Scripture often called the heart, that being thought, of old, to be the chief place of its residence. But we may learn, by the by, from this denomination, that the mind of man ought to resemble his heart, from whence it borrows its name. Now the motion of this in healthful persons is even and placid, propagates the like pulse into all the several arteries which overspread the body. All its stops and intervals are equal and harmonious, as if nature kept time in these organs of the body. This high pulse argues no less than an inflamation of the mind, than a feverish distemper of the soul. Lastly, the text affords another character of this zeal: it must be constant and persevering. We are to be zealously affected always. This holy fire must ever be burning on the altar. This is, according to the apostle’ s expression, “ instantly” (or intensely) “ serving God day and night” (Acts 26:7). As no adverse accidents and calamitous circumstances, so no allurements and smiles of the world are able to make the truly zealous person alter the tenour of his life. He hath set himself to a just pitch, and there he continues. False zeal spends itself too fast, and like some meteor is seen to blaze only a short time, and then to vanish. But that zeal which is true and genuine, like the sun shineth more and more unto a perfect day, and is a never-failing source of light and heat. II. Having finished the first general part of my discourse, wherein I have displayed the true nature of Christian zeal, I am now in the next place (but more briefly) to show you how reasonable it is to put in practice this grace, Or rather this complication of graces and virtues. The reasonableness of this is contained in those words in the front of the text.1. I say it is good in respect of God, and that if you consider Him, either as He is in His own nature, or as He is to us. First, in Himself, and in His own nature, He is a spirit, and therefore our service to Him must be spiritual, lively, and zealous. But will you offer dead services to the living God? Will you offer a body without a soul? For such is our service and worship, if it be devoid of zeal and fervency. Secondly, if you consider God as He is to us, every ways good and gracious, continually loading us with His benefits, and laying obligations on us by all ways imaginable, we are engaged on this account to be zealous. We must do our homage and service to God, as to our great King and Lord in the highest strain, and with the greatest intention. 2. Zeal is most reasonable in respect of ourselves, and that, first, because it is necessary, in order to our happiness, Neither grace nor glory are attained otherwise, as our Saviour assures us, telling us that “ the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). And secondly, zeal is not only necessary but advantageous. The benefits of it are very numerous; it shall suffice to mention some of them only. Zeal takes up our thoughts, and employs our minds wholly, and therefore is beneficial on this account, that it frees us from worldly cares and solicitudes. It suffers us not to be anxious about earthly things, because it fixes our hearts on heavenly ones: it causes us to set our affections on things above, and consequently we are not troubled with those below. Again, zeal makes us contented and cheerful. When we are spirited with this excellent quality, we are able to serve God with ineffable joy and gladness. This likewise produceth fortitude and courage. If we be zealous, we shall be valiant for the truth, we shall not fear the greatest opposition, but undauntedly make our way through all difficulties and disasters. Zeal will enable us to suffer anything for a good cause. Let me add, that zeal renders all things in religion easy. There are some things so sublime in every virtue, that it is hard to attain to them. But zeal facilitates all; this makes the way of religion plain and smooth, and helps us to run, and not faint. This is as wind to the sails, as bellows to the fire, and as an edge to the sword. Lastly, steadiness is begot by zeal, this crowns us with constancy and perseverance. 3. Not only in respect of God and ourselves, but in regard of our brethren also, this is our duty and concern. For zeal is the best promoter of religion in others, according to that of the apostle, “ Your zeal hath provoked many” (2 Corinthians 9:2). No wonder that there are so few converts, that religion gains no more ground in the world, since there is so little zeal. III. And last task must be to apply the foregoing doctrine, which I will do in these two particulars, namely, by way of reproof and of exhortation. First, this reproves all lukewarmness, carelessness, and indifferency in religion. What a frigid zone do we live in now? How perfunctory are we in all our religious duties and services? O thou Christian zeal, whither art thou banished? Now to back my exhortation, I will offer these serious considerations to you.1. It will not be improper for some, yea, most of you, to reflect on your former indifferency and coldness: and let that consideration move you to be very zealous for the future. It is high time to mend our pace. 2. It may be some of you have been zealots in the worst sense, that is, exceeding eager and hot against religion and the ways of holiness. The thoughts of this should make you for the future zealously affected in that which is good. 3. All of us ought to consider the end and design of Christ’ s meritorious undertakings for us. “ He gave Himself for us,” saith the apostle, “ that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” 4. Let us weigh well the important nature of those things which we are bid to concern ourselves for. 5. There is this consideration to urge you to this duty, that the neglect of it will prove very dangerous to you, as appears from what was said to the Church of Laodicea (Revelation 3:16). 6. Set before you the examples of the best and chiefest servants of God. As we see in nature’ s fabric the most excellent bodies, as the sun and stars, are the most restless and active, so it is in the economy of grace, the most eminent saints of God have been always most earnest and zealous, continually moving and acting in the way of godliness. How zealous were Moses, Phineas, Elias, David, John the Baptist, Paul, and other saints recorded in holy Scripture? 7. Would yon be zealous, then seriously study the last things. Think often of death, and that will inspire you with zeal. (John Edwards, D. D.) Galatians 4:19-20 Until Christ be formed in you.The growth of Christ in us Now, although the apostle nowhere carries out this into a full allegory, yet it may be clearly seen that this thought dwelt in his mind, viz., that as Christ came into this world, and was first a babe, and then a youth, and finally a man, so there was an order in the stages of our personal experience; and that Christ in us was born, first as a babe, and went on through all the stages of youth up to maturity, so that we have in the spiritual experience of our nature the parallel, the analogue, of that which Christ Himself went through. This great truth, therefore, is to be borne in mind, that Christian life begins at the point of weakness, and goes on by regular normal stages to maturity. It is first a spark, and then a flame, hidden in much smoke, and at last a pure and glowing coal. With this unfolding of the primal idea, I proceed, now, to make some applications.1. Children and youth may become disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and may be safely gathered into the Christian fold, if only their parents and their pastors will be content to receive the babe--Christ in the young convert, or the young Christian. Persons, we all know, are more susceptible at an early age that at any other. Children are not superior to men in knowledge, nor in strength, nor in discrimination. There are a thousand of the acquirements by which a man battles with the world that they are not superior in. But there is one all-important principle which belongs to childhood, and not to any other time, viz.: that peculiar development of the soul by which it knows how to take hold of another, and to borrow its light from that other. To borrow an orchard illustration, there is but one period of the year in which you can graft well. It may be possible to graft successfully at other times; but there is one period when you must make the transfer if you would take a bud from one tree, and graft it into another, and have it produce its kind, and do the best that it is capable of doing. There is but just one season when the bark lifts easy, and the staff is in the right condition. There is a time, also, when the little natures bud- easily, and graft easily. It is possible to graft them at other times, by extra elaboration; but more than half of the grafts will blow out, as the saying is. There is a period, however, in which ninety-nine out of a hundred will stick and grow. For all the adaptations of the child at the time are such as to incline it to borrow its life from another. It feeds upon another instinctively. It is a little parasite. It is but the transfer of that which is its need and instinct to the blessed Saviour. And then it becomes a Christian child. But many people, in bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, look with great suspicion on early Christian experiences. They are afraid of abnormal growths. 2. One may be a Christian who is yet very far from the beauty and symmetry and manhood of piety. We are not to suppose that they only are Christians who are beautiful Christians, or who are embellished with all Christian graces. A man may be a Christian, and his Christ may be a babe. A man may be a Christian, and the Christian nature in him may yet be, as it were, in its boyhood. A man may be a Christian, and yet the Christ in him may have reached only that stage in which it enters upon young manhood. A man may be a Christian, and the Christ in him may have entered upon His ministry, as it were, in the full ripeness of His manhood. We are not, therefore, to suppose that persons are not Christians because they are very imperfect. If a man’ s heart is in the cause, and he enlists in the army, he is a soldier, not when he is a veteran, but when he enlists. He is a soldier just as really when his name goes down on the roll, and he goes out with the awkward squad to the first drill, as after he has been in the army five years--although he is not a soldier with the same degree and amplitude of experience. He is a soldier, provided his heart is right, and he loves the cause, and he joins in earnest. The degree of imperfection and ignorance that is in him has nothing to do with the fact of his being a soldier. It is that silent other thing, viz, the principle at the core of your life which undertakes to organize your whole being on the law of love. And that may be established in a man without any outward experience. A person may come to a state in which he means to be like Christ, and means to cut off everything that hinders his being like Christ, and to enforce outward and inward compliance to this law of love in Jesus Christ; and yet, he may not have light nor joy. But it is the raising up of that standard, the vindicating of that sovereign law in the soul, which constitutes the beginning of the Christian life. If it comes with joy so much the better. If it does not come with joy it is none the less true conversion. 3. In a Christian life, as in the ordinary life, there are two principles at work--first, the force of nature in the steady growth and unfolding of our normal powers; and secondly, the voluntary drill which, working in harmony with nature, we call education. Christian graces, if I might so say without being misapprehended, are like so many trades. They are not to be learned theoretically; and certainly they are not created in us by the mere operation of the Spirit, nor by the forces of sanctified nature. We learn them just as we learn anything in outward life. It is supposed that the Spirit of God makes men humble; that it, as it were, sends humility into them. Just as dew falls, and orbs itself on the bearded grass, gemmed and jewelled on a summer’ s morning; so men think that the Christian graces fall down oat of the great heavenly concave above them; and that all one knows is, that he went to sleep violet dry, and woke up a violet wet and beautiful! Many persons think that meekness, and gentleness, and humility, and faith, and patience, and hope, and joy in the Holy Ghost, are Divine gifts. They are Divine gifts, to be sure. So is corn a Divine gift; so is wine a Divine gift; and so are cattle on a thousand hills Divine gifts; but men have to work for them. God gives them to man’ s industry, and not to his laziness. All gifts are Divine gifts in such a sense as that. If the connection between the soul and God were to stop, these things would never take place; but He works together with us to will and to do these things. No man ever came to a state of Christian eminence by waiting and praying alone. 4. The experiences of Christian life are not promiscuous. They stand in a certain order of nature. Just as in summer all flowers do not blossom in spring, nor wait till autumn; as there is a regular succession, according to the temperament of the year, following a line of increasing heat; as there is an order of development in the tree; as there is first the leaf, and afterwards the green fruit, and then the ripe fruit, so is it in Christian life. Christ begins with us at the infant point, and develops in us steadily; and the later developments cannot be had until the intermediate ones are passed. We are steadily to grow; but at each point of growth we are, as it were, to seize the experiences of that point. When first people think they are delivered from the power of sin and Satan and death; when they first have a triumphant feeling that Christ loves them, and they know they love Christ, there is something wonderful and beautiful in it, and they should remember it as long as they live; but, after all, is that the best? And do you look back and say, “ I never again had such experiences of love; I never again was so happy; I never again was so near to Christ?” Oh I what a life you have been living! Why, how far have you been? Is your Christ a babe yet? Born into your soul, did you turn the key of the chamber where He was? And did you send no schoolmaster and no nurse there? Did you starve the infant child? And has there never been any growth in that child? Is it but a phantom or vision in you? That child Jesus, born into your soul, should have grown, and should little by little have expelled the natural man, and swollen to all the proportions of your being, until he became Christ formed truly and perfectly in you. How is it with you, dear Christian brethren? Have you grown in that part of your being which is represented by Christ’ s love, and humility, and disinterestedness? Have you imitated Him in going about doing good? Have these elements of the Divine nature in you severally grown and cohered symmetrically, and swollen to the proportions of full manhood? On earth there is no sight more beautiful, and there never will be a sight more beautiful till He comes to reign a thousand years, than a character which has been steadfastly growing in every direction, and has come to old age rich and ripe. I am sorry to say that such characters are rare. (H. W. Beecher.)I travail in birth again I. The apostle’ s ministry. He takes the condition of a mother to express his most tender affection. If this be the case with Paul, how great is the compassion of God (Isaiah 49:15).2. He signifies the measure of his ministerial pains (2 Corinthians 11:23). Those who take most pains are most successful. 3. He signifies the dignity of his ministry that it is the instrument of the new birth. II. Its end. “ Till Christ,” etc. This conformity to Christ is two-fold.1. In quality. (1) To the death of Christ.(2) To the resurrection life of Christ. 2. In practice. (1) As prophets; confessing Christ; teaching and admonishing one another.(2) As priests; to offer spiritual sacrifices.(3) As kings; to have sway over the corruptions of our own hearts. (W. Perkins.)Christians as children They are weak, humble, teachable, obedient, hopeful, and progressive; and hence are called children. (Thomas Jones.)Superiority of speech to writing It is a common saying that a letter is a dead messenger, for it can give no more than it hath. And no epistle or letter is written so exactly that it is not lacking in some respect. For the circumstances are divers; there is diversity of times, places, persons, manners, and affections, all which no epistle can express; therefore it moveth the reader diversely, making him now sad, now merry, as he himself is disposed. But if anything be spoken sharply, or out of time, the living voice of a man may expound, mitigate, or correct the same. Therefore the apostle wisheth that he were with them, to the end he might temper and change his voice, as he should see it needful, by the qualities of their affections. As, if he should see any of them very much troubled, he might so temper his words that they should not be oppressed thereby with more heaviness; contrariwise, if he should see others high-minded, he might sharply reprehend them, lest they should be too secure and careless, and so at length become despisers of God. “ Wherefore he could not devise how he, being absent, should deal with them by letters. As if he should say: If my epistle be too sharp, I fear I shall more offend than amend some of you. Again: If it be too gentle, it will not profit those who are perverse and obstinate; for dead letters and words give no more than they have. Contrariwise, the living voice of a man, compared to an epistle, is a queen; for it can add and diminish, it can change itself into all manner of affections, times, places, and persons. (Luther.)I desire to be present with you I. Paul’ s desire. This presence of pastors among their people is most necessary.1. To prevent spiritual dangers; whence they are called watchmen and overseers.2. To redress wrongs.3. To recover backsliders. II. The end of this desire--“ That I may change my voice.”1. From that of seeming rebuke to that of tender entreaty. 2. From that of the hard controversialist to that of the loving teacher and friend. Learn that frequent conference between pastor and people is most desirable-- (1) That pastors may know better how to teach.(2) That people may know better what is taught.(3) That both may live in peace and goodwill. III. The occasion of the desire.1. The apostle’ s perplexity was real.2. He took steps to relieve his doubts by this Epistle.3. He left events to God. (W. Perkins.)Christian fellowship Fellowship of souls does not consist in the proximity of persons. There are millions who live in close personal contact--dwell under the same roof, board at the same table, and work at the same shop--between whose minds there is scarcely a point of contact, whose souls are far asunder as the poles; while contrariwise there are those Who are separated by oceans and continents, ay, by the mysterious gulf which divides time and eternity, between whom there is constant; intercourse, a delightful fellowship. In truth, we have often more communion with the distant than with the near. (D. Thomas, D. D.)The tender anxieties of ministers for their people I stand in doubt of some of you. I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. And if there be no ground for it, you will forgive me; for if it be an error, it is the error of love. Even the apostles, the most select society that ever was formed, had a Judas among them. Even a judicious Christian may suspect that your whole hearts are not engaged, that the vigour of your spirits is not exerted, and that there is no spiritual life in your devotions. This man may suspect; and he who searches the heart may see it is so in fact. I also stand in doubt of some of you, that you have worn off your religious impressions before they ripened to a right issue. This is a very common case in the world, and therefore it may be yours. The temper of a Christian has such a resemblance to Christ’ s, that it was called Christ in embryo, spiritually formed within us. It is indeed infinitely short of the all-perfect original, but yet it is a prevailing temper, and habitually the governing principle of the soul. That filial temper towards God, that humble veneration and submission, that ardent devotion, that strict regard to all the duties of religion, that self-denial, humility, meekness and patience, that heavenly-mindedness and noble superiority to the world, that generous charity, benevolence and mercy to mankind, that ardent zeal and diligence to do good, that temperance and sobriety which shone in the blessed Jesus with a Divine incomparable splendour: these and the like graces and virtues shine, though with feebler rays, in all His followers. They have their infirmities indeed, many and great infirmities--but not such as are inconsistent with the habitual prevalency of this Christ-like disposition. You may make what excuses you please, but this is an eternal truth, that unless you have a real resemblance to the holy Jesus, you are not His genuine disciples. Pray examine critically into this point. Have you a right to take your name Christian from Christ, by reason of your conformity to Him? Again, if Christ be formed in your hearts, he lives there. The heavenly embryo is not yet complete, not yet ripe for birth into the heavenly world, but it is quickened. I mean, those virtues and graces above-mentioned are not dead, inactive principles within you, but they operate, they show themselves alive by action, they are the governing principles of your practice. Before I dismiss this head, I must observe that the production of this Divine infant, if I may so call it, in the heart, is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit. Ii; is not the growth of nature, but a creation by Divine power. But you would inquire farther, “ In what manner does this Divine agent work; or how is Christ formed in the hearts of His people?” I answer, the heart of man has a quick sensation. Nothing can be done there without its perceiving it, much less can Christ be formed there, while it is wholly insensible of the operation. There is indeed a great variety in the circumstances, but the substance of the work is the same in all adults. Therefore, if ever you have been the subjects of it, you have been sensible of the following particulars.1. You have been made deeply sensible of your being entirely destitute of this Divine image. Your hearts have appeared to you as a huge, shapeless mass of corruption, without one ingredient of true goodness, amidst all the flattering appearances of it. 2. You have hereupon set yourselves in earnest to the use of the means appointed for the renovation of your nature. 3. You have been made sensible of your own weakness, and the inefficacy of all the means you could use to produce the Divine image upon your hearts; and that nothing but the Divine hand could draw it there. 4. Hereupon the Holy Spirit enlightened your mind to view the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and the method of salvation revealed in the gospel. You were enabled to cast your guilty corrupt, helpless soul upon Jesus Christ, whom you saw to be a glorious all-sufficient Saviour; and with all your hearts you embraced the way of salvation through His mediation. The view of His glory proved transformative: while you were contemplating the object, you received its likeness; the rays of glory beaming upon you, as it were, rendered your hearts transparent, and the beauties of holiness were stamped upon them. 5. If Christ has ever been formed in you, it is your persevering endeavour to improve and perfect this Divine image. You long and labour to be fully conformed to Him, and, as it were, to catch His air, His manner and spirit, in every thought, in every word, and in every action. As far as you are unlike to Him, so far you appear deformed and loathsome to yourselves. While you feel an unchristian spirit prevail within you, you seem as if you were possessed with the devil. And it is the labour of your life to subdue such a spirit, and to brighten and finish the features of the Divine image within you, by repeated touches and retouches. (President Davies, M. A.)Perplexing professors There are minerals which exhibit different colours on different faces. Thus dichroite, or iolite, is often deep blue along its vertical axis; but, on a side perpendicular to this axis, it is brownish yellow. The phenomenon results from the manner in which the particles are arranged for’ reflecting and transmitting light. The whole internal structure must be changed before the same colour shall be presented on all the faces. There is a moral dichroism. It consists in a man’ s being Janus-faced--that is, double-faced--both in his principles and his practice, in order to secure popular favour and avoid odium. The chameleon is said to have the power of assuming the colour of the object on which it fastens; so this man means to conform his creed and his practice to those which are most popular in the community where he happens to abide or sojourn. In one place he is orthodox; in another, heterodox; in one, an advocate for temperance; in another, loose in this matter, both in theory and practice: in one place, proslavery; in another, antislavery. His moral and religious principles are not settled, or, rather, he makes them bend to his worldly interest, and you have no way of determining where to find him in any circumstance, except to inquire what aspect self-interest will require him to put on. Nor will it ever be essentially better until Divine grace shall have transformed and re-arranged the elements of his character. (Hitchcock.)Halfhearted religion vain Mr. Camden reports of one Redwald, king of the East Saxons, the first prince of this nation that was baptized, yet in the same church he had one altar for Christian religion, another for that of the heathens. And many such false worshippers of God there are to be found amongst us--such as divide the rooms of their souls betwixt God and the devil, that swear by God and Malcham, that sometimes pray and sometimes curse, that halt betwixt God and Baal--mere heteroclites in religion. But God cannot endure this division: He will not have thy threshold to stand by His threshold; He will have all thy heart; He cares not for half, if it and the devil have the other. (Spencer.) Galatians 4:21 Tell me.The value of a pointed question The question that prompts us to tell what we know sharpens our knowledge; and, similarly, the question that makes us tell what we are doing may greatly influence our conduct. For many a man drifting on in a course of evil that he has never stopped to define, it would be a good thing if some one by a pointed question could get him to say out, in plain words, just what he is doing. If he would only honestly state it to himself he would shrink from it with horror. But not only for clearing away the haze that obscures an unworthy purpose, but also for removing the fog in which good purposes are sometimes involved, a pointed question may serve us. There are those whose intention to do right and live the highest life is rather nebulous. If some question could be put to them that would lead them to objectify their purpose in language so that they could look at it and understand it, it would be of great service to them. (Washington Gladden.) Galatians 4:22-23 That Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman.St. Paul’ s outlook and vision The principle from which he views the Old Testament history may be compared to those lines of light which, on a misty day, open up glimpses among the mountains, in which that which is definitely seen is as nothing to the crowded and mysterious shapes suggested to the imagination. First his mind turns to the tents of the patriarchs, to that simple and pathetic tale--Sarah and Hagar--Isaac and Ishmael. Concentrated in them he sees the spirit of the two covenants. First the Egyptian slave, “ which gendereth unto bondage,” “ which is Mount Sinai.” But this covenant reminds him of Jerusalem which now is in miserable bondage. But then, high above all, the apostle’ s spirit rises to another Jerusalem, where the fetters fall from the soul of every slave that sets foot upon that soil. “ Jerusalem which is above is free.” (Bishop Alexander.)Points of parallelism Jewish Church. The bondwoman, Hagar. Son of the bondwoman, Ishmael. Natural birth (the flesh). Mount Sinai. The Law. The earthly Jerusalem. Enslaved. Fruitful. Small offspring. Persecuting. Expulsion. The Jewish Church is enslaved. Christian Church. The freewoman, Sarah. Son of the freewoman, Isaac. Supernatural birth (the promise). Mount Zion. The Promise. The heavenly Jerusalem. Free. Barren. Large offspring. Persecuted. Inheritance. The Christian Church is free. (W. Sanday, D. D.)Bond and free Look at the two covenants as represented by Hagar and Sarah. I. Their points of connection. 1. They have the same origin. Those who are outside the covenant of promise are still children of the Heavenly Father. 2. They have to a great extent the same elements. Promise on God’ s part and conditions on man’ s. Ishmael got promises, and Isaac was subjected to conditions. Sinai had its promises; the gospel has its conditions. 3. For a time they largely influence each other. Ishmael and Isaac live together. The law was permeated by the gospel; the gospel by the law. II. The points of difference.1. The degrees of prominence in those elements which they possess in common. The covenant becomes under the new dispensation also a testament with large bequests. 2. In the absence or presence of one great vital element--grace, forgiveness. 3. In their effects on men’ s natures. The law, like Hagar, bringeth forth children of bondage; the gospel, like Sarah, children of freedom. (Clerical World, 3, 441.) Galatians 4:24-25 Which things are an allegory: for they are the two covenants.Which things are an allegory I. The two women.1. Sarah, the type of the covenant of grace, was the original wife of Abraham. This covenant is the original one. 2. Though Sarah was the elder wife, Hagar bore the first son. 3. Hagar was not intended to be a wife, and ought never to have been anything but a handmaid to Sarah. The law was meant to be a handmaid to grace. 4. Hagar wished to be mistress, so was driven out. The law is a good servant, but when it usurps the mastership it must be expelled. 5. Hagar never was a freewoman, Sarah never a slave. So with the law and grace. 6. Hagar was cast out as well as her son, but Sarah never was. So the law has ceased to be a covenant, and it and all who trust in it are now driven out by Christ. II. The two sons.1. Ishmael was the elder--so the legalist is older than the Christian. 2. Where was the difference between them? (1) None as to ordinances; both were circumcised.(2) Nor, probably, as to character.(3) It was that one was of the flesh, the other of’ the Spirit. III. Israel’ s conduct to Isaac. He mocked him--so the legalist is irritated by the doctrine of free grace, and mocks at it. IV. What became of the two sons.1. Isaac had all the inheritance and Ishmael none. Not that he had nothing, but no spiritual inheritance. The legalist gets respect and honour, and has his reward. 2. Ishmael was sent away; Isaac was kept at home. (Spurgeon.)The two covenants I. The covenant of works propounds the bare justice of God without mercy; the covenant of grace reveals both the justice and the mercy of God. II. The law requires of us perfect righteousness both for nature and action; the gospel propounds to us an imputed righteousness in the person of the Mediator. III. The law promises life on the condition of works; the gospel, remission of sins and life everlasting on the condition of faith. IV. The law was written on tables of stone; the gospel on the fleshy tables of the heart (Jeremiah 31:33; 2 Corinthians 3:3). V. The law was in nature by creation; the gospel is above nature, was revealed after the full. VI. The law had Moses for a mediator (Deuteronomy 5:27); but Christ is the Mediator of the New Testament (Hebrews 8:5). VII. The law was dedicated by the blood of beasts (Exodus 24:5); the New Testament was confirmed by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:12). (W. Perkins.)The lessons of the allegory I. It teaches us what to expect in God’ s word.1. That Word is full of God, but-- 2. It is full of man. 3. While, therefore, it is the medium of Divine thought, that thought is not expressed as by a flash of lightning, but through various minds and characters. II. This makes our study of revelation the more difficult and responsible.1. “ The wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err” in its general import; but a man will grievously err if he thinks he may read it like a fool--superficially, carelessly. 2. Each writer and book has its own peculiarities, which demand discrimination for profitable study. III. The main principle of the bible is “ the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” The Old Testament must be studied in the light of the New.1. In its predictions of Christ.2. In its analogies of spiritual life. (Dean Vaughan.)The interpretation of the Old Testament I. In the interpretation of Scripture our first duty is to hold fast the literal historical sense. Christianity is distinguished from other religions by the fact that it rests on a firm historical basis. Whatever else we are to learn from the story, we are to understand first of all that the persons really lived, the places existed, the events transpired. II. From the intent for which Scripture was written we gather that it must contain deeper titan the merely historical lessons. It was written with reference--1. To Christ. And hence apostles found in the Old Testament yearning and hopes and types which were fulfilled in Him. 2. To Christ’ s people. So they found analogies of spiritual life in its historical events. III. The general principle which should guide us in interpreting these types and analogies is their exposition in the New Testament. (Bishop Lynch-Cotton.)The profitableness of Scripture How fruitful are the seeming barren places of Scripture. Bad ploughmen they who make balks of such ground. Wheresoever the surface of God’ s Word doth not laugh and sing with corn, then the heart thereof within is merry with wines, affording, where not plain matter, hidden mysteries. (T. Fuller.)St. Paul allegorizing Though the apostle does not disdain either Amoraic or Alexandrian methods of dealing with Scripture, he never falls into the follies or extravagances Of either. Treating the letter of Scripture with intense respect, he yet made the literal sense of it bend at will to the service of the spiritual consciousness. On the dead letter of Urim, which recorded the names of the lost tribes, he flashed a mystic ray, with made them gleam forth into Divine and hitherto un-dreamed-of oracles. The actual words of the sacred writers became but as the wheels and wings of the cherubim, and whithersoever the Spirit went they went. (Archdeacon Farrar)The force of the allegory There was a terrible severity in it meant to shock and exasperate his opponents; a withering contempt which we, with our feelings, can hardly comprehend. To make Hagar and Ishmael--the bondwoman and her slave child--a type of the Jew, and Sarah and Isaac of the Christian Gentiles, would seem to those pointed at by the parable as if a sacrilegious hand had torn down the vail of the temple, and exposed the holiest of all to the common gaze; or, rather, as if the unclean and uncircumcised had been introduced within the sacred precincts as their proper place, and the very priest of God thrust out. Consistently with this daring defiance of the national opinion, this contemptuous mocking of Jewish pretensions, put in the form of that allegorical logic in which St. Paul was so thorough a proficient, and the force of which on the Hebrew mind he knew so well,--in consistency with this, he even represents the believing Gentiles as the seed of Abraham; tells them that the blessing of Abraham comes on them; that theirs is the promise and the inheritance through faith; that circumcision is nothing, and may be worse than nothing; that “ the Israel of God” is not now “ the concision,” but those who walk according to the rule that “ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Philippians 3:2-3). (T. Binney.)Legitimate use of allegory 1. It is by no means affirmed that the history of Hagar and Sarah in Genesis had any original reference to the gospel. The account there is a plain historical narrative, not designed to have any such reference. 2. The narrative contains important principles that may be used as illustrating truth, and is so used by St. Paul. There are parallel points between the history and the truths of religion, where the one may be illustrated by the other. 3. The apostle does not use it at all in the way of argument, or as if that proved that the Galatians were not to submit to the Jewish rites and customs. It is an illustration of the comparative nature of servitude and freedom, and would therefore illustrate the difference between a servile compliance with Jewish rites and the freedom of the gospel. 4. This use of an historical fact by the apostle does not make it proper for us to turn the Old Testament into allegory, or even to make a very free use of this mode of illustrating truth. That an allegory may be used sometimes with advantage no one can doubt while the “ Pilgrim’ s Progress” shall exist. Nor can any one doubt that St. Paul has here derived, in this manner, an important and striking illustration of truth from the Old Testament. But no one acquainted with the history of interpretation can doubt that vast injury has been done by a fanciful mode of explaining the Old Testament, by making every fact in its history an allegory, and every pin and pillar of the tabernacle and the temple a type. Nothing is better fitted to bring the whole science of interpretation into contempt, nothing more dishonours the Bible than to make it a book of enigmas, and religion to consist in puerile conceits. The Bible is a book of sense, and all the doctrines essential to salvation are plainly revealed. (Albert Barnes, D. D.)The children of promise The hidden truth here spoken of--“ which things are an allegory” --the apostle tells us, is that of “ the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” By “ the two covenants” I do not think we are to understand what are generally described as the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. It would take us a long time to enter into that argument; but, in the first place, the covenant of works was certainly not made with Moses--if made at all, it was made with Adam; and, therefore, we cannot suppose that it is here referred to. There appears rather to be an allusion to the national covenant that was made with Israel, which is contrasted with the new and better covenant made with all God’ s believing people. The first covenant here spoken of is one “ which gendereth to bondage,” and if we go back to the Israelitish covenant we find it beginning with the painful rite of circumcision, and connected with a multitude, I might almost say an innumerable multitude, of sacrifices, burdensome to the mind and conscience of the people of God, and with the killing letter of the law. But the other covenant refers to the state of the gospel Church--that gospel Church state in which all believers have a part. If you look again at the context, you find that one of these children was born to the bondmaid and the other to the freewoman; and the character of the birth of these two children exactly answers to the difference which exists between Israelites according to the flesh and the spiritual Israel, who are really God’ s children by promise. The child that was born to Hagar, Ishmael, was born in the common course of nature; the child that was born to Sarah, Isaac, was born “ by promise,” and was therefore eminently distinguished from the other. In the one case, we see that the child that was born of the bondmaid was not, so to speak, a free child; and so it is with all who are born by nature; they are all naturally born under bondage to the law. But the child that was born “ by promise,” when it was contrary to all expectation that Abraham and Sarah should have a child, was born by the direct interference of God, and became the heir of special privileges, of which Ishmael was not allowed to be a partaker. The one, therefore, may be spoken of in plain terms, as having been born--the other may be more correctly spoken of, or at least compared with those who are new born. I have, therefore, in opening up the subject further, first to draw your attention to the persons who are partakers of the promised privileges; because we read at the twenty-eighth verse--“ Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.” In other words, the apostle intends to teach us that what was figured under Ishmael and Isaac has a direct bearing upon ourselves. The Galatians were a Gentile Church; we then, as Gentiles, have an interest in the promise, and, like Isaac, who was the child of promise, are partakers of special blessings. It is very clear from this passage, first, that these blessings do not belong to those who are only nominally the people of God. We know that the Israelites were in a peculiar manner God’ s people; but they were not, nationally, to be the inheritors of all the promised blessings which come down to us under the new covenant. Our Lord, in His parable of the husbandmen and the vineyard, illustrates this, when, after having spoken of those wicked husbandmen putting to death the son of the proprietor of the land, He draws the conclusion that the vineyard shall be taken away from them and given to others--in other words, that those who were first God’ s chosen people were not to continue His chosen people for ever, in a spiritual sense, and that others were to be admitted to the privileges which they had abused. Then, if we have ascertained that the promises do not refer to those who are merely nominally belonging to God, we may say that they do belong to those who are partakers of God’ s sovereign grace. They are, therefore, the persons who are brought to the Lord Jesus Christ; they are those who through faith in Christ, simply trusting to His merit, are introduced into “ the glorious liberty of the children of God.” They are those, therefore, who not only belong to God as an outward and visible Church, but as the true invisible Church, which shall be made manifest unto all men, not in our day, but in the great day of the Lord. These, then, are the parties described. They are born not of “ a bondmaid,” but of “ a freewoman; “ or, as we read here--“ We, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise;” and in the concluding verse--“ So, then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” Now, if this be the case, the moment that we are thus under grace, and partakers of the promised blessings, we are free from ceremonial bondage; we are not looking to any mere outward act or ceremony, but we are made free by the Son of God, and those whom He makes free “ are free indeed.” But we are not only free from the ceremonial law, but we are free from the terrorism connected with the judgment to come. We are taught, indeed, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, that “ we have access by one Spirit unto the Father” through Jesus Christ; for He “ came and preached peace to us who were afar off, and to them that were nigh.” See, therefore, what our privileges are if we are real believers under the new covenant; see what freedom we enjoy. But though we may all take this joyful view of a believer’ s privileges, yet we are not to think that the believer has no crosses or trials. Let us turn again to the context, for that which happened to Ishmael and to Isaac is again an illustration of what will happen to believers when brought into contact with the world. The twenty-ninth verse says--“ As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.” We are not to expect that if a man desires to walk blameless, or to carry out such an exhortation as that in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians, to “ be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of life” --we are not to expect that he will be left alone. The very fact of his being a light in the midst of a dark world, one who desires constantly to carry out into practice the doctrines he professes to believe, will draw attention to him, be he where he may. And what will be the result? He will be exposed to those very things against which we are taught to pray in our Litany--“ the envy, hatred, and malice” which abound in the world. You will see this happening over and over again in every-clay life; and when they cannot catch believers halting, they will” try to “ entangle them in their talk. And why should we expect all this? Because our Lord has told us that we must expect it--that “ the disciple is not above his Master” --and in that striking chapter, the fifteenth of St. John’ s Gospel, our Lord has said, “ If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Persecution, misrepresentation, therefore, must be expected by the Lord’ s people. As Ishmael mocked and ridiculed Isaac, so we must expect the Ishmaelites of this day to attack and ridicule and persecute you and me, if we are really on the Lord’ s side. Let us never, then, be surprised for a moment to find that we must experience that which the Word of God has laid down in unmistakable terms--“ Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom.” The Jews have always shown their hatred to the gospel. We have seen, then, who are to be partakers of the privilege; we have not blinded our eyes--I trust I have not, and you have not--to the treatment we may expect in the world; and now let us see the encouragement which is held out in this portion. “ We are the children of promise;” “ we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” The persecuted, then, shall be known, and the persecutors shall be known. There is no overlooking any one, high or low, rich or poor, in the eye of the Lord; His eye “ is in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” My brethren, if you look at the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, you will find the apostle saying, “ We ourselves glory in you in the Churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.” God’ s eye, therefore, is in every place. The first covenant that was looked to was a national covenant--the covenant that is now looked to is an individual covenant; it is with each one of us personally. The whole passage, therefore, upon which we have been speaking is intended to make every single soul, high or low, rich or poor, cut off all idea of salvation by works, and cultivate a hope of salvation by grace--this is the whole purport of the passage--to lead us to see our own individual interest in the covenant of grace. What a blessing it would be, brethren, if one inspired by God’ s Holy Spirit could indeed make use of the language of this passage, and standing here address you and me, and say to each person in this congregation--“ Ye are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free!” And why should it not be said of us? (H. M. Villiers, M. A.) Galatians 4:26 But Jerusalem, which is above, is free. Notes of the Church The Church is--1. Heavenly.2. One.3. Invisible.4. Free.5. Propagative.6. Careful of her children. Jerusalem a type of the Church Cf. Hebrews 12:22-23; Revelation 21:2. I. God chose Jerusalem above all places to dwell in; the catholic Church is composed of those in the midst of whom He dwells (Matthew 18:20; Matthew 28:20). II. Jerusalem is a city compact in itself by reason of the bond of love and order among the citizens (Psalms 122:3); so the members of the Church are linked together by the bond of one Spirit. III. In Jerusalem was the sanctuary, a place of God’ s presence and worship and truth; the Church is now in the room of that sanctuary; in it we must seek the presence of God and the word of life (1 Timothy 3:15). IV. In Jerusalem was the throne of David (Psalms 122:5); the Church, is the throne and sceptre of Christ (Revelation 3:7). V. The commendation of a city, as Jerusalem, is the subjection and obedience of its citizens; in the Church all believers are citizens (Ephesians 2:19), and yield voluntary obedience and subjection to Christ the King (Psalms 110:2; Isaiah 2:5) VI. As in Jerusalem the names of the citizens were enrolled in a register, so the names of Christians are recorded in the Book of Life (Revelation 20:15; Hebrews 12:23). (W. Perkins.)The heavenly Jerusalem The Church in the creed has three properties: holy; catholic; knit in a communion. The word “ above” intimateth that she is holy; “ mother,” that she is knit in a communion; “ of all,” that she is catholic. I. Jerusalem a type of the church.1. In election (Psalms 132:13; cf. 1 Peter 2:9).2. In collection (Isaiah 5:2; cf. Ephesians 4:3).3. In nobility (Psalms 122:5; cf. Revelation 3:7). II. This new jerusalem is heavenly.1. In respect of her birth and heavenly beginning (James 1:18).2. In respect of growth and continuance (Philippians 3:20).3. In respect of the end (John 17:24). (T. Adams.)The heavenly origin and nature of the Church The Church is said to be above-- I. In respect of her beginning, which is from the grace of God. II. Because she dwells by faith in heaven with Christ. Wherefore we are admonished--1. To live in this world as pilgrims and strangers (1 Peter 2:21). 2. To carry ourselves as burgesses of heaven (Philippians 3:20). (1) By seeking heavenly things;(2) by leading a heavenly life. (W. Perkins.)Characteristics of the Church In that it is said she is above it signifies her heavenly origin; that she is Jerusalem, her peaceful multitude; that she is free, her great liberty; that she is mother, her abundant fecundity; that she is mother of us all, her wide charity. (Cardinal Hugo.)Jerusalem our mother The holy Church is our mother, and the most holy God our Father. She feeds us with sincere milk (1 Timothy 3:15) from her two breasts, the Scriptures of both Testaments, which God hath committed to her keeping. God doth beget us of immortal seed by the Word (1 Peter 1:23), but by the instrumentality of the Church. (T. Adams.)The comprehensiveness of the Church The city of God, of which the Stoics doubtfully and feebly spoke, was now set up before the eyes of men. It was no unsubstantial city, such as we fancy in the clouds; no invisible pattern, such as Plato thought might be laid up in heaven; but a visible corporation, whose members met together to eat bread and drink wine, and into which they were publicly initiated. Here the Gentile met the Jew whom he had been accustomed to regard as an enemy of the human race; the Roman met the lying Greek sophist; the Syrian slave the gladiator born beside the Danube. In brotherhood they met, the natural birth and kindred of each forgotten, the baptism alone remembered to which they had been born again to God and to each other. The edict of comprehension conferred citizenship upon every class. Under it, whatever law of mutual help and consideration had obtained between citizen and citizen obtained also between the citizen and his slaves. The words “ foreign” and “ barbarous” lost their meaning. All nations and tribes were gathered within the pomoerium of the City of God; and on the baptized earth the Rhine and the Thames became as Jordan, and ever sullen desert-girded settlement of German savages as sacred as Jerusalem. (Ecce Homo.)The Judaizers would have made the Jerusalem which is above, which is free, and which is the mother of us all, a mere cramped and narrow faubourg in the metropolis of Jerusalem. (Paul of Tarsus.)Christian freedom Jesus Christ not only called Lazarus into life, but he commanded the grave-clothes to be taken off him, that he might have liberty in life. Life, without liberty from the grave-clothes, would scarcely have been a blessing. So Jesus Christ not only gives life to the soul which believes in Him; He also commands the Spirit to descend upon him, to set him free from all enslaving habits. “ If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed,” (J. Bate.)True Liberty. “ Who then is free? the wise who well maintains An empire o’ er himself; whom neither chains Nor want nor death with slavish fear inspire, Who boldly answers to his warm desire; Who can ambition’ s vainest gifts despise, Firm in himself who on himself relies; Polished and round who runs his proper course, And breaks misfortune with superior force. (Horace.)St. Paul’ s allegory And because similitudes and figures will hold faster in the memory of the unlearned, who are the greater number, than powerful arguments; after weighty reasons premised, the apostle concludes with an allegory at the end of his disputation, as a banquet after a meal of solid meat. And thus it runs, that they who sought righteousness by the law were no better than Ishmael, the son of Hagar; they that sought righteousness by faith were as Isaac, the heir of his father. That the law came from Sinai, which was seated in Arabia, a mountain quite out of the confines of the Land of Promise; the gospel began at Sion, or Jerusalem, which was the heart of the Holy Land. In this little abstract of the excellency of the Church, six portions of its glory are contained in six words.1. She is a Jerusalem, a visible fair city, that’ s her external communion.2. A Jerusalem above, that’ s her internal sanctity.3. A Jerusalem that is free, which is her supernal redemption.4. A mother, that’ s her fruitfulness.5. The mother of us, which comprehends her unity.6. The mother of us all, which expresseth the universality. 1. Jerusalem is the substantive or fundamental word that bears up the whole text, and it is as musical a word as most that run upon syllables; but it offers more pleasantness to the understanding than to the ear; full of happy signification; a name given, as the philosopher Plato was wont to say, so accommodate to the Church apostolical, that unless God had foreseen that His saving truth should first grow up within the walls thereof, it had never been called Jerusalem. And I refer myself to two things especially, how the name descended upon the Church. (1) While the old tabernacle stood, Jerusalem was the chief place wherein men called upon the name of the Lord. (2) Out of the same Sion went forth the new law, and Jerusalem was the mother of the first-born in Christ. 2. It was not enough in St. Paul’ s judgment to denominate the spouse of Christ from the best habitation (for earth is but earth be it never so much a selected portion); therefore he carries her aloft in his praise, and adds, that it is Jerusalem which is above, an heavenly city (Hebrews 12:22), as if it had not its original here, but fell down from the starry firmament. (1) Because Christ our head is ascended into heaven, and governs all things beneath from thence, sitting at the right hand of His Father. As a king, upon whose safety the weal of the kingdom depends, is said to carry the lives of his people with him, when he adventures his person into danger; so our souls do hang upon Christ our Redeemer in Him we live and move, wheresoever He goes He draws us after Him; if He be lifted up on high, so are we also by virtue of concommitancy; it is His will, and we have His word for it, that where He is, there should we be also. When we pray unto Him, if our spirit do not issue out from us, and prostrate itself before Him in heaven, that petition solicits faintly, and is not like to speed, because it comes not nearer to Him who is our advocate with the Father. When we come to His Holy Supper, unless we carry up our heart unto Him by strong devotion, and presume that we see that very Body which was crucified for us before our eyes, we pollute the Sacrament for want of faith. There are such joints and bands which knit the body unto the head, as mortal reason cannot express; but through faith and love we are often with Him by invisible ascensions; but most assured be we that there He intercedes for us, from thence He assists His sacraments, sanctifieth His ministry, gives grace unto His Word. And if they did not escape who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn from Him that speaketh from heaven. (2) Our Jerusalem is above, not only in the head, but in the members. I do not say in all the members; for the Church is that great house in which are vessels of honour and dishonour. Terms of excellency, though indistinctly attributed to the whole, are agreeing oftentimes only to the chiefer or more refined part. Some there are in this body, whom though we salute not by the proud word of their sublimity, yet in true possession, which shall never be taken from them, they are those that are above. Witness that the angels make up one Church with us, being the chief citizens that are reckoned in the triumphant part; fellow servants with us under one Lord; adopted sons under one Father; elect under one Christ. This is the language of the Scripture, and surely members of one mystical body, for the same Jesus is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2:10). Of this family also are the saints departed, even all those holy spirits that obey God in heavenly places, and do not imitate the devil and his angels. (3) We have obtained this dignity, to be ranked as them that are above, because our calling is very holy: “ He hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling” (2 Timothy 1:9); called to doctrine which is above, which flesh and blood did not reveal, but the Father that giveth wisdom plentifully. (4) This holy city of God is above, because it pursues not the things beneath, but it seeks those things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God; it is above in its affections. The delights of the synagogue were victory over their enemies, length of days, a land of wine and olives, and flowing with milk and honey, poor accessories of a transitory happiness. This was tolerated unto them, when the first rudiments of the fear of God were taught; but these are too childish for us to look after, inasmuch as long continuance of time hath taught us to choose the better part. (5) The Church evangelical is Jerusalem above in respect of the Jewish Hagar, propter sublime pactum, the covenant that is made with us is sublime and magnificent; not the dreadful law of works, but the mild and gentle covenant of faith in the blood of Christ. 3. Jerusalem, which is above, is free. The precedent praise of the Church adheres unto this word for the consummation thereof. If there be any that take upon them to belong to the New Jerusalem, and to the city which is above, let them show the copy of their freedom, that they are not led by the spirit of bondage, but by the spirit of adoption. (1) What this freedom is. Our freedom consists in a manumission from a fourfold servitude. (a) We are delivered from the yoke of ceremonies, called the bondage of the elements of this world, in this chapter, verse 4. (b) We are most free for the new covenant’ s sake, which is made with us. For salvation is not offered us through the works of the law, but through the promise of grace. We brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise (verse 28). (c) We have not received the spirit of bondage to fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “ Abba, Father” (Romans 8:25). Says Theophylact upon my text, The gospel exhorts us gently, it doth not affright us tyrannously. (d) The rewards of the New Testament are not momentary things, such as the law propounded, but heavenly. Says the same author, We are not servants that do our duty for visible wages. And all these together make the copy of a perfect freedom. (2) How we got this freedom. We all know the procurer, and what He did to gain it for us; it is a flower that grew out of the blood of Christ. We were not protected, as Joshua’ s spies were, by a common woman; nor set at large, as Samaria was, by the tidings of lepers; our Deliverer is more honourable to us than our freedom. The Son of God was made a servant, that we servants might become sons. As God made nothing in nature but by His Son, by Him He made the worlds, so He did nothing for the restoration of the world without Him. He is all in all. He bath freed us from the bondage of shadows by taking a body; from the covenant of works by satisfying His Father’ s justice; from the dread of fear by the sweetness of His mercy; from the sordid desire of earthly things by the operation of His holy Spirit. (3) How we should use this freedom. No blessing hath been more abused than this. Under colour hereof the Galileans would be free from tribute, the Nicolaitans from the bond of marriage, the Gnostics from all justice and temperance, the clerks of the Roman Church from the courts of the civil magistrate, and the Anabaptists from all moral duties. No, says St. Peter to all these, “ As free, but not using your liberty as a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.” It was St. Austin’ s by word, You are free, therefore love God, and do what you will. If ye love Him keep His commandments. We are not so soon loosed but we are tied again, both freed and bound at once. We must recompense His goodness with our imperfect obedience. It is the law of gratitude; it is the bond of nature. As we commonly say, that nothing is more dearly bought than that which comes by gift; so we owe the greater service to Him of whom we got our freedom. Nay, we are bound to endure all for His sake. We feel the pain as much as they that curse and rage in their sufferings, but our love unto Christ doth overcome it. A free man, that will thrive, follows his trade as close as any apprentice, though not by austere compulsion. So our freedom will not make our hands slack from working, if we mean to lay up a treasure in heaven. 4. And as the Church hath taken upon it the proper name of Jerusalem, yet without any contract to the local and material building of Jerusalem, so she hath taken up the appellation of a mother, yet without any respect to nature, no way bending to natural causes, or natural affections. For not only our parents in the flesh, ,but the whole world, hath quite lost us in this word. As Moses remembered the great devotion of Levi, that he said of his father and mother, I have not seen them, or I respect them not, and of his brethren, I do not acknowledge them (Deuteronomy 33:9); so by deriving ourselves from this mother, we east our fleshly parentage aside, and we say to her, who did give us to suck from her breasts, as oar Saviour did to the blessed Virgin; “ What have I to do with thee?” Jerusalem is ours, and we are hers, First, to know our mother, that we may not be ignorant either of her fruitfulness or our own obedience. He is a wise son, says Telemachus, in Homer, that knows his father; but he is a foolish son that doth not know his mother. Secondly, note the unity and indivision of the children of this mother. They are a cluster of grapes hanging upon one stalk, a brood of chickens clockt under the wings of one hen; there is but one stem and one progeny; one in relation to this parent, the mother of us. The third and last part puts us to observe, that the note of universality was large in Paul’ s days, but now much more amplified than in those times--the mother of us all. (Bishop Hacker.)The new Jerusalem Liberty is the element of a Christian. The fall placed nature under the bondage of sin; but then the law placed sin under the bondage of fear; but Christ first delivers sin from fear, and then delivers nature from sin. That the “ Jerusalem above” means the present Church militant, as well as the Church triumphant the kingdom of heaven within you, as well as the kingdom of heaven above you--both grace and glory--is evident from the manner in which the expression “ Jerusalem,” or “ Zion,” is used in its connection of thought in many other parts of Scripture; as, for example, in the Psalms; or Isaiah 62:1-2; or Hebrews 12:22; or Revelation 3:12; or Revelation 21:2. Of all this Jerusalem, then, or Church-state, the character, the determining character, is liberty. If I wanted a proof of this, I might see it in the fact that everything which is not free is from beneath. Every machination of Satan against God’ s people--every dark heresy that comes to confine the Church--every spiritual temptation which ensnares a man’ s conscience--every distress which cramps a believer’ s mind--is from beneath; therefore, because it is from beneath, it is bondage. Bondage is from below. “ Jerusalem above,” --that which your citizenship is--“ is free.” Endeavour now to catch, for a moment or two, a feature, one or two features, in the liberty of the Church in heaven, that we may, by God’ s grace, copy it into our liberty of the Church below. I observe that in heaven everything is very large, to us infinite. The room is boundless; the inhabitants are beyond computation--even as those stars in the heavens, which no man can reckon. But yet, as God does with those stars, so God does with everything in heaven. The gates, the fruits, the seats, the elders, the crowns, are all numbered--so that I see in heaven at once vastness and accuracy; the freest scope with the minutest observation. So be out freedom here. Our mercies are infinite. Still, every one of my mercies is known, and written down in God’ s book, as a separate item. It is written; it is catalogued, and responsible. The multitude is vast; but, for each one that goes to make that multitude, I have to give a separate account how I have used it in this world. That is my liberty. Again, look at the cervices of heaven. I note that they use forms in heaven. We are told the very words, which they cease not day and night to say (never weary, though)--“ Worthy is the Lamb!--Amen!--Alleluia!--For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!” But oh! what a freshness, what spirit there is in those celestial formularies! Let us take our liberty. Free thoughts and full affections, in prescribed currents of regulated words, go to send up our separate feelings in all the individualities of unpremeditated prayer; and now we blend in social worship, as in the beautiful prayer and language of the holy services in which we have been this night engaged; and, in all, with the equal liberty of Zion’ s children. That is heaven’ s free worship, and that is the liberty of the Church around. There must be law to have freedom. The greater the law, the greater liberty; but the deeper that law is engraven in the heart’ s fine feelings, and the more a man is the spring of his own obedience, the more of habit, the more of anticipation’ s boundings, the less of misapprehensions without a man, and the more felt presence of the love of Christ in a man, the nearer are we to the “ Jerusalem which is above,” which is free, and which is the mother of us all. “ The mother of us all.” There is no confidence which the world ever shows, so intimate and so tender, as that which a son feels for his mother. There are feelings which a man will deposit nowhere but with his mother. “ The mother of us all!” Children of “ the New Jerusalem” --children of the Church--set much by your Church. She is to you no other than a parent. Children of “ the new Jerusalem” --children of heaven--remember into what a registry your name is now, by your second birth, enrolled. Demean it not; sully it not; sit loose to this world in the spirit of your minds; for, behold! she, which is your “ mother,” will come presently, in her perfect beauty; and where should your eye be, and where should your anticipation daily be, but to that “ new Jerusalem,” which shall come from heaven. Children of “ the new Jerusalem” --children of liberty--take the image of your parent’ s features. “ Be free” in the spirit of your minds. Have freer prayer--freer hope--freely take the freedom so freely given you. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The liberties of the Church We must understand St. Paul here to speak of the Church; and not of the Church triumphant in heaven, as some of the schoolmen have asserted, but the Church militant here on earth, that glorious edifice of the faithful, whose names are written in the book of life, and who are united with Christ above in a fellowship of His sufferings. But the word “ above” is not to mislead you, as Luther has well observed; for all the processes of spiritual generation and adoption are from above; all intercourse between God and His faithful worshippers is from above; and “ our conversation is in heaven.” All, then, that are allowed to see the kingdom of God, are to be born from above: this is the decree of the Head of the Church. As Christ, therefore, is in heaven, and as He is Head of the Church, so is the Church spiritually in heaven, even whilst she is militant here below; for the Church is an unmeasured edifice, and never can be measured till some one by searching can find out the limits of the Almighty: “ It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?” The Head of the Church is at the right hand of God; the feet are walking here on earth; and yet one mighty eternal Spirit animates the whole, one will and principle of action pervades the immense body; one thought and intention directs and disciplines all the mass;--for in Him “ we live, and move, and have our being;” and the whole company of true and faithful believers, from the day that Christ was crucified, down to the hour when the last trumpet shall sound from heaven, do form but one mystical body, with one soul and One spirit, entire in union and perfect in co-operation. But the beauty of this city is her freedom: the real Church of Christ has ample privileges; and all her laws are comprehensive and liberal. There is no spirit of bigotry, no local attachments, no exclusive jealousy, no straining on the conscience, no turning of the fancies of man into the decrees of God. St. Paul, the illustrious scribe of that holy city, lays no heavier burthen on the chartered inhabitants than this--“ Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free; and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1.) How easy, one would think it must be, to love the freedom which God has given us I But, alas! that which has been given us as our freedom by God, has been, by the world in general, considered irksome and intolerable. The world cannot endure a spiritual Church; it loves neither a spiritual worship nor a spiritual faith; and to worship God in spirit is what it can neither understand nor tolerate. (R. M. Beverley.) Galatians 4:27-28 Rejoice, thou barren, that bearest not. Rejoice, thou barren I. The Church in her sadness.1. The figure is drawn from the closest tie that nature knows, that of marriage relationship, and teaches that as both male and female are incomplete without each other, so the happiness of God is incomplete without the love of the creature He has made to love Him. 2. The picture, however, is that of a wife whose husband has forsaken her. She is (1) barren, desolate, and therefore(2) sorrowful. 3. This applies to the Hebrew Church. II. The Church in her gladness.1. Restrictions between Jew and Gentile broken down.2. Arbitrary barriers of race and rank and law are removed.3. All nations are redeemed and gathered into a common salvation. (C. Clemance, D. D.)Songs for desolate hearts Take the text to refer-- I. To the Church of God. 1. For a long season before the Advent the Church was desolate.2. During Christ’ s temporal stay with her her condition was not much better.3. Suddenly after His departure, on the Day of Pentecost, she became fruitful.4. And continued fruitful (luring the whole apostolic age. Notice--1. That at all seasons when the Church has been desolate and barren God has appeared to her. (1) In the dark ages the Church was barren, but the Lord appeared through Luther, and she became fruitful. (2) In the last century the Church was barren, but God appeared and made her fruitful through the Wesleys and Whitefield. 2. That in the present age of comparative barrenness we may expect revival. II. To any one church.1. There are some separate Churches that are in a sad condition, with a lifeless ministry, worldly officers, and declining membership. 2. What is the present duty of members of such Churches? (1) Labour to be conscious of your state, of its evil and danger.(2) Pray earnestly for revival.(3) Do all you can personally to bring it about. III. To the poor, helpless sinner.1. His fruitlessness.2. Desolation.3. Help in Christ.4. Trust in Him, and He will make thee fruitful. IV. To the depressed believer.1. Barrenness is the platform of Divine power.2. Desolation the setting for God’ s everlasting love. V. To those Christians who have not been successful in doing good.1. It is good for you while you are barren to feel desolate.2. But you may be barren only in your own esteem.3. Wait, and toil on, for in due season you will reap if you faint not.4. If your barrenness is real let it humble you, but repair to the source of fruitfulness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christianity not a failure While Christianity is speaking in languages more numerous, by tongues more eloquent, in nations more populous than ever before: marshalling better troops with richer harmony; shrinking from no foe, rising triumphant from every conflict; shaking down the towers of old philosophies that exalt themselves against God; making the steam press rush under the demand for her Scriptures, and the steam horse groan under the weight of her charities; emancipating the enslaved, civilizing the lawless, refining literature, inspiring poetry; sending forth art and science no longer clad in soft raiment to linger in king’ s palaces, but as hardy prophets of God to make earth bud and blossom as the rose; giving God-like breadth and freedom and energy to the civilization that bears its name, elevating savage islands into civilized states, leading forth Christian martyrs from the mountains of Madagascar, turning the clubs of cannibals into the railings of the altars before which Fiji savages call upon Jesus; repeating the Pentecost “ by many an ancient river and many a palmy plain” ; thundering at the seats of ancient Paganism; sailing all waters, cabling all oceans, scaling all mountains in the march of its might, and ever enlarging the diameter of those circles of light which it has kindled on earth, and which will soon meet in a universal illumination--you call it a failure! A little more such failure and we shall have, over all the globe, the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. (E. Thompson.)The enlargement of the Church I. Depends on the promise--made to Abraham and secured in Christ--is effected by the Spirit--realized in the children of promise (Galatians 4:28). II. Is certain--because the revealed purpose of God--which must surmount all the difficulties of barrenness and apparent desolation. III. Will be glorious--surpassing all experience--hope--faith. IV. Will be a source of unspeakable joy- to all believers- to the world at large. (J. Lyth.)The children of promise I. The resemblance of the Gentile Christians to Isaac.1. They had been promised.2. They had been begotten (spiritually) by a supernatural and extraordinary operation. II. The spiritual character of the promise.1. It appealed to faith.2. Its fulfilment was by Divine grace. III. The dignity and privilege of the relation it creates. The relation is--1. Immediate.2. Vital.3. Spiritual. (A. F. Muir, M. A.) Galatians 4:29 He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit. Enmity between the natural and the spiritual man I must profess that since I observed the course of the world, and the concord of the Word and providences of God, I took it for a notable proof of man’ s fall, and of the verity of the Scripture, and the supernatural origin of true sanctification, to find such a universal enmity between the holy and the serpentine seed, and to find Cain and Abel’ s case so ordinarily exemplified, and him that is born after the flesh to persecute him that is born after the Spirit. And methinks to this day it is a great and visible help for the confirmation of our Christian faith. But that which is much remarkable in it is, that nothing else in the world, except the crossing of men’ s carnal interest, doth meet with any such universal enmity. A man may be as learned as he can, and no man hate him for it. If he excel all others, all men will praise him, and proclaim his excellency; he may be an excellent linguist, an excellent philosopher, an excellent physician, an excellent logician, an excellent orator, and all commend him. Among musicians, architects, soldiers, seamen, and all arts and sciences, men value, prefer, and praise the best; yea, even speculative theology, such wits as the schoolmen and those who are called great divines are honoured by all, and meet, as such, with but little enmity, persecution, or obloquy in the world. Though I know that even a Galilaeus, a Campanella, and man such have suffered by the Roman Inquisitors, that was not so much in enmity to their speculations or opinions, as through a fear lest new philosophical notions should unsettle men’ s minds and open the way to new opinions in theology, and so prove injurious to the kingdom and interest of Rome. I know also that Demosthenes, Cicero, Seneca, Lucan, and many other learned men have died by the hands or power of tyrants. But this was not for their learning, but for their opposition to those tyrants’ wills and interests. And I know that some religious men have suffered for their sins and follies, and some for their meddling too much with secular affairs, as the counsellors of princes, as Funetius, Justus Jonas, and many others. But yet no parts, no excellency, no skill or learning, is hated commonly, but honoured in the world; no, not theological learning, save only this practical godliness and religion, and the principles of it, which only renders men amiable to God, through Christ, and saves men’ s souls. (R. Baxter.)Honour of persecution One who was persecuted in Queen Mary’ s time wrote thus: “ A prisoner for Christ! What is this for a poor worm? Such honour have not all His saints. Both the degrees which I took in the university have not set me so high as the honour of becoming a prisoner of the Lord.” Glorifying in persecution Paul and Silas had their prison songs in their prison sufferings. Those caged birds sing with as much melody as any that have sky liberty. Thus Ignatius, in his epistle, glorified, saying: “ The wild beasts may grind me as corn between their teeth: but I shall by that become as choice bread in the hand of my God.” (Archbishop Secker.)Faithfulness under persecution A young Christian soldier in the army was often assaulted by his tent-mates while at prayer at night. He sought advice of the chaplain, and, by his counsels, omitted his usual habit. But his ardent soul could not endure this. He chose rather to have prayer with persecution than peace without it, and resumed his old way. The result was, that after a time all his tent-companions knelt in prayer with him. In reporting to the chaplain he said, “ Isn’ t it better to keep the colours flying?” Riches of persecution A certain person, on seeing a Christian woman go cheerfully to prison, said to her, “ O, you have not yet tasted of the bitterness of death.” She as cheerfully replied, “ No, nor never shall; for Christ has promised, that those who keep His sayings shall never see death.” On persecution In these words the apostle doth present to our eye the true face of the Church in an allegory of Sarah and Hagar, of Ishmael and Isaac, of Mount Sinai and Mount Sion. Take the full scheme and delineation in brief.1. Here is Sarah and Hagar; that is, servitude and freedom. 2. Here are two cities: “ Jerusalem that now is,” the synagogue of the Jews; and that “ Jerusalem which is above,” “ the vision of peace,” and “ mother of all” the faithful. For by the new covenant we are made children unto God. 3. Here is the law promulgated and thundered out on Mount Sinai; and the gospel, the covenant of grace, which God published, not from the mount, but from heaven itself, by the voice of His Son. In all, you see a fair correspondence and agreement between the type and the thing, but so that “ Jerusalem our mother” is still the highest; the gospel glorious with the liberty it brought, and the law putting OH a yoke, breathing nothing but servitude and fear; Isaac an “ heir,” and Ishmael “ thrust out” ; the Christian more honourable than the Jew. The veil is drawn, and you may behold presented to your view and consideration a double parallel.1. Of the times; “ But as then, so now.” 2. Of the occurrences, the acts and monuments, of these times, divided between two, the agent and the patient, “ those that are born after the flesh” persecuting, and “ those that are born after the Spirit” suffering persecution. I. Though the privileges and prerogatives of the Church be many, yet was she never exempted from persecution, but rather had it entailed on her as an inheritance.1. In the persons themselves. 2. This will yet more plainly appear from the very nature and constitution of the Church, which is best seen in her blood, when she is militant; which is more full and expressive than any other representation of the title that she hath. 3. “ As it was then, so it is now.” St. Paul doth not say, “ It may be so,” or “ It is by chance,” but “ So it is,” by “ the providence of God, which is seen in the well-ordering and bringing of every motion and action of man to a right end,” which commonly runneth in a contrary course to that which flesh and blood, human infirmity, would find out. Eternity and mortality, majesty and dust and ashes, wisdom and ignorance, steer not the same course, nor are they bound to the same point, “ My ways are not your ways, nor My thoughts yours,” saith God, by His prophet, to a foolish nation who in extremity of folly would be wiser than God. We must first be made more spiritual by the contradiction of “ those who are born after the flesh” ; more Isaacs than before, for the many Ishmaels. So perfection is not only agreeable to the wisdom of God, but convenient to the weakness of man. And it is a beatitude: Blessed poverty, blessed mourning, blessed persecution (Matthew 5:3-4; Matthew 5:10-12). Blessedness is set upon these as a crown, or as rich embroidery upon sackcloth, or some coarser stuff. Thus you see the Church is not, cannot be, exempt from persecution, if either we consider the quality of the persons themselves, or the nature and constitution of the Church, or the providence and wisdom and mercy of God. II. Let us now look back upon this dreadful but blessed sight, and see what advantage we can work, what light we can strike, out of this cloud of blood to direct and strengthen us in this our warfare, that we may “ be faithful unto death, and so receive the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).1. Let us not be dismayed when we see that befall the Church which befalleth all the kingdoms and commonwealths in the world, when we see the face of the Church gather blackness, and not shine in that beauty in which formerly we beheld her. For what strange thing is it that Ishmael should mock Isaac? that a serpent should bite, or a lion roar? that the world should be the world, or the Church the Church? The Church, so far as she is visible, in respect of her visibility and outward form, is as subject to change as any other thing that is seen, as those things which we use to say are but the balls of fortune to play with. 2. And that we may not marvel, let us, in the next place, have a right judgment in all things, and not set up the Church in our fancy, and shape her out by the state and pomp of this world, but “ be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2). We must not make the world the idea and platform of a Church. 3. Therefore let us cast down these imaginations, these bubbles of air blown up by the flesh the worse part which doth soonest bring on a persecution, and doth soonest fear it; and let us, in the place of these, build up a royal fort, build ourselves up in our holy faith, and so fit and prepare ourselves against the fiery trial. 4. “ Be ye therefore ready; for, in an hour when you think not, the Son of man,” the Captain of your salvation, may come (Matthew 24:44), and put you into the lists. Though the trumpet sound not to battle, yet is it not peace. And now, to conclude, “ What saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with the son of the freewoman.” To cast out is an act of violence; and the true Church evermore hath the suffering part; but yet she may cast them out, and that with violence; but then it is with the same “ violence we take the kingdom of heaven,” a violence upon ourselves (Matthew 11:12).1. By laying ourselves prostrate, by the vehemency of our devotion, by our frequent prayers that God would either melt their hearts, or shorten their hands; either bring them into the right way, or strike off their chariot wheels. 2 By our patience and long-suffering. Patience worketh more miracles than power. 3. We cast them out by our innocency of life, and sincerity of conversation. 4. Lastly: We may cast them out by “ casting our burden on the Lord” (Psalms 55:22); by putting our cause into His hands who best can plead it, by citing our persecutors before His tribunal who is the righteous Judge. If we thus cast it upon Him, we need no other umpire, no other revenger. If it be a loss, He can restore it; if an injury, He can return it; if grief, He can heal it; if disgrace, He can wipe it off: and He will certainly do it, if we so cast it upon Him as to trust in Him alone; the full persuasion of God’ s power being that which “ awaketh Him as one out of sleep,” putteth Him to clothe Himself with His majesty, setteth His power a working, to bring mighty things to pass, and make Himself glorious by the delivery of His people. (A. Farindon, D. D.)He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit When the powers of the world give any rest, yet the carnal seed will be mocking and scoffing, and bringing God’ s holy ways into contempt, branding them with censures and calumnies. The reasons of this are partly because men are drunk with the delusions of the flesh, and so cannot judge of spiritual things; and partly to excuse themselves. Men will be quarrelling at religion when they have no mind to practise it, and dispute away duties when they are unwilling to perform them; partly they take occasion from the failings of God’ s people, though there is no reason why they should do so. An art should not be condemned for the workman’ s want of skill; but they do so. If Christians be serious then religion is counted an uncomfortable thing. If there be any differences among God’ s people, because of their several degrees of light, oh, then there are so many sects and factions and controversies about religion, they suspect all. If any creep into the holy profession, and pollute it with their scandals, then all strictness in religion is but a pretence and imposture. If men be strict and would avoid every ordinary failing incident to mankind, then they are more nice than wise, and this is preciseness and indiscretion. (T. Manton, D. D.)We must expect persecution A soldier in the East Indies--a stout, lion-hearted man--had been a noted prizefighter, and a terror to those who knew him. That man sauntered into the mission chapel, heard the gospel, and was converted. The change in his character was most marked and decided. The lion was changed into a lamb. Two months afterwards, in the mess-room, some of those who had been afraid of him before began to ridicule him. One of them said, “ I’ ll put it to the test whether he is a Christian or not;” and, taking a basin of hot soup, he threw it into his bosom. The whole company gazed in breathless silence, expecting that the lion would start up, and murder him on the spot. But after he had torn open his waistcoat, and wiped his scalded breast, he calmly turned round, and said, “ This is what I must expect if I become a Christian. I must suffer persecution.” His comrades were filled with astonishment. (Biblical Treasury.)Persecution is harmless Do they cast us out of the city? They cannot cast us out of that which is in the heavens. If they who hate us could do this, they would be doing something real against us. So long, however, as they cannot do this, they are but pelting us with drops of water or striking us with the wind. (Gregory Nazianzen.) Galatians 4:30 Cast out the bondwoman and her son. Freedom the blessing of the gospel I. Freedom is the characteristic privilege of the gospel. 1. Christ proclaimed freedom from sin (John 8:33-36).2. Paul proclaimed freedom from the law, both ceremonial and moral3. But does not the latter (1) contradict the former? is not lawlessness sinfulness?(2) contradict the moral sense which asserts the obligation of the moral law? II. This freedom is the provision of the covenant of grace.1. This covenant is no longer restricted to an observance of the law, but is fulfilled by us when we believe in Christ. 2. The purpose of this covenant is the same as that of the covenant of the law, but that purpose is effected (1) by a different method, viz., faith in One who has fulfilled the law, which we could not do. (2) By a higher method by introducing us into a state in which we keep the law by the effective motive of sonship; into which state we enter by faith in God’ s Son. 3. This faith works by love, which is henceforth our ruling impulse (Romans 13:10), and we become followers of God, not as servants, but as “ dear children,” having received the spirit of adoption. III. This covenant answers the yearnings of the human soul, which are--1. To be reconciled to God and at peace with Him. This is accomplished through Him who fulfilled the law for us. 2. To serve Him truly. This is done by Him who conquers evil in us, and who gives us through faith a power to work the works of God (John 6:28-29). IV. This covenant brings us therefore under the law to Christ. Hence the moral precepts of the gospel; which are given--1. Because of the imperfection of our faith and lest liberty should become licence. 2. To supply us with the means of self-examination whether we are keeping the royal law of liberty. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)The simplicity of the gospel covenant Our attention, perhaps, may not be unprofitably directed to a consideration of--first, the principles of the old and new covenant, and, secondly, the declaration of the text concerning them.1. It is important for us to have constantly before us clear views concerning the law and the gospel, or the dispensation of works and the dispensation of grace. The law given on Sinai was a system of precepts and commands, which required man’ s perfect obedience. These were to be constantly in the people’ s minds and in their hearts. They were to teach them diligently unto their children, and to talk of them when they sat down in the house, or journeyed in the way; they were even to write them upon the outside of their houses and gates, that they might be in every place a memorial, that they should “ observe and do them.” And they had two motives presented to urge them to obedience: first, the fear of punishment, and secondly, the hope of reward--“ This do, and thou shalt live;” but “ this neglect to do,” and thou shalt die. It shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He hath commanded us, and yet, “ cursed be He that continueth not in all things which are written in the Book of the Law to do them.” The effect of the law, then, upon the individual soul was this, that with some it led to a constant fear, lest there should be a violation or omission of any command. But then, with others it had an opposite effect. It was not the fear of punishment, and this leading sometimes to despair, but it was the hope of reward, and this often lifting up the heart with pride, so that many were led to suppose themselves perfect--to say, “ What lack I yet?” --“ I thank Thee that I am not as other men are.” But we pass on to notice the principles of the new, or gospel covenant. The Old Testament, as we said, was a system of commands and precepts, rewards and punishments--“ This do, and thou shalt live” --this neglect to do and thou shalt die. The gospel is an offer of eternal happiness and life, as a free gift, secured to us by the work of One who fulfilled the law, and kept the covenant of works for us; who bore the curse and the punishment due to a broken law, and thus became Himself, in His own living Person, the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. The gospel, indeed, summons us to a work, but it is the work of faith; the act of casting our soul’ s affections and hopes upon a living Saviour. Scripture has beautifully set forth the condition of u true believer under the new covenant as that of one married to Christ. In other words, are we delivered from doing any good works, having ceased from the economy of works? Are we to live carelessly, and without diligent activity for God’ s glory? By no means. We are not delivered from doing our Heavenly Father’ s will; it is the motives only that are changed. Under the law we are servants, and the servant or hireling obeys from duty; he labours for recompense, or to keep his situation; but the wife and child feel that the husband or father’ s interests are identical with their own; his will is their will; his honour and welfare theirs. The mercenary soldier fights for pay or promotion, in a cause, perhaps, with which he has no sympathy, but the Christian soldier fights the fight of faith, because Christ’ s enemies are his enemies, Christ’ s cause His cause. “ I delight in the law of God after the inward man,” says St. Paul; my heart’ s affections are now given to my Saviour. II. Now notice the declaration of the text concerning these principles of the two covenants.1. Here is a distinct statement, that it is impossible for the soul to be saved and for heaven to be gained, if we are actuated by the principles of the law and the principles of the gospel at the same time--“ The son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free-woman.” And yet there is constantly an attempt made to gain heaven in this way. It is a very common condition in the religious history of man. The principles of the law and the gospel combined form the motives actuating and influencing many a Christian’ s life: his deeds of charity, his benevolence, even his very prayers are offered partly as a matter of duty, and partly as an act of faith. 2. The text, consequently, points out to us our duty, if we are being drawn away from the simplicity of the faith. God will not allow Christ to be robbed of His own glory. If the soul is to receive heaven at all, it must be as a beggar would receive an alms; it must be with a consciousness that in itself it is poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked; that Christ bestows the purchase-money, and the holy garments, and the anointing as a gift. In fine, yield your heart to Him, entirely and constantly, and then will His love be shed abroad in your heart, and become the motive for your every act, and the magnet of constant attraction. Then will there arise up in your soul the spirit of love and not of fear; the spirit of a child, and not of a servant;. Then will the fruits and graces of God’ s own Spirit develop and grow in you, and then shall you have assurance as well as reliance, heaven yours because Christ is yours. In conclusion, let us notice how inconsistent we are, not to say how sinful, when any double motives actuate us in anything. In the common concerns of life, if I display an act of kindness to a poor person, partly from benevolence, but partly in order that he may think well of me, or my neighbour may think well of me; if I subscribe to a missionary society, partly because it is a duty, and partly to be thought religious; then, if such a double motive were known, how I should be held up to the just scorn and contempt of others! But do we not act like this when we are expecting to gain heaven itself, partly by our knowledge of Christ, and partly by our prayers, almsdeeds, or refined sanctities, when, as a fact, we are half-worldly and only half-religious, and will not go as helpless, bankrupt sinners, and in brokenheartedness, and faith, and love to Christ? We have all need, brethren, to keep constantly before us the principles of the new covenant of grace, as distinguished from the old covenant of works. (Louis Stanham, M. A.) Galatians 4:31 We are not children of the bondwomn, but of the free.Nature and the supernatural The whole force of this application of the allegory lies in the truth of the facts. It is because the birth of Isaac was supernatural that St. Paul was able to find in it what he here bids us see. What Isaac was in the miracle of his origin that is the Christian in the miracle of his regeneration. What Hagar and Ishmael hated in Isaac was the interference of God with the laws of nature. This spirit caused the strife and the ejection. So it is now. I. The Jew has his covenant from Sinai. Call that Hagar. Set it in the same row with Jerusalem that now is. See her gendering to bondage, bearing her offspring into a condition of spiritual servitude, the condition of all who trust in the flesh. II. The Christian has his covenant, and its home is above. He is a child not of the flesh but of the Spirit. He is born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, but of supernatural graces. III. Nature cries out against grace, and regards it as an interference with creature rights and dignity, and “ mocks” and “ persecutes,” and must be ejected, at last, from the family and the home of the free. IV. Apply this to scepticism. It is the boast of anti-supernaturalism that it is free. It has cast off the shackles of tradition, authority, priestcraft. Freethought is its watchword. Paul here brings a charge against it under the figure of Hagar and Ishmael, whose characteristic was dislike of the supernatural.1. Unbelief in rejecting the supernatural rejects pardon and Christ, grace and the Holy Spirit. 2. This is a state of bondage. For what hope is there for man in nature? (1) None as he turns remorsefully towards the past. Nature crushes the sinner. (2) None as he looks wistfully towards the future. Mark the poor tentative, vacillating peradventures in reconstructing himself in holiness. Mark the self-vexing “ O Baal, hear us” of the man who will not grasp the Divine Sanctifier. 3. If we would be free from the slavery of sin and despair, we must seek forgiveness through Christ and sanctification through-the Holy Spirit. (Dean Vaughan.)Christianity the home and the hope of the free I. The nature of true freedom.1. The absence of all restraint.2. The worldling is not free.3. Man naturally desires freedom. II. The Church of Christ as the home of the truly free.1. It is a voluntary association.2. It is well adapted to promote human happiness.3. It is a state of preparation and training for higher scenes. III. The province of the church in diffusing the true freedom of the race.1. What it has done.2. Would do.3. Can do, as the hope of the free. Learn: gospel freedom is necessary, for it alone can--(1) make other freedom possible;(2) valuable;(3) permanent. (W. R. Williams.)Abraham’ s two sons We must keep this faith pure; “ For it is written that Abraham had two sons.” This fact of history, the Holy Ghost shows us, is an allegory, exposing the fatal bondage into which the Galatians were gliding. In the two sons of Abraham we see-- I. The bondage of the law.1. Hagar’ s son was born after the flesh, in the common course of nature. “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6).. We inherit an evil nature, inclined to sin, yet miserable in it. No natural man is really happy (Isaiah 57:21-22); he is always sinful (Jeremiah 17:9). 2. Hagar’ s son was born in bondage. She a bondwoman; her child, though Abraham’ s son, a bondslave, under the law of the house. Here is the old covenant: “ For this Agar denotes Mount Sinai.” There Israel consented to a covenant of works (Exodus 24:1-18.; Deuteronomy 5:2-3), which results in failure and bondage. Hagar brings forth only bondmen: this is all the law can do. “ The strength of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:5-6). 3. Hagar’ s son was a persecutor. He derides, mocks, persecutes the promised seed. The world, Israel, hated Christ. The law cannot endure grace (Luke 15:2). The natural cannot tolerate the spiritual (1 Corinthians 2:14; 1 John 3:1). Here is the mind of Cain. Hagar’ s son was Abraham’ s son. This increased the hostility. Religion is often religion’ s greatest enemy. Our claim to be perfectly justified by faith, without the law, arouses animosity (John 8:33). 4. Hagar’ s son was cast out: he had no title; he could inherit nothing. His continuance in the house depended on his obedience. Obedience to law avails not for justification (Psalms 143:2); it only brings curse (Galatians 3:10), and wrath (Romans 4:15), rejection (Galatians 5:2; John 8:35); it confers no claim to inheritance. Christ the only way to God, to heaven (John 14:6). If not “ in Christ,” “ of the faith of Abraham” (Romans 4:16), we are yet “ in our sins” (John 8:24). But think of Christ’ s--“ by no means” cast out (John 6:37). II. The liberty of the gospel.1. The freewoman’ s son was the child of promise. Abraham and Sarah being as good as dead (Hebrews 11:12), their child was born, not in the course of nature, but by God’ s gracious power (Romans 4:17-21). “ We, brethren, as Isaac was, i.e., after the manner of Isaac, are the children of promise” (Romans 9:8; 2 Timothy 1:1). Our sonship is not the result of legal obedience, or “ culture,” or of man in any way (John 1:12). We are counted dead, and have been quickened by the Holy Ghost, by the grace of God (Romans 9:11). 2. The freewoman’ s son was born free, free from the conditions of the bondslave’ s law. For us, who by faith are justified, the law is, in that respect, dead (Romans 7:4; Galatians 2:19). Its condemning hold is broken. In Christ its claims are satisfied. It is no longer an outer law, restraining, convicting; but an inner law, in which we delight (Romans 7:22 : Psalms 1:2), and which, by love, we fulfil (Romans 8:4), through the Spirit. This is real liberty. “ Whose service is perfect freedom.” 3. The freewoman’ s son was persecuted. This we must expect if we are faithful, to be “ mocked” (John 15:20), especially in “ the last days” (2 Timothy 3:12). The offence of the cross has not ceased. “ Blessed are the meek,” etc. 4. The freewoman’ s son was the heir. The children of promise are counted for the seed, and are heirs according to the promise. Jerusalem above is a city of freemen (Galatians 3:19; Romans 8:17; 1 Peter 1:3-4). Conclusion.1. Let us hold fast (Galatians 5:1) our liberty in Christ, and beware of legal bondage. 2. Let us use our liberty in active, loving service (Galatians 5:13). 3. Let us meekly suffer, in patient hope, for His sake. (J. E. Sampson, M. A.)The ways of religion are not and cannot be pleasant to irreligious men It is to renewed and holy persons that the assertion refers, and to them only; for our pleasures must be suitable to our prevailing dispositions and predominant tempers. Light itself affords no pleasure to the blind, nor can the most exquisite music yield any gratification to the deaf. An idle man has no enjoyment in labour, nor a glutton or a drunkard in temperance and sobriety. Those very things which the spiritual mind most relishes and desires are to the carnal mind distasteful and offensive. (Dr. Bruiting.). Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us freer and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. The freedom of the Christian It is necessary that we first see generally what that “ liberty” is, “ wherewith Christ maketh His people free.” I cannot hold any one “ free,” so long as his own conscience locks him up into the fear of death and punishment. The mind which has places which it is afraid to touch, can never expatiate every where; and the mind which cannot go anywhere, never is “ free.” It is the sense of pardon which is that man’ s emancipation. Have we not all felt the difference. to work that we may be loved, and to work because we are loved; to have a motive from without, or to have a motive from within; to be guided by a fear, or to be attracted by an affection? But, again, to obey any one isolated law, however good that law may be, and however we may admire and love the Lawgiver, may still carry with it a sense of confining and contraction. To do, not this or that command, but the whole will, because it is the will of one we love--to have caught His mind, to breathe His spirit, to be bound up with His glory--that has in it no littleness; there are no circumscribing confines there; and these are the goings out of the unshackled being in the ranges which match with his own infinity. And yet once more. Such is the soul of man, that all that in his horizon falls within the compass of time, however long--or of a present life however full--that man’ s circle being small, compared to his own consciousness of his own capability, through that disproportion, he feels a limitation. But let a man once look, as he may, and as he must, on that great world which lies beyond him as his scope and his home, and all that is here as only the discipline and the school-work by which he is in training, and immediately everything contains in it eternity. And very “ free” will that man be “ among the dead,” because his faith is going out above the smallnesses which surround him, to the great, and to the absorbing, and to the satisfying things to come. It will not be difficult to carry out these principles, and apply them to the right performance of any of the obligations of life. It needs no words to show that whatever is done in this freedom will not only be itself better done, but it takes from that freedom a character which comports well with a member of the family of God; and which at once makes it edifying to Him, and acceptable and honouring to a heavenly Father. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Spiritual freedom What is liberty? Obedience to one’ s self; obedience to a law which is written in a man’ s own heart. If I obey myself, and myself is not a right self, it is, indeed, “ liberty,” but being a bad liberty, it becomes “ licentiousness.” It is compulsion; it is bondage. Liberty is when the outer law and the inner law are the same; and both are good.1. Every one has a past which fetters him. The moment a man really believes, and accepts his pardon, he is cut off from all his sinful past! He is at liberty--free from his own bitter history--free from himself! 2. Now look to the “ liberty” from the present. If I have received. Christ into my heart, I am a pardoned man, I am a happy man, and I know and feel that I owe all my happiness to Him--therefore I love Him; I cannot choose but love Him; and my first desire is to please Him; to follow Him; to be like Him; to be with Him. My life is to become a life of love. In obeying God, I obey myself. The new life and the new heart are in accord. 3. And what of the future? A vista running up to glory! But are there no dark places? Chiefly in the anticipation. When they come, they will bring their own escapes and their own balances. He has undertaken for me in everything. He will never leave me. So I am quite free from all my future. To die will be a very little thing. The grave cannot hold me. He has been through, and opened the door the other side. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Christian liberty I. The liberty of the subjects that are freed. Christian liberty stands--1. In immunity from evil. (1) From that which is evil in itself. Satan; sin (a) in the fault, (b) in the punishment--whether the inward slavery of an accusing conscience or outward wrath of God, death, and damnation.(2) From that which is evil to us, as (a) burdensome traditions, (b) the law, either ceremonial or moral, as regards either the obligation or the curse. 2. Less than this is bondage, more than this is looseness. II. The prerogative of the King of Glory that hath freed them.1. They could not free themselves.2. Angels could not free them.3. Only Christ could, whose ransom was infinite.4. Only Christ has, whose love is infinite. How? (1) By force; in that He hath conquered him whose captives we were.(2) By purchase; in that He hath paid the full price to him to whom we were forfeited. We could not be free by birth since we were sons of wrath; nor by service since we were vassals of Satan. 5. Christ has freed us from seven Egyptian masters. (1) The bondage of sin by the Spirit of Christ (Romans 6:12; Romans 7:14; 2 Peter 2:19; Romans 7:24-25; 2 Corinthians 3:17).(2) An accusing conscience by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 10:22).(3) The wrath of God by faith in Christ (Hebrews 10:27; Romans 5:1).(4) The tyranny of Satan by the victory of Christ (2 Timothy 2:26; Hebrews 2:14).(5) The curse of the law by the satisfaction of Christ (Galatians 3:10; Galatians 3:13).(6) The law of ceremonies by the consummation of Christ (Romans 8:2; Ephesians 2:14-16).(7) Human ordinances by the manumission and instruction of Christ (Galatians 4:10-11; 1 Corinthians 7:23). III. The maintenance of the liberty which the power of that great prerogative hath achieved.1. How strange that such an exhortation should be necessary. In the case of a liberated bird or an emancipated slave it would be superfluous. 2. Yet facts prove it necessary in the case of Christ’ s freemen. (Bishop Hall.)Christian believers exhorted to the maintenance of their spiritual liberty I. This exhortation implies--1. That attempts will be made to deprive us of this liberty. This is discovered soon after its first enjoyment. (1) By Satan and sin.(2) By companions.(3) By pleasure.(4) By persecution.(5) By deceivers who attempt to undermine the doctrine on which salvation rests. 2. The awful possibility of losing this liberty, as testified (1) by Scripture;(2) by the history of the Church;(3) by observation;(4) by experience. 3. That there is no necessity to lose this liberty. When lost it is most frequently by (1) a culpable ignorance of spiritual duties and privileges;(2) a presumptuous self-confidence leading to unwatchfulness;(3) a weak and wicked self-indulgence. 4. Yet while there is no necessity to forfeit their liberty, Christians are exposed to great and peculiar dangers (1) from constitution and temperament;(2) circumstances;(3) difficulties and sorrows;(4) spiritual exercises. II. The duties in the observance of which spiritual freedom may be maintained.1. The devotional reading of Scripture day by day in connection with religious biography and kindred works.2. A regular and conscientious attention to private prayer.3. A spirit of watchfulness.4. Constant self-denial.5. Unceasing cultivation of holiness. In conclusion: Remember--1. The price paid for your redemption.2. The wretched state of the re-enslaved believer. (H. H. Chettle.)Christian freedom I. In the voluntary service of God (Luke 1:74; 1 Timothy 1:9). II. In the free use of the creatures of God (Titus 1:15; Romans 14:14). III. To come unto God through Christ in prayer. (Romans 5:2; Ephesians 3:12). IV. To enter heaven (Hebrews 10:19). (W. Perkins.)Liberty not lawlessness Liberty is harmony between the law and the nature and inclinations of its subjects. Law is essential to freedom, but freedom requires that the law shall be such as comports with the best interests and highest reason of those who have to obey it; for then their best desires will concur with their obligations, and, wishing to do only what the law requires them to do, they will be conscious of no restraint. (Newman Hall.)Spiritual and related freedoms Let me remind you of the arrangement of the ancient temple. In the centre was the sanctuary, with the altar of sacrifice before it, and the altar of incense within; and beyond the veil, the Holy of Holies and the mercy seat. Here worship was offered, atonement made, the presence of God manifested. Let this represent liberty-spiritual--the union of the soul with its Maker. Beyond the sanctuary and enclosing it, was the Court of the Jews, through which access was obtained to the inner shrine. Let this represent liberty-doctrinal--that revealed truth by which the soul obtains admission into the liberty of God’ s children. Beyond was the Court of the Gentiles--further from the Holy of Holies--but connected with it, surrounding and defending it. Let this represent liberty-ecclesiastical, by which doctrinal truth is best conserved and thus spiritual liberty best attained. Beyond all these were the outer walls and gates, and the lofty rock on which it was upreared. Let this represent liberty national, by which ecclesiastical freedom is guaranteed. (Newman Hall.)Freedom and slavery Know that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and fast, to be frugal and abstinent, and, lastly, to be magnanimous and brave; so to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave; and it usually happens that that people who cannot govern themselves, are delivered up to the sway of those whom they abhor, and made to submit to an involuntary servitude. (Milton.)The soul’ s rebellion against its thraldom As the lark, imprisoned since it burst its shell, though it has never sprung upward to salute the rising sun, will often manifest how cruel is its captivity by instinctively spreading its wings and darting upward, as if to soar, but only beats its head against the wires and falls back on its narrow perch; so the soul of man, designed to soar and utter its raptures in the rays of the great central sun, will sometimes, even in its cage, attempt to rise and breathe a loftier atmosphere, but falls back vainly struggling against the bars which sin and death have framed around it. (Newman Hall.)Standing fast in liberty The phrase alludes to the duties of soldiers on military service. When marshalled in the ranks they must stand firm, without yielding their ground, without bending their knees; when placed as sentinels they must stand upon their guard and permit no enemy to surprise them. You are soldiers of Christ, and must stand fast--be valiant for the truth--and look to yourselves. (H. H. Chettle.)Liberty from law unconscious obedience No man has reached liberty until he has learned to obey with such facility and perfection that he does it without knowing it, If I step upon a little bit of plank in the street I walk along over it without thinking. Although it is only four inches wide I can walk on it as well as I can on the rest of the pavement. But put that plank between two towers one hundred feet high in the air and let me be called to walk over it. I begin to think, of course, of what I am called upon to do. And the moment I begin to think I cannot do it. When you try to do a thing you cannot do it as well as when you do it without trying. (H. W. Beecher.)Christian liberty The apostle now enters upon the more practical part of the Epistle. Freedom is the link which connects the two parts together. I. Christian liberty is the liberty of faith. Faith receives the truth, the whole truth, concerning sin and redemption; and it is the truth, believed, that makes men free. II. Christian liberty is the liberty of hope.1. A hope which maketh not ashamed, for it is based on Christ’ s accomplished work. 2. A hope which patiently waits for that which it knows it will assuredly possess. III. Christian liberty is the liberty of love. The Saviour’ s love to the sinner draws the sinner’ s love to Himself. IV. Christian liberty is the liberty of holiness. The safeguards of political liberty lie not in the laws which regulate, or the armies which defend it, but in the spirit which animates a people, in their respect for law, in their mutual toleration, in their recognition of others’ rights, and, above all, in their hearty devotion to the government under which they live. Where these prevail, a nation is already free, and a liberty so founded will never degenerate into license. So also Christian liberty is best secured from abuse, not by the threat of penalties, or by an appeal to fear, but by the operation of those principles which lie at the foundation of Christian character. The gospel sets man free from a bondage beneath which a loving obedience is impossible, in order that, being free, he may serve God in the spirit of Christian liberty. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Spiritual liberty Spiritual liberty consists in freedom from the curse of the moral law; from the servitude of the ritual; from the love, power, and guilt of sin; from the dominion of Satan; from the corruption of the world; from the fear of death and the wrath to come. (C. Buck.)Christian liberty The liberty wherewith Christ has made men free is a deliverance from a system of rules, positive and prohibitory--a temporary and provisional system which had an educational value, training men to the full privileges of religious manhood. It is an abdication of privilege, when men fall back upon the old standpoint of Judaism, and fence themselves in by rigid rules as if of primary importance. There is a perpetual tendency to make men subject to ordinances, whose language is, “ Touch not, taste not, handle not,” after the commandments and ordinances of men; and not only to adopt these precepts as useful helps for their own moral progress, but to impose them upon others, almost as if they were of Divine origin; and to make them the standard of their judgment upon the spiritual condition of their fellow men. Every school of religious thought exhibits proofs of this temptation to represent as commandments of God, precepts of man’ s own devising. This Judaising temper displays itself whenever men try to narrow down eternal principles of conduct into minute rules, which can prefer no higher claim than to be deemed useful to some, whilst they may be positively injurious to others In vindicating the freedom brought to us by the gospel, we throw ourselves back on the primary truths of Christianity--the Fatherhood of God, and the reconciliation wrought out by the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. Fully believing that God is a righteous Judge, we shall yet not feel towards Him as if He were a hard taskmaster or rigid lawgiver, but as the Infinite Being whose love first created us, and subsequently devised our redemption; we shall exercise an unreserved faith in the completeness of the sacrifice for sin which has been made by our Saviour, and the present forgiveness which has been obtained for us; and we shall rejoice in the glorious liberty of the children of God. But this sense of liberty will not degenerate into licentiousness and unrestrained self-indulgence. Because we are not under the law, but under grace, we shall see ourselves called to a higher and nobler type of holiness. We shall certainly not be without law to God. Our religion will be displayed, not in a punctilious attention to external rules, but in a life-giving spirit, which will penetrate into every department of action in relation to others. In daily society it will impart a kindliness, a charity, a justice, in cur estimate of the words and conduct of those around us; it will teach us a Divine tolerance and a modest humility. It will make the best of both worlds, not in the low commercial sense, which tries to strike a balance between the claims of secular expediency and devotion to the service of God, but in the spirit of the apostolic exhortation which bids men “ use this world as not abusing it.” Spite of all the manifold temptations on the plea of piety, or on the plea of the necessary subordination of the individual to the society, it will firmly refuse to descend to a lower level of Christianity than that which Christ its Founder intended. It will uphold the banner of freedom by maintaining, alike in theory and in practice, that Christianity is not in its essence a system of doctrine or a code of precepts, but a life and a spirit, a communion with God in Christ, manifesting itself in the power of true godliness. (Canon Ince.)Personal liberty of the Christian The doctrine of St. Paul is not that a Christian man has a right to liberty in conduct, thought, and speech in and of himself, without regard to external circumstances, interests, organizations, and without reference to his own condition. Paul’ s conception of the rights and liberties of men stands on the philosophical ground underneath all those things. Rights and liberties belong to stages or states of condition. The inferior has not the right of the superior. A stupid man has not the right of an educated or intelligent man. He may have the legal rights; but the higher ones, that spring out of the condition of the soul, must stand on the conditions to which they belong. A. refined man has rights and joys that an unrefined man has not and cannot have, because he cannot understand them, does not want them, could not use them. Rights increase as the man increases--increases, that is, not merely in physical stature, or in skill of manual employment or material strength, but in character. So, as men work up higher and higher towards the Divine standard of character, their rights and liberties increase. The direct influence of Christ is to bring the human mind into its highest elements:. The power of the Divine nature upon the human soul is to lift it steadily away from animalism or from the flesh--the under-man--up through the realm of mere material wisdom and accomplishment, in the direction of soul-power, reason, rectitude--such reason and such rectitude as grow up under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. When love has permeated the whole man, he then has perfect liberty--liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of conduct. A perfect Christian is the one and only creature that has absolute liberty unchecked by law, by institution, by foregoing thoughts of men, by public sentiment. Because a perfect man is in unison with the Divine soul, he has the whole liberty of God in himself, according to the measure of his manhood. But he has liberty to do only what he wants to do, and he wants to do nothing that is not within the bounds and benefit of a pure and true love. He becomes a law to himself; that is, he carries in himself that inspiration of love which is the mother of all good law. He is higher than any law. His will is with God’ s will. He thinks what is true; he does what is benevolent. (H. W. Beecher.)Christian liberty a trust When a man is in slavery he is not his own master; he acts and lives under the direction of others, and the responsibility of life is in a greater or less degree shifted from him on to some one else. When a man becomes free, he assumes the duties of life, and recognizes that it rests only with himself whether those duties are performed or not. And so man living under the Christian covenant stands in a direct personal relation to God, a relation of trust. Gifted with freewill, he is answerable for his conduct; subjected no longer to the ordinances of the Mosaic Law, he claims the liberty of the gospel; but he dares not forget that there still is a law limiting and controlling the freedom which he enjoys, and that every action of his carries responsibility with it. The soul of the old law is enshrined and quickened in the body of the new. The spirit, not the letter, of Sinai is met with again in the Sermon on the Mount. All Christian duties are summed up there and enforced with the authority of One who taught not as the scribes and Pharisees, and who spake as never man spake (Matthew 22:37-40). Our liberty is a limited one. No man can do as he likes. He has a Master in heaven whom he must serve. He is indeed set free by the death of Christ from the ordinances of the old covenant, and he is no longer a slave; but he has been placed in a society which is governed by laws eternal in their force, and the measure of the liberty he enjoys is the good of his own soul and the well-being of his brother’ s, for none of us liveth to him-self, and no man dieth to himself As Christian members in the commonwealth of Christ we possess, indeed, in its highest and holiest sense, the triple right of liberty, fraternity, equality; but the religion to which we belong is neither reactionary nor revolutionary, and our liberty must be controlled, our equality sanctified, and our fraternity blessed, by the Holy Spirit of God. (C. W. H. Kenrick, M. A.)Stand fast Brethren, I cannot be of any other faith than that which I preached nearly twenty-nine years ago on this platform. I am to-day what I was then. That which I preached here then I preach here now. You know the story of the boy who stood on the burning deck because his father said, “ Stand there,” and he could not come away. Other boys, much wiser than he was, had gone and got out of the mischief. I am standing where I stood then; I cannot help it, so help me God. I know no more to-day than I knew when first I believed in Jesus as to this matter. I know by grace. Are ye saved through faith and that not of yourself--“ it is the gift of God?” You shall leave this :Rock if you like; you may be able to swim; I cannot, and so I stop here; and when the crack of doom shall come I shall be here, God helping me, believing this self-same doctrine. There is something in our very adhesiveness and pertinacity which represents the spirit of the gospel. I am sure that steadfastness in these particular times has its value, and I urge you,, to it that the gospel which you have received, the gospel of the grace of God, you stand fast to as long as you live. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The secret of steadfastness Standing on the shore of an estuary, one sees a boat riding in the tideway, when sea-weed and other things float by, over the self-same spot; and whether the tide ebbs or flows, whether it steals quietly in or comes on with the rush and roar of foaming billows, the boat always boldly shows its face to it; and turning its head to the current receives on its bows, to split them, the shock of waves. This, which to a child would seem strange, is due to the anchor that lies below the waters, and, grasping the solid ground with its iron arms, holds fast the boat. It seems no less wonderful to see a tree--no sturdy oak, but slender birch, or trembling aspen--standing erect away up on a mountain brow; where, exposed to the sweep of every storm, it has gallantly maintained its ground against the tempests that have laid in the dust the stateliest ornaments of the plain. But our wonder ceases so soon as we climb the height, and see wherein its great strength lies; how it has struck its roots down into the mountain, and wrapped them with many a strong twist and turn round and round the rock. (W. Arnot.).Stand fast 1. In Christ to whom you have been brought.2. In adherence to the doctrines which the gospel has set before you.3. You will find your strength and dependence only in the grace of Christ.4. In the service of your Master to the end. (J. Harding, M. A.)The bounds of Christian freedom When we speak of freedom, we are apt to think only of the removal of restraints. But though it is important to get rid of all needless restraints, it is much more important that we should possess and train the powers for which the absence of restraint is demanded. If there is no life, the removal of restraints will be of no use. If the life is feeble, and tied down by inward restraints like those of superstition or of fear, the removal of outward restraints will not set it free. But if there is vigorous life, it demands for its development a constantly expanding freedom: and this spiritual power has in itself both its proper energy and its proper bound. It is a tree which has an innate capacity of growth. Give it air and light; remove whatever confines and overshadows it. It may need pruning and guiding; but it can provide its own symmetry for itself. I do not propose to dwell verse by verse upon the passage (Galatians 4:1-16) which I have taken for a starting point, but to illustrate and enforce its central principle. Wherever there is a just demand for freedom, it is because there exists a living power to be liberated; and this living power, if it be kept pure, contains in itself the true limit of its exercise. First, take the revival of Christian liberty at the time of the Reformation. Luther’ s first great treatise was Concerning Christian Liberty. The liberty he claims presupposes the establishment in the soul of the Divine life of faith. You do not work, he says again and again, so that you may live. Life comes first; works, afterwards. The fruit will never make the root or the sap, but the root and the sap ensure the fruit. But, since this Divine life of faith exists, he demands that it should be free from the fetters of the clerical system of the Middle Ages. But let us come to more commonplace examples of freedom; we shall still find that it is the growth of the inner life or capacity which determines and controls the external conditions. Take the familiar case of a boy who wants to leave school and go to sea. If his father is wise, he will watch carefully, and try to estimate the meaning of this wish. Is it mere unruliness or restlessness, or dislike of study? If so, he will give it no encouragement. But, if he finds the boy in his leisure moments reading about the sea, and haunting about the seashore, and studying intelligently the boats and sails and machinery, after a time he will begin to recognize in the boy such a bent as indicates a genuine call. And when this is so, he may assure himself that the freedom will not be abused. The boy will be free from the constraints of the shore life; but that very zest for seamanship which has won its freedom will be most likely to ensure the right use of that freedom. There is a fine expression in the speech in which Pericles contrasted the free system of Athenian life, “ the trustful spirit of liberty,” with the narrower system of Sparta. It might be thought that, unless such constraints as those imposed at Sparta existed, each man would try to impose his own will or tastes upon others. But the contrary, Pericles declared, was the case at Athens; each man respected the feelings of his neighbour. The slavish system is that of mistrust. Mutual confidence is the offspring of freedom. We might illustrate this by the experience of two great English schools some sixty years ago. When Keate was head-master of Eton, his system of discipline was one of terrorism. He never took a boy’ s word, and, on the suspicion of a fault, he flogged him. At the same period, Arnold was head-master at Rugby. He always believed a boy; and it was only on rare occasions, when the proof was indubitable, that he punished. It might have been supposed that, under the severer system, boys would be afraid to do wrong, and that they would take advantage of the more lenient system to deceive. The contrary was the case. At Eton, under Keate, it; was thought quite fair to deceive a master. At Rugby, boys said, “ It is a shame to tell Arnold a lie, he always believes you.” Thus freedom and trustfulness beget the sense of responsibility. To conclude: We have spoken of freedom first as an inward and spiritual state, secondly as the removal of outward restraints. The first of these is the most important. To the attainment of this we must constantly attend, both for ourselves and for those on whom we have any influence. There are tyrannies which have nothing to do with physical restraints, and against these we must war incessantly. There is the tyranny of evil habits. How can he he thought free who is the slave of customs which he knows to be wrong? There is the tyranny of fashion and opinion, and again of prejudice and party spirit. How can he be free who acts only as others choose? There is the tyranny of ignorance. How can he be called free whose life is bounded by a narrow circle of ideas? Let us strive for the sublime liberty which belongs to those who fear God and hate evil. (Canon Fremantle.) Galatians 5:2 If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. The law and grace I. God will deal with us either altogether by works or altogether by Christ; these things cannot be mixed. II. To piece up therefore the righteousness of Christ by our own works, and to add anything to the passion as a meritorious cause of our justification, is to make Christ unprofitable. III. We ought to content ourselves with Christ and His merits alone (Colossians 2:10). (T. Manton, D. D.)Circumcision I. The nature of sacraments in general.1. Signs (1) to represent and instruct;(2) of absolute grace and favour. 2. Seals, to ratify and confirm (1) seals of the conditional promises;(2) mutual seals. II. The nature of circumcision in particular.1. A sign prefiguring baptism which has now taken its place 2. A seal of the covenant of grace, particularly of justification by faith. (Matthew Henry.)The superfluousness of circumcision Circumcision was the shadow of the substance which the Christian man already enjoyed. The law which prescribed it had already done its true work and was abolished in Christ. Where was the sense then of leaving the great liberator for one of the most grievous shackles of their old tyranny? (H. W. Beecher.)Christianity not uniformity It is not uniformity that we see in the works of God; but unity in variety or diversity. The tree has branches large and small, but the tree is one. Every plant, flower, or tree in the landscape has full freedom to unfold itself according to its nature; and yet the landscape is one. The many members in the human frame form one body. The many nations of the earth form one race. The twelve tribes of Israel constituted one “ peculiar people.” The same law is true in relation to the Church. Christians are many, and differ in natural powers, gifts, education, and opinions; but they have all faith in Jesus Christ, worship the true God, and love their fellow men, and therefore form one spiritual brotherhood and Church. (Thomas Jones.) Galatians 5:3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.The great dilemma I. Justification by the law.1. What this means. (1) Circumcision which commits a man to the law. (2) Obedience to all the requirements of the law to which the circumcised are committed. 2. Its utter impossibility. (1) The legal covenant is abolished. To seek justification is to follow a course which God condemns. (2) Supposing it still in force, no man can fulfil all its requirements. II. Salvation by grace.1. This is now the only appointed way.2. This is a perfectly possible way: what man cannot do God does for him.3. This is a very simple way: accept by faith what God has provided. III. To reject the latter in favour of the former, therefore, is to fall from grace. Christ is thus--(1) repudiated;(2) rendered unnecessary; consequently(3) becomes of no effect, and so(4) the legalist puts himself beyond the pale of salvation. The comprehensiveness of the claims of the law Tell me, then, ye who desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? Does it say anything to you, but “ do this and thou shalt live:” Does it set before you any alternative but “ cursed is he that continueth not” (Galatians 3:10)? Do this, this wrath-working law proclaims, do it all--all without exception--continue in it from first to last, and you shall live; but a curse, an everlasting curse, awaits you if you offend in one particular. Plead what you will, these denunciations are irreversible--its terms cannot be changed. You may say, “ I wish to obey;” and it answers you; “ tell me not of your wishes, but do it.” “ I have endeavoured to obey.” “ Tell me of no endeavours, but do it or you are cursed.” “ I have done it in almost every particular.” “ Tell me, not what you have done almost, have you obeyed it altogether? Have you obeyed it in all things; if not, you are cursed.” “ I have for many years obeyed it, and but once only have I transgressed.” “ Then you are cursed; if you have offended in one point you are guilty of all.” “ But I am very sorry for my transgressions.” “ I cannot regard your sorrow; you are under a curse.” “ But I will reform, and never transgress again.” “ I care nothing for your reformation; the curse remains upon you.” “ But I will obey perfectly in the future, if I can find mercy for the past.” “ I can have no concern with your determinations for the future; I know no such word as mercy; my terms cannot be altered for any one. If you rise to these terms you will have a right to life, and need no mercy. If you fall short in any one particular, nothing remains for you but punishment!” (C. Simeon). Galatians 5:4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are Justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.Is Christ preached “ of no effect” I think, the sum and substance of my text amounts simply to this: that the attempt to add anything to Christ’ s perfect work in the salvation of a ruined sinner, is an entire rejection of Christ, and makes the man an infidel. I. First of all, let us look a little to the effect. Now what effect has been produced upon your hearts by the preaching of the gospel? I will tell you three effects produced upon the hearts of many. In the first place, the preaching of Christ has produced the effect of pardon sealed upon the conscience--but not where justification is looked for from the law; in the second place, where Christ is preached and embraced by faith, reconciliation to all God’ s method of saving sinners, and to all God’ s dispensations, is wrought in the heart; and thirdly, the effect--and the prime effect--included in the covenant of grace, and registered in heaven to be carried into execution, is a vital oneness of soul with Jesus. II. A few words now respecting the apostasy. “ Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are” seeking to be “ justified by the law.” I pray you, mark what an awful extent of apostasy this one short sentence proves: that all those, who are cherishing vain hopes of justification before God, in whole or in part, from anything that the creature does, or anything proposed to the creature, have “ no effect” from Christ; they are rejecting Christ. I would have you think seriously upon this. You know, we do not now dwell upon the term ,, circumcision,” nor yet the keeping of the ceremonial law: only we insist, that these are phrases, which set forth the folly and rebellion of attempting to put anything of the creature along with the perfect work of Christ. One single condition, if it be but an act of obedience, if it be but a word, “ if it be but a thought--one single condition or contingency left with man, seals his damnation for ever. If the preaching of the Word of God does not give man a salvation without a contingency, it gives him none at all. III. A word or two now, relative to the apostle’ s testimony against this apostasy. Ah! I fear there are many such professors in these days; who receive the doctrines of grace as a whole in theory, but by and by abandon them for the first theory that seems more pleasing to their fleshly natures. “ Fallen from grace” marks, then, a rejection of the doctrine once embraced or received--the doctrine once admitted to be correct. I think there is another class that might be included in this; and that is, the great class who hold the doctrines of grace while living in habits of sin. (J. Irons, D. D.)Although the law cannot justify, it has a value Money doth not justify, is it therefore unprofitable? The eyes do not justify, must they therefore be plucked out? The hands make not a man righteous, must they therefore be cut off? We must attribute to everything its proper effect and use. If the law doth not justify we have no right to condemn or destroy it; it is good, as St. Paul tells us, if a man do rightly use it; that is to say, if he use the law as law. (Luther.)Falling from grace If Satan cannot hinder the birth of graces, then he labours to be the death of graces. This is too ordinary, to see a Christian lose his first love, and to fall from his first works. This love that was formerly an ascending flame, always sparkling up to heaven, is now, like a little spark, almost suffocated with the earth. The godly sorrow that was once a swelling torrent, like Jordan overflowing his banks, is now like Job’ s summer brook, which makes the traveller ashamed. His proceedings against sin, once furious, like the march of Jehu against Ahab; but now, like Samson, he can sleep in Delilah’ s lap while she steals away his strength. Before, he could not give rest to his eyes till God had given rest to his soul; but now he can lie down with sin in his bosom, and wounds in his conscience. At first, his zeal did eat him up; but now his decayings have omen up his zeal. (Foster.)Falling away As leaves fall from the trees, so the grace of God decay, and drop away, in the wicked, one after another, as if there was a consumption. (Cawdray.) Galatians 5:5 For we, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith, Salvation by faith and the work of the Spirit Faith is not opposed to the spirit, but is the child of it. Through the Spirit we wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. I. Declare the Christian’ s hope.1. Its singularity. Not founded on parentage, outward rites and ceremonies, moral virtues and spiritual excellencies; but upon Christ. 2. Its speciality. In grace alone--looking entirely to the free mercy of God. Nothing by merit. Nobody has any claim upon God. He blesses us because He is good, not because we are; He saves us because He is gracious, not because He sees any grace inherent in us. 3. Its ground. It is founded upon right--a solid base for hope. We expect to be saved by an act of justice as well as by a deed of mercy. By faith the righteousness of Christ becomes ours, so that we have a right to salvation (Romans 4:23-25; Romans 5:1-2; Romans 8:1-4; Romans 8:32-34). 4. Its substance. A triumphant death, a glorious eternity. 5. The posture which our hope takes up. Waiting. All is done; we have but to wait for the reward. To the garment which covers us we dare not think of adding a single thread. To the acceptance in which we stand before God, we cannot hope to add a single jewel. Why attempt it? Has not Jesus said, “ It is finished?” Waiting implies continuance. Our faith is not for to-day and to-morrow only, but for eternity. II. The relation of this matter to the Holy Spirit. No division in the purposes and works of the three sacred Persons in the Trinity. Their will is one. That which glorifies Jesus cannot dishonour the Holy Spirit.1. The faith which brings this righteousness is never exercised by any but those who are born of the Spirit. The new heart which the Spirit creates is the only soil in which faith will grow. 2. Faith for righteousness is based on the testimony of the Holy Spirit. 3. Simple faith is always the work of the Spirit. 4. When a man has believed, he obtains a great increase to his faith in Jesus by the work of the Spirit. 5. It is by the Spirit that we continue to exercise faith. III. Concluding inferences.1. Whoever has this hope of righteousness by faith has the Spirit of God. He that believeth hath the witness in himself. He that believeth in Him is not condemned. 2. Wherever there is any other hope, or hope based upon anything else but this, the Spirit of God is not present. The Spirit will not bear witness to man’ s home-born presumptuous hopes, but only to the finished work of Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Difference between faith and hope There is so great affinity between faith and hope, that the one cannot be separate from the other. Notwithstanding, there is a difference between them, which is gathered of their several offices, diversity of working, and of their ends.1. They differ in respect of their subject, that is, of the ground wherein they rest. For faith resteth in the understanding, hope in the will; but the one is to the other, as the two cherubim on the mercy-seat. 2. They differ in respect of their office, i.e. of their working. Faith tells what is to be done, teaches, prescribes, directs; hope stirs up the mind that it may be strong, bold, courageous, that it may suffer and endure adversity, waiting for better things. 3. They differ as touching their object, that is, the special matter whereunto they look. Faith has for her object the truth, teaching us to cleave surely thereto, and looking upon the word and promise of the thing that is promised; hope has for her object the goodness of God, and looks upon the thing which is promised in the word, that is, upon such matters as faith teaches us to hope for. 4. They differ in order. Faith is the beginning of life, before all tribulation; hope proceeds from tribulation. 5. They differ by the diversity of working. Faith is a teacher and a judge, fighting against errors and heresies, judging spirits and doctrines; hope is, as it were, the general or captain of the field, fighting against tribulation, the cross, impatience, heaviness of spirit, weakness, desperation, and blasphemy, and it waits for good things even in the midst of all evils. Therefore, when I am instructed by faith in the Word of God, and lay hold of Christ, believing in Him with my whole heart, then am I righteous by this knowledge. When I am so justified by faith, or by this knowledge, by and by cometh the devil, the father of wiles, and laboureth to extinguish my faith by wiles and subtleties; that is to say, by lies, errors, and heresies. Moreover, because he is a murderer, he goeth about also to oppress it by violence. Here hope wrestling, layeth hold on the thing revealed by faith, and overcometh the devil that warreth against faith; and after this victory followeth peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. (Luther.)Faith and hope complementary of each other In civil government, prudence and fortitude do differ, and yet these two virtues are so joined together, that they cannot easily be severed. Now, fortitude is a constancy of mind, which is not discouraged in adversity, but endureth valiantly, and waiteth for better things. But if fortitude be not guided by prudence, it is but temerity and rashness. On the other side, if fortitude be not joined with prudence, that prudence is but vain and unprofitable. Therefore, like as, in policy, prudence is but vain without fortitude; even so in divinity, faith without hope is nothing; for hope endureth adversity and is constant therein, and in the end overcometh all evils. And on the other side, like as fortitude without prudence is rashness, even so hope without faith is a presumption in spirit, and a tempting of God: for it hath no knowledge of Christ and.of the truth which faith teacheth, and therefore it is but a blind rashness and arrogancy. Wherefore, a godly man, before all things, must have a right understanding instructed by faith, according to the which the mind may be guided in afflictions, that it may hope for those good things which faith hath revealed and taught. To be short, faith is conceived by teaching; for thereby the mind is instructed what the truth is. Hope is conceived by exhortation; for by exhortation hope is stirred up in afflictions, which confirmeth him that is already justified by faith, that he be not overcome by adversities, but that he may be able more strongly to resist them. (Luther.)Hope with faith The heir must believe his title to an estate in reversion before he can hope for it: faith believes its title to glory, and then hope waits for it. Did not faith feed the lamp of hope with oil, it would soon die. (Ambrose.)The believer’ s treasure 1. The riches of a believer are not so much in possession as in expectation and hope. 2. None have right to heaven here, or shall enjoy it hereafter, who are wholly unrighteous. 3. No personal righteousness of our own can entitle us to this blessed hope and heavenly inheritance; but only the righteousness of Christ. 4. It is only the inward, efficacious teaching of God’ s Spirit, that can sufficiently instruct us in the knowledge of this imputed righteousness by faith, and make us with security and confidence venture our eternal well-being and hope of heaven upon it. (James Fergusson.)Faith and morality When faith is finished a good life is made perfect in our kind: let, therefore, no man expect events for which he hath no promise; nor call for God’ s fidelity without his own faithfulness; nor snatch at a promise without performing the condition; nor think faith to be a hand to apprehend Christ, and to do nothing else; for that will but deceive us, and turn religion into words, holiness into hypocrisy, the promises of God into a snare, the truth of God into a lie. When God gives us better promises, He intends that we should pay Him a better obedience; when He forgives us what is past, He intends that we should sin no more; when He offers us His graces, He would have us make use of them; when He causes us to distrust ourselves His meaning is that we should rely on Him; when He enables us to do what He commands us, He commands us to do all that we can. (Jeremy Taylor.)Faith the only basis of righteousness and hope Our religion is spiritual faith, which speaks after this fashion: “ Believe in God; believe in Jesus Christ; believe in your own soul; believe in redemption from sin, from guilt, and from punishment; and believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.” This is our religion. Infidelity comes and unfolds its little couch and lays it on the ground, and says to my soul, “ Rest there.” But I have tried, and cannot. The bed is too short for my soul to stretch itself upon it. It only reaches from the cradle there to the grave yonder, while my soul has desires that wander through eternity. No, thank God, here is room: God is, Christ is, thy soul is, redemption is, pardon is, liberty from sin is, and the glorious life eternal is! Stretch thy soul upon that couch and rest for ever. (Thomas Jones.)Faith and hope in our Lord Jesus Christ I. Consider faith in Christ.1. Explain the nature of it. (1) This includes in it an assent to the truth of Christ’ s being appointed of God, to be a Mediator betwixt Him and the sinful children of men. (2) An hearty acceptance of Him to be our Saviour, as He is proposed to us in the gospel. The apostle tells us that with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, so as to be justified, to be entitled to life (Romans 10:10). Justifying faith is not seated only in the head, but in the heart. (3) True and saving faith in Christ imports a dependence upon Him. 2. It is our duty to believe in Christ. (1) The evidences of God’ s appointment of Jesus to be Mediator betwixt Him and men are sufficient to convince all attentive unprejudiced persons, upon whom the light of the gospel shines. The exact accomplishment of the many ancient prophecies recorded in the Old Testament, relating to the Messiah, in our Lord Jesus; the miracles wrought by Him in the presence of enemies, as well as friends, who could not deny the reality of them; and His resurrection from the dead on the third day. (2) As it is “ a faithful saying,” so it is “ worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” (3) We all need Christ and His salvation, therefore it behoves us greatly to accept of Him. (4) Christ Jesus is an all-sufficient Saviour, therefore we ought to believe in Him, to depend upon Him. (5) We are expressly required in the Word of God to believe in Christ Jesus. A heart of unbelief is emphatically styled an evil heart; it rebels against the word of the living God, and departs from Him (Hebrews 3:12). Having showed that it is our duty to believe in Jesus Christ, give me leave to subjoin a few remarks. 1. Though it be our duty to believe in the Lord Jesus, and this should be pressed upon our consciences, yet we need the aids of Divine grace to enable us to discharge this duty; therefore we should ask them of God. 2. It is not only the duty of persons, when they are first awakened to a sense of sin, to believe in Jesus Christ; those also who have received Him should be daily exercising faith in Him. II. Consider hope in Christ.1. Let us consider what it is true Christians hope for in the Lord Jesus. (1) True Christians hope that the Lord Jesus will keep “ that which they have committed unto Him against the great day.” (2) They hope that He will “ present them faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” (3) True Christians hope through the Lord Jesus to be admitted to dwell for ever with Him in His Father’ s house. 2. Let us inquire into the reasons of this their hope in Christ. (1) God’ s appointment of the Lord Jesus to the work of mediation encourages the hope of believers in Him. (2) The dignity of Christ’ s Person encourages believers to hope in Him. We are expressly told in His Word that He hath “ laid help upon One that is mighty” (Psalms 89:19). (3) The resurrection, ascension, and intercession of Christ encourage the hope of believers in Him. (4) The compassion of Christ is a reason of believers’ hope in Him. Though He be “ a great High Priest,” and “ is passed into the heavens,” yet He is not such a One “ as cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:14-16). (5) The promises of God in Christ Jesus greatly support the hope of believers in Him; they have a promise of very ancient date to bear up their hope of eternal life (Titus 1:2). Concluding reflections:1. We may hence learn that true Christians should be ready always to answer every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them. Seeing it is so reasonable, so well grounded, they should never be ashamed of it, nor suffer themselves to be moved from it by the vain cavils of men. 2. Is our hope in Christ Jesus? Then it should be our great care to “ glorify His name, and to adorn His doctrine in all things.” And in order hereto let us live answerably to our hope in Him. 3. It behoves us to be very solicitous that we do not take up with such a hope as shall make us ashamed. The salvation proposed by Jesus Christ to His disciples is inexpressibly great; and it should be our great concern that our expectations of it be not disappointed. “ Not every one that says unto Christ, “ Lord, Lord,” that pretends respect for Him, “ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21). “ The hope of the hypocrite shall perish.” (S. Price.)The Spirit inclining us to seek after righteousness In these words observe--1. The end, scope, and blessedness of a Christian in the word “ hope.”2. The firm ground of it--“ The righteousness of faith.”3. The carriage of Christians--“ We wait.”4. The inward moving cause of waiting for this hope in this way-- “ Through the Spirit.” They are taught by Him, inclined by Him, so to do.1. The blessedness of a Christian is implied in the word “ hope.” For hope is taken two ways in Scripture--for the thing hoped for, and for the affection or act of him that hopeth. Here it is taken in the first sense, for the thing hoped for. As also Titus 2:13, “ Looking for the blessed hope.” So Colossians 1:5, “ For the hope which is laid up for us in heaven.” 2. The ground and foundation of this hope, “ The righteousness of faith.” What it is I will show you by and by. Only here it is opposed, partly to the covenant of works, which could not give life; partly to the legal observances; for it presently followeth, “ Neither circumcision, nor uncircumcision,” etc. But by no means is it opposed to evangelical obedience; for the whole New Testament obedience is comprised in this term, “ The righteousness of faith; “ as appeareth by the apostle’ s explication in the next verse, “ But faith, which works by love.” 3. The duty of a Christian--“ We wait.” All true Christians wait for the mercy of God and life everlasting. And he calleth in waiting, because a believer hath not so much in possession as in expectation. And this waiting is not a devout sloth, but implieth diligence in the use of all means whereby we may obtain this hope. 4. The inward efficient cause--“ Through the Spirit.” We are taught by the Spirit, inclined by the Spirit so to do. That by the Spirit all true Christians are inclined to pursue after the hope built upon the righteousness of faith. I. What is the righteousness of faith? We told you before it is opposed either to the law of works or the ceremonial observances of the law of Moses. But more particularly it may be determined--(1) Either with respect to the object of faith; or (2) to the act or grace of faith itself; (3) with respect to the rule and warrant of faith, which is the gospel or new covenant. We return to God, as our chief good and sovereign Lord, that we may love, serve, and obey Him, and be happy in His love. Faith respects Christ as Redeemer and Mediator, who hath opened the way for our return by His merit and satisfaction, or reconciliation wrought between us and God, and given us a heart to return by the renewing grace of His Spirit. II. What is the hope built upon it, or the things hoped for by virtue of this righteousness? and they are pardon and life.1. Certainly pardon of sins is intended in the righteousness of faith, as appeareth by that of the apostle (Romans 4:6-8). 2. There is also in it salvation, or eternal life (Titus 3:7). These two benefits give us the greatest support and comfort against all kind of troubles. III. What is the work of the Spirit in this business in urging believers to wait for the hope of righteousness by faith? The work of the Spirit doth either concern the duties of the new covenant or the privileges of the new covenant, or what is common to them both. I begin with the latter.1. What is common to them both. He doth convince us- of the truth of the gospel, both of means and end; that there is such a hope, and the righteousness of faith is the only way to obtain it. Now this he doth externally and internally. (1) Externally, and by way of objective evidence. All the certainty that we have of the gospel is by the Spirit (Acts 5:32; John 15:26-27). (2) Internally, enlightening their minds and inclining their hearts to embrace the truth; which maketh the former testimony effectual (Ephesians 1:17). To the sight of anything these things are necessary--an object, a medium, and a faculty. As in outward sight, an object that may be seen; a convenient light to represent it and make the object perspicuous; an organ or faculty of seeing in the eye. Unless there be an object, you bid a man see nothing. Unless there be a medium, a due light to represent it, as in a fog, or at midnight, the sharpest sight can see nothing. Unless there be a faculty, neither the object nor medium will avail; a blind man cannot see anything at noonday. Now here is an object, the way of salvation by Christ; a convenient light, it is represented in the gospel; and the faculty is prepared, for the eyes of the mind are opened by the Spirit, that we may see both way and end, the necessity of holiness, and the reality of future glory and blessedness. 2. The work of the Spirit as to the duties of the new covenant. He doth not only convince us of the reality and the necessity of Christ’ s obedience and our holiness, but by His powerful operation frameth and inclineth our hearts to the duties required of us. Faith itself is wrought in us by this holy Spirit, for it is “ the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8); and so is repentance and obedience: Hebrews 8:10, “ I will write My laws upon their hearts, and put them into their minds.” Moses’ law was written on tables of stone, as a rule without them; but Christ’ s law on the heart and mind, as drawing and inclining them to obey it. The renewing grace of the Spirit of God doth prepare us and fit us, and His exciting grace doth quicken us, that we may do what is pleasing in His sight. 3. The work of the Spirit as to the privileges of the new covenant, which are pardon and life. (1) As to pardon, He is the Comforter. He cometh into our hearts as the pledge of our atonement; we receive it when we receive the Spirit (Romans 5:11); and His sanctifying work is the sure evidence that God is at peace with us (1 Thessalonians 5:23). (2) As to life, He assureth us of it. (a) He prepareth us and fitteth us for it (2 Corinthians 5:5). (b) He assureth us of it (2 Corinthians 1:22). (c) He comforteth us and raiseth, our longing after this blessed estate, for the beginnings we have here are called also the first-fruits (Romans 8:23). The beginnings are sweet; what will the completion be? Application: 1. Here you see your scope, what you should look for and hope for--the forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among the sanctified. 2. Here you see your work, and what you should now seek after--“ The righteousness of faith.” 3. Here you see your help, and what will enable you to obtain--“ Through the Spirit.” Oh! let these things be more in your thoughts. (1) For your happiness, or the great privileges which you should most value and hope for. (i) The forgiveness of sins. The sin be forgiven you can never have found peace within yourselves, but still God will be matter of fear and terror to you. (ii) By waiting on the duties of the gospel, this comfort is more and more settled in the heart.(2) For eternal life. Having spoke to your hope and scope, let me, secondly, now speak to your work, what you must seek after, and that is, “ The righteousness of faith.” To enforce this consider--1. There is no appearing before God without some righteousness of one sort or another. Why? Because it is an holy and just God before whom we appear; and “ shall not the Judge of all the earth do right” (Genesis 18:25); and 1 Samuel 6:20, “ Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?” If not now in the time of His patience, how, then, in the time of His recompense? His holiness inclineth Him to hate sin, and His justice to punish it. “ Thy law is exceeding pure” (Psalms 19:14). The gospel abateth nothing of the purity of it. Now when we appear before an holy God, and must he judged by an holy law, surely we must have holiness and righteousness answerable, or how can we stand in the judgment? 2. No ether righteousness will serve the turn but the righteousness of faith; and therefore, till we submit to the new covenant, we are in a woeful case. Now the righteousness of the new covenant is supreme or subordinate; the supreme by way of merit and satisfaction, the subordinate by way of application and qualification on our parts. (1) The supreme is the righteousness or obedience of Christ, which can alone deliver us from hell: Job 33:24, “ Deliver him from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom.” There is no deliverance from eternal destruction, which our sins deserve, but only by the ransom which He hath paid. Till His justice be satisfied by Christ, no good can come unto us. (2) The subordinate righteousness, which qualifieth us, and giveth us an interest, is faith, repentance, and new obedience; all which are hugely necessary, convenient, and gracious terms. (T. Manton, D. D.)The hope of righteousness reasonable How foolish and ignorant we should esteem an artificer, who, having taken a piece of iron, should melt and mould, file and polish it, and then imagine that it has become gold! It shines, it is true; but is its brilliancy a proof that it is no longer iron? And does not God require pure and refined gold; that is to say, a perfect righteousness and a perfect holiness? (Malan.)Righteousness by faith As the graft is kept in union with the stock by means of the clay which has been applied by the gardener, so is the believer united to Christ by faith, which is the gift of God. The clay cement keeps the parts together, but has no virtue in itself: so faith is the means of union to Christ; it shows that the husbandman has been there. When the clay is removed in an ordinary tree, the graft is found united to the stock: so, when faith is swallowed up in sight, then the perfect union of Christ and His people is seen. (J. H. Balfour.) Galatians 5:6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. The order of gracious exercises in the renewed heart All evangelical writers and preachers maintain that none can be real Christians without exercising faith, repentance, and love; but they differ widely in respect to the proper order of these gracious affections. Some place faith before love and repentance, and some place love before repentance and faith. I. Let us consider the order in which holy exercises take place in a renewed sinner. The Spirit of God in renewing, sanctifying, or converting a sinner, does not give him any new natural power, faculty, or principle of action; but only gives him new affections or exercises of heart. It is true, indeed, the Holy Spirit commonly awakens and convinces a sinner, before He converts him. But as both sin and holiness consist in free, voluntary exercises, so the Divine Spirit, in converting sinner, only turns him from sinful to holy exercises. Having premised this, I proceed to consider the order in which the Spirit produces the first gracious affections. If love be distinct from repentance, and repentance distinct from faith, which cannot be reasonably denied, then one of these affections must be exercised before another, in a certain order. They cannot all be exercised together.1. And here it is easy to see that love must be before either repentance or faith. Pure, holy, disinterested love, which is diametrically opposite to all selfishness, is the essence of all true holiness; and, of consequence, there can be no holy affection prior to the love of God being shed abroad in the heart. 2. The next fruit of the Spirit is repentance. As soon as the renewed sinner loves God supremely, he must loathe and abhor himself for hating, opposing, and dishonouring such a holy and amiable Being. As repentance follows love, so faith follows both love and repentance. When the sinner loves, he will repent; and when he repents, he will exercise not merely a speculative, but a saving faith. It is morally impossible that he should feel his need of a Saviour, until he sees and feels that God would be righteous and amiable in sending men to destruction. II. The importance of representing these first exercises of the renewed heart in the order i have mentioned.1. Unless we place love before faith and repentance, we cannot reconcile regeneration with the Divine law, which requires all men to love God immediately and supremely. If we say that faith is the first gracious exercise, then we virtually say that men ought to believe the gospel before they love God; which is the same as to say that it is not the duty of sinners to obey the, first and great command, until they become true believers in Christ. 2. It is of importance to represent love as before repentance and faith, in order to make it appear that sanctification is before justification and the only proper evidence of it. Those who place faith before love and repentance, suppose that men are justified before they are renewed or sanctified. They suppose that saving faith consists in a man’ s believing that he is justified and entitled to eternal life without any evidence from Scripture, sense, or reason. 3. It is absolutely necessary to place love before repentance and faith, in order to distinguish true religion from false. All true religion essentially consists in pure, holy, disinterested love; and all false religion essentially consists in interested, mercenary, selfish love. Now those who place faith before love and repentance, make all religion selfish; because, upon their supposition, all religious affections flow from a belief of their being elected and entitled to eternal life. But if we place supreme love to God, for what He is in Himself, before faith, then all the gracious exercises which flow from it will be holy and disinterested affections. Conclusion:1. If the first exercises of renewed sinners always take place in the same order, then all real saints have always had precisely the same kind of religious experience. 2. If the Holy Spirit, in converting sinners, always produces love to God before faith in Christ, then it is extremely erroneous to represent faith as previous to love in the renewed heart. This is the greatest and most prevailing error among those who believe in expert-mental religion. 3. If there can be no true experimental religion but what originates from that supreme love to God which is before faith in Christ, then there is ground to fear that there is a great deal of false religion among all denominations of Christians. Finally, this subject teaches all who have entertained a hope of having experienced a saving change, the great importance of examining themselves, whether they have ever exercised that precious faith which flows from supreme love to God, (N. Emmons, D. D.)Prevailing faith I. What is this faith?1. It is not a mere creed-holding. Though the creed be true, it may not be true to you, if you just repeat it and put it away like a paper in a pigeon-hole. No use if it does not influence your heart and affect your life. 2. It is trust. As creatures we look up to the great Father of spirits; as sinners we trust for the pardon of our sins to the atonement of Christ; as being weak and feeble we trust to the power of the Holy Spirit to make us holy and to keep us so; we venture our eternal interests in the vessel of free grace, content to sink or swim with it. We rely upon God in Christ. We hang upon Christ as the vessel hangs upon the nail. II. Why is faith selected as the way of salvation? 1. No other way is possible. The road of good works is blocked up by our past sins, and it is sure to be further blocked up by future sins: we ought, therefore, to rejoice that God has commended to us the open road of faith. 2. God has chosen the way of faith, that salvation might be by grace. All idea of our own merit is thus shut out. 3. That there may be no boasting. 4. It is a way open to the most unlearned. However little you may know, you know that you have sinned; know, then, that Jesus has come to put away sin, and that there is life in a look at the crucified One. III. How does faith operate?1. It touches the mainspring of our nature by creating love within the soul.2. It puts us into a new relation. No longer servants, but sons.3. It creates agreement with the Divine will. (C. H. Spurgeon.)What makes a Christian: circumcision or faith Mistake to suppose the Primitive Church can be regarded as a pattern. Apostolic teaching they had; -yet they were only beginners. Just rescued from heathenism, no wonder their spirits long bore the scars of their former bondage. To know what they were like, we must look at the communities gathered by modern missionaries. The same infantile simplicity, the same partial apprehensions of the truth, the same danger of being led astray by the low morality of their heathen kindred, the same openness to strange heresy, the same danger of blending the old with the new, in opinion and practice, beset both. The first theological difference in the early Church illustrates this. It was an attempt to put new wine into old bottles. The Jewish and the Gentile elements did not coalesce. The point round which the strife was waged was not whether Gentiles might come into the Church. That was conceded by the fiercest Judaisers. But it was whether they could come in as Gentiles, without being first incorporated into the Jewish nation by circumcision, and whether they could remain in as Gentiles, without conforming to Jewish ceremonial and law. Those who said “ no” were members of the Christian communities, and, being so, they still iasisted that Judaism was to be eternal. Those who said “ yes” were mostly Gentiles, headed and inspired by St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. They believed that Judaism was preparatory, and that its work was done. This Epistle is the memorial of that feud. It is of perennial use, as the tendencies against which it is directed are constant in human nature. The text contains St. Paul’ s condensed statement of his whole position in the controversy. I. The first grand principle contained in these words is that faith working by love makes a Christian (Comp. 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 6:15.)1. Religion is the harmony of the soul with God, and the conformity of the life to His law. Obedience must be the obedience of a man, and not of his deeds only; it must include the submission of the will and the prostration of the whole nature before God. To be godly is to be godlike. As two stringed instruments may be so tuned to one keynote that, if you strike the one, a faint ethereal echo is heard from the other, which blends undistinguishably with its parent sound; so, drawing near to God, and brought into unison with His mind and will, our responsive spirits vibrate in accord with His, and give forth tones, low and thin indeed, but still repeating the mighty music of heaven. 2. This harmony with God results from love becoming the ruling power of our lives. Love to God is no idle emotion or lazy rapture, no vague sentiment, but the root of all practical goodness, of all strenuous effort, of all virtue, of all praise. That strong tide is meant to drive the busy wheels of life, and to bear precious freightage on its bosom; not to flow away in profitless foam. All the virtues and graces will dwell in our hearts, if Love, their mighty mother, be there. 3. The dominion of love to God in our hearts arises from faith. How can we love Him so long as we are in doubt of His heart, or misconceive His character, as if it were only Power and Wisdom, or awful Severity? Men cannot love an unseen person at all without some very special token of his personal affection for them. It is only when we know and believe the love that God has to us, that we come to cherish any corresponding emotion to Him. Heaven must bend to earth, before earth can rise to heaven. The skies must open and drop down love, ere love can spring in the fruitful fields. And it is only when we look with true trust to that great unveiling of the heart of God which is in Jesus Christ, that our hearts are melted, and all their snows are dissolved into sweet waters, which, freed from their icy chains, can flow with music in their ripple, and fruitfulness along their course, through our otherwise silent and barren lives. II. But we have to consider also the negative side of the apostle’ s words. They affirm that in comparison with the essential--faith, all externals are infinitely unimportant. A general principle. Rites, sacraments, etc., may be helps: nothing more. If religion be the loving devotion of the soul to God, resting upon reasonable faith, then all besides is, at the most, a means which may further it. The test of all acts and forms of Christian worship is, Do they help men to know and feel Christ and His truth? They are but fuel; the flame is loving faith. The only worth of the fuel is to feed the flame. We are joined to God by faith. Whatever strengthens that is precious as a help, but worthless as a substitute. III. there is a constant tendency to exalt these unimportant externals into the place of faith. So long as men have bodily organizations, there will be need for outward helps. Forms are sure to encroach, to overlay the truth that lies at their root, to become dimly intelligible, or quite unmeaning, and to constitute at last the end instead of the means. Necessary to remember, in using them, that a minute quantity may strengthen, but an overdose will kill. Even freedom from forms may be turned into a bondage. IV. When an indifferent thing is made into an essential, it ceases to be indifferent, and must be fought against. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The office and operation of faith The peculiar character of the gospel is, that it shows how a sinner may be justified before God. Yet the generality of Christians are far from entertaining just views of this most fundamental point. They confound the different offices of faith and works. But St. Paul distinguishes them with much accuracy and precision. He invariably declares that our justification is by faith. Yet, though he denies to works the office of justifying, he invariably insists on them as the fruits and evidence of our faith. Nothing can be more decisive than the declaration in the text. I. We shall explain it.1. Man is prone to trust in outward rites and[ ceremonies. The Jews trusted in the ordinance of circumcision; some among ourselves think it sufficient Chat they have been baptized, or are communicants. 2. But no outward observances can avail for our salvation. (1) An external conformity with the rule of duty may proceed from the basest motives; (a) to obtain man’ s applause; (b) to establish a righteousness of our own; (2) it may consist with the indulgence of (a) evil tempers; (b) vicious appetites. It cannot, therefore, of itself characterize the true Christian. Nor can it avail anything towards procuring the Divine favour; though, if it proceed from faith and love, it will doubtless be rewarded.3. That which alone can avail for our acceptance with God is faith. It is by faith that all the saints of old obtained salvation (Romans 4:3; Romans 4:6-7). All the promises of God are made to faith (Mark 16:16; Acts 10:43). 4. Yet this faith must be productive of good works. It is not a mere notional assent to certain doctrines; nor a confident assurance respecting the safety of our own state; but a living, operative principle in the heart. 5. It is, on our part, the bond of union between Christ and our souls; and it cannot but discover itself by works of love. II. Improve it (2 Timothy 3:16).1. For the establishment of true doctrine. Let us renounce all confidence in our own works, and rely wholly on the blood and righteousness of Christ. 2. For reproof, i.e., refutation of false doctrine. We are not justified by faith as an operative principle, but simply as uniting us with Christ. Our works do not make our faith to be good or saving, but only prove it to be so. 3. For correction of unrighteous conduct. Let unrighteous Christians put away either their profession or their sins. 4. For instruction in righteousness. Love should operate uniformly, and respect both the bodies and souls of men. Let us abound in it more and more. (Theological Sketch-book.)Faith Faith is the foundation of the whole spiritual building, whereby we are built on Christ Jesus. It is the root of the whole spiritual life of grace, the ground whereon the soul rests securely, the beginning of our spiritual existence. The cross is not far off, not over the seas, in the Holy Land, nor removed by length of time. Faith sees it close at hand, and clasps it and loves it, and is crucified on it with Him, dying to itself with its Lord, nailed to it, motionless to its own desires, dead to the world, and living to Him. Nor is heaven far off to faith. For where its Lord is, there is heaven. Faith is with Him, present with Him in spirit, though absent in the body; a penitent amid those who, around the Throne, sing “ Holy, Holy, Holy.” Faith, in one sense, goes before love, because, unless we believed, we should have none to love. Faith is Divine knowledge. As in human love we cannot love unless we have seen, heard, or in some way known, so, without faith, we cannot know aught of God, or know that there is a God whom to love. Yet in act, faith cannot be without love. “ The just,’ says Scripture, ‘ shall live by his faith,’ but by a faith which lives. A dead faith cannot give life.” Faith without love is the devils’ faith. For they believe, and tremble. Hearing must come before faith, for “ faith cometh by hearing.” But faith cannot for an instant be separated from love. Who is the object of faith? God the Father, who created us, and gave His Son to die for us; God the Son, who became one of us, and by dying, redeemed us; God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth us, and “ pours forth love,” which He is, “ abroad in our hearts.” We were as stocks and stones without faith; but He died, even “ of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” Are we stocks or stones now, that, having faith, we can believe without loving? Which of His acts of boundless love should we believe without loving? Were it not enough to bear us out of ourselves for love, to transport us, to make us give up our lives for love, to carry us away out of ourselves and of all that we are, to think that for us, earth-worms and defiled, Jesus died? Does not the very name of Jesus make the heart beat, and tremble, and thrill with love? Could a criminal really believe that he had received a full pardon from his injured king, or that the king’ s son had suffered to obtain his pardon, and was come to tell it him and forgive him, and not love? Well might he doubt such love. But he could not believe it and not love. Faith and love would enter his soul together. Love is in all true faith, as light and warmth are in the ray of the sun. Light and warmth are in the sun’ s ray, and the sun’ s ray brings with it light and warmth; not, light and warmth; the sun’ s ray: yet, where the sun’ s ray is, there are light and warmth, nor can that ray be anywhere without giving light and warmth. Even so, faith it is which brings love, not love, faith; yet faith cannot come into the heart, without bringing with it the glow of love, yea, and the light wherewith we see things Divine. So soon as faith is kindled in the heart, there is the glow of love; and both come from the same Sun of Righteousness, pouring in faith and love together into the heart, and “ there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” In winter, fewer rays come upon any spot of this land from the sun; whence there is then less brightness of light and less glow of heat than in summer; and so the surface of the earth is chilled; and though for a time the frost be melted by that fainter sun, this warmth, coming upon it only for a short time, soon passes away. Even so, there are degrees of faith and love. Yet they may be real faith and love, even when the power of both is lessened, in that the soul does not keep itself or live in the full presence of God. Or, as through a closed window, more light comes than heat, so in some hearts, there may be more of knowledge than of love. And again, as on a cold misty day, when the sun is hidden from our eyes, we are so oppressed by the clamminess of the chill damp upon the surface of our bodies, and by the heavy gloom around, that we scarcely feel the presence of the light and heat; and yet the light and heat are there, else we should be in utter darkness, and our bodies would die; even so, many hearts, at many times, when some mist hides from them the presence of their Lord, feel nothing but their own coldness and numbness, and all seems dark around them, and yet in their very inmost selves they believe and love, else their souls would be dead, and they would be “ past feeling,” and they would not pine for more light and love. A dead body is in darkness, and seeth not the light of this world, and has an awful coldness to the touch; yet itself feels not its own coldness, nor knows its own darkness. Even so, the dead soul, being without the life of God, feels not its own death, craves not to love more. For He who is love hath left it, and it hath no power wherewith to desire to love, unless or until the voice of Christ raises it from the dead and awakens it and it hears His voice, and lives. Or think on the great instances of faith in Holy Scripture. Think you not that Abraham loved, as well as believed, when God first spake to him, and called him to give up his country, and his kindred, and his father’ s house, and instead of all, God said, “ I will bless thee,” and he took God for his all, and “ went out, not knowing whither he went,” save that he was following God? And of that great penitent, St. Mary Magdalene, our Lord bears witness that in her there were together love and faith; and for both together, a loving faith, or a “ faith working by love,” our Lord tells her, “ Thy sins are forgiven.” Or was there not love in the faith of the penitent thief, when he discerned his Saviour by his side, in that marred form, which “ had no beauty or comeliness,” “ His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men,” and he said, “ Lord, remember me in Thy kingdom.” There was humility, which owned that it deserved to be forgotten, and wondrous faith which owned in Him, “ the rejected of men,” his Lord and King and God. But there was love too. For love only craves to be remembered. Or think you not that, when God “ opened the heart of Lydia, to attend unto the things spoken by Paul,” He poured into her heart which He had opened, love with faith? Faith which loves not, is not faith; it is dead. And what is dead, hath ceased to be. A “ dead faith” is a “ faith without love.” A dead body is, for the time, until it wholly decays in outward form, like a living body or a body asleep; a dead faith has an outward likeness to a living faith. But as a dead body has no warmth nor power of motion, nor feeling, nor can use any of the powers it once had, nor has them any longer, it can neither taste, nor see, nor hear; so a dead faith is that which has no love, no power to do good works. It perceives not, hears not, tastes not, feels not, the things of God. As love is the life of faith, so with the increase of love, faith increaseth. Even from man towards man, faith and love grow together. The more we love, the more we understand and the more we trust one another. We trust, because we love, and by loving, know God, We can only know God, by loving Him. St. Paul says, “ I know in whom I have believed.” Want of love is the cause of all want of faith. Did we fully love God, who could for a moment doubt of Him? But love liveth by good works. Love cannot live torpid. Even in human love, love which never did deeds of love would grow chill and die. We love those most, to whom we do most good. Love is perhaps increased more by doing than by receiving good; at least, by doing good out of the love of God. Acts of love do not prove only that we have a living faith they increase it. But it has been thought, “ if faith, on which God holds us righteous, or justifying faith, have love in it, are we not accounted righteous for something m ourselves?” We are justified, or accounted righteous before God, neither for faith nor love, but for the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ alone. And faith and love alike, although in us, are not of us; both are alike the gift of God. But this gift, whether of faith or love, is so given, that it is with us to receive it. We come to God by faith and love. But “ no man cometh unto Me,” saith our Lord, “ except the Father, which hath sent Me, draw him.” “ Believe, and thou comest; love and thou art drawn.” The drawing of grace changes nature, and strengthens nature, reforms nature, subdues nature, but only if we be willing to be changed, reformed, subdued, strengthened. How then may we know if we have this faith? How may it grow and be strengthened in us? How do we know that our bodies live? “ As,” says a holy man, “ we discern the life of this body by its motion, so also the life of faith by good works. The life of the body is the soul, whereby it is moved and feels; the life of faith is love; because by it, it worketh, as thou readest in the apostle, “ faith which worketh by love: Whence also when charity waxeth cold, faith dies; as the body, when the soul departeth.” (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)The grandeur of faith I. View, then, the grandeur of faith as the great collective act, in which all the powers of the soul are alike embarked. If God, in the beginning, by the constitution which He gave to man, made him a creature of law, if it can be shown that man fell from his original holiness in the free exercise of all the powers by which he was characterized a responsible being, then it follows that the gospel, as a remedy, must, in all its provisions, recognize this fundamental fact. The whole work of salvation has been already achieved by One from the bosom of the Father, acting as our substitute under the law, satisfying the claims of justice, and rendering obedience to the precepts. Where, then, if we do not work out the righteousness by which we are saved, comes into play our agency? What has man to do in this matter of personal salvation? Where does God place the test of our responsibility and freedom? Exactly at this point: Not in working out a righteousness, not in making atonement for sin, but in accepting the righteousness which is already provided--by cleaving to the Saviour whom the gospel presents to us as our Redeemer. Therefore, with the highest philosophy, do the Scriptures say, “ He that believeth shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” I ask you, now, to notice how completely, in the simplest exercise of faith, every faculty of the human soul is brought into action. There is the understanding, which must employ itself upon the propositions of Scripture in order to perceive what they say. There is the judgment and reason, which must meditate upon what is contained in these statements, in order to see whether they constitute a sound basis for a sinner’ s hope. Here are the affections, all brought into exercise when we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and feel that He is, to us, “ the chiefest among ten thousand and the one altogether lovely.” Here is the will, putting forth its determinate act of choice when it accepts the Lord Jesus Christ, and accepts His work; and, in this very act of acceptance, distinctly and consciously repudiates every other ground of trust-exclaiming, with the apostle, “ I desire to be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Nay, even the subordinate faculties of the human soul, such as the imagination, and the fancy, and the taste, all are brought into exercise in order that the great facts of the gospel may be presented before the mind as realities which it can touch and apprehend. Even the faith which is but as a grain of mustard seed, over which you and I weep in the closet because it is so feeble, when you come to analyze it in its constituent parts, is found to have drawn upon the whole contents of your spiritual being. It has occupied the understanding, it has employed the conscience, it has drawn out the affections, it has exercised the will; so that not one single power in man has remained dormant in that faith by which we cling to the Lord Jesus Christ. We hear the eulogy pronounced every day upon the achievements of intellect. Men spread out their philosophies before us, and we follow the painful steps with which they have proceeded from the first premise to the most distant conclusion. We walk with the scientists, who seem to have wrested from the hand of the Creator the keys of His own universe, and with bold adventure have roamed through its wide domains, opening its secret cabinets and unlocking their treasures to our gaze. And as these high achievements of science and of philosophy are held up before us, we are filled with astonishment and pride. God forbid that I should lack in sympathy with these grand movements of the human mind! But they are the exercise of only one power of our nature, even at the best. They reveal man in the towering reach of his intellect, which is bound to expand throughout the eternal ages, growing larger in its grasp and holding within its embrace the great truths of eternity and of God. By so much as I hope hereafter to see in heaven the boundless glory of Jehovah, and to spread out all my intellect in the contemplation of what is sublime and beautiful in God, am I forbidden this day to utter one word of disparagement upon the proofs of man’ s gigantic understanding. But I turn to faith, which equally exercises this intellect, which draws out all the affections of the soul and the immense power of the will; which presents man before me in the full complement of his powers; which reveals me to myself in the superb integrity of my nature--and I feel that if, through grace, I have been able to exercise this faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have put forth an act which has brought out the totality of my being, which has expressed all the constituents of my nature, and which, therefore, in its essential glory, immeasurably transcends all other acts within the compass of the human soul. Under this aspect of it, then, I ask you to look at faith--as the great collective act of the soul, in which a man embarks all the constituent faculties of his being. II. Faith is the full and final conveyance of the soul to the Lord Jesus as His possession for ever. So that the first act of faith, by which we cleave to Jesus Christ, contains potentially within itself every subsequent act. Just as the seed implicitly contains the whole plant which is evolved from it, so all other acts of faith, until the hour when faith shall lose itself in sight, are contained within this first conveyance of the soul over to the Lord Jesus Christ. For, my hearer--God help you to understand it! ten myriads of times, in sins of desire and of thought and of deed, you have, with your own signature, endorsed the original apostasy in the garden of Eden and underwritten it for yourself. All your days, by personal transgression, you have assumed that guilt as your own. But now comes the hour when the connection with the first Adam is to be broken, when, as far as in us lies, we openly and publicly recant all our sin, and say to the second Adam, who stands upon the ruins of the first covenant and fulfils all of its forfeited conditions, “ As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” My hearer! is there no power in such an act? and must there not be a Divine virtue in the principle which enables you to perform it--when you can thus cut the connection with all preceding sin, and with him who by his fall precipitated you beneath the curse, disavowing all the transactions of the past, and giving yourselves over in an everlasting covenant to Him who is your Redeemer? III. View faith as the germinal grace, out of which the whole experience of the Christian is developed--the root of all repentance, obedience, love, and worship. Thus I meet the shallow criticism which men sometimes make against the gospel, when they say, “ We turn to one Scripture which declares, ‘ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved;’ and we turn to another Scripture which proclaims, ‘ Repent and be converted for the remission of sins.’” They ask of what value is that system which, in the very terms of salvation, is found so contradictory? Faith and repentance are but the two poles of one and the same truth. As there can be no faith which does not involve repentance as its immediate consequence, so there can be no repentance which has not been preceded by the faith of which it was born: and the difference between the two is simply in the order of thought in which you choose to contemplate them. When you shall presently go out of this building, every step down those aisles toward the door carries you just so much away from your pew: but as egress from the building is before the mind as the object to be attained, the motion toward the door, in the order of thought, precedes the motion from the pew; yet every inch that lessens the distance from the one increases just so much the distance from the other. The two are necessarily reciprocal. Then the faith which accepts the Lord Jesus Christ, accepts Him in all of His offices. Thus, faith is seen to be the germ, first of our repentance, then of our obedience, and then of that supreme love which we have to God when we love Him with all the heart and with all the soul and with all the strength and with all the mind. And if faith be, as I have sought to represent, the full conveyance of the soul to Christ as His possession, then is it in itself a complete and sublime devotion; and becomes the germ of that positive worship which we render to God upon His throne here upon earth and hereafter in heaven. IV. See the grandeur of faith as it is the human correlative, and the human measure, of the atonement of Jesus Christ. Here, again, as I put into these cold words a thought that burns like fire, I tremble at the presumption. The obedience of Jesus Christ is the measure of God’ s holiness. And you find that there is a human measure and a human correspondent to this atonement of the Redeemer itself. For when our faith embraces it--when our faith looks upon the blood of Christ, and upon the obedience of Christ, and upon the sufferings and upon the cross of Christ--when, with all the power that belongs to thought, with all the pathos that belongs to feeling, with all the energy that belongs to will, man brings out his whole nature and grasps that atonement, and draws it up to him, and lays it over against his own guilty conscience, and rests in life and in eternity upon its blessed provisions--you have the best expression that earth can give of its estimate of the glory that lies in obedience to the law. I cannot afford to disparage that faith which thus, in its excursions, travels over the atonement of the adorable Redeemer; which is itself the measure of the infinite justice of God, and takes the dimensions of the boundless glory of Jehovah. V. In the last place, I signalize the grandeur of faith, in that it is the perfection of reason. Philosophers are wont to glory in the prowess of human reason. Let me illustrate this, most simply, from the science of mathematics. If I say that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right-angles, I by no means state a truth that is intuitive, but one that is demonstrable. But, then, how do I demonstrate it? By proving that the things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Through the demonstration I carry the mind back, step by step, until it is landed in one of those original and necessary cognitions. And yet the mathematician will smile, with the most self-complacent disdain, upon the very principle which gives him the postulate upon which his reasoning depends. Now, consistency is a jewel; and when you undertake to flout faith, you must go clean through and strike at all these beliefs. When a man tramples upon this principle of faith, which demands the acceptance of the Saviour, I debar him from the possibility of reasoning on any subject under the sun. If the human reason starts from what it is obliged to accept; if, in all the after process, it is obliged to remand its conclusions to that elementary trust from which it in the first instance departed, in order to verify them--if you are obliged, for example, to believe in the principle of causality; if you are obliged to believe in the fact of your personal indentity; if you are obliged, by the necessity of your mental constitution, to believe in the reality of the external world, and to rely upon the evidence and the testimony of sense which underlies all the demonstrations of our proud physical science; if you are compelled, by the same necessity, to rely upon memory, which hangs together all the links of every chain of reasoning through which you are carried--I say, just in proportion as you reason with power to conclusions that are satisfactory, the verification of those conclusions is found in the elementary beliefs which you accept simply and alone with the trust of faith; and I interdict you, by this known fact, from undertaking to despise or contemn it. The man of intellect, who is proud of his power of thought, is the very last under the broad heavens to despise the principle of faith, which gives him his postulates, and the tests by which his conclusions are verified. One other suggestion, and then I am done with this point; which is, that if we start from faith, and if all the time we are going back to faith to verify every course of reasoning, it would seem that when we have accomplished the grand circuit, and know all things that are knowable, and have proved all things that are demonstrable--it seems to me in perfect analogy with man’ s mental constitution and with God’ s high prerogatives, that He should open to us the infinite beyond the finite; that we should rise at last beyond nature up to God; that we should ascend, at last, above these mortal shores to the immortal; that we should have power, by this principle of faith, to take possession of another world, grander, larger, more glorious than all these myriads of worlds which dot the immensity of space; and that, by and by, when we shall have illustrated all the triumphs of science, we shall be able to put the climax upon all this by the higher triumphs of a grander faith. God is infinite, lying beyond the sphere of human thought. Can He ever be known except through revelation? Could we ever understand Him, except by the power of faith? (B. M. Palmer, D. D.)Faith working by love I. Faith always produces love.1. By a necessity of faith’ s own nature.2. By the discoveries of beauty in Christ which faith is sure to make.3. By its appropriation of the love of Christ.4. By its enjoyment of mercy, leading the heart to a grateful acknowledgment of the source of mercy.5. By the familiarity with God and the congeniality of disposition which it breeds in the heart. II. Love is entirely dependent on faith.1. No man loves a Saviour in whom he reposes no confidence.2. Love cannot flourish except as faith flourishes.3. Love cannot work without faith. III. Faith displays its power by love. Compare faith to an artificer in metals.1. Love is faith’ s arm.2. Faith’ s tools.3. Faith’ s furnace.4. Faith’ s mould.5. Faith’ s metal, for into the mould of love faith pours love itself.6. Faith’ s burnisher. IV. Love reacts on faith and perfects it.1. Love leads the soul into admiration and so increases faith.2. Love forbids unbelief.3. Perfect love casts out fear. In conclusion(1) Faith works: let us as a Church work because we have faith.(2) A working Church must be a loving Church, for faith works by love.(3) But if you are to be a working and a loving Church you must be a believing Church, for that is the bottom of all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)That salvation is conditional does not affect its gratuitousness A nobleman might declare his intention of giving a purse of money to all who would walk to his castle, knock at his door, and ask for the treasure. The walking, the knocking, the asking, would be the conditions of bestowment; but certainly the conditions, when fulfilled, would leave untouched the gratuitousness; and no one who walked, knocked, and asked, and obtained the purse would regard it as wages due for what had been done. The case is precisely the same when the proposed benefit is salvation, and the prescribed conditions repentance, faith, and works. (H. MeIvill, B. D.)Uncircumcision availeth nothing There may be as much formalism in protesting against forms as in using them. Extremes meet; and an unspiritual Quaker is at bottom of the same way of thinking as an unspiritual Roman Catholic. They agree in their belief that certain outward acts are essential to worship, and even to religion. They only differ as to what those acts are. The Judaizer who says, “ you must be circumcised,” and his antagonist who says, “ you must be uncircumcised,” are really in the same boat. Neither rejection of forms nor formalism, neither negations nor affirmations, make a Christian. One thing alone does that, faith which worketh by love, against which sense ever wars, both by tempting some of us to place religion in outward acts and ceremonies, and by tempting others of us to place it in rejecting the forms which our brethren abuse. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The relations between faith and love The two graces are inseparable. Like Mary and Martha they are sisters, and abide in one house. Faith, like Mary, sits at Jesus’ feet and hears His words, and then love, like Martha, diligently goes about the house and rejoices to honour the Divine Lord. Faith is light, while love is heat, and in every beam of grace from the Sun of Righteousness you will find a measure of each. True faith in God cannot exist without love to Him, nor sincere love without faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Faith and love are the brain and heart of the soul, so knit together in a mutual harmony and correspondence, that without their perfect union the whole Christian man cannot move with power, nor feel with tenderness, nor breathe with true life. (T. Adams.)Faith and love Judith goes in alone, and by her own hand delivers Israel; the waiting woman hath not a stroke in it (Jdt 13:1-20.). Faith is this great lady, and charity her handmaid; through all the actions of goodness she attends on her mistress; when faith sets down the objects of her beneficence, love is her secretary; when she disposeth her good deeds, love is her almoner; when she treats a league of peace, love is her ambassador; what work soever she undertaketh, charity is her instrument. But when it comes to a point of justification to enter the presence chamber of the Great King, to procure remission and peace, charity leaves her to herself. Thus is it now. But hereafter these two shall change places; charity shall be the lady, and faith the waiting-woman. When the soul is to be discharged out of prison and moves to the high court of heaven, faith waits upon her all the way; but at the presence-chamber of glory, faith stays without and love only enters. Yet though faith at last perish in the act, it shall never perish in the effect; for we shall enjoy what we have believed. (T. Adams.)The relation of faith and love to spiritual life We may compare the infusion of spiritual life by God to His importation of vegetable life to a tree; faith and love, considered as organs of the inner life, we may compare to the roots of the tree which cleave to the soil for nourishment and support, and to the sap which is propelled through the trunk to every branch and fibre; and finally, we may compare good works, which are the products and manifestations of the vital energies, to the leaves and blossoms with which the tree is adorned, and to its fruits, which are pleasant to the eye and grateful to the palate. No one of these is to be overlooked, nor are they to be confounded with each other. (T. MacNeece, D. D.)Faith, a power Whenever the things believed are fitted to awaken any emotion or other active principle of our nature, belief becomes a power. Such it is in all matters respecting man’ s life, his interests, and his passions. Let a geologist tell a man that there is coal on his property; if he believe him, be assured his faith will not be long inoperative. (T. MacNeece, D. D.)Love impossible without faith You cannot love by mere trying. Trial is the first stage in Christian development, but do not call yourself an expert Christian until the distinguishing Christian graces come to you in ways that are spontaneous, automatic, overflowing, consentaneous, symmetrical, and brood as the stream of life--until every thought and feeling has been subdued to the supreme will of God, which is love. When you have reached that condition, then you may call yourself an expert Christian. (H. W. Beecher.)Faith working by and not by love Faith is one of the mightiest powers that the world contains. It is like the central fire of the earth, it is like the fountain of the great deep. But whether it be a power for good or evil depends entirely on the objects to which it is directed, or the way in which it “ works.” It may be a volcano scattering ruin and desolation around it, or it may be the genial heat and warmth which fuses together the granite foundations of the globe, and sustains the life of every human being on its surface. It may be a torrent tearing and rending everything before it; it may be diverted into a hundred insignificant streams; or it may be a calm and mighty river, fertilizing and civilizing the world. There is a faith which justifies and a faith which condemns. Faith which worketh by love justifies, sanctifies, elevates, strengthens, purifies Faith which worketh not by love, condemns, hardens, weakens, destroys. The ordinary means and ways by which the faith of a Brahmin, e.g., works are not love, and truth, and justice; but meats, and drinks, and washings. To eat the flesh of a cow is the most enormous wickedness of which a Hindoo can be guilty, and one for which there is no forgiveness in this world or the world to come. To bathe in the waters of the sacred river, is a passport to heaven which will avail though every moral virtue he cast aside. On the avoidance of this sin and the preservation of this virtue the Hindoo expends an energy, a courage, a faith, which would be sufficient to convert a kingdom, and the consequence is that the wilder passions of his nature are left either altogether unrestrained, or are actual]y stimulated and aggravated by the faculty which was meant to purify and elevate them. It is like any other power of the human mind, which, if fed on useless or poisonous substances, becomes unable to attend to what is useful and wholesome. There may be a gigantic memory, which lays up the most trifling details, and forgets the most important events. There may be a gigantic intellect, which wastes itself away in subtlety, or degrades itself in fraud and treachery. There may be also a gigantic faith, which squanders its powers on things without profit, which works by blindness of heart, vainglory, and hypocrisy, by envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness. But Christian faith worketh always and everywhere by love. In this one broad channel, faith may work as it will; it will find enough to fill, enough to fertilize, many rough corners to be rounded off, many intervening obstacles to be washed away, many winding tracks to be followed. Do not divert the faith of Christ our Saviour, that world-controlling, world-conquering faith, from its proper functions; we cannot afford to lose its aid, we want the whole volume of its waters, the undivided strength of its stream, to moisten the dry soil of our hardened hearts, to feed and cleanse our dark habitations, to turn the vast wheels of our complex social system, to deepen our shallow thoughts, to widen our narrow sympathies, to sweeten our bitter controversies, to freshen our stagnant indolence. “ Faith working by love,” can do this, and nothing else can; and we can neither with safety spare its motive power, nor yet without danger open another path for its energies. (Dean Stanley.)Faith working by love the only genuine faith That only is faith that makes us to love God, to do His will, to suffer His impositions, to trust His promises, to see through a cloud, to overcome the world, to resist the devil, to stand in the day of trial, and to be comforted in all our sorrows. (Jeremy Taylor.)Faith working by love Faith is able to justify of itself, not to work of itself. The hand alone can receive an alms, but cannot cut a piece of wood without an axe or some instrument. Faith is the Christian’ s hand, and can without help receive God’ s given grace into the heart; but to produce the fruits of obedience, and to work the actual duties required, it must have an instrument: add love to it, and it worketh by love. So that the one is our justification before God, and the other our testification before man. (T. Adams.)Faith when once it lives in the soul is all Christian practice in the germ. (Canon Liddon.)How to estimate the strength of faith Faith works by love, and therefore its strength or weakness may be discovered by the strength or weakness of the love it puts forth in the Christian’ s actings. The strength of a man’ s arm that draws a bow is seen by the force the arrow which he shoots flies with. And, certainly, the strength of our faith may be known by the force that our love mounts to God with. It is impossible that weak faith, which is unable to draw the promise as a strong faith can, should leave such a forcible impression on the heart to love God as the stronger faith does. If, therefore, thy heart be strongly carried out from love to God, to abandon sin, perform duty, and exert acts of obedience to His command, know thy place, and take it with humble thankfulness; thou art a graduate in the art of believing. (W. Gurnall.)Faith and love intimately connected Faith without love is, as it were, a dream, an image of faith; just as the appearance of a face in a glass is not a real face. (Luther.)Flatter not thyself in thy faith to God, if thou wantest charity for thy neighbour; and think not thou hast charity for thy neighbour, if thou wantest faith to God: where they are not both together, they are both wanting; they are both dead if once divided. (F. Quarles.)Faith is the source; charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity; as wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was imperfect with heat; or that the sun, however cloudless, is imperfect without beams. The true answer would be, it is not faith, but utter reprobate faithlessness. (S. T. Coleridge.)Faith is that nail which fastens the soul to Christ; and love is the grace which drives the nail to the head. Faith takes hold of Him, and love helps to keep the grip. Christ dwells in the heart by faith, and He burns in the heart by love, like a fire melting the breast. Faith casts the knot, and love draws it fast. (Erskine.)Faith’ s evidences Consider the character and the position of a man of simple faith. That man walks this earth, and with every step he feels and realizes that he is in another world of unseen things, greater and far more real to him than what he can see about him. Now let us see what some of the consequences of that faith are--its results, and its evidences. It is quite evident that such a man is, and must be, at peace, for he possesses every element of peace. The past pardoned; the present furnished and supplied; the future secure. Now that rest makes composure, and composure is strength. Faith, and faith only makes strength. Faith is strength. Or look at him again in another of the consequences of faith; “ And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Then you say, charity--that is, love--is greater than faith? Yes, greater as a tree is greater than its root, or as a river is greater than its spring; but the faith makes the charity. It is an indispensable ingredient and representation of all charity. I must believe before I can love; I must believe in God before I can love God. Now we are all kind in proportion as we are happy. Who has not found it so? Why do we feel kind on a birthday, or at a marriage, or when we receive some very good news? Why are we kind at Christmas? Because we are happy. For to be happy, we must have no bitter past; we must have no dreaded future; but there must be in the future hope which casts back its happiness upon the passing hour. To make happiness there must be a happy to-day, and a happier to-morrow; without a happier to-morrow, no day will be perfectly happy. This again, is just what faith gives. What is bad in the past is cancelled. The future is bright; and the bright future brightens the passing hour. Faith makes hope, hope makes happiness, and happiness makes love. The next thing is union with Christ. It is a new creation, and faith, faith has done it. “ Faith has worked by love,” and made the union. That union is heaven; it is heaven begun upon earth. Let us follow that man now that he is united. See him at his prayers. O, so different to what he used to call “ saying his prayers.” It is a child speaking to a Father; and he goes boldly. “ Faith worketh by love.” Observe the relationship. Faith is mistress, love is the handmaid. “ Faith worketh by love.” Love subordinate to faith. If love is not subordinate to faith, love becomes misplaced. Love subordinate to faith. Faith has to do with the unseen, and makes it seen, and then the love clasps the seen and makes it his own. We begin by believing the great Unseen; we go on to believe that is love; we apply that love to ourselves, and so that is faith. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Faith working by love Now observe, this “ love” has nothing to do with saving you. You were saved before the “ love” began. It owes its existence to the fact of your being saved. It is no cause, it is an effect--an invariable effect--an effect which loves the presence of the cause. “ We love Him because He first loved us.” And now you come to the second stage. You “ love:” deeply, gratefully, irrepressibly, you “ love.” What comes next? “ Love” is a feeling which always looks about to find, or make for itself language. If it do not this, it may be a passion, but it is not “ love.” The language of love is action. We all wish to please where we feel affection. Therefore, by a necessary law, the forgiven soul--happy and attached--looks at lovingly--to see how it can testify its gratitude to the God of its salvation. In God’ s great scheme, every Christian is working under constraint of the most powerful impulse that ever animates the breast of man. It is a spring strong enough for the machine, the great machine which it has to move; but all the while he works happily because he works under the smile of God, who has forgiven him, and who loves him with an everlasting love: sure, because it is free, and certain to continue on to the end, because it was all Christ at the beginning. In this little ladder of three steps which goes up from sin to peace, and from peace to glory--the only point that unites the two worlds: faith resting on Christ, love springing out of faith, and good works crowning love--I do desire to trace with you, for a minute, how they act and re-act one upon the other, interweaving themselves endlessly, into greater and greater unity and strength. “ Faith” is the only basis of “ love.” You cannot really “ love” God until you believe that He has forgiven you. You cannot “ love” an angry God you cannot “ love” an object of fear--such as God must be to every man who does not feel that he is pardoned. Well, now, see the return. Every good work re-acts to feed the “ love” from which it sprang. Do not you know how, by doing something for any person, you may make yourself, at last, begin to “ love” that person? Do not you know still more how, by every act of self-denying affection to those you love, you increase the feeling, and deepen the tendency of the attachment? So that the rule is good in the heavenly code, every good action, done for Christ’ s sake, increases spiritual affection, and enhances the desire to love--just as the dropping of the fruit strengthens the roots for the next autumn’ s harvest. It is a blessed thing to have a religion which I ‘ am now endeavouring to shew in its whole nature is a “ faith which worketh by love.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Faith worketh I have read that a bishop of the Episcopal Church said, “ When I was about entering the ministry, I was one day in conversation with an old Christian friend, who said, ‘ You are to be ordained: when you are ordained, preach to sinners as you find them; tell them to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they shall be as safe as if they were in heaven; and then tell them to work like horses.’” Christian enthusiasm I. Define enthusiasm.1. Origin of the word, and its uses at that time.2. Etymology: marking changes in meaning.3. Emphasize present use--Christian enthusiasm. II. Enthusiasm subjectively considered. God in. Love dwelling in the Christian’ s heart.1. Crystalized energy; energy taking form; efficiency.2. Concentrated earnestness; sincerity and singleness of purpose.3. Unwavering perseverance; continuity.4. Indomitable courage; bravery. III. Objectively considered. Love at work. Love gives faith its life, and causes it to glow with fervency, but it does more: it gives action. Faith worketh by love. This action depends upon two conditions, viz.:1. A correct ideal. Love reveals Christ as the One altogether lovely. (a) In His character. (b) In His work. 2. A worthy cause. Love seeks the best time, place, subject. What can be more worthy to engage the Christian’ s powers than the gospel? When once at work, what will net a Christian endure? (Hebrews 11:1-40.) (Missionaries.) Faith may subdue kingdoms, may overcome worlds, but first of all it must be inspired by love. Faith worketh by love. (American Homiletic Review.)Doctrine1. That the grace of faith is a working grace if it be of a right kind. 2. That if faith be right and true it worketh by love. First. That faith is a working grace: we have many Scriptures that prove this (2 Thessalonians 1:11). If faith be living it works. Show I.--What the work is that faith doth. Answer--It is that which nothing else can do. If we ask faith, as Christ did His disciples, What do ye more than others? Faith might say, Yes, I do.1. It doth more than sight or sense can do. Faith can make that which is far off to be near (Hebrews 11:1). 2. It will do that which reason cannot. [1. In reference to doctrinal revelation, as-- (1.) The doctrine of the Trinity. (2.) Of the creation. (3.) The doctrine of the resurrection. [2. In reference to providential dispensations. God told Abraham that he should have a child, though he were an hundred, and Sarah fourscore and ten; and Abraham believed it, and it was so.3. It can do that which no other grace can do. Faith doth all things well. This will appear by three things-- (1) Other graces are but particular graces, but this is a universal grace. (2) Other graces depend upon faith, but faith depends upon none. If faith be strong, then patience will be so, and meekness will be so, and charity will be so. Faith is the mouth of the soul: it maintains the whole body. (3) Other graces are useful, but all the graces together without faith will not justify a man. Show II.--How it comes to pass that faith doth all these things? Answer--Not by its own power. Whence then is it?1. It is from the supplies of the Spirit of God; the Spirit of God works in every act of believing (Colossians 1:29). Faith of itself can do nothing. 2. As it hath Christ for the object of it (John 14:1; Philippians 4:13). 3. By applying the promises, which are the food of faith (Psalms 60:6). Secondly.--Faith works by love. Question--What are we to understand by love? Answer--There is a two-fold love. (1) The love of God. (2) The love of our neighbour. This may be understood of both these. Question--How doth faith work by love? 1. Passively. Faith is accepted by love. (1) By works faith is discovered, and made manifest, as life by action, and fire by flame. Compared to-- 2 Corinthians 12:9. (2) It was improved and bettered. Abraham’ s faith had three great trials. [1. Leaving his kindred and country to follow God, he knew not where. [2. When God told him that he should have a son, which was greater than the former. [3. The offering of this son, which was the greatest trial of all to him.2. Actually. Show I.--How faith in God doth produce love to God.1. By acquainting the soul with His most excellent perfections. 2. By acquainting the soul with the great love of God to us. 3. In revealing this to us in the gospel, by inviting us; when the soul sees this great love of God, saith, How can I choose but love Him again? (Psalms 31:19; Psalms 31:23). II. Where this love is, it works desire of obedience to the command of God. Where love is, obedience is.(1) Free and voluntary.(2) It is abounding (1 Corinthians 15:1-58. last verse).(3) It is constant, like the waters of a spring. How should I know whether mine be a true faith? Answer--If it doth work.1. If it sets the Lord always before us.2. It sets the things of the other world before us.3. It purifies the heart.4. It overcomes the world.5. It overcomes the fiery darts of the devil. Thou hast faith, but it hath these characters:--(1) It is a blind faith.(2) It is a barren faith.(3) It is a profane faith.(4) It is a presumptuous faith; it works security; it rocks thee asleep in the devil’ s cradle.(5) There is a faith which men do swear by, but they cannot live by.(6) See whether it works by love (1 John 4:20).(7) Try the strength of your faith. [1. If faith be weak, it will work but weakly. When faith is weak, it will look upon that to be a discouragement that is indeed an encouragement. [2. If it be weak, it will not work alone, it must have company. [3. If faith be weak, it will not work in the dark. (Philip Henry.) Galatians 5:7 Ye did run well; who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth.I. The concession--“ Ye did run well.”1. Christianity is like a race. (1) It is laborious.(2) It is brief.(3) It gives the prize only to the persevering. 2. Christianity differs from a race. (1) In other races many run, but only one wins; in this all who run faithfully shall reign triumphantly.(2) In other races one hinders another; in this one helps another.(3) In other races the runners obtain a perishable crown; in this one, incorruptible. II. The expostulation--“ Who did hinder you?”1. Satan (1 Thessalonians 2:18; Zechariah 3:1).2. Heretical teachers.3. Worldly influences. (T. Adams.)Running I. Christian people must be runners in the race of God, which teaches us--1. That we must make haste without delay to keep God’ s commandments (Psalms 119:32; Psalms 119:60).2. That we must increase in all good duties.3. That we must look neither right nor left, but forward (Philippians 3:1; Luke 9:62).4. That we must allow no man to hinder our course. II. Christian people must not only run, but run well.1. The two feet by which we run are faith and a good conscience.2. Some men are lame in one or other of their feet, and are therefore hindered. III. Christian people must run from the beginning to the end, and finish their course so as to obtain life everlasting (1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24). For which cause they must1. Cherish a fervent desire of eternal life.2. Maintain a daily purpose of not sinning. (W. Perkins.)Hindrances I. The truth demands unhindered obedience. II. Hindrances to obedience to the truth are always to be expected. The Galatians were too hot to last. Hindrances raise from--1. The discovery that Christianity is a daily, practical, quiet conformity to the will of Christ, arising out of steady love to Him. 2. The use of extraordinary means to revive the pleasure of spiritual sensation or sentimentality. 3. Revived zeal for the mere external performances of religion. 4. Worldly longings and sinful habits. 5. Listening to others sneering at religion. III. The most disastrous consequences follow upon giving way to spiritual hindrances.1. We lose our hold on saving truth.2. Hindrances lead to the ruin of the soul. IV. Incessant watchfulness is necessary against such hindrances. They may come--1. Suddenly.2. Insidiously.3. Therefore be always on guard. (Hadji.)Christian advancement He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood is getting warmer and brain quicker, and whose spirit is entering into living peace. (Ruskin.)Hindrances--Riches Atlanta, according to fable, was an athletic yet charming maiden, who challenged all her suitors to run with her in the race. She offered to become the wife of the conqueror, but attached death as a penalty to failure. Many competed with her, and lost their lives. At last Hippomenes, the judge, Overcome by her charms, offered himself for the contest. Unseen, he took three golden apples, and they sprang forth from the goal, and skimmed along the sand. Hippomenes felt himself failing, and threw down one of the golden apples to detain the virgin. She, amazed, stopped to pick it up, while he shot ahead. She soon overtook him, when he threw another apple, which she stopped to get. Again she shot by him. One apple remained, which he threw to one side; and she, selfconfident or undecided, turned aside for it; and he reached the goal, and won the prize. The golden apples defeated her, as they have many others, in the race of life. Hindrances--Novel reading At a prayer-meeting on March 9th Mr. J. M. Scroggie said:--“ At the close of an evangelistic meeting in Inverness I saw a young lady at the church door looking very sad. I spoke to her, and she told me she was a backslider. She said she was converted ten years before, and for many years enjoyed fellowship with Christ; but she began novel-reading. For awhile she read novels and the Bible side by side, but in the end the novels had the best of it, and she laid aside the Bible. She had then no desire for private prayer, and grew cold in her Christian life. She moved from the part where she was then living, and went and sat under the preaching of Dr. Black, whose earnest words showed to her that she must either give up the novels or her hope of salvation. She added, ‘ For some weeks I have been wretched: I pointed out to her suitable portions of God’ s Word, and soon the light began to dawn upon her darkened soul. She went home, fell upon her knees, and after lengthened prayer, between two anti three o’ clock in the morning, she was able to thank God for restoration and joy and peace in Christ.” Hindered Christians In the heathery turf you will often find a plant chiefly remarkable for its peculiar roots; from the main stem down to the minutest fibre, you will find them all abruptly terminate, as if shorn or bitten off, and the quaint superstition of the country people alleges, that once on a time it was a plant of singular potency for healing all sorts of maladies, and therefore the great enemy of man in his malignity bit off the roots, in which its virtues resided. The plant with this odd history is a very good emblem of many well-meaning but little-effecting people. They might be defined as radicibus praemorsis, or rather inceptis succisis. The efficacy of every good work lies in its completion, and all their good works terminate abruptly, and are left off unfinished. The devil frustrates their efficacy by cutting off their ends; their unprofitable history is made up of plans and projects, schemes of usefulness that were never gone about, and magnificent undertakings that were never carried forward; societies that were set ageing, then left to shift for themselves, and forlorn beings who for a time were taken up and instructed, and just when they were beginning to show symptoms of improvement were cast on the world again. (James Hamilton, D. D.)Spiritual declension When visiting a gentleman in England, I observed a fine canary. Admiring his beauty, the gentleman replied, “ Yes, he is beautiful, but he has lost; his voice. He used to be a fine singer, but I was in the habit of hanging his cage out of the window, the sparrows came around him with their incessant chirping, gradually he ceased to sing and learned their twitter, and now all that he can do is to twitter, twitter.” Oh! how truly does this represent the case of many Christians; they used to delight to sing the songs of Zion, but they came into close association with those whose notes never rise so high, until at last, like the canary, they can do nothing but twitter, twitter. (D. L. Moody.)Religious decline This disease is one which, like that fatal malady which leaves the cheek beautiful and the eye brilliant whilst it rapidly undermines the strength, may allow external appearances to continue specious and flattering, though the work of death is fast going on within. I. Signs of spiritual decline.1. Remissness in spiritual exercises. (1) Prayer.(2) Bible reading.(3) Church-going. 2. Want of interest in the conversion of others.3. Worldliness.4. Laxness in creed. II. The dangers of this state.1. Difficult to restore decayed affection. If the fire be once out, almost impossible to rekindle the embers. 2. The longer any one goes on in this state, the less likely he is to retrace his steps. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Spiritual declension insidious It is the insidiousness of the disease which makes it so difficult to cope with, and so likely to be fatal. The resemblance is continually forced upon us, between what our medical men call consumption, and what our theologians call spiritual declension. You know very well that the presence of consumption is often scarcely suspected, till the patient is indeed past recovery. The worm has been eating out the Core of life, and yet its ravages have been overlooked, for the victim has hardly seemed to languish, and if the hectic flush may have occasionally excited a parent’ s fears, they have been quickly allayed by the assurance that no pain was felt, and by the smile that seemed prophetic of life And even when no doubt could exist in the minds of others as to the presence and progress of the malady, it is, we might almost say, one symptom of the complaint, that it flatters the patient, so that often he may be expecting recovery even on the day of his death. Now this disease, so insidious, so flattering, so fatal, is the exact picture of spiritual decline. There is, indeed, one point of difference; but that only makes the moral malady the more formidable of the two. It may be hard to make the consumptive patient see his danger, but that disease is apparent enough to others; friends and neighbours, however unsuspicious at the first, become well aware of the painful truth, as disease is more and more confirmed. But where there is spiritual decline, it may be unsuspected to the last. Ministers and kinsmen may perceive no difference in the man; equally regular in the public duties of religion, equally large in his charities, equally honourable in his dealings, equally pure in his morals. The fatal symptoms may be all internal; and because they are not such as to draw observation, there may be no warning given by ethers; and the sick man, not examining himself, and not finding that his religious friends suppose his health to be on the decline, will be all the more likely to be persuaded of his safety, and to learn his disease, alas! only from his death. See to it, then, whether or not there be amongst you this spiritual cankerworm. You may find out by the symptoms already indicated, whether or not you are in any measure ceasing to “ run well.” But you must be honest and bold with yourselves. The case is not one for trifling. You are not to shrink from proving yourselves diseased. Go down into your hearts; try the pulse there; use the thermometer there. Stay not upon the surface, where a thousand things may preserve the appearance of animation, and induce what may pass for the glow of life and health; but descend into yourselves, search into yourselves, and be content with no evidence but that of an increasing love of God and an increasing hatred of sin. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Hindrances to a godly life Christian life fitly compared to a race: soon over, and followed by a prize to the winner: a hard struggle while it lasts. But how often does one who began by running well relax his efforts and fall back! What are the causes of this--the obstacles that come in the way of Christian endeavour? I. Corrupt heart. This remains even in the best. It inclines us to sin; and unless we resist the inclination, sin gets the mastery over us, and we are slaves. One bad habit, thus contracted, is enough to ruin the soul. Our only safety lies in the help of God, He “ will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” II. Bad example. We are greatly influenced by -what we see in others. Sometimes an influence is exerted purposely to corrupt us. At school. At home. Be careful in the choice of companions. Be stedfast in doing the right, even if alone. III. Want of good guidance in youth. An un-favourable start is a terrible obstacle. But God will bestow His blessing on those “ who love and fear Him, wherever their lot has cast them. (R. D. B. Rawnsley, M. A.)Warning against defection 1. A Christian life is like a course or race from earth to heaven by the way of holiness and all commanded duties, especially the exercise of faith and love; therefore we ought to carry, ourselves as those who run in a race. 2. It is very ordinary for new converts to be carried on with a greater measure of affection and zeal, and to make swifter progress than others, or they themselves afterwards, when they are of older standing; the newness of the thing, the first edge which is upon their affections, not yet blunted by change of cases and multiplicity of duties, and God’ s restraining for a time the violent assault of multiplied furious temptations until they be a little confirmed and engaged in His way, together with His affording a more plentiful measure of His sensible presence at first than afterwards, all contribute to this. 3. As those who once made good progress in the ways of God may afterwards sit up, their after-carriage proving no ways answerable to their promising beginnings; so, when it thus happens, it is matter of sad regret to beholders, and of deserved reproof to the persons themselves. 4. No satisfactory reason can be given for which any, who has once entered the way of truth and holiness, should alter his course, halt in it, or make defection from it, and thereby cause the ways of God to be evil spoken of (2 Peter 2:2). 5. When people fall remiss and lazy in giving obedience to known truth, they are upon the very brink and precipice of defection into contrary error, and of apostasy from the very profession of truth. 6. The serious consideration of a man’ s former forwardness in the ways of God, and how little reason can be given for his present backsliding and remissness, is a strong incitement to do the first works, and by future diligence to regain “ what he has lost by his former negligence. (James Fergusson.)Obstructions to spiritual progress What are the conditions which alone could frustrate the progress upon a river of a strong man and an expert rower, placed in a good and swift boat, and furnished with oars? Such an one might either not use the oars at all, or use only one of them; the result in each case would be practically much the same. In both cases the boat would drift with the stream; the only difference would be that, when one oar was vigorously applied, the boat, in addition to drifting, would move round and round in a circle, and might perhaps for a while mock the rower by the semblance of progress. In spiritual things there are those who are utterly careless and godless--dead alike to the claims of religion and to its hopes. These are they who, launched upon the stream of life, quietly drift down it, giving no thought to the life which is to come after, and seeking only to gather the few perishable flowers which grow upon the brink. And, among persons of more serious mind, there are those who are willing indeed that Christ should do all for them, but have never surrendered themselves to Him to be and do all that He requires. And there are those, on the other hand, who have surrendered the will to Christ, and are making efforts to obey Him; but because they perceive not this simple truth, that they cannot sanctify themselves, that sanctification from first to last, like justification, must be wrought for us by Him,--are constantly met by failures and disappointments, which a simple trust in Him to do all for them can alone remedy. Both these last are they who are rowing with one oar, moving indeed, but moving in a circle, and coming round always to the same point from which they started--deluding themselves for a while by the very fact of their motion with the idea that they are progressing, and often bitterly complaining, as soon as they are undeceived, that they are making no way. And, finally, there are those who are equally well contented to give all to Christ which they have to give (that is, their will), and to take all from Him which He has to give--sanctification and wisdom, as well as righteousness--who in one and the same act of faith have renounced both self-will and self-distrust. These are they who are rowing with two oars, and so realizing a true progress towards that haven where they would be. Show me a man who is both giving to Christ all he has to give, i.e., his will, and at the same time taking from Christ all Christ has to give, which is a perfect salvation from Sin’ s guilt, power, and consequences; and I will show you a man who is growing in grace, and advancing daily in meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. And if we find ourselves not thus growing and advancing, and yet are certainly well-disposed persons of some seriousness of mind, it is, no doubt, that we are endeavouring to push the boat forward with only one of the oars, to reach that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, with trust in Christ alone, or with self-surrender alone. Apply the other oar simultaneously, and the bark shall at once begin to cleave the water, as an arrow cleaves the air, straight forward. (Dean Goulburn.)Want of perseverance The leopard does not run after his prey like other beasts, but pursues it by leaping; and if at three or four jumps he cannot seize it, for very indignation he gives over the chase. They are some who, if they cannot leap into heaven by a few good works, will even let it alone; as if it were to be ascended by leaping, not by climbing. But they are most unwise, who, having got up many rounds of Jacob’ s ladder, and finding difficulties in some of the uppermost--whether a-wrestling with assaults and troubles, or looking down upon their old allurements--even fairly descend with Demas, and allow others to take heaven. (T. Adams.)Fickleness Many are soon engaged in holy duties, easily persuaded to take up a profession of religion--and as easily persuaded to lay it down: like the new moon which shines a little in the first part of the night, but is down before half the night be gone; lightsome professors in their youth, whose old age is wrapped up in thick darkness of sin and wickedness. (W. Gurnall.)What congregation cannot show some who have outlived their profession? Not unlike the silkworm which, they say, after all her spinning, works herself out of her bottom, and becomes a common fly. As the disciples said of the literal temple, “ See what manner of stones are here,” so we once said of the spiritual temple; but now, not one stone upon another. (W. Gurnall.)The nature of backsliding Backsliding is the act of turning from the path of duty. It may be considered as--1. Partial, when applied to true believers, who do not backslide with the whole bent of their will. 2. Voluntary, when applied to those who, after professing to know the truth, wilfully turn from it and live in the practice of sin. 3. Final, when the mind is given up to judicial hardness. Partial backsliding must be distinguished from hypocrisy, as the former may exist when there are gracious intentions on the whole; but the latter is a studied profession of appearing to be what we are not. (C. Buck.)Signs of backsliding Among the evidences of backsliding are these--1. Indifference to prayer and self-examination.2. Trifling or unprofitable conversation.3. Neglect of public ordinances.4. Shunning the people of God.5. Associating with the world.6. Neglect of the Bible.7. Gross immorality. (C. Buck.)Gradual back-sliding We warn you against little concessions, little acquiescences, little indulgences, little conformities. Each may only destroy the millionth part of the velocity; but this destruction of a millionth has only to be perpetually repeated, and the planet’ s march is arrested, and its lustre is quenched. If vital religion be driven out of the soul, it will be as the Canaanites were to be driven before the Israelites, “ by little and little.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)At Preston, at Malines, at many such places, the lines go gently asunder; so fine is the angle, that at first the paths are almost parallel, and it seems of small moment which you select. But a little farther one turns a corner, or dives into a tunnel; and, now that the speed is full, the angle opens up, and, at the rate of a mile a minute, the divided convoy flies asunder; one passenger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of Holland; one will step out in London, the other in the Irish Channel. It is not enough that you look for the better country; you must keep the way; and a small deviation may send you entirely wrong. (J. Hamilton, D. D.)Spasmodic religion Nay, sometimes those motions in natural men under the gospel may be more quick, and warm, and violent for a time than the natural motion of this habit; as the motion of a stone out of a sling is quicker than that of life, but faints by degrees, because it is from a source impressed, not implanted and inherent in the nature. They are just like water heated by the fire, which has a fit of warmth, and may heat other things; but though you should heat it a thousand times, the quality not being natural, will vanish, and the water return to its former coldness. But the new heart being in the new creature causes him to walk in the statutes of God, not by fits and starts, but with an uniform and harmonious motion. (S. Charnock.)Hindrances (1) Worldliness:--Mrs. Hannah More once took Dr. Sprague to her window to show him what she called her Moral Prospect. Not far from her house was a little clump of trees and bushes, covering a few yards of ground. At some considerable distance was a little forest covering some acres. If one would place this small cluster between him and the larger, the latter was quite hidden from view. “ So,” said Mrs. More, “ the things of time being near, seem great, and so hide from our view the things of eternity.” (Rev. Dr. Plumer.)(2) Evil company:--Saphronius, a wise teacher, would not suffer even his grown-up sons and daughters to associate with those whose character was not pure and upright. “ Dear father,” said the gentle Eulalia to him one day, when he forbade her, in company with her brother, to visit the volatile Lucinda,--“ dear father, you must think us very childish if you imagine that we should be exposed to danger by it.” The father took in silence a dead coal from the hearth, and reached it to his daughter. “ It will not burn you, my child; take it.” Eulalia did so, and behold! her beautiful white hand was soiled and blackened, and, as it chanced, her white dress also. “ We cannot be too careful in handling coals,” said Eulaiia, in vexation. “ Yes, truly,” said the father. “ You see, my child, the coals, even if they do not burn, blacken; so it is with the company of the vicious.” (From the German.)(3) Neglect of prayer:--When a pump is frequently used, but little pains are necessary to obtain water; it flows out at the first stroke, because the water is high. But if the pump has not been used for a long time the water gets low, and, when it is wanted, you must pump a great while, and the stream only comes after great efforts. And so it is with prayer: if we are instant in it and faithful in it, every little circumstance awakens the disposition to pray, and desires and words are always ready. But if we neglect prayer, it is difficult for us to pray, for the water in the well gets low. (Felix Neff.)(4) Unsubdued sins:--“ The horse that draws its halter with it,” says the proverb, “ is only half escaped; “ so long as any remnant of a sinful habit remains in us, we make but an idle boast of our liberty; we may be caught, and by that which we drag with us. True and seasonable is the remark of Adams of Puritan times--“ He who will not be a mortified saint on earth shall never be a glorified saint in heaven.” (C. Nell.)(5) Unworthy trifles:--A lost pound of candy delayed a train crowded with passengers for a considerable time on June 24th, at New London, U.S. Just as the special train was about to start, a well-dressed young man went to- the guard and asked him if he would delay his train a few minutes while he went for a valuable package he had mislaid. He replied, “ I will,” and kindly waited. The young man sped on his mission and returned without finding his package. The guard then gave the signal to start. Thinking there might have been Government bonds or priceless jewels in the missing package, he asked the young man what was in it, that he might aid him in recovering it. At first the young man declined to answer, but he finally replied, “ A pound of French candy.” The guard’ s chagrin at having lost time and hindered over fifty passengers for so trifling a cause may be imagined. Various hindrances Never censure indiscriminately; admit and praise that which is good, that you may the more effectually rebuke the evil. Paul did not hesitate to praise the Galatians, and say, “ Ye did run well.” It is a source of much pleasure to see saints running well. To do this they must run in the right road, straight forward, perseveringly, at the top of their pace, with their eye on Christ, etc. It is a great grief when such are hindered or put off the road. The way is the truth, and the running is obedience; men are hindered when they cease to obey the truth. It may be helpful to try and find out who has hindered us in our race.1. We shall use the text in reference to hindered believers. I. You are evidently hindered.(1) You are not so loving and zealous as you were.(2) You are quitting the old faith for new notions.(3) You are losing your first joy and peace.(4) You are not now leaving the world and self behind.(5) You are not now abiding all the day with your Lord. 2. Who has hindered you? (1) Did I do it? Pray, then, for your minister.(2) Did your fellow-members do it? You ought to have been proof against them; they could not have intended it. Pray for them.(3) Did the world do it? Why so much in it?(4) Did the devil do it? Resist him.(5) Did you not do it yourself? This is highly probable. (a) Did you not overload yourself with worldly care? (b) did you not indulge carnal ease? (c) Did you not by pride become self-satisfied? (d) Did you not neglect prayer, Bible reading, the public means of grace, the Lord’ s Table, etc.? Mend your ways, and do not hinder your own soul. (e) Did not false teachers do it, as in the case of the Galatians? If so, quit them at once, and listen only to the gospel of Christ. 3. You must look to it, and mend your pace. (1) Your loss has been already great. You might by this time have been far on upon the road.(2) Your natural tendency will be to slacken still more.(3) Your danger is great of being overtaken by error and sin.(4) Your death would come of ceasing to obey the truth.(5) Your wisdom is to cry for help, that you may run aright. II. We shall use the text in reference to delaying sinners.1. You have sometimes been set a-running. (1) God has blessed His Word to your arousing.(2) God has not yet given you up; this is evident.(3) God’ s way of salvation still lies open before you; 2. What has hindered you? (1) Self-righteousness and trust in yourself?(2) Carelessness, procrastination, and neglect?(3) Love of self-indulgence, or the secret practice of pleasurable sins?(4) Frivolous, sceptical, or wicked companions?(5) Unbelief and mistrust of God’ s mercy? 3. The worst evils will come of being hindered. (1) Those who will not obey truth will become the dupes of lies.(2) Truth not obeyed is disobeyed, and so sin is multiplied.(3) Truth disregarded becomes an accuser, and its witness secures our condemnation. Conclusion:1. God have mercy on hinderers. We must rebuke them.2. God have mercy on the hindered. We would arouse them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)A wrong maxim Cecil says that some adopt the Indian maxim, that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. Such is not the teaching of the gospel. It is a good thing to be walking in the ways of God, but it is better to be running--making real and visible progress, day by day advancing in experience and attainments. David likens the sun to a strong man rejoicing to run a race; not dreading it and shrinking back from it, but delighting in the opportunity of putting forth all his powers. Who so runs, runs well. (The Christian.)A difficult race The Christian race is by no means easy. We are so let and hindered in running “ the race that is set before us,” because of--1. Our sinful nature still remaining in the holiest saints. 2. Some easily-besetting sin (Hebrews 12:1). 3. The entanglements of the world, like heavy and close-fitting garments, impeding the racer’ s speed. 4. Our weakness and infirmity, soon tired and exhausted, when the race is long or the road is rough. (G. S. Bowes.)Hinderers It is possible that fellow-professors may hinder. We are often obliged to accommodate our pace to that of our fellow-travellers. If they are laggards we are very likely to be so too. We are apt to sleep as do others. We are stimulated or depressed, urged on or held back, by those with whom we are associated in Christian fellowship. There is still greater reason to fear that in many eases worldly friends and companions are the hinderers. Indeed, they can be nothing else. None can help us in the race but those who are themselves running it; all others must hinder. Let a Christian form an intimate friendship with an ungodly person, and from that moment all progress is stayed; he must go back; for when his companion is going in the opposite direction, how can he walk with him except by turning his back upon the path which he has formerly trodden? (P.)A sailor remarks “ Sailing from Cuba, we thought we had gained sixty miles one day in our course; but at the next observation we found we had lost more than thirty. It was an under-current. The ship had been going forward by the wind, but going back by the current.” So a man’ s course in religion may often seem to be right and progressive, but the under-current of his besetting sins is driving him the very contrary way to what he thinks. (Cheever.)Hindrances to religious life I propose to discuss some of those causes which prevent growth and development of religious life. I shall not stop to illustrate the evil influences of overt and known wickedness. I shall select, therefore, only some less apparent, but nevertheless influential causes which produce barrenness in Christian life. Let me say, preliminarily, that there are a great many persons who seem to need no special religious teachings, for one of two opposite reasons. There is one class who are so evenly adjusted in their faculties, so well balanced in mind constitutionally, and who from birth are so Christianly educated, and who are so genially affected by parents, friends, and social connections, and who have all the appointments of society so fitted round about them, that when they become Christians their life seems to be a tranquil and almost unresisting progress. Then there is another large class to whom I do not speak particularly, namely, those persons who have--I know not how, and they know not how--made a profession of religion;--I know not why, and they know not why;--but still they have done it, and are in the Church; and that is about the whole of it. Other people have their difficulties about prayer; they have none, for they do not pray. Other people have their difficulties about the sacred Scriptures; they do not read the Scriptures enough to be troubled by them. The Bible seldom troubles people who do not meddle with it. Other people have their temptations; they have none that they recognize as such. They have temptations, but they yield so easily to them that they are not disturbed by them. Those who have no religious conscience, and whose life is one of quiet compliance with circumstances as they are--it is not particularly to such that I speak to-day. The third class--which is the great middle class--consists of persons who are professedly Christian people, but who have great and almost unceasing religious difficulties. I. The want of general technical religious culture is one obvious cause of confusion and distress. Men may enjoy little for the very same reason that some farmers reap little--because they sow little and till little. This is the natural poverty which comes from the want of religious thrift. The tendency of our age and nation is particularly to external activity, not to internal meditations. This excessive activity carries us away, and exhausts our susceptibility. How can it be-but that Christians should be weak, when there is so much to stimulate, and so little to feed them? II. But, secondly, the endeavours which men are continually making to live a religious life while using only a part of their natures, will explain a great many difficulties which Christians experience. It is to be assumed that man is a symmetrical being in his Divinely created nature; that every part of that nature was needed, or God would not have given it, and that no man can become what God meant, who does not develop every part of himself according to the spirit of Christianity. To take every faculty or power God has given you, and bring it under Divine influences, and make it act right--that is being a Christian; and all partialisms, by just so much as they are partialisms, are, therefore, misunderstandings or misappropriations of Christian truth. Let us specify a few. First, our religion must always aim at a good and healthy condition of the body. Health is a Christian grace. It is the mother of almost all the Christian graces; so much so that in respect of multitudes, although it is not difficult for them to exercise Christian graces when they are perfectly healthy, it is almost impossible for them to do it when they are not healthy. What they supposed to be an infernal temptation was the protest of nature in themselves. Our appetites and passions are all of them to be controlled, used, sanctified--not killed. So all our social affections must be used, Christianized, and made to be a part of our Christian life. They are not to be regarded as alternatives, but as parts of true Christian experience. It is sometimes said that we are to distinguish between the natural affections and the gracious ones. I do not know of any gracious affections that are not natural ones. Natural affections, rightly directed, become, by that very rectitude, gracious. Your store, your office, your shop, your family, your neighbourhood, the street--these are not so many things that you must resist for the sake of grace. On the contrary, you must deal with them as the means of grace. III. Thirdly, men are left in an ungrowing and barren state from an ignorance of the various influences or instruments by which religious feeling may be cultivated. Let me mention a few of those things which observation and experience have taught me to be instrumental in promoting religious feeling. I have mentioned already, and shall mention again only for the sake of completeness, secret religious exercise, as one of the things that promote Christian feeling. I will mention, next, sympathy with other minds. I have never seen a tree whose leaves sung, unless, somehow, the wind was caused to play among them; but the leaves of any tree will sing when the wind does play through them. And there are a great many hearts that do not sing because nothing moves them to sing. Then there are some persons who seem so constituted that their religious feelings almost never flow so readily as when they act for other people. They are persons of great constitutional benevolence. They make benevolence their conscience. When they go forth into life, benevolence is their guiding principle. Such persons oftentimes say, “ I never can have deep religious feelings by ordinary means; but when such a man was in trouble, and told me of the wants of his family--his wife and children--and I took my hat and went home with him, and mingled my tears with theirs, it did seem as if I was not a hand-breadth from heaven. I never had such a sense of the goodness of God as I had then.” Probably you were never so near like God as you were then. No wonder you felt near Him. You are not far from Him when you get so near Him as to give your time and energies for the good of His needy creatures. There are many persons who are very little affected by social sympathy, or music, or art, or any of the other influences to which I have referred, but who would be amazingly lifted up if they could have certain doubts which they have concerning their religious safety purged away. Oh, how many different ways there are by which God comes into the soul! The great God, so prolific of thought, so endless in diversity of function, has a million ways by which to express Himself. He, in His power, works on the soul, not through one thing alone--not alone through steeple, nor meetinghouse, nor lecture-room, nor closet, though often and much through these; but through all things--through the heavenly bodies, and animals, and insects, and worms, and clouds, and mountains, and oceans, and rivers, and the productions of the earth; and not by these only, but by everything that affects man’ s comfort and happiness in this life--by store and anvil, and plane and saw, and hospital and poor-house, and music and forms of beauty, and sweet feelings and trials, and sufferings and victories over temptation, and light and darkness, and joy and sorrow, and ten thousand unnameable subtle influences that touch the human soul; by all these God reveals His greatness and goodness to us, that He may win us to Himself, and make us heirs of immortality; and, blessed be His name, not to us alone who are here, but to every one, everywhere! (H. W. Beecher.)Obeying the truth To obey the truth is to feel and act agreeably to it. It implies such a state of the heart, and such a comformation of conduct, as comports with the nature of the things revealed and believed. As, for example, the truth relates in part to the character of God, which it represents to be infinitely excellent and amiable. To obey that truth is to admire and love the Divine character, for those are the feelings appropriate to it. Is it the greatness of God that is the object of contemplation? The duty is veneration. Is it His sovereignty? The duty is submission. Is it His law? The duty is compliance with all its requisitions. Does the truth relate to the subject of sin? Then the duty is repentance. Does it relate to the Saviour? The duty is faith and trust in Him. We may learn hence the high importance, yea, necessity of apprehending and believing the truth. It cannot otherwise be obeyed. Obedience to truth not known or not credited is impossible. We may learn also the insignificance and worthlessness of mere faith and knowledge. To believe there is a God and not love Him; to have a knowledge of Christ, without trust in Him, or of sin without repenting of it, what is that worth? The obedience of the truth is religion. There can be no better definition of it, unless it be one which we find in Scriptures, viz., this “ faith that worketh by love.” There is no other religion worth anything, or availing aught,but that which answers to this description. The obedience of error is not religion, nor is the belief of truth religion. Sincerity is not religion, nor is orthodoxy, but the obedience of the truth. To obey the truth is not anything that can be done at once, or that requires to be done only at stated periods. Religion is not a job, which, being done, there is an end of it; not a mere arrears to be paid up, or a mere score to be wiped off. The truth must be perseveringly obeyed. There is such a thing (would there were not) as declension in religion. The Galatians declined. Paul heard of it, and wrote to them on the subject. How melancholy it is that men should turn away from God, that they should grow worse, as they get nearer the grave and the judgment! If we see no indications of declension in you, yet He who sees not as man sees may. In some of you, however, even we do see them. There is a visible diminution of interest in the things of religion. And I ask you, professor of religion, what it was that hindered you. What first drew you away; how did this declension commence; and where did it commence, and how did it first manifest itself? What sin did you fall into, what duty omit, what was it that you suffered yourself to become inordinately attached to? And you who neither profess nor possess religion, I ask you what hindered you from becoming a penitent disciple of Christ at that time to which I have alluded. Although the hindrance in every case is not precisely the same, yet there is a passage of Scripture which is applicable to every case. “ A deceived heart hath turned him aside.” Whenever one either totally or partially departs from the living God, it is because of an evil heart of unbelief that is in him. And there is another passage which applies perhaps to every case of defection. “ Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” That phrase, the “ world,” is a very comprehensive one. It includes everything which may be preferred to God. It includes persons and things. It comprehends profit, pleasure, and honour; your business, your profession, your family. One loves the world in this aspect of it, another in that. In what shape or phase of it, it drew away and destroyed Demas, I do not know. By what one of its many chains it binds you, I cannot tell; perhaps by one of such delicate materials, and so finely drawn, that it is scarcely, if at all, perceptible. (W. Nevins, D. D.) Galatians 5:8 This persuasion cometh not of Him that calleth you. This persuasion “ We learn-- I. That the cause of religious declension is unbelief in God’ s Word, and surrender to plausible persuasions. Thus--1. Eve, by the persuasion of the devil.2. Papists, by persuasion that the Church cannot err.3. Common people, by persuasion that God is all mercy.4. Tradesmen, that they have a family to keep.5. Moralists, that honesty and temperance are sufficient for salvation. II. That our duty and safety lie in following absolutely the calling of God.1. Thus Abraham.2. Thus Paul. III. That doctrines are to be tested by their conformity or nonconformity to the calling of God.1. God calls us to liberty; hence the yoke of ordinances is wrong.2. God calls us to justification by the merits of Christ; hence justification by works is wrong.3. God calls us to self-denial and service; hence self-indulgence even in religious privileges is wrong.4. God calls us absolutely to and for Himself; hence the sin of conformity to the world. IV. That God calls even backsliders; which shows--1. God’ s patience.2. The possibility of restoration. V. That our life and conversation must be suitable to the high calling of God. (W. Perkins.) Galatians 5:9A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Leaven as a symbol of evil I. Leaven corrupts: evil corrupts. II. Leaven infects: evil infects. III. Leaves is subtle and secret in its movements: So is evil. It is a virus whose antecedents and consequents it is impossible to trace. IV. Leaven is not restricted to one mode of reaching the mass upon which it superinduces its own chemical conditions. It may be inserted by the hand of another, or it may be wafted by a breeze, and fall by its own gravity. So evil works--1. Through systems and organizations. (1) In our Lord’ s time by the Pharisaic, Sadducean, and Herodian systems.(2) In Paul’ s day by the Judaizing emissaries. So now there is the leaven of--(1) Religious superficiality;(2) scepticism;(3) formalism. 2. Through the Zeit-Geist, the spirit of the age. IV. The resultant duties.1. Indignation. To prevent fermentation, the chemist passes the air which contains the sporules through a hot platinum tube, which destroys the germs. A mild apologetic mood will not do for evil. 2. Separation. Living organisms will not grow energetically until brought in contact with substances having an affinity with them. So evil must be “ cut off” by caution. V. The chief instrument in the war against evil is the Cross of Christ. (J. Clifford, D. D.)The power of example Just as the leaven, by its mere presence, changes the particles of meal in which it is hid, so does each human being, by his mere presence, affect for good or evil those with whom he associates. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)Scripture use of leaven I suppose we are most of us rather surprised that “ leaven” is generally used in a bad sense in Holy Scripture. Not, indeed, always; because the kingdom of heaven itself is likened to leaven; but generally. In the New Testament leaven is mentioned on five distinct occasions, and on four of these as a type of something very evil, as a symbol of a thoroughly mischievous activity. In the Old Testament, the prohibition of leaven in all the offerings made to God occurs to us at once. It must, however, be allowed that this prohibition has two distinct origins, the one of which (and the earlier and most important) is purely historical, and carries with it no notion of good or evil. The total avoidance of leaven during the annual solemnity of the Passover, although it afterwards acquired a moral significance, was simply ordained in memory of their hasty flight from Egypt (Exodus 12:1-51.). The other prohibition, however, is of a moral and typical character: the exclusion of leaven from the sacrifices of God distinctly gave a moral character and meaning to its absence (Leviticus 2:11) Now let us ask what leaven is, and whether there is anything in its own nature to explain the evil significance which Holy Scripture has attached to it. Leaven, then, is simply so much dough in a state of fermentation. When the last “ lump” had been leavened, and was ready for baking, a portion was set aside to act as leaven for the next “ lump.” Now the process of fermentation is one of the most curious, and (until lately) most obscure among the commoner operations of nature. It is now known to be due to the rapid--often inconceivably rapid--development of vegetable (fungoid) growth, which has the power of disengaging a quantity of free acid, and of changing the chemical character of the substance on which it acts. It is believed that most, if not all, contagious diseases are due to fermentation imported into the blood; and the terrible danger of these diseases is only a striking proof of the extreme facility with which fermentation spreads. This is, indeed, its one great characteristic--a characteristic which governs at once many of the most ordinary and useful operations of life, and many of its most deadly and widespread evils. Fermentation may, indeed, be conveyed by one substance into another, as in the common case of dough “ raised” by means of yeast. But the ordinary and typical method is that of leaven, which is itself fermented dough, introduced into the midst of other unfermented dough. The invariable consequence is, that the fermented portion has the power of superinducing its own chemical condition upon the mass with which it is placed in contact: being itself in a state of violent chemical change, it has the power of setting on the same change all around it; nor will this action cease until that of which it is a part has entirely succumbed to its influence. But this change is, in its entirety, a change for the worst: it may, indeed, be checked (as in bread by baking, in wine by adding spirit, or by other means); but unless stopped at an early stage it is hurtful; and when it cannot be checked, as in decaying substances and in fatal diseases, it is simply destructive. Thus fermentation does, as it were, spring from evil and end in evil; it originates in that which is corrupt and hastening towards dissolution, and it ever tends to reproduce the same. Only when carefully watched, and mastered, and held in check, does it lend itself to real usefulness. And even so it retains some reminder of its evil origin. Yeast may be tasteless and harmless enough; but leaven is fermented, i.e., “ sour,” dough, and always imparts a certain sourness to the bread which is made with it. It is in the nature of all complex organic substances to be subject to a destructive fermentation; they are only kept from it, only preserve their delicate chemical balance, by the principle of life (whatever it may be) within them The very law of leaven and its power stands in the fact of like to like; and even so false teaching can only act with rapidity and certainty when it comes to minds disposed to receive it--when it jumps, i.e., with the popular errors and exaggerations of the day. But with moral evil it is different, because that evil is always in us more or less, and therefore the leaven always finds something apt to work on if it be admitted. There is in most of us, at any rate, a large body of imaginations which are ready to swell, to work, to become turbid, to disengage a quantity of evil temper and evil feeling, and to ruin the proper sweetness and savour of our Christianity, if once we have opened our hearts to the contagion of malice and wickedness. In 1 Corinthians5. St. Paul passes, by an easy transition, from the natural to the historical associations of leaven. As sedulously as all ferment was banished from the houses of the Israelites, so sedulously should the moral ferment be banished from the hearts of Christians. (R. Winterbotham, B. Sc.)Infectious nature of evil The least particle of evil infects; a single spark kindles a forest. Away with it! But O ye careless! is it a small thing to you, to be corrupted through idle talk and accompanyings, through poison of lies against Christ? (Hedinger.)The lost hammer A relief lifeboat was built at New London thirteen years ago. While the workmen were busy over it, one man lost his hammer. Whether he knew it or not, it was nailed up in the bottom of the boat. Perhaps if he found it out, he thought the only harm done was the loss of one hammer. The boat was put to service, and every time it rocked on the waves that hammer was tossed to and fro. Little by little it wore for itself a track, until it had worn through planking and keel, down to the very copper plating, before it was found out. Only that plate of copper kept the vessel from sinking. It seemed a very little thing in the start, but see what mischief it wrought. So with a little sin in the heart. It may break through all the restraints that surround us, and but for God’ s great mercy, sink our souls in endless ruin. A few evil words in a child’ s ear have rung in his soul for twenty years, and brought untold harm. It is the sir hidden in the heart that we should most fear. There are none who do not need to pray, “ Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.” Little faults The least unfaithfulness may bring a curse upon us, as the foot of the chamois on the snowy mountains, or the breath of a traveller who sings or shouts on his snowy road, may cause an avalanche which shall entomb the village now full of life and gaiety at the mountain’ s base. “ It is the little rift within the lute, That by-and-by will make the music mute, And, ever widening, slowly silence all: The little rift within the lover’ s lute, Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit, That rotting inwards slowly moulders all.” One wilful sin enough to ruin The effect of one wilfully committed vicious action on the inner life of a man may be like the effect produced by allowing a single drop of ink to fall into a glass of pure water, which surely, though perhaps imperceptibly, permeates and contaminates the whole. Danger of little sins A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump; a little staff may kill one; a little leak in a ship sinks it; a little flaw in a good cause mars it--so a little sin may at once bar the door of heaven and open the gates of hell: though the scorpion he little, yet it will sting a lion to death: and so will the least sin, if not pardoned by the death of Christ. (T. Brooks.)You need not break the glasses of a telescope, or coat them over with paint, in order to prevent you from seeing through them. Just breathe upon them, and the dew of your breath will shut out all the stars. So it does not require great crimes to hide the light of God’ s countenance. Little faults can do iV just as well. (H. W. Beecher.)Believe it, these little sins do arm God’ s terrible power and vengeance against you: and as a page may carry the sword of a great warrior after him, so your little sins do, as it were, bear the sword of God’ s justice, and put it into His hands against you. (Bishop Hopkins.)A company was walking in Sudbrook Park, when Dr. Ellis drew attention to a large sycamore tree decayed to the core. “ That fine tree,” said he, was killed by a single worm. Two years previously, the tree was as healthy as any in the park, when a woodworm, about three inches long, was observed to be forcing its way under the bark Of the trunk. It then caught the eye of a naturalist who was staying there; and he remarked, “ .Let that worm alone, and it will kill the tree.” This seemed very improbable; but it was agreed that the black-headed worm should not be disturbed after a time it was discovered that the worm had tunnelled its way a considerable distance under the bark. The leaves, next summer, dropped off very early; and, in the succeeding year, it was a dead, rotten thing, and the hole made by the worm might be seen in the heart of the once noble trunk.” “ Ah,” said one who was present, “ let us learn a lesson from that single tree. How many who once promised fair for usefulness in the world and the Church have been ruined by a single sin!” Little sins lead to greater It is Satan’ s custom by small sins to draw us to greater, as the little sticks set the great ones on fire, and a wisp of straw enkindles a block of wood. (T. Manton, D. D.)A spark is the beginning of a flame, and a small disease may bring a greater. (R. Baxter.)Sin encroacheth by degrees upon the soul ; if it can get but one of its claws into us, it will quickly follow with its head and whole body. Unfaithfulness to God is first discovered in the smallest matters, then it proceeds to greater things. As the decay of a tree is first visible in its twigs, but by degrees it goeth on the bigger arms, and from them to the main body. As it is the nature of a cancer or gangrene to run from one joint or part of the body to another, from the toe to the foot, from the foot to the leg, from the leg to the thigh, and thence to the vital parts. Do we not sometimes see a whole arm imposthumated with the prick of a little finger; and have we not sometimes heard of a great city betrayed by the opening of a little postern? These little sins will grow to great ones if let alone. Time will turn small dust into stone. The poisonous cockatrice at first was but an egg. Small twigs will prove thorny bushes if not timely stubbed up. (G. Swinnock.)Deteriorating influence of little sins The little transgressions in which men indulge, though they have no power upon the settled course of human affairs, even if they are swept out into a current of public sentiment that carries them down, as leaves are carried by the Amazon, are not harmless nor indifferent, because, aside from the influence of minor delinquencies upon the sum of affairs outwardly, there is another history and record, namely, their influence upon the actor. They deteriorate conscience. You can by a blow crush and destroy the conscience, or you can nibble and gnaw it to pieces. There is one way in which a lion strikes down his prey, and there is another way in which a rat comes at his prey; and in time the gnawing of vermin is as fatal to beauty and life itself as the stroke of the lion’ s paw. These little infidelities to duty, truth, rectitude, lower the moral tone, limit its range, destroy its sensibility; in short, they put out its light. It is recorded of a lighthouse erected on a tropical shore, that it was like to have failed for the most unlooked-for reason. When first kindled, the brilliant light drew about it such clouds of insects, which populate the evening and night of equatorial lands, that they covered and fairly darkened the glass. There was a noble light that shone out into the darkness and vanquished night, that all the winds could not disturb, nor all the clouds and storms hide; but the soft wings and gauzy bodies of myriads of insects, each one of which was insignificant, effectually veiled the light, and came near defeating the proposed gift to mariners. And so it is in respect to conscience. There may be a power in it to resist great assault, to overcome strong temptations, and to avoid fearful dangers; but there may be a million little venomous insect habits, unimportant in themselves, taken individually, but fearful in their results collectively. (H. W. Beecher.)Insidiousness of little sins Men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, a million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them, would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would be neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through. Now men think, with regard to their conduct, that if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never he able to hold up their heads; but they will harbour in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin. (H. W. Beecher.)The bad leaven; or, the contagion of sin There is a thing active, “ leaven;” a thing factive, “ soureth;” a thing passive, “ the lump.” I. But because the whole speech is allegorical, let us first open the metaphor with the key of proper analogy,1. First, taking leaven for false doctrine, so we find in the New Testament four sorts of leavens: Matthew 16:6, “ Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees; “ there be two of them, the Pharisaical and the Sadducean leavens. Mark 8:15, “ Beware of the leaven of Herod;” there is the third. The fourth is my text, the leaven of mingling Mosaical ordinances with Christ’ s institutions. 2. Now to the second way of considering these words, taking leaven personally for leaveners, false teachers, indeed heretics. 3. “ A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Now let us resolve this allegory another way, and conceive by leaven, sin; by lump, man; by leavening, infection. In effect, a little sin makes the whole man, in body and soul, unsavoury to the Lord. Sin and leaven are fitly compared for their sourness. There is a leaven sharp and sour, but sanative. But this leaven is far sourer, yet hath nothing but death in it. It is soar to God, sour to angels, sour to saints, sour to the sinner. Sin is sourer than any leaven. II. The allegory thus opened, the special treasure or instruction remains yet to be drawn out. We perceive what the leaven signifies, and what the lump. Now we must consider the relation betwixt a little leaven, and the whole lump. “ A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” A little sin infecteth a great deal of righteousness. “ Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). And upon good reason; for there is a universal corruption, therefore should be a universal sanctification. In that young man that professed himself to have kept the commandments, and Christ began to love him, yet there was a little leaven spoiled all--covetousness. In Herod, though he heard many sermons of John’ s preached gladly (and it is some good thing to hear sermons with joy), yet the leaven of Herodias marred all.1. Even the least offence is mortal in its own nature, capable of transgression, and liable to malediction. 2. Sins less heinous, are the most numerous. Many littles make a mickle. Small drops of rain commonly cause the greatest floods. The less violence, the longer continuance. The drizzling sleet, that falls as it were in a mist, fills the channels, they swell the rivers, the overcharged rivers send forth their superfluous waters over the containing banks; now the meadows are polluted, the corn-fields spoiled, the cattle drowned; yea, even houses, and towns, and inhabitants are endangered, and firm continents buried under a deluge of waters. Many little sands, gathered to a heap, fail not to swallow a great vessel. You have eagles, hawks, kites, and such great fowls of rapine, flying always alone; but the sparrows and pigeons, that devour the grain, by innumerable troops. A pace is but a little space of ground; yet a thousand paces make a mile, and many miles bring to hell. If they be not the worst, they are the most; and is it not all to one purpose whether one Goliath or a thousand Philistines overcome thee? The bird brings so many little straws as make up her nest: the reprobate so many little sticks as make up his own burning pile. Augustine saith there is in sin both weight and number. Judge them by tale, and not by weight. Put a wanton speech, a loose gesture into the balance, though Christ found it heavy, and every soul shall for whom he did not bear it, yet it is censured, a little faulting, a little failing: so little, that were it less, it were nothing. 3. These little sins are not so easily felt, therefore most pernicious. If a man hath dyed his hand in blood, a peaceless conscience haunts him with incessant vexation: let him hate his brother, this little murder he feels not. The devil, like a roaring lion, is soon heard: forming himself to a fox, his insinuation is not perceived. Doubtless there be some that would shudder at the temptation to perjury; yet, by insensible steps they arrive at it: by lying they come to swearing, by swearing to forswearing. 4. Little sins are the materials of great sins. The seeds of all sins are naturally in us: not so much as treason, homicide, perjury, but there is in our nature a proclivity to them. Sin seems at first like a little cloud, but it prognosticates a deluge of ensuing wickedness. 5. A little sin infects a great deal of righteousness. The leprosy infected the garments, and the very walls of the house; but sin hath infected wood, and wool, and walls, earth, air, beasts, plants, and planets; and stuck a scar on the crystal brow of nature itself: “ For we know the whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 8:22). If the great world groan for man’ s sin, shall not the little world, man, groan for his own sin? When one commended Alexander for his noble acts and famous achievements, another objected against him that he killed Callisthenes. He was valiant and successful in the wars; true, but he killed Callisthenes. He overcame the great Darius; so, but he killed Callisthenes. He made himself master of the world; grant it, but still he killed Callisthenes. His meaning was, that this one unjust fact poisoned all his valorous deeds. Beware of sin, which may thus leaven the whole lump of our soul. Indeed we must all sin, and every sin sours; but to the faithful and repentent Christian it shall not be damnable: “ There is no damnation to them that are in Jesus Christ,” (Romans 8:1). There is in all corruption, to most affliction, to none damnation, that are in Christ. Our leaven hath soured us, but we are made sweet again by the all-perfuming blood of our blessed Saviour. 6. The least sins are the most fatal to men’ s destruction. There is death in it and for it. A dram of poison diffuseth itself to all parts, till it strangle the vital spirits, and turn out the soul from the tenement. (T. Adams.)A little leaven It is needful to remember what leaven represented under the Mosaic ritual. It typified the unrenewed degenerate nature. Though its component ingredients were the same as sweet dough, through fermentation it was liable to corruption and acidity. Thus it is opposed to the oil of the meat offering which symbolized the Spirit of God. In the latter case the meal was made palatable by a mild and penetrating process, while leaven caused a fermenting disturbance of the mass. (Kurtz.) Galatians 5:10I have confidence in you through the Lord that ye will be none otherwise minded--(Comp, Galatians 4:11-20).The troubled Church and its troublers I. Paul’ s treatment of the Galatian Church shows us--1. To hope the best of men so long as they are curable. (1) Objection: Those that hope the best may be deceived. Answer: In judgment but not in practice. It is the duty of love to hope the best. Those who suspect the worst are the oftenest deceived. (2) Objection: We must judge of things as they are indeed. Reply: Judgment of things and persons must be distinguished. No uniform rule is sufficient by which to estimate a fellow creature. The worst have repented. The best have fallen. 2. How are we to be hopeful of men? (1) Only for such things as they are able to perform, (2) and these “ in the Lord.” He only can give helping grace, exciting grace, and so lead to reformation. 3. Not to excommunicate them unless they are incurable. So long as they are curable we must use means to cure them. (1) If the sheep or the ox that goes astray must be brought home (Exodus 23:4), much more our neighbour. (2) Christ brings home the lost sheep (Luke 15:1-5). So must every under-shepherd (Ezekiel 34:4). II. Paul’ s treatment of the troubles of this church shows us--1. That God watches over the Church by a special providence.2. That the apostle’ s doctrine is an infallible certainty.3. That the troublers of Churches shall be plagued by the just judgment of God. (W. Perkins.)Bearing the judgment The consul Q.S. Caepio had taken the city of Toulouse by an act of more than common perfidy and treachery, and possessed himself of the immense hoards of wealth stored in the temples of the Gaulish deities. From this day forth, he was so hunted by calamity, all extremest evils and disasters, all shame and dishonour, fell so thick on himself and all who were his, and were so traced up by the moral instinct of mankind to this accursed thing which he had made his own, that any wicked gains fatal to their possessor acquired this name; and of such a one it would be said, “ He has gold of Toulouse.” (Trench.) Galatians 5:11 And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution?then is the offence of the Cross ceased. The perversion of apostolic preaching There are two attempts or resolves in constant operation as to the Cross. One is man’ s, to accommodate it to human liking and taste: the second is God’ s, to raise human liking and taste to it. I. The aim of man. “ Then is the offence of the Cross ceased.” And in such case, there must be its depreciation. It is brought down from its proper excellency. What is to be understood by the Cross? Not the wood. How should we be the better did we possess the very tree on which the Saviour hung and died? The true Cross consists in a fact, the crucifixion of the Son of God: in a doctrine, salvation by atonement: in an influence and moral power, a hatred to sin, a weanedness from the world, a penitential devotedness to the Saviour. The Cross is preached when the sinner is taught how he may be justified, and how he must be born again. In what lies its scandalising property, its offence? It was early declared that Christ should be a sign spoken against, and that in connection with his death, when the sword should pierce through her soul who held the Holy Child. This obnoxious sign was therefore the spectacle of a crucified Messiah. Now the following may be named as the principal exceptions taken to it by those who rejected it.1. It was an improbable medium of revelation. For man can talk loudly how God should manifest Himself and His purposes toward us. He is fond of anticipating the Father of lights, would teach Him the path of judgment and show to Him the way of understanding. Is it morally probable that all His dispensations should revolve upon the Cross for their pivot? 2. It was a stigma on this religion which set it in disadvantageous contrast with every other. It was unheard of that the vilest of all deaths should give its absolute character to a religion, and that this religion of the Cross should triumph over all. Yet this was avowed. 3. It was a violent disappointment of a general hope. 4. It was a humiliating test. Ambition, selfishness, insincerity, licentiousness, ferocity, pride, felt that it was encircled with an atmosphere in which they were instantly interrupted and condemned. In what manner did the first preachers of the Cross exhibit it? So ingenuous, so unvarnished, was that manner, that it always prejudiced them: “ to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness.” They preached it not only in its integrity of truths, but without gloss and concealment. They refined not on it. But man is desirous of doing this away as a wrongful and unnecessary impression. He would make the offence of the Cross to cease. (1) By fixing it upon some extrinsic authority.(2) By torturing it into coalition with foreign principles.(3) By transforming the character of its religious instructions.(4) By applying it to inappropriate uses.(5) By excluding its proper connections. It is not to be viewed as naked and detached, it is a centre to which all that is great and serious spreads out as circumference. While it is alone and single in its incomparableness, it is full of relations and consequences. It declares the righteousness of God. It is the basis of mercy to sinners. It is intended to sanctify as well as to expiate. II. The procedure of God. We have seen that the Cross, the true type and pledge of Christianity, may be placed in suck factitious lights and may be contemplated through such false mediums, may be so distorted from its real excellence, and so polished of its real reproach, may be so illustrated and decked, that, instead of offending, it shall be taken into favour. Yet, this is no just reading of Christianity, it is only a fiction, a tale that is told. It evades the actual import of it. It offers nothing of its actual efficacy. It is a god which cannot save. God’ s way is therefore to frustrate all these miserable perversions--to set them all aside--to honour the Cross as He knows and unfolds it--to bring the sinner into direct contact with it--to suffer him to interpose nothing--to add nothing of his own--to subtract nothing however offensive to him--that he may be brought under its original power and receive its complete impression. The method is conducted after this sort.1. It is necessary, if we would receive the proper influence of the Cross, that we be prepared to hail it as a distinct revelation. It is not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world. It is not some conclusion that the wise, the prudent, the disputer of this world, have reached. It is no gathering up of certain prepossessions and analogies. It is no happy venture in the large field of discovery and experiment. It is the immediate ray from heaven. It is a great declarative act. 2. When we rightly appreciate the Cross, when it has its full effect upon us, we recognize it as the instrument of redemption. This is not an expedient among many expedients, a safe remedy among remedies equally safe. It stands apart. This is the one vent and vehicle for mercy. 3. When our mind approves this method of salvation, it finds in it the principle of sanctification. We reverse all our aims and desires. We are called unto holiness. What shall work it in us? Gratitude for the Saviour’ s love, common cause with His mission, sympathy with His design. (1) Mark the process. We had hitherto abided in death. We had continued indifferent to the most mighty interests. Christ was preached, but He was dead in vain. He profited us nothing. We thrilled not with wonder, nor grief, nor joy. But now we are quickened with Him. He liveth in us. Our eyes are opened. It is like another sense. Our ideas are new. Each emotion is strange. We are disabused. (2) Mark the necessity. Until we be brought nigh to it, until we take hold of it, the doctrine of the Crucified Saviour is an unintelligible and uninteresting thing. “ He is of none effect to us.” It is alienated from holy use. We see it only at a distance, and it scarcely moves the most transient feeling. Until it comes into contact with our mind, it can command no proper influence. It is not a blind agent, operating perforce. It works in no occult manner. It addresses the understanding. It convinces and persuades. It excites the moral dispositions. (3) Mark the effect. There is a suddenly, though a most intelligently, developed charm. It is the infinite of attraction. All concentrates on it. It absorbs the tenderness and the majesty of the universe. It is full of glory. It combines whatever can make great or constitute greatness. It is the simplest of all simple things--the deepest of all deep things. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)The offence of the Cross I. Wherein lies the offence of the cross?1. Its doctrine of atonement offends man’ s pride.2. Its simple teaching offends man’ s wisdom, and artificial taste.3. Its being a remedy for man’ s ruin offends his fancied power to save himself.4. Its addressing all as sinners offends the dignity of Pharisees.5. Its coming as a revelation offends “ modern thought.”6. Its lofty holiness offends man’ s love of sin. II. How is this offence shown?1. Frequently by the actual persecution of believers.2. More often by slandering believers, and sneering at them as old-fashioned, foolish, weak-minded, morose, self-conceited, etc.3. Often by omitting to preach the Cross. Many nowadays preach a Christless, bloodless gospel.4. Or by importing new meanings into orthodox terms.5. Or by mixing the truth of Christ with errors.6. Or by openly denying the Deity of Him who died on the cross, and the substitutionary character of His sufferings. Indeed, there are a thousand ways of showing that the Cross offends us in one respect or another. III. What then?1. Herein is folly, that men are offended with that which God ordains; with that which must win the day; with the only thing which can save them; with that which is full of wisdom and beauty. 2. Herein is grace, that we who once were offended by the Cross, now find it to be (1) the one hope of our hearts,(2) the great delight of our souls,(3) the joyful boast of our tongues. 3. Herein is heart-searching. (1) Perhaps we are secretly offended at the Cross.(2) Perhaps we give no offence to haters of the Cross. Many professed Christians never cause offence to the most godless. (a) Is this because they bear no testimony to the Cross? (b) Is this because they are not crucified to the world? (c) Is this because there is no real trust in the Cross, and no true knowledge of Christ? (C. H. Spurgeon.)The slandered apostle I. The report spread about Paul.1. What it was--that he preached circumcision: from whence we see that ministers are subject to defamation, not only in respect of their lives but of their doctrine. (1) This verifies the saying (Ecclesiastes 8:14).(2) Ministers must use circumspection both in the manner and matter of preaching.(3) Being defamed wrongfully they must be more careful to please God (Psalms 119:69). 2. How it came about. Probably by the circumcision of Timothy. Hence we see the fashion of the world to raise reports on light occasions. II. Paul’ s defence.1. AS it was more than a mere personal matter, and one that affected the purity and success of the gospel, he was obliged to notice it. (1) Ministers should not be overnice in defending themselves. Character is its best defence. (2) When their doctrine is impugned let them defend it with all their might, for thereunto are they set. 2. Paul disproves the charge from the fact that he is persecuted for not doing what he is charged with doing. Hence we see (1) that ministers must preach the gospel, whatsoever trouble may follow. (2) The fidelity of St. Paul, who, by conceding circumcision, might have gained honour, profit, and pleasure. 3. Paul proves his innocence by the fact that the offence of the Cross was not abolished. It still offended the lapsed Galatians and their teachers. Hence this charge. (W. Perkins.)Preach the Cross Let others hold forth the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven. Let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the Church. Give me the Cross of Christ. This is the only lever which has ever turned the world upside down hitherto, and made men forsake their sins. And, if this will not, nothing will. A man may begin preaching with a perfect knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; but he will do little or no good among his hearers unless he knows something of the Cross. Never was there a minister, who did much for the conversion of souls, who did not dwell much on Christ crucified. Luther, Rutherford, Whitefield, M’ Cheyne, were all most eminent preachers of the Cross. This is the preaching that the Holy Ghost delights to bless. He loves to honour those who honour the Cross. (Bishop Ryle.)The offence of the Cross Luther was offered to be made a cardinal if be would be quiet. He answered, “ No, not if I might be pope,” and defends himself thus against those that thought him haply a proud fool for his pains: “ Let me be counted fool, or anything, so I be not found guilty of cowardly silence.” The Papists, when they could not rule him, railed at him, and called him an apostate. He confesseth the action, and saith, “ I am indeed an apostate, but a blessed and holy apostate--one that hath fallen off from the devil.” Then they called him devil; but what saith he? “ Luther is a devil; be it so: but Christ liveth and reigneth; that’ s enough for Luther: so be it.” Nay, such was the activity of Luther’ s spirit, that, when Erasmus was asked by the Elector of Saxony why the pope and his clergy could so little abide Luther, he answered, “ For two great offences--meddling with the pope’ s triple crown and the monk’ s fat paunches.” And hence was all the hatred. (Spencer.) Galatians 5:12I would they were even cut off that trouble you. Reasons for Paul’ s indignation Not content with argument he charges the Judaizers with what is base, cowardly, and corrupt. They are mean and time-serving, and dread the loss of caste among their fellow-countrymen. His whole being at last becomes excited with indignation; his brow darkens; his feelings explode; and the flash and the thunderbolt leap forth in an anathema. Only something very serious could justify even an apostle in such a mode of conducting religious controversy. What was it? The error he denounced was--1. A species of blasphemy against the Divine fact which constituted God’ s method of reconciliation, and, as such, it shocked Paul’ s love and reverence for the Christ it dishonoured (Galatians 2:21). 2. A species of apostasy from Christ, whatever might be their verbal profession of belief, and thus it shocked and was resented by his love for man (Galatians 5:2-5). 3. A thing absurd in itself, and, as such, it shocked his understanding (Galatians 2:16-18). 4. It opposed the idea of progress, intellectually considered, and it was thus inconsistent with Paul’ s hope for humanity (Galatians 4:9). 5. It was a yoke put on the neck of the Gentiles, and, as such, it shocked the apostle’ s respect for liberty, and offended and aroused his spirit of independence (Galatians 5:1). 6. It was an attempt to perpetuate a national distinction, and to keep up the supremacy of a particular people, and, as such, it offended St. Paul’ s philanthropy and ran counter to his conviction of the design of the gospel, the oneness of the race, and the equality of the nations (Galatians 3:26-28). 7. It interfered with the bestowal of the gifts of the Spirit, and, as such, it grieved the apostle on account of his anxiety for the holiness of the Church (Galatians 3:2-3). (T. Binney.)Church troublers The Church is troubled-- I. By false doctrine; thus Ahab troubled Israel (1 Kings 18:18), and false apostles the Galatians. II. By wicked example; thus Achan troubled Israel (Joshua 7:15). III. By force and cruelty; thus tyrants and persecutors trouble the Church (Acts 12:1). (W. Perkins.) Galatians 5:13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. Christian liberty I. The nature of that liberty of which the apostle here speaks. There is a charm in the very sound of liberty; it awakens many grateful recollections. But the word is employed in various acceptations. Civil liberty is that freedom which is our birthright as men. Spiritual liberty is that freedom, which belongs to us, not as men, but as Christians. II. The great value of that spiritual liberty to which all believers of gospel truth are called. Political freedom, important as it is, may be overrated. It is highly advantageous to a nation, but not essential to the happiness of individuals. Good men have been happy in exile or in prison, and bad men cannot be so under any circumstances however favourable; the cause of the difference is to be referred to the state of the mind.1. The measure of spiritual liberty, which a Christian even now attains, removes or alleviates some of the keenest and heaviest sorrows to which man is subject. 2. The measure of spiritual liberty, which a Christian now possesses, greatly heightens and refines all his enjoyments. Countermanding the original curse, it brings back some of the productions of paradise. It opens the noblest faculties and animates the best feelings of the mind. 3. It is but the beginning and pledge of that complete deliverance from all sin and sorrow, to which he is looking with lively hope. The best state on earth bears the marks of imperfection. Even where grace reigns, sin, like a rebel dethroned but not destroyed, is too near to leave any long interval of peace. In that kingdom to which we are hastening, no tumults or temptations will rise; no sickness or sighing, death or danger, will be known. No law in the members will be found warring against the law of the mind, or bringing us into captivity to sin. Even creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God (Romans 8:21). III. The way in which the liberty to which the believer is called may be duly improved. All the principles of our holy religion have a practical bearing. We see a beautiful harmony in its doctrines and precepts. This is one of the great excellencies of Christianity. Paul was a wise master-builder, equally concerned to lay a good foundation, and to carry up the superstructure.1. He gives a word of salutary warning--“ Use not liberty,” etc. There is hardly any good but is liable to abuse. Every sacred privilege has been and may be perverted. We must be on our guard against this. To use Christian liberty for an occasion to indulge the flesh is the best thing in the world turned to the worst purpose. 2. The apostle, in our text, gives a suitable word of direction--“ By love serve one another.” Love is the first and best of all the Christian graces. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc. Love finds out many means of serving our brethren. It prompts and animates the mind-it makes us cheerful, active, tender, kind, forbearing. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)By love serve one another--Christianity a system of love Look at the operations of charity, or the love of benevolence. It was this which existed in the mind of Deity from eternity, and in the exercise of which He so loved our guilty world as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. It was on the wings of charity that the Son of God flew from heaven to earth, on an errand of mercy to our lost world; it was charity that moved in the minds and hearts of the apostles, and urged them with the glad tidings of salvation, from country to country. The whole missionary enterprise is founded, not of course on the basis of brotherly kindness, but on that of charity. All those splendid instances that have been presented to us of the exercise of philanthropy are the operations of this Divine charity. See Howard, leaving the seclusion of a country gentleman, giving up his elegant retreat and all its luxurious gratifications, pacing to and fro through Europe, plunging into dungeons, battling with pestilence, weighing the fetters of the prisoner, gauging the disease of the pest-house--all under the influence of heavenly charity. See Wilberforce, through twenty years of his eventful life, lifting up his unwearied voice, and employing his fascinating eloquence against the biggest outrage that ever trampled on the rights of humanity. What formed his character, sketched his plan, inspired his zeal, but charity? See that illustrious woman, lately departed, so ripe for glory and so richly invested with it, who interested herself amidst the prisoners of Newgate--to chain their passions, to reclaim their vices, and to render them more meet for society, which had condemned them as its outcasts. What was it that gave to Mrs. Fry her principle of action, what indeed was the principle itself, but charity? (J. Angell James.)One another I. What is a Christian Church?1. Not a club, an association of persons belonging to the same rank in life, but a Divine society embracing all classes. 2. Not a republic where majorities rule, but a society where the will of the Divine Head is the governing power. 3. Two or three, met in Christ’ s name, and loyal to His will, are sufficient to constitute a Christian Church. II. What are the conditions of happy Church life?1. The root of all is obedience to the law. “ Love one another.” 2. Love gives rise to mutuality in everything. 3. Mutual feeling branches out in various ways. (1) Where help is wanted--“ Bear ye one another’ s burdens,” “ Edify one another,” “ Admonish one another.” (2) Where wounded feelings prevail--“ Confess to one another,” “ Pray for one another,” “ Forbearing one another,” “ Forgiving one another.” 4. From the whole proceeds the Christian law of courtesy and etiquette--“ Be subject to one another,” “ In honour prefering one another,” “ In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself.” (E. Johnson, M. A.)Law and liberty There is a great mistake about liberty from law. Some religious persons think it means free, so that though you sin, the law will not punish. This is the liberty of devils: free to do as much evil as you will, and yet not suffer. True Christian liberty is this, self-command; to have been brought to Christ; to do right and to love right without a law of compulsion to school you into doing it. If we have not got so far, the law has all its power hanging over us still. (F. W. Robertson.)To preach justification by the law as a covenant is legal, and makes void the death and merits of Jesus Christ. But to preach obedience to the law as a rule is evangelical; and it savours as much of a New Testament spirit to urge the commands of the law as to display the promises of the gospel. (Bishop Hopkins.)True liberty is only realized in obedience. The abuse of freedom is bondage, from which there is no self-deliverance. (T. T. Lynch.)The joy of liberty Dr. Fletcher was passing the Old Bailey one day, and saw a couple of boys turning somersaults, standing on their heads, making wheels of themselves, and all sorts of things; and he stopped, and said, “ Why, boys, whatever are you at? You seem to be delighted;” to which one of them replied, “ Ah! and you would be delighted, too, if you had been locked up in that jail three months. You would jump when you came out.” And the good old doctor said he thought it was very likely he should. And the man who has been called unto liberty by Christ, knows the sweets of freedom, because aforetime the iron had entered his soul. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Loving service A train from the Far West of America was once passing through Saratoga, having among other passengers a man with an infant child. The man’ s garments showed him to be poor, and the crape on his hat showed the child to be motherless. The infant was restless, and the father handled it clumsily; with all his efforts he could not quiet it. He wiped the tears from its eyes, and then from his own. All who saw him pitied him. At length a richly-dressed lady, whose infant lay in the arms of its nurse, said, with motherly tenderness in her tone, “ Give me the child.” The poor man gave her his boy, whose coarse and soiled robes rested for once on costly silk; his head disappeared under her shawl, and all was still. She held him mile after mile, and did not relinquish him until her own child required attention. (Biblical Treasury.)Liberty through love I. The nature of this liberty.1. This liberty is freedom from the burden of a religion of ordinances. 2. It is liberty from the moral law as the awakener of sin, and from the fear of its punishment, which is death. II. To keep this liberty pure, we should know its dangers, and avoid them.1. It may be so used as, to allow the lower nature to rule--as “ an occasion to the flesh.” (1) We are freed from ceremonies, but we cannot live without some forms. Spiritual life, left to silence, unsymbolized, unused, fades away. (2) We err if we use liberty to despise those who love ceremonial; or if we bind ourselves never to use it. 2. Our liberty from coercive law is produced in us by a love which obeys the law. If we do not love to obey, we are not in Christian liberty at all. St. Paul calls such despisers of law the servants of sin. 3. The use of freedom must be in subordination to love. It is the habit of many to placard their freedom; to violate the scruples of others. What sort of Christianity is that which uses the freedom of Christ to do violence to the love of Christ? The rule is--Use your liberty, not for your own gratification, but for the good of others. Liberty is not a principle of action; it is a mode of action. Love is its principle, and love is the test which tells whether we are free or enslaved. (S. A. Brooke, M. A.) Galatians 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The fulfilling of the law I. Love is of perpetual obligation. II. A true response to the obligation of neighbourly love will ensure the faithful discharge of every other obligation. III. Therefore love is the fulfilliing of the law. For--1. The law is the interpretation of love, and the definition and prescription of that which the infinite intelligence knows that love demands. But-- 2. There is also the underlying assumption that in the absence of love the law cannot be truly fulfilled. Therefore-- 3. When the principle of love, recognizing the authority of the teaching and guiding law, has restrained from every act of injury to its neighbour, and prompted to all sorts of kindly service for that neighbour’ s good, then has the law been truly fulfilled. (W. Tyson.)Love of our neighbour I. Love is--(1) Desire for,(2) delight in,(3) endeavour after another’ s good. II. It exists as being--1. Cherished in the heart.2. Exhibited in the life. III. The term neighbour is applicable and includes all men. All are God’ s offspring. IV. The degree of love here necessary.1. As truly as thyself.2. With the same love in kind and degree. (T. Robinson.)I. The duty--Love.1. The word.2. The deed.3. The truth. II. Its object--Our neighbour.1. Friend or foe.2. At home or abroad. III. Its measure--As thyself; therefore--1. Sincerely.2. Constantly.3. Devotedly. IV. Its excellence.1. It fulfils the whole law.2. Promotes universal happiness and peace. (J. Lyth. , D. D.)Self-love Contracted affections, like self-love, may oppose their own end--private good. The supposed contrariety between benevolence and self-love may be only apparent. I. Self-love as distinguished from other passions.1. Self-love has an internal, other affections an external, object. 2. Such affections are distinct; from self-love, though part of ourselves. 3. All language recognizes this distinction. Self-love produces interested actions; particular affections, actions which are friendly. 4. Happiness does not consist in self-love, but in the wise gratification of all our affections. 5. Self-love often fails to produce happiness; it often produces anxiety, ands when in excess, misery. Thus self-love is distinct from particular affections, and so far from being our only rule, it often disappoints itself, especially when made one solitary principle. II. Self-love as distinguished from benevolence. These are distinguished but not necessarily opposed.1. From the nature of the affections themselves; self-love does not exclude particular affections, nor does benevolence. 2. From the course of action suggested by them. (1) Affections tend both to private and public good. (2) Their tendency to one object does not disturb their connection with another. (3) Benevolence produces as much enjoyment as ambition. 3. From the temper of mind produced by them. (1) Benevolence gives a pleasure over and above other pleasures, with which it does not interfere. (2) Has an assurance of special favour from God. (3) Hence self-love and benevolence are so far from being opposed, that the second may be the easiest way of gratifying the first. (4) It is true that particular affections may be gratified, so as to interfere with self-love, but benevolence interferes with it less than any other. (5) The origin of the mistake that they interfere is in the confusion of property and happiness. 4. From Scripture, which inculcates benevolence, and yet recognizes self-love and appeals to it. (Bishop Butler.)The love of our neighbour I. The object of this affection. Love of our neighbour or benevolence seeks the good of others, and in its noblest form it is the perfection of God. II. The proper extent of this affection. As ourselves: which implies--1. That this love is to be of the same kind. (1) We have a common interest in others and in ourselves. (2) This is the proper temper of virtue; love. 2. That our love for others is to bear a certain proportion to our love for ourselves. (1) A proportion in affections implied in all virtuous characters. (2) So a due proportion of benevolence and self-love is implied here. (3) What the proportion is to be not easily decided, for affection is not easily measured; but as to actions, the expression of affection, the more others occupy our thoughts (provided we neglect not ourselves) the better. Even if this imply-- 3. That our love for others is equal to our love for ourselves, no ill consequences can ensue, for (1) men have other affections for themselves not felt for others. (2) They are specially interested in themselves. (3) They have a particular perception of their own interests, so that there is no fear of self-neglect. III. The influence of this affection on our general temper. Its effect is--1. To produce all charitableness.2. To fit men for every relation and duty.3. To moderate party feeling.4. To prevent; or heal all strife. IV. This affection includes all virtue.1. Love prompts men to seek the greatest happiness of all, which is itself a discharge of all obligations. 2. Love even prompts to the practice of personal virtues (temperance, etc.); and certainly the neglect of these virtues implies a deficiency of love to others. 3. Apart from particular natures and circumstances, love includes all goodness; and-- 4. Piety itself is the love of God, as an infinitely good Being. (Bishop Butler.)We may love man because of what he is as man God has stamped beauty on his material body, and given an higher grandeur to his mysterious mind. But there is a deeper and diviner reason for love. It is this: To love a man because he is a brother in Christ; because he is to some extent like Christ, and reflects His image upon those who come in contact with him. Here the grounds of love are moral, spiritual, and internal. (Thomas Jones.).Neighbourly love Thomas Samson was a working miner, and working hard for his bread. The captain of the mine said to him on one occasion, “ Thomas, I’ ve got an easier berth for you, where there is comparatively little to do, and where you can earn more money: will you accept it?” What do you think he said? Captain, there’ s our poor brother Tregony. He has a sick body, and he is not able to work as hard as I am. I fear his toil will shorten his useful life. Will you let him have the berth?” The captain, pleased with his generosity, sent for Tregony, and gave him the berth, which he is now enjoying. Thomas was gratified, and added, “ I can work a little longer yet.” (Sunday Magazine.)Caring for others The intensity of maternal affection was illustrated in the observation of a little boy, who, after reading Bunyan’ s “ Pilgrim’ s Progress,” asked his mother which of the characters she liked best. She replied, “ Christian, of course: he is the hero of the story.” The dear child responded, “ Mother, I like Christiana best, because when Christian set out on his pilgrimage, he went alone; but, when Christiana started, she took the children with her.” Great love:--Edward I. of England having received a wound from a poisoned dagger, his wife Eleanor sucked out the poison, venturing her own life to save her husband’ s. Galatians 5:15 But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. Uncharitable contentions in the Church of God I. There ever were, are, and will be, differences among God’ s own people in the matters of religion. Even amongst the Jews, who had such punctual rules prescribed before them, yet the school of Hillel went one way, and the school of Shammai went another; and their contentions sometimes were sprinkled with the blood one of another. And no sooner was the gospel planted, but the professors of it fell at variance about matters of religion: this is plain in the controversies about circumcision, for the quieting whereof that famous council met at Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-41.). And the causes hereof are evident:--1. Our general imperfection in this life. As the best men are imperfect in their holiness, so are they in their knowledge; there will be defects in our understanding, as well as in our will. So that it is scarce possible to prevent all diversity of opinions in religion. 2. Men’ s education contributes much hereunto. It is manifest how strong an influence this hath upon all people’ s understandings. 3. Men’ s capacities are different. Some have a greater sagacity to penetrate into things than others; some have a clearer judgment to weigh and determine of things than others; some have more solid learning by far than others; and these, doubtless, will attain to a higher form and class than others can. 4. Men’ s natural tempers are different. Some more airy and mercurial, some more stiff and melancholy. 5. Men’ s interests are different. Not that any good man doth wittingly calculate his profession for his baser ends; but yet they may secretly bias him, especially in more minute and dubious matters belonging to religion. II. These differences may and should be managed with charity. “ Better to have truth without public peace, than peace without saving truth:” so Dr. Gauden. “ We must not sail for the commodity of peace beyond the line of truth; we must break the peace in truth’ s quarrel:” so another learned man. But this is to be understood of necessary and essential truths; in which case, “ that man little consults the will and honour of God, who will expose the truth, to obtain,” as saith Nazianzen, “ the repute of an easy mildness.” But when, after all such endeavours have been used as are within the reach of a man’ s parts and calling, still differences do remain in smaller matters, these ought to be managed with all charity; that is, with true love. III. These dissensions are uncharitable, when persons bite and devour one another. The spring of all this poison is in the heart; for “ out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and the hand acts. There is a defect of real and fervent love, and an excess of selfishness within; self-opinion, self-will, and self-interest: and this arrogance breeds insolence, and all the “ biting and devouring” mentioned in this place. Now if these two expressions do bear a distinct signification, then--1. Men do “ bite” one another by keen and venomous words. (1) Sometimes by censuring their brethren. (2) Sometimes men “ bite” one another by plain slandering one another, charging them with crimes which they abhor. (3) And sometimes men “ bite” by downright railing at, if not cursing, those that differ from them. 2. Men “ devour” one another by actual endeavours to injure and hurt one another. (1) By fraud.(2) By force. IV. These uncharitable contentions do prepare for utter destruction.1. So saith Scripture (Hosea 10:2.; Matthew 12:25). 2. “ Histories and experience do attest the same. For contentions in general: it is evident that the divisions which were among the Trojans made way for their overthrow by the Greeks; the like animosities among the Greeks brought them under the slavery of Philip. The feuds that were among the Assyrians, brought in the Persians; and the like among the Persians subjected them to the Macedonians; and the contentions among Alexander’ s successors rendered them up to be swallowed by the Romans, one after another. Yea, the Roman Empire itself, near the tinge when the western and the eastern branches of it were hottest in contention about the supremacy of their bishops and about images,--behold, the Goths and Vandals destroyed the one, and the Saracens and Turks ruined the other. The scandalous discords among the Jews exposed Jerusalem at length to that dreadful desolation by Titus Vespasian. And for this island, it has been still accounted like some great animal, that can only be ruined by its own strength. The contentions of the Britons made the Romans conquerors. Afterwards the Saxons came in upon the divisions of the natives; and the contentions of the Saxons prepared the way for the Normans. And for religious differences: it is known how Julian the Apostate cherished those between the Catholics and the Donatists; saying, that no savage beasts were so cruel against one another as the Christians; so that he expected thereby to ruin them all. It is notorious what famous and numerous churches were once in Africa; but, by the contentions of the Manichees, then of the Donatists, they are now extinguished. The contentions among the Protestants in King Edward the Sixth’ s reign ended in the persecution by Queen Mary: and if ever the Romans ruin us again, it will be procured by our contentions among ourselves. 3. There is too much reason for it. (1) On the part of the thing itself. These dissensions have a natural tendency to promote our destruction; nothing can more properly bring it to effect. (a) They weaken that confidence that is necessary for the preservation of a people. (b) They destroy that love which is the cement of all societies. As they proceed from a defect of love, so they quite ruin the remainders of it. Now, this love unites, and so strengthens: but when men’ s hearts are once divided from each other, what care I what becomes of them whom I hate? (c) They prepare for the most desperate actions. For when there is a dislike settled within, and that men’ s spirits are exasperated by provoking words and actions, there wants nothing but opportunity to produce the most violent effects. (2) On the part of God they deserve destruction; and therefore they plainly prepare for it. (a) They provoke the wrath of God. (b) They consume the power and life of godliness. God’ s grace never thrives in an unquiet spirit. Application:1. Union is the true means of our preservation. Let us consider (1) how many things we agree in. And if men would begin at this end, and not still at the wrong end--to wit, the few and small things wherein we differ--we could not, for very shame, be so implacable to one another. (2) Consider the imperfections of our human nature. Our understandings were sorely wounded by the fall of Adam; and they are but imperfectly and unequally recovered by all the means which the gospel affords. Why should we condemn every one that is not endowed with our abilities, or advanced to our capacity? (3) Consider, that you, who are so violent, do differ from others just as far as they differ from you. (4) Consider, that there have been greater differences than ours among those that were the true members of Christ’ s Church. Witness Acts 15:1 : “ And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved:” a material point, and urged, you see, with great confidence; and yet God forbid we should blot these out of the roll of true Christians! (5) Consider your own personal moral failings. Hath not each of us some “ right eye” ? Are we perfectly good? Are not we all “ men of like passions” ? 2. If uncharitable contentions do prepare for utter destruction, then woe be to the instruments and bellows of our contentions! (1) The devil.(2) Atheistical and debauched persons.(3) Ignorant and proud people. These are many in number, and generally most conceited and contemptuous. Of such good old Mr. Greenham is to be understood, when, being asked by the lord-treasurer Cecil, where the blame of that great rent lay between the bishops of those times and others, “ The fault,” said he, “ is on both sides, and on neither side: for the godly-wise on both sides bear with each other, and concur in the main; but there be some selfish, peevish spirits on both sides, and these make the quarrel.”3. If these prepare for destruction, then we in this sinful nation are in the ready way to misery. For, (1) Our differences and contentions are notorious.(2) We are uncharitable in these contentions.(3) Too many of those that should quench these flames, exasperate them.(4) Our common enemy is ready to devour us. 4. Let us all, then, be entreated, conjured, and persuaded to forbear biting and devouring one another. Leave off this brutish behaviour toward one another. To which end consider-- (1) The greatness and baseness of the sin. (a) You break the great commandment of God’ s law, which is love. (b) You trample upon the great precept of the gospel, which is love. (c) These contentions bring great dishonour to Jesus Christ. (d) They grieve the Holy Spirit of God. (e) They stir up much corruption, both in the aggressor and in the defendant. (f) They greatly hinder the conversion of the ungodly, and the progress in holiness of the godly. (g) These contentions in religion tempt men to be atheists. (h) These biting and devouring contentions are uncivil, inhuman, and barbarous. (2) The certainty and sadness of the danger. “ Lest ye be consumed one of another.” (a) It includes the ruin of our outward comforts. (b) It threatens the ruin of our religion. (c) This destruction infers the ruin of our posterity.(3) The best method to cure this great evil, and to prevent this great danger. (a) Lament your own and others’ sin in this particular. (b) Learn Christian wisdom. (c) Endeavour for a catholic spirit. (d) Be clothed with humility. It is pride that begins and maintains our quarrels. (e) Apply yourselves to the practice of real piety. (f) Follow after charity. This is the healing grace; and if this be not applied to our bleeding wounds, they will never be cured. It were better, as one says, that Caesar should break all Pollio’ s curious glasses, than that they should break the bond of charity, or that the breach of them should be the occasion of so much inhumanity of brethren one against another. (g) Avoid extremes. Do not labour to screw-up one another to the utmost. (h) Mind every one his own business. (i) Observe that good old rule, of doing to others as you would be done to. You would have others to bear with you; and why will not you bear with others? (j) My last advice is, to “ pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” This every one may do, and this every one ought to do: “ Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces” (Psalms 122:6-7). (R. Steele, M. A.)Dissensions in the Church 1. Are often due to trivial causes.2. Are always unreasonable.3. Are a hindrance to the progress of the gospel.4. Enfeeble and imperil the Church.5. Are a cause of rejoicing to the enemies of the truth.6. Are offensive to God. (R. A. Bertram.)Good results from cessation of party strife A wall having become very feeble by age, a portion of it one day fell down. Great consequences followed the Falling of the piece of the old wall.1. The sun was able to pour more light into the gardens on either side, which the height of the wall had obstructed, so that the flowers looked to greater advantage; and, owing to their having more air and sunshine, became really more beautiful. 2. The perfume was borne across the breach; so that the gardens were the, sweeter. “ What a pity that piece of old wall had not fallen down before,” said the flowers. 3. The shrubs looked over to one another, and got into friendly talk; and so they said, “ What a good thing that piece of old wall fell down; it is a pity it stood so high so long.” 4. The flowers and shrubs of each garden discovered that members of their own families had been living on the other side, and therefore really near to each other, though they had had no communion, owing to the wall between. 5. Finally, so many benefits were seen to be the result of the occurrence that, instead of rebuilding the fallen part, the remainder was pulled down to a low level, that air and sunshine might have freer course, and the gardens a free communication. And not a few afterwards acknowledged that a real good and blessing was the consequence to all parties, by the opportunely falling down of that old dividing wall Party spirit is a wall of separation which the coming and the work of Christ was intended to remove. “ For He is our peace, who hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” Let none now seek to divide Christians by building up a wall of party spirit between them; for, “ behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” (G. Bowden.)Satanic origin of quarrels among Christians You all profess to have been baptized into the spirit of the gospel; but you do not show it when you bite and snarl at one another. The gospel, which makes wolves and lambs agree, does not teach the lambs to turn wolves and devour each the other. The gospel will not allow us to pay our enemies in their own coin, and give them wrath for wrath; much less will it suffer brethren to spit fire at one another’ s face. No, when any such embers of contention begin to smoke among Christians, we may know who left the spark; no other but Satan, he is the great kindle-coal of all their contentions. If there be tempest (not in the air) in the spirits of Christians, and the wind of their passions be high and loud, it is easy to tell who is the conjuror; it is the devil that is practising his black art upon their lusts, which yet are so much unmortified, as gives him too great an advantage of raising many times sad storms of division and strife amongst them. There is nothing (next Christ and heaven) that the devil grudges believers more than their peace and mutual love; if he cannot rend them from Christ, or stop them from getting heaven, yet he takes some pleasure to see them go thither in a storm; like a shattered fleet severed one from another, that they may have no assistance from, nor comfort of, each other’ s company all the way; though, where he can divide, he hopes to ruin also, well knowing this to be the most probable means to effect it; one ship is easier taken than a squadron. A town, if it can be but set on fire, the enemy may hope to take it with more ease. Let it, therefore, be your great care to keep the devil’ s spark from your powder. (W. Gurnall.)Consumed one of another: Strife in the fold Two friends met the other day. One inquired of the other how his Church was prospering. “ Not at roll, I am sorry to say,” was the answer; “ our numbers are diminishing weekly.” “ Why, how is that? Has the wolf got into the fold?” “ Worse than that, I fear. If it was only the wolf that was worrying the flock, we might cherish the hope that we could get him driven out. The fact is, the sheep have taken to worrying each other, and our condition, therefore, could not be worse.” The ideal brotherhood A little boy, seeing two nestling birds pecking at each other, inquired of his elder brother what they were doing. “ They are quarrelling,” was the answer. “ No,” replied the child, “ that cannot be, for they are brothers.” Would that this true and simple and natural logic were always borne in mind; then might the Christian nest be more peaceful, more like a family Divine! Unity among Christians to be sought after Melancthon mourned in his day the divisions among Christians, and sought to bring them together by the parable of the war between the wolves and the dogs. The wolves were somewhat afraid, for the dogs were many and strong, and therefore they sent out a spy to observe them. On his return the scout said, “ It is true the dogs are many, but there are not many mastiffs among them. There are dogs of so many sorts one can hardly count, them; and as for the worst of them,” said he, “ they are little dogs, which bark loudly, but cannot bite. However, this did not cheer me so much,” continued the wolf, “ as this, that as they came marching on, I observed they were all snapping right and left at one another, and I could see clearly that though they all hate the wolf, yet each dog hates every other dog with all his heart.” Is not this still true--that many professed Christians snap right and left at their own brethren, when they had better save their teeth for the wolves? Evils of strife They say of bees, that, when they strive among themselves, it is a sign that the queen is about to leave the hive. When the sheep of Christ are malignant one against another, it is a fearful presage of ensuing ruin; when there are tumults in the Church, it may justly be feared that God is about to remove from us. (Spencer.)Wranglings destroy Churches Jars and divisions, wranglings and prejudices, eat out the growth, if not the life, of religion. These are those waters of Marah that embitter our spirits, and quench the Spirit of God. Unity and peace are said to be like the dew of Hermon, that descended upon Sion, where the Lord promised His blessing. Divisions run religions into briars and thorns, contention and parties. Divisions are to Churches like wars in countries; where war is, the ground lieth waste and untilled; none takes care of it. It is love that edifieth, but division pulleth down. Divisions are as the north-east wind to the fruits, which causeth them to dwindle away to nothing; but when the storms are over, everything begins to grow. When men are divided, they seldom speak the truth in love; and then, no marvel, they grow not up to Him in all things which is the Head. It is a sad presage of an approaching famine (as one well observes)--not of bread, nor of water, but of hearing the Word of God--when the thin ears of corn devour the plump full ones; when our controversies about doubtful things, and things of less moment, eat up our zeal for the more indisputable and practical things in religion. (American.)How to defeat strife A young fox asked his father if he could not teach him some trick to defeat the dogs, if he should fall in with them. The father had grown grey in a long life of depredation and danger, and his scars bore witness to his narrow escapes in the chase, or his less honourable encounters with the faithful guardians of the hen roost. He replied with a sigh, “ After all my experience, I am forced to confess that the best trick is, to keep out of their way.” The safest mode of dealing with a quarrelsome person is to keep out of his way. (Persian Fables.)How to end bickerings The following incident, respecting two philosophers of old, may well put to the blush Christians who are unwilling to be reconciled, and who consequently have their intercourse with heaven hindered (Matthew 5:24). We are told that, Aristippus and AEschines having differed, the former came to the latter and said--“ AEschines, shall we be friends?” “ Yes,” he replied, “ with all my heart.” “ But, remember,” said Aristippus, “ that I, being older than you, do make the first motion.” “ Yes,” replied AEschines, “ and therefore I conclude that you are the worthiest man: for I began the strife, and you began the peace.” (C. Neil.)The evil of dissensions The English ambassador, some years since, prevailed so far with the Turkish emperor as to persuade him to hear some of our English music, from which (as from other liberal sciences) both he and his nation were naturally averse. But it happened that the musicians were so long in tuning their instruments that the great Turk, distasting their tediousness, went away in discontent before the music began. I am afraid that the dissensions betwixt Christian Churches (being so long in reconciling their discords) will breed in pagans such a disrelish of our religion, as they will not be invited to attend thereunto. (T. Fuller, D. D.) Galatians 5:16 Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. Flesh versus Spirit A Galatian Christian might argue that the religion of Christ had not wrought for him the deliverance which he had expected; that whereas he had been taught to believe in the Almighty power of Christ, and of Christ’ s grace, he found that there yet abode within him another power of a wholly different kind, a power antagonistic to the grace of Christ, a power constantly inclining him to evil. How was he to account for this state of things? was it that Christ’ s gospel was ineffectual; or that he had not rightly apprehended it? I. The abiding presence of the law of sin in the believer’ s soul. Scripture everywhere assumes and asserts this (James 3:2; 1 John 1:8). II. Its hostility to good. Compromise is impossible. If sin be false to everything else, it must be true to its own nature; it must be hostile to that principle which aims at its destruction. III. Note certain features in the action of sin.1. It is secret.2. It is constant.3. It is subtle. Seeks to discover the weakest parts in the soul’ s defences; to deceive and beguile the soul, and so lead it captive. IV. The maintenance of the spiritual life.(1) The spirit acts upon the soul as the Revealer of spiritual truth; and(2) as the Giver of spiritual power.(3) There must be co-operation on our part. No tampering with evil. A circumspect walk. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Twofold nature of man Man’ s nature presents two sides. On the one hand the body, with all its physical needs, desires, impulses; on the other hand that spiritual nature which distinguishes him from the animal creation. These two sides are often found in collision, warring against each other; the question is, how shall they be adjusted, and which ought to rule? The two extremes of crushing out one or the other entirely, are both wrong. The Christian method does no violence to any true part of human nature. It respects all parts; but gives special emphasis to the highest, not by crushing out the lower, but by bringing it into proper subordination, so that there shall be harmony, due proportion, and complete unity. I. The spiritual nature must have the first place. It is the most noble, and therefore the most worthy of attention. II. The spirit is to be the directing and ruling element. It is to sway the body, not the body to sway it. III. The physical nature is to be allowed to exercise its natural rights, but under the guidance and control of the spiritual. How practical is all this! St. Paul does not content himself with taking up a merely negative attitude. To have simply forbidden this or that, or to have told his readers that they were to exercise a restraint upon their passions, would have been at best only a partial and an unsatisfactory way of dealing with their danger. He was far too true a master of the human heart to fall into the error that nothing more than prohibition was needed. If man is to be saved from evil thoughts, habits, passions, he must be given definite and positive duties to fulfil. This is true both of (a) the body, and (b) the mind, as well as (c) the soul. Be up and doing. Don’ t be idle. Let your life have definite aims; your heart and mind definite impulses, desires, principles. In this way will you be better able not only to resist what is evil but to grow in what is best. (A. Boyd Carpenter, M. A.)The appeal to the spiritual nature Such is St. Paul’ s method, and it is the one which treats man with the greatest respect, and is calculated to effect the desired end most completely. Man is not a machine to be regulated only by external influences. He has reason, will, conscience, love; in a word, a spiritual nature. To appeal to this spiritual nature, to place it in its proper position of authority and rule, is to treat man as man, and to do so with the greatest hope of success. Law alone will not succeed unless there is a response from within. Self-restraint will not be sufficient. What is needed is the creation of an inward power of good; a self-acting principle that shall love and will and strive after what is highest and best, and from the innermost citadel of the spirit rule every thought, word, act. This is what St. Paul advocates when he says, “ Walk in the Spirit.” He contends for voluntary service as against enforced; for spiritual obedience as against the mere living by rule. It is the life of love and purity and wisdom that he advocates as the life, as against the impulses, desires, passions of the physical nature. And in doing this he not merely respects man as spiritual, he not merely points out the superiority of the spiritual, but he seeks to base thought and word and deed, and the whole tenor of the life, upon a heart loving what is good and hating what is evil. Service, with St. Paul, is spiritual, free, spontaneous, high-minded. The higher desires and spiritual forces for what is good not only check what is baser, but, influencing the whole manhood, lift up every faculty, power, impulse into a purer atmosphere. (A. Boyd Carpenter, M. A.)The spiritual walk In these words observe--(1) A duty enforced; (2) The consequent and fruit of it. 1. The duty is to walk in the Spirit, which is the sum of all Christian piety.2. The motive is taken from the consequent and fruit of it: “ and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Let us fix the sense. 1. For the duty, “ to walk in the Spirit.” Walking implieth the tenor and course of our actions, in all which we should follow the direction and inclination of the Spirit. Therefore by flesh and spirit is meant the old man and the new, and so by spirit is meant the renewed part, or the new man of grace in the heart ; that is, there is a work of saving grace wrought in our hearts by the Spirit of God, which new nature hath its motions and inclinations which must be obeyed and followed by us. And by flesh, is meant inbred corruption, or the old man, which is “ corrupt, with his deceivable lusts” (Ephesians 4:22). Now, then, you see what it is to walk after the Spirit, to direct and order our actions according to the inclinations of the new nature. 2. For the consequent fruit of it: “ and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Here two things must be explained:-- (1) The lust of the flesh.(2) Fulfil. 1. “ The lust of the flesh.” By it is meant the inordinate motions of corrupt nature. The flesh doth not consider what is right and good, but what is pleasing to the senses, and craveth their satisfaction with much importunity and earnestness, to the wrong of God and our own souls; especially in youth, when the senses are in vigour, and lust and appetite in their strength and fury. 2. Ye shall not fulfil; that is, accomplish and bring into complete act, especially with deliberation and consent. Mark, he cloth not say that the lusting of corrupt nature shall be totally suppressed, but it shall not be fulfilled. The best of God’ s children feel the motions of the flesh, but they do not cherish and obey them. The lusts of the flesh may be said to be fulfilled two ways-- (1) When the outward act is accomplished, or “ when lust hath conceived and brought forth (actual) sin” (James 1:15). (2) When for a continuance we obey the flesh, usually accomplish its motions without let and restraint, and with love, pleasure, and full consent of will; this is proper to the unregenerate. The flesh doth reign over them as its slaves; this is spoken of (Romans 6:12), “ Let not sin reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.” Let it not have a power over you as slaves. The doctrine, then, is this: That the more Christians set themselves to obey the new nature, the more is the power of inbred corruption mortified and kept under. To understand this point, let me lay down these propositions.1. That there is a diversity of principles in a Christian--flesh and spirit. 2. That there is a liberty in a Christian of walking according to each principle, either the spirit or the flesh. Application:1. It showeth what necessity there is that we should look after conversion to God, or a work of grace wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, for the apostle supposeth they had the Spirit. There is no walking without living, for otherwise our motions are but the motions of puppets, not proceeding from internal life, but acted from springs and engines; no subduing the flesh without setting up an opposite principle. 2. Being renewed by the Holy Ghost, that is, having our minds enlightened and hearts inclined, we must obey this inclination; for life is not given us that we may have it, but that we may act by it, and do things suitable to that life which we have. Grace is not a sluggish, idle quality, but is always working and warring on the opposite principle. 3. Though at first we are pestered and encountered with the lusts of the flesh, which divert us from God and heavenly things, yet we should not be discouraged by every difficulty; for difficulties do but inflame a resolved spirit, as stirring doth the fire. 4. The carnal life is not of one sort. Some wallow in sensual pleasures, others have head and heart altogether taken up with the world and worldly things. Now if God hath put a new bias upon our wills and affections, we must show it forth by a heavenly conversation; for they that mind earthly things are carnal, and the great inclination of the new nature is to carry us unto God and the things of another world (2 Corinthians 5:5). 5. They are much to blame that complain of sin, and will not take the course to get rid of it by obeying the instincts of the Holy Ghost, or the motions of the new nature. The Lord’ s spirit is a “ free spirit” (Psalms 51:12.), and His “ truth maketh us free” (John 8:32). 6. How much we are concerned in all conflicts, especially in those which allow deliberation, to take part with the Spirit, and obey His motions rather than to fulfil the lusts of the flesh: otherwise, by consent and upon deliberation, you are unfaithful to Christ and your own souls. Your business is not to gratify the flesh, but to crucify it, to overrule sense and appetite, and cherish the life of grace (Galatians 5:24). 7. It is of great use and profit to us to observe which principle decayeth, the flesh or the Spirit; for thereby we judge of our condition, both in order to mortification and comfort. The increase of the flesh may be known--1. By your backwardness to God. Grace is clogged when you cannot serve Him with sweetness and delight (Romans 7:18). 2. When the heart groweth careless of heaven, and your life and love is more taken up about things present than things to come. On the other hand, the prevalency and increase of the Spirit is known--1. By a humble contentedness and indifference to plenty, pleasures, and honours. 2. When your delight in God, heaven, and holiness is still kept up. 3. When the heart is kept in a preparation for the duties of your heavenly calling. (T. Manton, D. D.)Walking in the Spirit, the preservative from the lusts of the flesh I. We are to inquire what it is to walk in the Spirit. I scarcely need to observe, that the Spirit of God is always represented in the New Testament as the Author of all holiness in the hearts of Christians; whence the Christian dispensation is eminently styled “ the ministration of the Spirit.”1. And first I imagine, that a regard to all the great evangelical principles is implied in the words, “ walk in the Spirit.” In the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, in which the phrases of walking “ in the Spirit” or “ after the Spirit” are chiefly used, the apostle takes much pains to wean the Judaizing converts from a servile spirit of dependence upon the law, and to instil into them a spirit of liberty in Christ Jesus. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. 2. By walking in the Spirit may be also implied habitual dependence upon His help. To walk in the Spirit, therefore, is to acknowledge with the heart our own weakness and inability to serve God; to expect victory over sin only by the gracious operation of His Spirit. 3. To walk in the Spirit implies also, that we use the means by which the Spirit has promised to convey His influence, in the humble hope of thus receiving it. Bible-reading, attendance on the preaching of the gospel, reception of the Holy Communion, and especially prayer. 4. I observe, further, that to walk in the Spirit implies the exercise of a holy fear of Him; which will manifest itself by avoiding those things which would grieve Him, and by complying with His holy motions. II. If we thus walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. This is the second point which I proposed to illustrate. There is a certain degree to which victory over the sinful desires of the flesh is obtained by every real Christian; and this degree is, perhaps, proportioned to that in which he walks in the Spirit. (J. Venn, M. A.)How may we be so spiritual as to check sin in the first risings of it I. The principle and root of sin and evil--the flesh with its lusts. II. The opposite principle and root of life and righteousness--the Divine Spirit. III. The terms and bounds of a Christian’ s conquest, how far he may hope for victory--“ Ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.” IV. The method and way of conquering--“ Walk in the Spirit.” The best expedient in the world not to fulfil the lusts of the flesh, is to walk in the Spirit; which what it imports, I come now to show.1. “ Walk in the Spirit;” that is, in obedience to God’ s commandments, which are the oracles of the Spirit (see Psalms 119:1-3). 2. “ Walk in the Spirit;” that is, as becometh those in whom God’ s Spirit dwells. As if the apostle had said, “ The part which ye are now to act, O ye Christian Galatians, it is that of new creatures--see that ye keep the decorum. Demean yourselves like the children of God who are led of the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14). 3. “ Walk in the Spirit;” that is, Fulfil the counsels and advices of the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. But if these three rules are too general and remote, I shall now lay down some more particular and exact directions for checking the beginnings of sin. Rule I. Before the paroxysm cometh, prepare and antidote thy soul against these lusts of the flesh, by observing these advices.1. That notable counsel of Eliphaz to Job: “ Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace” (Job 22:21). 2. Stir up spiritual and holy lastings in thy soul after the love and favour, the grace and image, of thy God; and thou shalt not fulfil the lastings of the flesh. Rule II.--Study thoroughly the unchangeable natures, the eternal laws and differences, of moral good and evil. The sum of this rule then is: Deeply possess and dye thy soul all over with the representation of that everlasting beauty and amiableness that are in holiness, and of’ that horror, and ugliness, and deformity that eternally dwell on the forehead of all iniquity. Be under the awe and majesty of such clear convictions all day long, and “ thou shalt not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.” Rule III.--Understand thyself; be no stranger to thy own breast; know the frame, and temper, and constitution of thy mind. See what grace is principally wanting in thee, which is weakest, in what instances thy greatest failure betrays itself, in which of thy passions and affections thou art most peccable, and what lastings of the flesh they are which give thee the frequentest alarms, and threaten the greatest dangers. Rule IV.--Get and keep a tender, conscience. Be sensible of the least sin. The most tender-hearted Christian--he is the stoutest and most valiant Christian. “ Happy is the man that feareth always: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.” Rule V.--Keep an exact guard upon thy heart (Proverbs 4:23). Let the eyes of thy soul be open and awake, upon all the stirrings of thy thoughts and affections. Rule VI.--Be daily training and exercising all thy graces. Have them always in battle-array. Rule VII.--Be well-skilled in the clenchs of temptation. I mean, in unmasking the sophistry and mystery of iniquity, in defeating the wiles and stratagems of the tempter, and in detecting and frustrating the cheats and finesses of the flesh with its deceitful lusts (Ephesians 4:22; 2 Corinthians 2:11). No small part of spiritual wisdom lies in the blessed art of discovering and refuting sin’ s fallacies and impostures. Rule VIII.--Withdraw thyself, if possible, from the occasions of sin. Be thou as the deaf adder to that great charmer: the best entertainment thou canst give him is, “ Get thee behind me, Satan!” Rule IX.--Bind thyself beforehand With the severest of thy resolutions, not to trust thy judgment, when the temptation begins to get within thee. “ A man in passion is not himself.” Rule X.--Awe them with the authority of thy reason and understanding. It is infinitely unbeseeming a man, that his lower appetites should grow mutinous and untractable, that “ the inferior and brutish faculties of our soul,” should rebel against “ that sovereign faculty of reason.” How soon doth the presence of a grave magistrate allay a popular tumult, if he comes in soon enough, in the beginning of the riot? God hath made reason the magistrate of the little world; He hath given it a commission to keep the peace in our souls. Rule XI.--If thy distempered affections and lusts slight the authority of thy reason, as thou art a man; bid thy conscience do its office, as thou art a Christian. Try to awe them with God’ s written Word. Bring out of the register of conscience the laws of Him that made thee; oppose some clear text of Holy Writ, that comes into thy mind against that very lust that is now rising. Rule XII.--If all this effect nothing, then draw the curtain, take off the veil from before thy heart, and let it behold the God that searcheth it (Jeremiah 17:10; Hebrews 4:13). Show it the majesty of the Lord; see how that is described (Isaiah 6:1-3). Rule XIII.--If these great real arguments be slighted, try whether an argument, ad hominem, drawn from sense, will prevail. Awe thy lusts with the bitterness of thine own experience. Consider how often thou hast rues their disorders; what dismal consequences have followed upon their transports, and how dearly thou hast paid heretofore for thy connivance at them. Rule XIV.--Labour to cure thy justings and affections in the first beginning of their disorders, by revulsion, by drawing the stream and tide another way. As physicians stop an hemorrhage, or bleeding at the nose, by breathing the basilic vein in the arm, or opening the saphaena in the foot; so may we check our carnal affections, by turning them into spiritual ones: and those either--1. Of the same nature. For example: catch thy worldly sorrow at the rise, and turn thy mourning into godly sorrow. If thou must needs weep, weep for something that deserves it. 2. Turn thy carnal affections into spiritual ones of a contrary nature. For example: allay thy worldly sorrow by spiritual joy. Try whether there be not enough in all-sufficiency itself to compensate the loss of any outward enjoyment; whether there will be any great miss or want of a broken cistern, when thou art at the fountain-head of living waters; whether the light of the sun cannot make amends for the expiring of a candle. Chastise thy carnal fears by hope in God. Set on work the grace contrary to the lust that is stilting; if it be pride and vain-glory in the applause of men, think how ridiculous it were for a criminal to please himself in the esteem and honour his fellow-prisoners render him, forgetting how guilty he is before his judge. If thou beginnest to be poured loosely out, and as it were dissolved in frolic, mirth, and joviality, correct that vainness and gaiety of spirit by the grave and sober thoughts of death, and judgment, and eternity. Rule XV.--If this avail not, fall instantly to prayer. Rule XVI.--When thou hast done this, rise up, and buckle on the shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16). Go forth in the name and strength of the Lord, to do battle with thy lusts. Conclusion: Let me now persuade the practice of these holy rules. Let us resolve, in the strength of Christ, to resist these lustings of the flesh. Let me press this with a few considerations.1. The more thou yieldest, the more thou mayest. Sin is insatiable; it will never say” enough.” Give it an inch, it will take an ell. 2. It is the quarrel of the Lord of hosts in which thou tightest. A cowardly soldier is the reproach of his commanders. Thou hast a noble General, O Christian, that hath done and finished perfectly whatever concerns thy redemption from the powers of darkness. 3. The lusts of the flesh are thy greatest enemies, as well as God’ s. “ They war against thy soul” (1 Peter 2:11). To resist them feebly, is to do not only the work of the Lord, but of thy soul, negligently. 4. It is easy vanquishing at first in comparison. A fire newly-kindled is soon quenched, and a young thorn or bramble easily pulled up. 5. If thou resistest the victory is thine (James 4:7). Temptation puts on its strength, as the will is. Cease but to love the sin, and the temptation is answered. 6. Consider what thou doest. If thou fulfillest the lusts of the flesh, thou provokest thy heavenly Father, rebellest against Him , thou “ crucifiest Jesus Christ afresh, and puttest Him to an open shame.” Is this thy love and thanks to thy Lord, to whom thou art so infinitely beholden? Canst thou find in thy heart to put thy spear again in His side? Hath He not suffered yet enough? Is His bloody passion nothing? Must He bleed again? Ah, monster of ingratitude! Ah, perfidious traitor as thou art, thus to requite thy Master! Again, thou grievest thy Comforter: and is that wisely clone? Who shall comfort thee, ii He depart? (John Gibbon, B. D.)The renewed man If, therefore, you would judge of the life in the soul by the command which is exercised over the body, you must bring into account the agency employed, as well as the result effected. You must calculate whether the non-fulfilment of the lust of the flesh be in consequence of a radical change of the heart, or nothing more than the proud device of a weak, and self-sufficient nature.1. It is not necessary that a man should be what Scripture calls a renewed man in order to his effecting a vast reformation in his ordinary conduct. Reformation, indeed, will unavoidably follow on renewal; and when thus produced, will be far more vigorous and decided than when traced to any other origin. But Satan, yea, oven Satan, can busy himself with the reforming of a man; for has the devil nothing to do with self-righteousness? has he nothing to do with the substitution of morality for faith? There will, indeed, have been all this outward change if an individual has been renewed by God’ s Spirit; but, alas! it is not true, that because there is a change there must have been renewal! For you should remember that there follows, in the chapter from which our text is taken, a catalogue of the works of the body; and this catalogue contains “ emulations, wrath, strife” --though these may have seemed to be mental rather than bodily actions. We are bound, therefore, to set down as works of the body many works which are not wrought by the agency of our corporeal members. Pride, for example, is classed as a work of the flesh, though it passes ordinarily as a disease of the mind. We argue, therefore, that since a man may gratify his pride by the higher discipline which he exercises over appetite and passion, he may be fulfilling, in one sense, “ the lust of the flesh,” whilst to others he may seem to be mortifying that lust. Pride is emphatically a sin of the devil, and, therefore, to trace the action of pride is to trace it to the devil. Thus, we think our first proposition sufficiently established. There may be a struggle with “ the lust of the flesh” where there is no “ walking in the Spirit,” and, therefore, well might the apostle fix our thoughts on the agency as well as on the result.--“ This I say, then” --oh! be not content with the appearance of resistance to the corruption of nature without searching into the origin of that resistances “ this I say, then, Walk in the Spirit,” then, and then only, shall you really and actually “ not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” 2. We proceed to set more definitely before you our second position, that there can be no effectual non-fulfilment of the lust of the flesh--none such as shall prove spiritual--unless there be “ walking in the Spirit.” It is unquestionable, as we have already admitted, that a man may mortify many deeds of the body. He may climb the mountains, and there, far away from all companionship with his fellows, the rock for his couch, and the wild fruits for his sustenance, he may live down the fierceness of passion, and win over carnal desires so effective a sovereignty, that though they have heretofore been most imperious in their cravings, they shall ever after yield obedience to the severer calls of the Divine law. We know of nothing that may more confound those who have embraced true religion--who prefer deliverance through the satisfaction of Christ--than the ready submission to every kind of toil and privation which is presented by the votaries of false systems of theology. But, whatever the appearance, there is no thorough mortification of “ the lust of the flesh” unless it be with the heart that the mortification begins. Yes, when the flesh is covered with the ashes and torn with the stripes, may pride be abroad in its strength, and man be regarded by the Holy Spirit of God as cherishing that self-sufficiency which it is the first object of the gospel to eject, and which must be subdued ere there can be admission to the kingdom of heaven. And if it be thus true that “ the lust of the flesh Scannel be thoroughly unfulfilled unless the heart be overcome and brought into subjection, then no withstanding of the lusts can be that which proves a man quickened from the death of “ trespasses and sins,” unless effected by the Spirit of God. As to outward conduct, a man may change it for himself, and, even as we have shown you, be assisted by Satan; but an internal change, the bringing order and harmony out of confusion and discord in the human soul, the crucifixion of the flesh, the renewal of the heart, can only be brought about by the Holy Ghost. See, then, whither you must turn for instruction and strength if you would live and not die. “ If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” Oh I not to be Christ’ s, after Christ has taken flesh, and sorrowed, and suffered, and died in order to make us His! Oh! not to be Christ’ s, though redeemed by Christ at the untold cost of His agony and His blood! And what is wanting to make us Christ’ s? Just that we have His Spirit, that Spirit which is freely promised to all by whom it is earnestly sought. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Walking in the Spirit As having a steady forward movement, as requiring not only an action of the will, but purpose, strength, and circumspection, the Christian life is very well conceived in figure as walking. Now, there are two ways or roads on either of which we may be walking--a way of life and a way or death. And the way of life is not easy to find. It is full of questions. The paths divide and diverge at all angles. We do not travel by trains. The apostle uses the more accurate word. It is a “ walk” --step by step--an individual, personal thing, with free choice, continual effort, and an onward movement. If it is to be worth anything, if it is to come to anything noble here, or immortal hereafter, life is costly. We must pay; we must think; we must watch and work, and perhaps suffer. We are equal to it, not in our own strength, but by a Power given us from above. What is the Power? Where is the Guide? To have the life that is glorious and eternal--all its failures forgiven, and its end perfect--perfect victory and perfect peace--we must “ walk” --in that way? We come back to St. Paul He answers, “ This I say then, Walk in the Spirit.” He is positive and peremptory. “ This I say then, Walk in the Spirit.” There is one way to take and follow. There is a guide for this life. Walking is living; it is our life’ s movement forward in this world. But how that shall be “ in the Spirit” is what we want to know more perfectly. And here, as often happens, we are helped by contrasts. Throughout all this writing to the Galatians, and through all his preaching of the gospel of Christ, we find this grand expounder of it pointing out two opposite forces in the nature of every man. He has various names for them--“ the law of the members and the law of the mind” --“ the old man and the new man” --but oftenest “ the flesh and the spirit.” It is popular language: we all know well enough what he means, not because the terms are precise, but because we are all conscious of having in ourselves the two things--if not always at work or at war, yet always there, ready to start up at any time and renew their battle. Take notice, the New Testament never says that the worse force of the two is wholly evil, or the better one wholly good. The gospel does teach everywhere that the spirit in man is the natural organ of what is highest and best in him, while the flesh is the natural organ of what is lower--the one connecting with the spiritual world above us, the other with the world below. St. Paul does preach, plainly and with all his might, that there is a struggle of each of these two forces for the mastery, and that it is a desperate fight till the right one gets the upper hand and rules. There are only two ways anywhere. It is one thing or the other. If we are not living in the spirit, we are living as part and parcel of a material world, which then overgrows and stifles the spirit, absorbs all interests into its outside show and passional comforts, then runs down, perishes, and has no immortality but the lingering one of the second death. If it is inquired then, What is our spiritual life? it is that within us which feels God to be a Father, which seeks and follows what is good in itself, which chooses what is lovely in conduct and generous in judgment, which tests friendships by their purity, and pursuits by their righteousness, which has faith in the unseen, which worships, which is touched and sometimes enraptured by the beauty of holiness. The spirit is that in us which would rather suffer than do wrong, and rather be crucified than mistake Caesar for the Saviour or Mammon for its maker. It would choose truth before falsehood: no matter what bribe is put into the balance with the lie. It is that by which we forgive injuries, and confess our own sins, and are willing to be made poorer for the kingdom of heaven’ s sake, and take in the glorious sense of the encomium on charity in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. There is another contrast still. St. Paul, through all this passage, has in mind not only a comparison of the spiritual mind with the sensual and selfish mind, but of the life lived in the spirit and a life which looks somewhat like it, but at heart, under the surface, is a very different thing:--i.e., a life lived under a set of rules formed by external regulations, fashioned, pieced together, cut and dried by the law. You know how determined his assaults were always, in every sermon and every epistle, from his conversion at Damascus up to his martyrdom at Rome, on the system which sees nothing in religion but rule. The reason is that in a character shaped by outside rules you will never have anything deeper than an outside piety. It will not be character at all, but only the shell of it. The heart of love has not begun to beat, the Spirit of Christ has not begun to breathe in them. Whoever would be a Christian must be one heartily and cheerfully, not grudgingly or of necessity. The Christian life must spring and bubble up from within, not be fitted on from without. (Bishop F. D. Huntington.)The positiveness of the Divine life There are two ways of dealing with every vice that troubles us, in either ourselves or others. One is to set to work directly to destroy the vice; that is the negative way. The other is to bring in as overwhelmingly as possible the opposite virtue, and so to crowd and stifle and drown out the vice; that is the positive way. Now there can be no doubt about St. Paul. Here comes his poor Gatatian fighting with his lust of the flesh. How shall he kill it? St. Paul says not, “ Do as few fleshly things as you can,” setting him out on a course of repression; but, “ Do just as may spiritual things as you can, opening before him the broad gates of a life of positive endeavour. And when we have thoroughly comprehended the difference of these two methods, and seen how distinctly St. Paul chose one instead of the other, we have laid hold on one of the noblest characteristics of his treatment of humanity, one that he had gained most directly from his Lord. I should despair of making any one see the distinction who did not know it in his own experience. Everywhere the negative and the positive methods of treatment stand over against each other, and men choose between them. Here is a man who is beset by doubts, perhaps, about the very fundamental truths of Christianity. He may attack all the objections in turn, and at last succeed in proving that Christianity is not false. That is negative. Or he may gather about him the assurance of all that his religion has done, and sweep away all his doubts with the complete conviction that Christianity is true. That is positive, and that is better. We see the same principle, the superiority of the positive to the negative, constantly illustrated in matters of opinion. How is it that people change their opinions, give up what they have steadfastly believed, and come to believe something very different, perhaps its very opposite? I think we all have been surprised, if we have thought about it, by the very small number of cases in which men deliberately abandon positions because those positions have been disproved and seem to them no longer tenable. And even when such cases do occur, the effect is apt to be not good, but bad. The man abandons his disproved idea, but takes no other in its stead; until, in spite of their better judgment, many good men have been brought to feel that, rather than use the power of mere negation, and turn the believer in an error into a believer in nothing, they would let their friend go on believing his falsehood, since it was better to believe something, however stupidly, than to disbelieve everything, however shrewdly. But what then? How do men change their opinions? Have you not seen? Holding still their old belief, they come somehow into the atmosphere of a clearer and a richer faith. That better faith surrounds them, fills them, presses off them with its own convincingness. They learn to love it, long to receive it, try to open their hands and hearts just enough to take it in and hold it along with the old doctrine which they have no idea of giving up. They think that they are holding both. They persuade themselves that they have found a way of reconciling the old and the new, which have been thought unreconcilable. Perhaps they go on thinking so all their lives. But perhaps some day something startles them, and they awake to find that the old is gone, and that the new opinion has become their opinion by its own positive convincing power. There has been no violence in the process, nor any melancholy gap of infidelity between. It seems to me that there is something so sublimely positive in Nature. She never kills for the mere sake of killing, but every death is but one step in the vast weaving of the web of life. She has no process of destruction which, as you turn it to the other side and took at it in what you know to be its truer light, you do not see to be a process of construction. She gets rid of her wastes by ever new plans of nutrition. This is what gives her such a courageous, hopeful, and enthusiastic look, and makes men love her as a mother and not fear her as a tyrant. They see by small signs, and dimly feel, this positiveness of her workings which it is the glory of natural science to reveal more and more. We find the same thing in the New Testament. The God there revealed to us is not a God of repression, or restraint, but a God whose symbols should be the sun, the light, the wind, the fire--everything that is stimulating, everything that fosters and encourages and helps. Such is the God whose glory we see in the face of Jesus Christ. The distinction is everywhere. Not by merely trying not to sin, but by entering farther and farther into the new life, in which, when it is completed, sin becomes impossible; not’ by merely weeding out wickedness, but by a new and supernatural culture of holiness, does the saint of the New Testament walk on the ever-ascending pathway of growing Christliness, and come at last perfectly to Christ. This is the true difference between law and grace, add the New Testament is the book of grace. And this character of the New Testament must be at the bottom in conformity with human nature. The Bible and its Christianity are not in contradiction against the nature of the man they try to save. Let us never believe they are. They are at war with all his corruptions, and, in his own interest, though against his stubborn will, they are for ever labouring to assert and re-establish his true self. And in this fundamental character of the New Testament, by which it is a book not of prohibitions but of eager inspirations, there comes out a deep harmony between it and the heart of man. For man’ s heart is always rebelling against repression as a continuous and regular thing. Man is willing to make self-sacrifices for a certain temporary purpose. The merchant will give up his home, the student shut his books, the mother leave her household for a time, to do some certain work. The world is full of self-sacrifice, of the suppression of desires, the forcing of natural inclinations; but all the while under this crust the fire is burning; all the time, under this self-sacrifice, there is a restless, hungry sense that it is not right, that it cannot be final; there is a crying out for self-indulgence. All the time there is a great human sense that not suppression but expression is the true life. And what has Christ to say to one, who, acting on this prompting of his nature, gives up restraint and tries indulgence? My brother, I can hear him say, you are not wholly wrong. Nay, at the bottom, you are right. Self-mortification, self-sacrifice, is not the first or final law of life. You are right when you think that these appetites and passions were not put into you merely to be killed, and that the virtue which only comes by their restraint is a poor, colour-less, and feeble thing. You are right in thinking that not to restrain yourself and to refrain from doing, but to utter yourself, to act, to do, is the purpose of your being in the world. Only, my brother, this is not the self you are to utter, these are not the acts you are to do. There is a part in you made to think deeply, made to feel nobly, made to be charitable and chivalric, made to worship, to pity, and to love. You are not uttering yourself while you keep that better self in chains, and only let these lower passions free. Let me renew those nobler powers, and then believe with all your heart and might that to send out those powers into the intensest exercise is the one worthy purpose of your life. Then these passions, which you are indulging because you cannot believe that you were meant to give your whole life up to bridling them, will need no forcible bridling, and yet, owning their masters in the higher powers which come out to act, they will be content to serve them. You will not fulfil your passions any longer, but the reason will not be that you have resumed the weary guard over your passions which you tried to keep of old. It will be that you have given yourself up so utterly to the seeking after holiness, that these lower passions have lost their hold upon you. You will not so much have crushed the carnal as embraced the spiritual. I shall have made you free. You will be walking in the Spirit, and so will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. Is not this Christ’ s method? Is not this the tone of His encouraging voice? “ Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin,” but “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It is the positive attainment and not the negative surrender. It is the self-indulgence of the highest, and not the self-surrender of the lowest, that is the great end of the gospel. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)The spiritual walk I. The point from which we have to start--“ Walk in the Spirit.” In every walk there is a place from which we first proceed. The starting-point for every man in the spiritual walk is a state of unrenewed nature, an unconverted, unregenerated condition. II. Let us now proceed to our second part: “ Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” We have seen the point from which, we now consider the course by which we are to walk--“ Walk in the Spirit.” But here there must first of all be life in order to our obeying this exhortation. A dead man walks not, moves not, from whence he is. But to walk not only requires life, there must be strength, and willingness to exert strength. The sick man often cannot walk, the slothful man often will not; the spiritually diseased and slothful walk not in the Spirit; but the Holy Ghost infuses an energy into the soul of man. But in walking beside life, strength, and willingness, there must likewise be a constraining motive to induce man to walk in the road marked out for his path. The constraining motive in the spiritual walk is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Redeemer. But still there must be a road marked out for walking. There is one marked out for each of you by the Holy Spirit; there is a way, little trodden indeed by the multitude, but well known to all who have gone, and who are going to heaven. It is a straight and a narrow way; it has its difficulties. III. Our third part yet waits. A walk, we have seen, has a point whence, a way by which, and now a place whither men are walking. The point to which the spiritual walk is intended to lead is perfect holiness, meetness for heaven, yea, heaven itself. (J. Hambleton.)The spirit and the flesh When St. Paul talks of man’ s flesh, he means by it man’ s body, man’ s heart and brain, and all his bodily appetites and powers--what we call a man’ s constitution; in a word, the animal part of man, just what a man has in common with the beasts who perish. To understand what I mean, consider any animal--a dog, for instance--how much every animal has in it what men have,--a body, and brain, and heart; it hungers and thirsts as we do; it can feel pleasure and pain, anger and loneliness, and fear and madness: it likes freedom, company, and exercise, praise and petting, play and ease; it uses a great deal of cunning, and thought, and courage, to get itself food and shelter, just as human beings do; in short, it has a fleshly nature, just as we have, and yet, after all, it is but an animal, and so, in one sense, we are all animals, only more delicately made than the other animals; but we are something more--we have a spirit as well as a flesh, an immortal soul. If any one asks, what is a man? the true answer is, an animal with an immortal spirit in it; and this spirit can feel more than pleasure and pain, which are mere carnal, that is, fleshly things; it can feel trust, and hope, and peace, and love, and purity, and nobleness, and independence, and, above all, it can feel right and wrong. There is the infinite difference between an animal and a ,,nan, between our flesh and our spirit; aa animal has no sense of right and wrong; a dog who has done wrong is often terrified, but not because he feels it wrong and wicked, but because he knows from experience that he will be punished for doing it: just so with a man’ s fleshly nature;--a carnal, fleshly man, a man whose spirit is dead within him, whose spiritual sense of right and wrong, and honour and purity, is gone, when he has done a wrong thing is often enough afraid; but why? Not for any spiritual reason, not because he feels it a wicked and abominable thing, a sin, hut because he is afraid of being punished for it. Now, in every man, the flesh and the spirit, the body and the soul, are at war. We stand between heaven and earth. Above us, I say, is God’ s Spirit speaking to our spirits; below us is this world speaking to our flesh, as it spoke to Eve’ s, saying to us, “ This thing is pleasant to the eyes--this thing is good for food--that thing is to be desired to make you wise, and to flatter your vanity and self-conceit.” And where man’ s flesh gets the upper hand, and takes possession of him, 1t can do nothing but evil--not that it is evil in itself, but that it has no rule, no law to go by; it does not know right from wrong; and therefore it does simply what it likes, as a dumb beast or an idiot might; and therefore the works of the flesh are--adulteries, drunkenness, murders, fornications, envyings, backbitings, strife. When a man’ s body, which God intended to be the servant of his spirit, has become the tyrant of his spirit, it is like an idiot on a king’ s throne, doing all manner of harm and folly without knowing that it is harm and folly. This is not its fault. Whose fault is is it, then? Our fault,--the fault of our wills and our souls. (C. Kingsley, M. A.)Walking in the Spirit I. We are to walk in the spirit of God. II. How are we to know that we have the Spirit?1. Not simply by natural conscience.2. By the effect of the Spirit on the Christian life.3. By a life that has an uniform God-ward tendency. III. The Spirit must influence our daily life and actions.1. The Spirit comes to young and old.2. The Spirit influences in different ways.3. His operation is necessary.4. His operation must be deep and permanent. (Canon Tristram.)The life and warfare of the Spirit in the soul I. The work of the Spirit in the believer.1. We live in the Spirit. (1) He begins the new life.(2) Sustains it. 2. We walk in the Spirit. Activity the first symptom of life. This (1) reminds us of our dependence on the Spirit.(2) Implies our consistency. Deportment must harmonize with character.(3) Is significant of progress. 3. We are led by the Spirit. (1) An entire surrender to His authority.(2) Following Him in the path of duty, we find the truest happiness and perfect safety. II. The reasons why the believer should be urged to maintain it.1. We shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. (1) We shall be kept from sin.(2) We shall grow in grace. 2. We are not under law. Freedom from (1) the law of sin;(2) the law of death. 3. We shall be victorious in the great battle between the flesh and the Spirit. (1) Indwelling sin is strong.(2) The Spirit makes us conquerors. (J. Morgan, D. D.)The marks of a Christian I. He “ walks in” and is “ led by the Spirit,” i.e., he has--1. A heart always open to Divine influence.2. A life subordinate to Divine rule. II. He conquers the flesh.1. In the inward strife described here, and in Romans 7:1-25., the Christian is not under the law of the flesh, but subdues the corrupt nature and brings it into subjection to the Spirit.2. He does this daily. III. He brings forth the fruits of the Spirit. Examine yourself by the list (verses 22, 23). The principles and method of Christian life I. The practical principles of the Christian life.1. The virtues which are God-derived and God-ward. (1) Love, the tie which binds us to God as a Father.(2) Joy, the glad emotion which makes music in the renewed soul.(3) Peace, the summer calm which settles upon the conscience. 2. Those which refer to our fellow-men--“ longsuffering meekness.” (1) They are the counterpart of the Divine virtues.(2) Are derived from the same spring. 3. These belonging to the general disposition and habit of the soul, “ Faith temperance.” II. The method by which we appropriate these principles and make them effective in our character.1. Negatively: the apostle does not (1) throw us back on our own will;(2) hold up minute regulations and restrictions. 2. Positively: he tells us to “ walk in the Spirit.” (1) Not simply after a spiritual manner,(2) by a mere Divine influence; but(3) by personal power of the Holy Spirit. III. Remember the true order of Christian life as here unfolded.1. The bad is not overcome by mere abstinence from evil. 2. Be filled with the Spirit and evil will be overcome. (S. Pearson, M. A.)The non-fulfilment of the lust of the flesh without the Spirit I. When man trusts in anything he has done it cannot be God’ s Spirit who leads to the doing of it. II. No non-fulfilment of the lust of the flesh, which is not the result of walking in the Spirit, affords any proof of life in the soul. III. The operations of grace may be closely imitated, though no change may have passed over the heart. IV. In his endeavour to destroy men the devil may employ morality as well as villainy. V. It is not enough for the mortification of the deeds of the body that the lusts of the flesh should appear unfulfilled. VI. If, therefore, you would judge of the life in the soul by the command which is exercised over the body, you must bring into account the agency employed as well as the result effected. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Flesh and Spirit Thou hast a double nature. Choose between the worst and the better that is within thee. Thou hast it in thy power to become the slave of passion, the slave of luxury, the slave of sensual power, the slave of corruption. Thou hast it also in thy power to become the free master of thyself, to become the everlasting benefactor of thy country, and the unfailing champion of thy God. (Dean Stanley.)The Divine rule Keep the spiritual nature uppermost. Give the spiritual man the advantage. Settle every account in the Spirit’ s favour. It will not make everything convenient, or merry, or prosperous. There may be mistakes of judgment; life may seem like a strain of bad music pitched to a minor key; your ideals may not be attained. Never mind that. The voice rings out over all the contradictions and ruins, “ This I say then, walk in the Spirit.” “ To be spiritually minded is life and peace” --life now and peace at last. (Bp. Huntington.)The Pauline ethics are as stern and strict as those of any system which has ever been promulgated. The liberty on which he insisted was no cover, no apology, no defence for licence, for those wild and profligate excesses which the fanatics’ faith has sometimes permitted. The extravagances of the Adamites, of the Cathari, of the Anabaptists, have been quoted as a reproach on the genius of Christianity. In reality they are a homage to it. The claim of Christianity on the allegiance of men has been so strong that they who have repudiated its spirit have affected to call themselves by its name. The Israelites often fell into that idolatry which the law donounced, condemned, chastised. But there is no reason to think that they forgot their nationality in their sin. (Paul of Tarsus.)Value of spirituality of mind A beautiful flower--the wood sorrel--grows among the trees in some parts of England. It has shining green leaves, and transparent bells with white veins. When it is gathered roughly, or the evening dew falls, or the clouds begin to rain, the flower closes and droops; but when the air is bright and calm, it unfolds all its loveliness. Like this sensitive flower, spirituality of mind, when touched by the rough hand of sin, or the cold dews of worldliness, or the noisy rain of strife, hides itself in the quietude of devout meditation; but when it feels the influence of sunny and serene piety, it expands in the beauty of holiness, the moral image of God. (S. J. Wright.)Entire consecration necessary Suppose you were to buy a ouse and lot and an elegant residence, pay the money and get the deeds, and the day you were to go in the gentleman said, “ Here’ s the key to eight rooms, I have reserved two rooms.” “ Didn’ t I buy the house?” “ Yes” “ Well, what do you mean?” “ I want to keep four tigers in one room, and the other I want to fill with reptiles. I want them to stay here.” You say, “ Well, my friend, if you mean what you say I would not have your house as a gracious gift. You want me to move my family into a house where one room is full of tigers and the other full of snakes.” Many a time we turn over our whole heart to God, and when He comes in we have reserved some rooms for the wild beasts of pride and the hissing serpents of iniquity. Let me tell you, brethren, I won’ t ask God to come and live in a house that I won’ t let my family live in. Empty every room in the house, and then the heart is the centre of gravity to Jesus Christ, and He will come in and live with you. (S. Jones.)How to overcome temptation “ Flee youthful lusts.” Fight not, but flee; or if fight you must, copy the old Parthians, who, seated on fleet coursers and armed with bow and arrows, shot from the saddle, flying as they fought. If you cannot flee, then in Christ’ s name and strength face round on the foe, and make a bold stand for God; and the virtues of youth shall rebuke the vices of age, and hoary sin shall go down before you armed with God’ s word, as did the Philistine before the young shepherd and his sling. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)How to vanquish sin Prudence: “ Can you remember by what means you find your annoyances at times as if they were vanquished? “Christian: “ Yes, when I think what I saw at the cross, that will do it; and when I look upon my broidered coat, that will do it; also when I look into the roll that I carry in my bosom, that will do it; and when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will do it.” (John Bunyan.) Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. Contest between flesh and spirit Here is a battle--a struggle--described: one in which we must all fight. Our own corrupt and wilful hearts, and the Holy Spirit of God, are ever drawing us different ways; and we have to choose between them. This is the work of the will. God leaves us free. The Spirit draws, but does not drive: invites, not compels. There are four states in which we may be.1. Before the struggle begins. The soul living utterly regardless of any will but his own, any law but his own desires; sin slumbering within him, lying hid and unknown; at peace with himself, and having no idea of his danger. Terrible condition; yet, alas! how many baptized Christians are in it. 2. The struggle going on. The sinner sees what God commands, and tries to obey. Then comes the difficulty. The mind approves one thing, but the flesh strives after another; and alas! how often the flesh comes off victorious. 3. The spirit subduing the flesh. Still a struggle, but by God’ s grace the good is now conquering the evil, the Holy Spirit dwelling in the heart and making the will strong to persist in following the law of God. Oh, how happy, how blessed a state is this! 4. The struggle over. In the first state there was no struggle, because the evil held undisputed sway. In the second state there was a struggle, but it was the helplessness of the natural man striving in vain to fulfil the law of God. In the third state there is a struggle too, but now it is the grace and power of God striving in us against the rebellious nature which before held us captive, and that grace and power gain the victory. In the fourth state there is again no struggle. But it is because the battle has been fought, and the victory gained for ever. No more foes to oppose, no sins to do battle with. A state we may not look for in this life; but it shall be reached by all who persevere. A little while, and the last struggle will be over; and then--rest, peace, joy, glory, victory! (Bishop Walsham How.)So that ye cannot do the things that ye would: The wrestle of humanity The translation is wrong. The R.V. gives it correctly: “ that ye may not do the things that ye would.” Here you have the flesh and the spirit personified: each has given to it intelligence, aim, purpose. Here is the man, the individual, the moral and spiritual personality--man with his moral capacity and power of volition, but volition is modified by influences from without. Here are two integral powers, standing on each side of the personality, and each of them is watching the action of the other as it may be, operating upon the human volition; when the spirit with its elevating thoughts, its intense desire, its strong aspirations, is operating upon the feeling and the soul, and when a man would act under that influence, then the flesh, watching its opportunity, comes with all its force and power, and endeavours to prevent it, so that “ the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, that the man may not do the things he would.” What is the remedy for that? Why, you, the central personality, take sides with one, that there may be two against one. Throw your moral power and affections upon one side, walk in the spirit, yield to the spirit, hold to the spirit, and then you will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. You will then do the things that you would, under the spiritual influence of this gracious Agent. Hold, pray, strive, depend, look up with religious faith, and seek to have within you, strengthened continually, an intense repugnance to everything evil--to the influences and lusts operating upon you--and you will conquer. The flesh will be defeated, you will gain victory after victory; there will be sympathy after sympathy, strength after strength; and then it will come to pass that the flesh, and the devil in the flesh, will pass by you. (T. Binney.)Self versus self The Christian life is one of conflict between opposing forces designated respectively, the flesh and the spirit, i.e., between the old nature and the new; between Christians themselves usually so called, and that which is higher, stronger, holier, than themselves. It is a conflict, we may say, between Christ and anti-Christ: for the soul, on the battlefield of the soul. The old nature is strong and very active, and loses no opportunity of plying all the weapons of its deadly armoury against the new-born grace: the new nature, on the other hand, is ever on the watch to resist and destroy its enemy. Grace within us employs prayer and faith and hope to cast out evil All growing Christians are like men working under difficulties; like racers who must carry weights; like men rowing against wind and tide, yet compelled for dear life to row. This is not the popular conception of a Christian’ s career. With some religious teachers Christianity is a mere sentiment; a given idea as to moral accountability, and as to escape through Jesus Christ, has to be fixed in the mind, and Presto! a man is “ fully saved.” Such teaching is void of danger only when explained to mean that he who has seen his sinfulness, and rested upon his Saviour, has passed the strait gate and entered upon the narrow way. Men need salvation from their all but infinite conceits. There can be no salvation “ unto the uttermost “ apart from character. Faith as a disposition must follow faith as an act.1. A Christian’ s life must be a battle from the nature of the case. Flesh and spirit are contrary as water and oil, as light and darkness, as good and evil; and so, to do the things they would and ought, Christians have to fight. 2. Because we gain immensely from fighting. All valuable discipline comes of difficulties faced and overcome. Better to fight and win than to obtain moral mastery without fighting. (J. S. Swan.)Sins of infirmity True faith is not shown here below in peace, but rather in conflict; and it is no proof that a man is not in a state of grace that he continually sins, provided such sins do not remain on him as permanent results, but are ever passing on into something beyond and unlike themselves, into truth and righteousness, As we gain happiness through suffering, so do we arrive at holiness through infirmity, because man’ s very condition is a fallen one, and in passing out of the country of sin, he necessarily passes through it. This prevents holy men from regarding themselves with satisfaction, or resting in anything but Christ’ s death as their ground of confidence. The following are some of the infirmities which, while they certainly beset those who are outcasts from God’ s grace, are also possible in a state of acceptance, and do not necessarily imply absence of true faith.1. Original sin. An evil principle within, dishonouring our best service. The old Adam, pride, profaneness, deceit, unbelief, selfishness, greediness, the inheritance of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; sin which the words of the serpent sowed in the hearts of our first parents, which sprang up and bore fruit, some thirty fold, some sixty, some an hundred, and which have been by carnal descent transmitted to us. 2. Sins arising from former evil habits, now abandoned. Sin once committed retains power over our souls; it has given a colour to our thoughts, words, works; and though, with many efforts, we would wash it out from us, yet this is not possible except gradually. Sloth, self-conceit, self-will, impurity, worldly-mindedness; sins such as these, though cast off, cling like a poisoned garment to the soul. 3. Sins arising from went of self-command; the conscience informed, but the governing principle weak. Difficult to do as one would wish--to govern the feelings, the tongue, the thoughts. 4. Sins which we fall into from being taken unawares. 5. Sins which rise from the devil’ s temptations, inflaming the wounds and scars of past sins healed, or nearly so; exciting the memory, and hurrying us away; and thus making use of our former selves against our present selves contrary to our will. 6. Sins which rise from a deficiency of practical experience, or from ignorance how to perform duties which we set about. Men attempt to be munificent, and their acts are prodigal; they wish to be firm and zealous, and their acts are cruel; they wish to be benevolent, and are indulgent and weak; they do harm when they mean to do good; they engage in undertakings, or promote designs, or put forth opinions, or set a pattern, of which evil comes; they mistake falsehood for truth; they are zealous for false doctrines; they oppose the cause of God. 7. Unworthy motives, low views, mistakes in principle, false maxims. 8. Negligences and ignorances. Forgetfulness, heedlessness, want of seriousness, frivolity. All these infirmities may be and are found in persons living consciously sinful lives, and in them of course they only serve to heighten transgression and hasten judgment; but they are also to be found in persons free from wilful sin, and such persons need not despond, or be miserable on account of failings which in them are not destructive of faith or incompatible with grace. Who these are is only known for certain by God. He is able, amid the maze of contending motives and principles within us, to trace out the perfect work of righteousness steadily going on there, and the rudiments of a new world rising from out the chaos. He can discriminate between what is habitual and what is accidental; what is on the growth and what is in decay; what is a result and what is indeterminate; what is of us and what is in us. He estimates the difference between a will that is honestly devoted to Him, and one that is insincere. And where there is a willing mind He accepts it, “ according to that a man hath, and net according to that he hath not.” In those whose wills are holy He is present for sanctification and acceptance; and, like the sun’ s beams in some cave of the earth, His grace sheds light on every side, and consumes all mists and vapours as they rise. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)Involuntary transgression The soul of man is intended to be a well-ordered polity, in which there are many powers and faculties, and each has its due place; and for these to exceed their limits is sin; yet they cannot he kept within them except by being governed, and we are unequal to this task of governing ourselves except after long habit. While we are learning to govern ourselves we are constantly exposed to the risk, or rather to the occurrence of numberless failures. We have failures by the “ way though we triumph in the end; and thus the process of learning to obey God is, in one sense, a process of sinning, from the nature of the case. We are feeble-minded, excitable, effeminate, wayward, irritable, changeable, miserable. We have no lord over us, because we are but partially subject to the dominion of the true King of saints. Let us try to do right as much as we will, let us pray as earnestly, yet we do not, in a time of trial, come up even to our own notions of perfection, or rather we fall quite short of them, and do, perhaps, just the reverse of what we had hoped to do. While there is no external temptation present, our passions sleep, and we think all is well. Then we think and reflect and resolve what we will do; and we anticipate no difficulty in doing it. But when the temptation is come, where are we then? We are like Daniel in the lion’ s den; and our passions are the lions; except that we have not Daniel’ s grace to prevail with God for the shutting of the lions’ mouths lest they devour us. Then our reason is but like the miserable keeper of wild beasts, who in ordinary seasons is equal to them, but not when they are excited. Alas! Whatever the affection of mind may be, how miserable it is! It may be a dull, heavy sloth, or cowardice, which throws its huge limbs around us, binds us close, oppresses our breath, and makes us despise ourselves, while we are impotent to resist it; or it may be anger, or other baser passion, which, for the moment, escapes from our control after its prey, to our horror and our disgrace; but anyhow, what a miserable den of brute creatures does the soul then become, and we at the moment literally unable to help it! I am not, of course, speaking of deeds of evil, the fruits of wilfulness, malice, or revenge, or uncleanness, or intemperance, or violence, or robbery, or fraud; alas! the sinful heart often goes on to commit sins which hide from it at once the light of God’ s countenance; but I am supposing what was Eve’ s case, when she looked at the tree and saw that the fruit was good, but before she plucked it, when lust had conceived and was bringing forth sin, but ere sin was finished and had brought forth death. I am supposing that we do not exceed so far as to estrange God from us; that He mercifully, chains the lions at our cry, before they do more than frighten us by their moanings or their roar, before they fall on us to destroy us: yet at best, what misery, what pollution, what sacrilege, what a chaos is there then in that consecrated spot which is the temple of the Holy Ghost! How is it that the lamp of God does not go out in it at once, when the whole soul seems tending to hell, and hope is almost gone? Wonderful mercy indeed it is which bears so much! Incomprehensible patience in the Holy One, so to dwell, in such a wilderness, with the wild beasts! Exceeding and Divine virtue in the grace given us, that it is not stifled! Yet such is the promise, not to those who sin contentedly after they have received grace; there is no hope while they so sin; but where sin is not part of a course, while it is still sin, whether sin of our birth, or of habit’ s formed long ago, or of want of self-command, which we are trying to gain, God mercifully allows and pardons it, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from it all … To know thus much, that infirmities are no necessary mark of reprobation, that God’ s elect have infirmities, and that our own sins may possibly be no more than infirmities, this, surely, by itself, is a consolation. And to reflect that at least God continues us visibly in His Church; that He does not withdraw from us the ordinances of grace; that He gives us means of instruction, patterns of holiness, religious guidance, good books; that He allows us to frequent His house, and to present ourselves before Him in prayer and Holy Communion; that He gives us opportunities of private prayer; that He has given us a care for our souls; an anxiety to secure their salvation; a desire to be more strict and conscientious, more simple in faith, more full of love than we are; all this will tend to soothe and encourage, us when the sense of our infirmities makes us afraid. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)The traitor within A garrison is not free from danger while it has an enemy lodged within. You may bolt all your doors and fasten all your windows; but if the thieves have placed even a little child within doors, who can draw the bolts for them, the house is still unprotected. All the sea outside a ship cannot do it damage till the water enters within and fills the hold. Hence, it is clear, our greatest danger is from within. All the devils in hell and tempters on earth could do us no injury if there were no corruption in our nature. The sparks will fall harmlessly if there is no tinder. Alas, our heart is our greatest enemy: this is the little home-born thief. Lord, save me from that evil man, myself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Continuance of natural depravity in Christians In material fruit-trees the sour nature of the wild plants that are grafted upon still continues in the stock or root, and is not taken away by ingrafting; it is only restrained and kept under by the graft. The nature of the graft is predominant in the tree, and overrules in bringing forth fruits according to its own kind (although with some small degree of the sour nature of the stock mixed with it), and the two natures of the graft and stock continue mixed together as long as the tree lives. This is a similitude of the state of mystical fruit-trees, and shadows forth to us this proposition: That corrupt nature abides in believers as long as they live, and is but in part subdued by grace. We find by experience that after plant is ingrafted, both the graft and the stock will shoot forth, and if the graft grow vigorously and strongly, then the shoots of the stock are but weak; but if the shoots of the stock break out strongly then the graft grows but weakly; therefore the husbandman takes pains often to cut off the shoots that grow upon the stock, so that the graft may grow the better. This is another similitude of the state of mystical fruit-trees, and shadows forth to us this proposition: That while the spiritual part in us acts and grows strongly, the fleshly part acts but weakly; so also, if the flesh be strong, the spirit is weak. This should teach us often to take notice of the actings of our spirits, whether the stock or the graft bud the faster. If we were watchful daily, and took pains with our spirits to keep them up in a spiritual frame in communion with God, then (by degrees) the shoots and growths of the spiritual part would become strong, and the shoots of the flesh weak and feeble. (Austen.)The Christian’ s conflicts The conflicts of the Christian, “ the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh,” continue to the end of life, and may be compared to a conflagration which is opposed by engines, where the supply of water is scarcely equal to the demand, and not incessantly followed up. Sometimes the fire yields to the well-directed stream, and at other times it breaks forth with renewed fury, and seems to defy the efforts of those who would arrest its progress. (H. G. Salter.)The believer’ s struggle The spirit and the flesh, grace and nature, heavenly and earthly influences, are sometimes so fairly balanced, that, like a ship with wind and tide acting on her with equal power but in opposite directions, the believer makes no progress in the Divine life. He loses headway. He does not become worse, but he grows no better; and it is all he can do to hold his own. Sometimes, indeed, he loses ground, falling into old sins. Temptation comes like a roaring sea-squall, and, finding him asleep at his post, drives him backward on his course; and, further now from heaven than once he was, he has to pray: Heal my backsliding, renew me graciously, love me freely. For Thy name’ s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Conflict and conquest I. The Fact Stated. “ The flesh,” etc. Remnants of indwelling sin remain. “ Flesh” does not mean “ sinews,” “ fibres,” etc., but carnal propensities. Fact stated shared by apostles. They no exception to general rule. Not by nature more saintly than ourselves. Indwelling sin affects all. Sinners not perfected in holiness here. Why?1. To make us watchful. Common idea, “ way to heaven easy.” Nature of sin misunderstood, so that men fly to it as moths to candle. But saints are taught another lesson. Sin is a deadly enemy. Truth is known, “ flesh lusteth,” etc. This keeps them alive, watchful, safe. Sleep is fatal. The story is told that Satan once summoned his angels to inquire what they had been doing. One said, “ I saw a company of Christians crossing the desert, and I let loose the winds of heaven, and their bones are bleaching in the sun.” “ What of that?” said Satan; “ perhaps their souls are saved.” Another said, I saw a ship with missionaries on board, going to a heathen land, and I raised a storm and drowned them all.” “ What of that?” said Satan; “ perhaps their souls are saved.” And then came forward a subtle spirit, who said, “ For fifteen years I have been trying to lull an old Christian to sleep, and I have just succeeded.” Whereupon there arose a shout of triumph, the bells of hell rang for joy, and Satan spoke approvingly. So the old nature is never made better, but a new one added. Always an enemy within. 2. That we may never mistake the grounds of our salvation. Works have no meritorious part. All of grace. Beginning (1 Corinthians 15:8-9), ending (Philippians 1:6). But only failures teach this. Past sins like past gales to the seaman--forgotten. Present sickness, distress, make us cling to friends. So indwelling sin and conflict bring the saint close to Christ. II. The attitude of indwelling sin. Not dead or restful, quiet or submissive. Romans 7:23-24, describes a deadly feud, very unlike common idea of personal depravity. Never feud more deadly, not even the Wars of the Roses or the Indian Mutiny. Its nearness makes it so. If distant, less painful, less distressing. Near. I would press this. Saints contest every step. Bunyan’ s description of Apollyon’ s conflict with Christian graphically describes the state. Weapons vary, but enemy never. Pride, anger, lust, sloth, despair (Ephesians 6:11) “ lusteth.” III. The conquest. “ So that ye,” etc. Not the flesh hindering grace. Vice versa. What a mercy! Shout of victory always follows cry of battle. Gospel purposes not accomplished when men, even Christians, are stationary. More glorious. Rich become liberal, godless godly, etc. (1 Corinthians 6:11). Not preach defeat. “ Greater is He that is,” etc. Are you ready to despair? Think of the issue. Not always slaves or prisoners. Deliverance. Wait as Wellington behind the lines of Tortes Vedras. So you behind the grace of God. Then go forth to victory. (H. T. Cavell.)The struggle of the flesh and the spirit It is on this passage we offer the following reflections:--1. Paul regards all the events that constitute the general course of the world, whether of private history or of public affairs, as the works of the flesh. As water cannot rise beyond its spring, so neither can life rise beyond its origin and inspiration. The natural life of man is “ animal.” The awful catalogue which is given of the “ works of the flesh” (verse 19) is a condensed history of the weed of mankind in all latitudes and in all ages. There is a close alliance between man and the animal races. In this state the gospel finds mankind. 2. They that lead this animal life, under whatever form of civilization or barbarism, “ cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). 3. But God, in His mercy, has provided redemption for man from his fleshly or animal condition--from sin and its consequences--by the Incarnation of the Divine Word, by the sacrifice of the Cross, by the Resurrection of Christ, and by His new creating Spirit. Christ is the new Head of life for mankind--the second Adam. Those who are not born twice will die twice. 4. But God affords His Spirit of renovation to dwell with all believers. The Spirit originates a struggle of forces within the nature of a Christian, the issue of which, as with the unborn Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:22-23), is that the elder serves the younger, the newer vanquishes the older man--the wild and shaggy animal Nature is subdued in the Israel of God by the civilizing power of Divine grace. We are surrounded on all sides in the creation by the struggle of rival forces; gravitation and muscular power; the vital powers and the chemical laws; the opposing forces which combine to send the earth along its nearly circular orbit. But there is no struggle in physical nature half so interesting or half so glorious as this inward contest between the flesh and the spirit. It is emphatically a war between heaven and earth in the body and soul of man. The condition of the contest is that God by His Spirit supplies a new power in supplying a new life. It is the part of man, as a living and intelligent will, to yield to the inspirations of the new power and life, and so to overcome the works of the flesh. God does not operate irresistibly, as upon dead matter, but intellectually and spiritually, as upon honest mind. He “ worketh in us to will and to do,” but we must “ work out our own salvation.” 5. How does the Holy Spirit accomplish the work of renewal in the Divine image? As it were by infusing a new blood into the system--a new life. What is this life-blood? It is the truth of Christ. “ Sanctify them by Thy truth” The old corrupt humanity is cut down. The new vine now bears fruit unto God, the “ fruit of the spirit” of life in Christ Jesus. There is a new motive in life. God has become real, and near, and dear in Jesus Christ. Here are revealed the secrets of power, the mystery of that supernatural “ life in Christ Jesus “ which begins in the gift of God, and repentance from dead works is strengthened by the assurance of salvation from sin already visible, and will be perfected in the resurrection. (Edward White.)The conflict in man’ s nature The flesh represents, in St. Paul’ s terminology, the whole brood of lower faculties, or that part of our nature which constitutes us animals; and the spirit represents manhood, or that whole class of faculties by which we are exalted into the higher sphere, by which we become sons of God. In a figurative way, he represents these two as in conflict. It is as if there were two bands of soldiers quartered in one tenement, having an upper and a lower storey. On the ground-floor is a company of brawling, drunken, unruly, brutal, cruel men; and in the story above them is a company of soldiers that are gentlemanly, and courteous, and humane, and well disciplined. And there are three states of affairs which may exist. The brawling soldiers below may govern the house; and then they will have hard times upstairs, for their supplies will be cut off, and they will starve. Or, a part of the time the gentlemen upstairs may govern the house, and part of the time the coarse brutal fellows downstairs may govern it; and then there will be a terrible conflict. And between the attempts of those upstairs to maintain discipline, and the attempts of those below stairs to break down discipline, the place will be a perfect pandemonium. There will be no peace there. They will be quarrelling perpetually. And so the animal nature and the manhood, in man, quarrel. Sometimes it is the lower nature that is in the ascendency; and then whatever things are above it--conscience, faith, hope, all spiritual tendencies, and all supernal tendencies--are at a discount. The upper part of the mind is starved out because of the absolute ascendency of the appetites and passions--of pride and selfishness, and envy and lusts, and all manner of evil feelings. Then, by and by, there is the second state--the state of resistance and conflict. The spirit wars against the flesh, and refuses to be in subjection to it. And while this war continues, sometimes one predominates and sometimes the other. The men upstairs to-day have the best of it, and the men downstairs tomorrow have the best of it. Nothing is settled, nothing is continuous; all is subject to chance. There is many a half-formed man who has no fixed habits of life, and in whom sometimes one part of his nature gets momentum and comes into the ascendency, and sometimes the other part. Sometimes those faculties which are seeking to do good govern, and sometimes those which are seeking to do evil govern. And to a greater or less extent there is a state of conflict between the upper and the lower nature, between the manhood and the animal, in everyone of us. Then comes that state in which, by the power of God’ s Spirit, and by the discipline of life, complete ascendency is gained by our supersensuous nature. And all the other parts of our being “ are brought into obedience,” as it is said, “ to the Lord Jesus Christ.” Or, if you choose to follow out the psychological figure, the superior faculties in our souls assume control. And then there is peace. Then there is rest. (H. W. Beecher.)Opposite tendencies of flesh and spirit As a fair and gentle wife, starlike and dovelike, is given to the guardianship of some rude, coarse, uncultured nature, who treads among her sweet feelings as the hoof and the snout deal with flowers in the garden, so it is in this strange husband and wife, the body and the soul; the soul full of sweetness and gentleness, purity and delicacy, and the coarse animal body full of despotism, and swayings and conflicts of cruel passions; and they fare but ill in their wedded life on earth. The body looks down and searches the ground for its delights; the soul looks up, and, like an astronomer, culls treasures from among the stars, and beyond. The body eats and drinks; the soul thinks and feels. The body lives in the world, for the world, and with the world; the soul reaches far away to some higher life whose need it feels--but all is vague, but the wish, but the need. Strange visions rise; but neither to-day does the soul know its origin, nor to-morrow. The picture of beauty and of purity that rose bright in the morning has faded out before night. To-morrow mocks the expectation of to-day. The soul is like a bird caged from the nest, that yet remembers something of its fellows in the forest of green leaves, and in summer days hears snatches of song from far-off fields, and yearns, with all its little life, for that liberty which it has never proved, for that companionship which it so early missed, and for those songs which it never learned to utter, though it strives in broken notes for them-. Once some adventurous hunters, from a ledge of rocks, robbed an eagle’ s nest of an eaglet. Brought home, he was reared among fowls, that he might perform domestic duty. As he grew, he grew apart from the children of the dunghill, and sat moody in sullen dignity. As his wings secretly grew strong, they were clipped. When on a summer’ s day, wild in the heaven the hawk screamed, every fowl in the yard ran cowering to shelter; he, with flashing eye and discordant scream, reared himself to fly, but alas! he could not rise. He fell sick. He would have died, if he might. They let him alone. His pinions grew again. They forgot him. He forgot not. The sky was his. The great round of air, without line or bound, was his. And when, one neglectful summer day, all were dozing, from afar up in the sky--so far that none could see, or see only a floating speck--there came down a cry so faint that no ear might hear it-none but an eagle’ s. Then, with sudden force, all its life beating in its breast, it sprang up. Away from the yard, its fowls, its owners, over the rick and over the barn, over the trees and over the hills, round and round in growing circles, beaten with growing power of wing, the freed eagle sought its fellow, and found its liberty right under the sun! And such, of many and many a soul, sad in bondage, valiant in liberty, has been the history. (H. W. Beecher.)The two natures in a Christian A Christian lives in two worlds at one and the same time--the world of flesh, and the world of spirit. It is possible to do both. There are certain dangerous gases, which from their weight fall to the lower part of the place where they are, making it destructive for a dog to enter, but safe for a man who holds his head erect. A Christian, as living in the world of flesh, is constantly passing through these. Let him keep his head erect in the spiritual world, and he is safe. He does this so long as the Son of God is the fountain whence he draws his inspiration, his motives, encouragement, and strength. (George Philip.)Spiritual conflict This is one of those many passages in the Bible which, from some causes or other, men have taken away from their first and proper and comforting sense, and invested with a dark and stern meaning. For most men, when they read these words--understand them to mean that, by reason of indwelling sin, “ we cannot do the good things which we desire to do.” Whereas, the real intention of it is exactly the reverse--that by reason of “ the good,” that is in us, “ we cannot do the bad things,” which, nevertheless, we wish to do. That this is the chief and true signification, the whole line of thought proves. No one who knows anything of human nature, or of his own heart, can doubt, for a moment, that the ninth article of our Church is thoroughly and literally true, and that “ the infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, phronema sarkos, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the law of God.” Nay, many could give painful testimony that the more they have striven to do what is right, the more they have been dragged back again! that the stronger the light, the deeper has been the shadow! that the presence of God in them seemed to serve only to stir up the violence of the wicked one! The fact is that the process of sanctification, in a man, is not exactly what almost all of us beforehand thought it would be. It is not in the main that evil gradually ceases, and good gradually takes its place. It is not the extirpation of sin at all--but it is the subjugation of sin. The Philistines are yet in the land, in their strongholds, though the land belong to the people of God. I am not sure that what is wrong in a man is at all diminished by his sanctification. It is rather (if I may so call it) the increase of grace than the decrease of nature. Imaginations--the wicked desires--are all there; and there they are in their strength, their tremendous strength! Do not doubt it. They are there to the very end! Witness the falls, the awful falls of Christian men--long after their conversion! Witness the fearful struggles which we all have passed through sometimes! Sin lives a subject, a slave, a rebel--but Christ reigns! Ah! brethren, what if there were not something by reason of which “ we could not do the things that we would?” This, then, brings us to the immediate force of St. Paul’ s words. The way to subdue sin is to introduce a master-power. You will never actually destroy the wrong will; but you must neutralize it by another will. You must bring in, and cultivate, and enlarge the prohibitive and preventive forces of the heart, till at last you have come to the state that “ you cannot do the things that you would.” Let us look at this a little in detail. I will take one of you who is still much too fond of the world. The world exercises a particular fascination over that man. He is probably ashamed of the influence; and yet he is unable to resist it. At last, the fact is certain, that he goes more into the world than is good for his soul; and he knows that he does. Now, what shall we say to that man? No man can really and honestly live higher than his level. While the level of your heart--its tastes, and pleasures, and ideas--is the level of the world, into the world, of course, you will go. It would not do much good--it would not make you a better Christian--if you kept out of it. What you want is to raise your level. You want to taste pure pleasures--to have a higher ambition--to pursue more satisfying objects to live in a holier atmosphere--to get into an upper range. How shall you do this? You must accept the love of God--you must have more peace--you must have more real communion with God--more of the spiritual life, with all its deep, absorbing influences--more of the fellowship with God’ s people--more work done for usefulness, and for the Church, and for Christ. As soon as ever you reach that point, those lesser things will descend in the scale; they will not be congenial to the new life; they will become insipid; they will be actually distasteful. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The conflict of the Christian life I. Its feature.1. The flesh has its desires, so has the spirit as acted upon by the Spirit of God; and both are strong, contradictory, and antagonistic. 2. The struggle between the two is a matter of the commonest Christian experience. (1) Of the flesh against the spirit. The sense of obligation arouses the spirit of revolt. Hence even Paul had to keep his body under. (2) The spirit against the flesh. The revolt against command is checked by the grace of submission, and the desire to be faithful awakens disgust at sin. 3. The Divine nature is imparted to us with all its love and longing that the flesh with its lusts may be overcome. 4. The nobler shall be victor over the meaner. II. Its purpose.1. That the antagonism of righteousness and unrighteousness may work out the highest good and accomplish the destiny of the faithful. 2. To prevent the Christian life becoming one of impulse, merely the doing simply as we would because we will it. 3. To force on us the task of deliberation and wise resolve; to make us choose as well as will, and determine as well as choose, and thus-- 4. To add the steadfastness of Christian purpose to the eagerness of Christian passion. (A. Mackennal, B. A.)I. The flesh desires ease, and thus comes into collision with the spirit, which requires us to fight the good fight of faith (Hebrews 12:1-2). II. The flesh desires excitement, whereas the spirit requires us to deny ourselves and take up our cross. III. The flesh desires distinction, whereas the spirit’ s injunction is to humility (Philippians 2:3-4; Matthew 20:26; Romans 12:10). IV. The flesh desires to make self supreme, whereas the spirit desires to make God supreme. (W. Landells, D. D.)There are eight main incom-modities which the soul hath cause to complain of in her conjunction with the body.1. The defilement of original sin.2. A proneness to actual sin.3. The difficulty of doing well.4. The dulness of our understanding in the things of God.5. Perpetual self-conflict.6. Racking solicitude of cares.7. Multiplicity of passions.8. Retardation of our glory. (Bishop Hall.)We must fight the flesh You that carry flesh and blood about with you, and sinful natures, and do perceive the conflicts of the flesh against the spirit, weigh with yourselves what it is the flesh conflicts with you for: it is no less than for the immortal soul, as the Apostle Peter tells you, “ I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” The flesh aims to damn the soul. It is in this con, flict, as Caesar said in the battle he had once in Africa with the children and partakers of Pompey, that, in other battles, he was wont to fight for glory, but there and then he was obliged to fight for his life. Remember thy precious soul lies at stake in this conflict. (Christopher Lowe.)Evil thoughts perilous A gossamer thread is attached to an arrow, and shot through the air unseen, over an impassable chasm. Fixed on the other side it is sufficient to draw over a cord. The cord draws over a rope, the rope draws over a bridge, by which a highway is opened to all comers. Thus is the gulf passed that lies between the goodly character of a youth fresh from his father’ s family, and the daring heights of iniquity on which veteran libertines stand. “ Out of the heart,” said He who knows it, “ proceed evil thoughts.” Yes, but what come out next? “ Murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” A horrible gang. How quickly they come on. Once the fountain were cleansed, the streams of life would be pure. So thought David, when, in an agony of grief, he cried, “ Create in me a clean heart, O God.” (W. Arnot, D. D.) Galatians 5:18 But if ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law. The guidance of the Spirit 1. The Spirit is a person. The personality of the Spirit is a doctrine freely confessed by us in our creed, but often denied by us in thought, converse, prayers. He comes to have with us only the indefiniteness of an impulse and the impersonalness of an influence, with none of that substantive being, intelligence, and will that constitutes the Holy Spirit a true and complete personality. 2. The Spirit is in some way the continuance to us, under altered conditions, of that same Jesus, who once walked among men in visible form, and in the utterance of tones that were audible. In a way He is the Son’ s messenger; and so, in letting ourselves be actuated by the Spirit, we are living still under the same personal regime as did the disciples who walked in the companionship of Jesus. (Chas. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)Christian freedom The text has its affirmative and also its negative element. In neglecting the latter, and addressing ourselves (as is more satisfactory) only to its affirmative and constructive aspect, it needs to be accepted as our basal principle, that through whatever stages God’ s government passes, God’ s government never ceases, and that changes of dispensation are not breaks in Divine authority, but alterations simply in God’ s method of administering His authority. This principle is distinctly implied in the text. The Jew as such is under the law, amenable to God’ s authority as exercised through Moses: the Christian as a Christian is also under a kind of law, amenable to God’ s authority as exercised through the Son, the Holy Spirit--sovereignty, Divine sovereignty, carrying its exercise through both dispensations in one uninterrupted continuity without hint of break or interregnum. Now the conception we are likely to have of Christianity is of a system under which there is larger liberty enjoyed than under the system of Moses; and this conception, provided only we associate with the word “ liberty” its true notion, is justified, and justified by the Scripture (John 8:32-33; John 8:36; 1 Corinthians 7:22; 2 Corinthians 3:17). But I question if we are all of us, or even most of us, quite careful or accurate in the notion we have of the thing called “ freedom.” Freedom is not exemption from government; rather is freedom a form of government. Anarchy, lawlessness, is the opposite of government; freedom is a special variety of government. Political freedom is civil authority vested in a particular way. Christian freedom is Divine authority vested in a particular way; so that in coming out from the bondage of a Jew into the freedom of a Christian, there is no inquiry to be had respecting the abatement of authority, but only respecting the new point at which authority is vested and the new manner in which it is exercised. (Chas. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)Freedom only for the spiritual “If”… A man may live in an age of gospel, but it does not follow from that that he lives under the administration of the gospel. Christ has come into the world, but it does not follow that He has come into my heart and set up His throne there. The Holy Spirit is abroad in society, and there are thousands and hundreds of thousands that are being led by that Spirit. It does not follow from that, that I am being led by it. If I am led by it, I am not under the law; if I am not led by it, of course I am under the law. I have not escaped the pressure of Divine authority at one point until I have first put myself under the pressure of Divine authority at another point. We read in the Book of Numbers that a man gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and he was stoned at the Lord’ s command; and our thought perhaps is that God used to be very particular. We read in the book of Joshua that Achan, the son of Zerah, was guilty of embezzlement, and that at the Lord’ s command he and his sons and his daughters were stoned with stones and burned with fire; and our thought perhaps is that the Lord used to be very particular. He used to be particular to be obeyed. There is so much in the New Testament respecting love, liberty, and the abolition of old ordinances, that we allow ourselves sometimes to be betrayed into supposing that the old dispensation was the dispensation of man’ s submission to God, and that the new dispensation is the dispensation of God’ s submission to man; that the gospel is a kind of giving up on God’ s part, a sort of confession that He is not disposed to be particular about little things any more, and that it hardly avails Him to attempt to be particular about little things. Now, this conception of the gospel as an economy of Divine “ relaxation,” Divine “ letting down,” Divine “ giving up,” is one that yields bitter fruit; it makes the gospel contemptible by making it irresolute … Calvary proves that the truth is exactly the opposite of such a notion as this--that God thinks so much of His own sovereignty that He would rather have Divine blood shed than not have you and me respect that sovereignty and come into terms of gentle allegiance to it …. The man who discards the punctilious observance of God’ s outward statutes because he lives in an age of gospel, without having first submitted himself to the governance of an inward Christ, and to the laws written by the Spirit upon the fleshly tables of the heart, has detached himself from God at one point, without having first attached himself to God at another point. (Chas. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)Superiority of spiritual to legal guidance The old administration was an administration of exterior lines that men could see: the new administration is an administration of interior personal impulses that men can feel. God drew the lines: God gives the impulses. Moses was the agency then: Christ is the agency now; one government underlying both, one sovereign administrative in both. In one case it was government by communicated statute; in the other it is government by immanent leadings. In one the law was a thing distinct from us, and laid down for us to run upon, like railroad-irons spiked and bedded before a locomotive; in the other the impulse is a thing inwardly contained and inseparable from us, in a certain way like the instinct of a bird guiding it southward at the approach of winter. In various ways might this distinction between government by applied constraint and government by contained motive be illustrated to us. Any bar of wood or metal you can balance upon a pivot and constrain into a north and south direction; a magnetic needle delicately suspended in the same way will constantly constrain itself into a north and south direction. An applied constraint in one instance, an immanent tendency in the other. Although it will occur to you, I hope, that even this immanent tendency of the magnetized needle becomes operative only as celestial polarity makes itself in a delicate way inwardly felt. The needle would not move only as the heavens move in it. Or again--one pupil solves a problem according to the rule stated in his arithmetic; another pupil solves the same problem purely at the direction of his own mathematical insight. The result may be the same--the steps by which the result is reached may be the same; but in the latter instance the process will be purely intellectual, and in the former to a considerable degree mechanical; for between such constrained operations of mind and the operations of a Babbage’ s calculating machine the points of resemblance are obvious and striking. This contrast, however, must not betray us into supposing that our gifted problem-worker is not as amenable, quite as amenable, to authority, as the boy who ciphers with his finger on the rule. When a man becomes a genius, a mathematical genius if you please, he passes out from under the constraints of his book, but not from under the supremacy of his science. There is no caprice about genius. Genius does not care much for a set of explicit regulations, but that does not mean that genius is lawless; in fact no mind comes so close to, and into such loyal intimacy with, the very substance of mathematical law as the free and the gifted mathematician. So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to re-enact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intellect. And however the Christian, the moral genius, may discard systems of detailed ordainment suited to a slow-paced Hebrew, so far from a Christian’ s denying the great supremacy beneath which he stands, rather is it his sovereign joy to re-enact in the senate-chamber of his own conscience the unwritten law that abides eternal in the bosom of his Lord. (Chas. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)The Spirit’ s leading We cannot put one foot before another in religion, except as we are led; and if there be difficulty of a more than common order, it is that which encounters the man who takes upon himself to be his own guide in seeking salvation. We are not, indeed, machines; we are not to be the subjects of an uncontrollable impulse, or a rigid compulsion, destroying free will, and forcing us into righteousness; but if we be not, drawn, we must be led; if there be no bending of the will which would destroy our moral responsibility, there must be a bending of the will which would incline us to godliness. Helpless and hopeless is man’ s natural estate: born in sin, cradled in sorrow. The Spirit of the living God enters into this alienated creature, lifts him from the dust, urges him with vigour, and introduces him into the circle of the celestial family, leading him to the knowledge of all that is most blessed and to the love of all that is most beautiful, leading him from ruin to triumph, from the wreck of all that Adam was to the fulness of all that Christ Jesus is. Whom else, then, shall I take as my guide? Shall I be led by reason? Meteor of a day, I cannot trust thee. Shall I be led by philosophy? Device of man, thou canst not bring me to God. Oh, Spirit of light, Spirit of truth, enter Thou into our souls, and go Thou before us, as went the fiery cloudy pillar before Israel of old; and we will follow Thee, and we will obey Thee; making it our confidence, that, if we are led of Thee, we are sons of God and heirs of immortality. (H. Melvill, B. D.)A disposition to follow the guide needed The case is not merely that the man has lost his way. The traveller who is conscious that he has wandered from the road is uneasy at advancing, so that he will climb every little eminence as that from which he may hope to catch some landmark; and if none be around him, he will look up to the stars, and seek to learn from the constellations the direction he should take; and all his actions will betray his anxiety. If he hear but the barking of a shepherd’ s dog, or discern a glimmering light amongst distant trees, there will be an eagerness in endeavouring to procure intelligence, and to seek guidance. But there is nothing of all this in the moral traveller. He will follow with obstinate determination the path upon which he has entered. And though there be much to assure him of his error--the rugged rocks, and deep mountains, and tangled forests--he will nevertheless push desperately on, pausing now and then for a moment, as though half conscious that all is not right, and then with a more dogged resolution hurrying forward in the same hopeless course. Thus he requires something more than a guide; he must be furnished with a disposition to follow. And when we say that the Spirit of God leads the true Christian, we do not mean that it merely goes before him as a guide and a director to the city of refuge. Nay, but that it takes hold on him, as did the angel when he brought Lot out of Sodom. We rather mean that the Spirit literally leads him by dwelling in him, residing in him as a quickening and actuating principle. (Chas. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)The leading of the Spirit These words have before now been must mischievously mistaken by ignorant persons who were glad enough to suppose that by Christian privilege they were put out of the reach of the law. The meaning is as follows:--The Holy Spirit of God puts into the heart of man the Spirit of Christ, and this is the Spirit to think and do “ whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.” Now if a man have in himself the spirit for a thing, what needs he any outward ordinance to compel him to it? To the man who is led by the Spirit the works of the law of God are the natural outward, working of his spirit, as natural to him as the very motion of his limbs; he does not want them to be written down, any more than he requires to be told that he must move his arms and legs, and they can neither condemn him nor justify him; he is what he is without them, before he comes to them; and, as St. Paul says, he, “ through the Spirit, waits for the hope of righteousness by faith;” so independent is he of them. Is it not manifest, then, that he who is led by the Spirit is not, under the law? Let us go on, then, to know more concerning this Spirit, in which we are called into such glorious liberty. It is, as I have said, the Spirit of Christ within a man, formed there by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit; it is the new, the inner, the spiritual man, and the walk of this man is, of course, a following of Christ, a continual working out of that which he believes; for instance, he believes that Christ was crucified, therefore he crucifies the flesh with the affections and lusts; he believes that Christ died, therefore he reckons himself dead unto sin; he believes that Christ rose again, therefore he reckons himself alive unto God through Him; he believes that Christ ascended into heaven, therefore he sets his affections on things above; he believes that Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, administering His kingdom and interceding for His people, therefore he does all that His kingdom may come and His will be done, and is instant in prayer; he believes that Christ will come again to judge the quick and the dead, therefore he does the part of a faithful servant in watching and waiting for his Lord. Our notion of perfect liberty in the flesh is to do everything that we like; but experience soon tells us that the notion is impossible. But the true Christian does everything that he likes, for he does everything from the heart, because of the spirit which is within him. This it is to be led by the Spirit; this is the liberty wherewith Christ hath made His people free. Shall we not desire to stand fast in it? Shall we surrender ourselves to the bondage of the law? Let us only consider a little farther the difference of these two states.1. To be under the bondage of the law, is either to take merit to ourselves for obeying it, or to bring its vengeance upon us by disobeying it; in either ease it is a hard master indeed. 2. Surely, then, there is no real liberty but that wherewith the gospel of Christ makes us free. Let me state a few particulars of this also. The man of God, continuing in the word of Christ, and led by the Spirit, uses the law as he does a road; he is not guided by it, any more than a man perfectly acquainted with a country is guided by it, but he uses it to travel along through this world, and he delights in it, as in a road to a better place, and as in the exercise of his spirit. As for the commandments of God, he loves them, and in His statutes he meditates. The word of God is a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path. He feels no unwillingness; he has no mind for pleading excuses and making delays; but he deplores the weakness of the flesh, which in this body of sin cannot follow up the willingness of the spirit, and he strives to put to full account all the means which God hath so graciously given in Jesus Christ our Lord for enabling him to keep the precepts and testimonies of the Lord. He takes to himself no merit for keeping them, any more than for eating or drinking, or satisfying any craving of his nature; the leading of the Spirit makes the will of God his will, and therefore doing the will of God is doing his own will, so that while he keeps the law he is not subject to it. (R. W. Evans, B. D.)Beside the spirit of our mind (Ephesians 4:23) every man is led by some spirit or other.1. One is led by the spirit of error (1 Timothy 4:1).2. Another by the spirit of giddiness (Isaiah 19:14).3. Another by the spirit of bondage (verse 1; Romans 8:15).4. Another by the spirit of the world (1 Corinthians 2:12).5. The regenerate by the Spirit of God. I. How may a man know that he is truly led by the Spirit? The Spirit leads--1. In a right way: the way of God’ s commandment.2. By a just rule: the word of truth.3. Sweetly and justly.4. In a constant way of progression, from grace to grace.5. In a way opposed to the flesh. II. Who are those who are not led by the Spirit?1. Those who go in a known evil way.2. Those who are led by their own imaginations without any warrant from the Word of God.3. Those who are carried by passions and distempers even in a good way.4. Those who make no progress.5. Those who fulfil the lust of the flesh. (Bishop Hall.)I. The need of guidance and help.1. We are ignorant of the road.2. Have defective vision and cannot see our way.3. Are lame and impotent. II. We should seek for this guidance and help. This is what a lost, benighted, or disabled traveller does. Man, however, does the opposite, and pursues his journey perversely, blindly, helplessly. III. We must be provided spiritually with what an ordinary traveller has mentally,1. A disposition to seek the right way.2. A willingness to receive every help in the pursuit of it. IV. This is supplied by the Spirit of God.1. He leads by dwelling in the believer as a quickening and actuating principle ever aspiring after knowledge and holiness. 2. Under His guidance the believer advances-- (1) in knowledge (a) of the person and work of Christ; (b) of the issues of obedience and suffering; (c) of Christ’ s spiritual kingdom.(2) In holiness. (a) In inward graces; (b) in outward deportment.V. This leading is not driving.1. The free will is not destroyed by uncontrollable impulses or rigid compulsion. 2. The will is so influenced as to be inclined to holiness. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The spiritually guided not under the law I. Negatively. I am not under the law--of picking pockets. If the law were abolished to-morrow, I would not pick anybody’ s pocket. I am not under the law of murder; for if there were no gallows, nor officer, nor judge, nor court, I would not murder. I am not under the law to drunkenness. I can go by a whole regiment of shops and never think of turning in. I am above it. I have the law within me. I do not abstain from gambling because gambling is disreputable, and I fear losses. I do not gamble because I do not want to. I do not avoid bad company because I should lose respectability; but for the same reason that musicians do not sit down and work out discords, and who keep to harmony because harmony is so sweet, and discord so painful. And so in regard to spiritual things, we are led by the Divine Spirit into such a state of approbation and satisfaction in the higher things, that we do not want the inferior, the antagonistic, the antithetic. II. Positively. There is not in all the statute books in the world one single word saying to the mother, “ Thou shalt love thy babe.” There is not a Church or creed which says, “ Thou shalt feed thy babe.” But see the mother as the twilight darkens, sitting with her child as it draws sustenance from her own bosom, and singing sweet carols, and counting it the proudest of all the hours of the day. She has the love of the mother in her, and does the things that ought to be done, because she loves to do them--it is automatic. So if ye be led of the Spirit ye do the things by the law that is in you, and by your spiritual preferences and loves and likes, which otherwise are commandments. (H. W. Beecher.)From bondage to liberty by obedience Consider how many laws there are which affect a man’ s body--the laws of light, of heat, of gravitation, of sleep, of digestion, of exercise, dec., etc. When men are young and inexperienced, and have no one to teach them they get into trouble by violating these laws. They have no mind to keep them, and they suffer in consequence. They are in bondage respecting these laws. But as they learn more perfectly, so that they use their eyes according to the law of light, and their ears according to the law of sound, and their mouth according to the law of health; selecting this thing because the law requires, rejecting that because the law forbids it--then they are set free from these trials, and pass out of a state of bondage into a state of liberty. The little child when it begins to walk has to think where it shall put this foot and where it shall put that, and has to poise itself carefully, and use its mind as well as its body. But a man walks without thinking. What is the difference? One is under the law--has not learned it--is yet subject to it; the other has learned it so perfectly that he is emancipated from it. The man does automatically, what it requires an effort on the part of the child to do. The child is in bondage and the man is free, because the child does not keep the law, and the man does. (H. W. Beecher.)The Holy Spirit our light A man has lost his way in a dark and dreary mine. By the light of one candle, which he carries in his hand, he is groping for the road to sunshine and to home. That light is essential to his safety. The mine has many winding passages, in which he may be hopelessly bewildered. Here and there marks have been made on the rocks to point out the true path, but he cannot see them without that light. There are many deep pits into which, if unwary, he may suddenly fall; but he cannot avoid the danger without that. Should it go out, that mine will be his tomb. How carefully he carries it! How anxiously he shields it from sudden gusts of air, from water dropping on it, from everything that might quench it! The case described is our own. (Newman Hall.) Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:21 Now the works of the flesh are manifest. The works of the flesh our own It is the same with all the passions and appetites. No one of them ever leaves a man, who indulges them, just where he was before. No one of them is a mere dry, isolated fact, that drops into his record and stops there. If a bank-clerk steals his employer’ s money, we do not put our funds in his hands, as if that were a simple fact, and he the same as before. If a woman loses her purity by a single act, no sensible man seeks her in marriage, on any theory that he can afford to condone the fall. Such is the nature of the soul that it lives in its own issues, or dies in its own empoisoned evil deeds. They are all our works--ours only. God has no part in them; good angels have no part in them; yea, that thing in us, which is truest self, the conscience, resists and struggles against them. As the eye weeps and inflames at the irritation of a grain of sand, so the conscience resists and inflames before the works of the flesh--before “ adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and such like.” I do not wonder at the despair, the black despair, which, like a dark night in winter of clouds and sleet and chill, settles down on such souls as are victims to bodily lusts, namely, hatred, envyings, murders, drunkenness, and such like; and men hear the howling of fiends, and see lurid lights, and moan of a hell of fears, horrible to think of, as yawning before them. These things are the inheritance of their election. (C. H. Hall, D. D.)The works of the flesh I. What is flesh? It is taken for--1. The whole man (Genesis 6:3).2. The mortal body (2 Corinthians 7:1; Galatians 2:20).3. The ceremonies of the law (Galatians 3:3; Galatians 6:12; Philippians 3:3), because performed by the body.4. The human nature of Christ (Romans 1:3; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 4:1) as spirit for the Divine (Romans 1:4).5. All mankind (Genesis 6:12; Isaiah 40:6).6. The human nature, as corrupt, or a state of sin (Ephesians 2:3; Romans 7:5). This denotes the corruption of soul as well as body (Romans 8:6 Colossians 2:18).7. The unregenerate part in the regenerate man (Romans 7:18). II. What are works? Whatsoever proceeds from the body of death. III. How are they manifest?1. By the light of nature. 2. They cannot be hid (Hebrews 4:13). Conclusion:1. Take notice of them. (1) The power of the flesh in your heart.(2) The works of the flesh in your life, 2. Labour against them. They are (1) pleasing to Satan,(2) offensive to God,(3) tormenting to the conscience,(4) injurious to religion,(5) destructive to the soul. (Bishop Beveridge.)Though some have all flesh and no spirit, none have all spirit and no flesh. (Bishop Beveridge.)Adultery I. Its nature. It is a vice opposed to chastity, and may be committed--1. In the heart (Matthew 5:28); and therefore (1)look not oh yourselves as innocent because not actual idolaters.(2) Repent of unchaste thoughts.(3) Labour against them. 2. In the act. II. its greatness as a sin.1. It is frequently forbidden.2. It is destructive to self and others.3. It is the occasion of many sins.4. It is a punishment as well as a sin (Proverbs 22:14; Romans 1:24).5. It consumes a man’ s estate (Proverbs 5:10; Proverbs 6:26; Job 31:12).6. The body also (Proverbs 5:11).7. It defiles the body (1 Corinthians 6:18).8. It darkens a man’ s judgment and understanding Hosea 4:11).9. It destroys the whole soul (Proverbs 6:32). 10. It brings irreparable is grace (Proverbs 6:33). 11. Ordinarily it is punished in this life (Numbers 25:6; 1 Corinthians 10:8). 12. Certainly in the life to come (Hebrews 13:4; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). III. Its prevention.1. Avoid the occasions. (1) Idleness (Ezekiel 16:49; 2 Samuel 11:2);(2) Bad company (Proverbs 7:25);(3) All other sins (Proverbs 1:25). 2. Make a covenant with thine eyes (Job 31:1).3. Watch over thy thoughts (Malachi 2:16),4. Keep in with God (Proverbs 22:14).5. Delight in the Word of God (Proverbs 2:10-16).6. Be much in prayer and meditation (Psalms 119:37). (Bishop Beveridge.)Fornication I. What It Is. When two single persons come together out of the state of matrimony (Deuteronomy 22:28). II. Its Sinfulness.1. Contrary to God’ s command (1 Corinthians 6:18; Ephesians 5:3; 1 Thessalonians 4:3).2. Provokes God’ s anger (Colossians 3:5-6; Jeremiah 5:7; Hosea 4:14).3. God will judge it (Hebrews 13:4; 1 Corinthians 3:9). (Bishop Beveridge.)Uncleanness I. Inward.1. The desire of strange flesh, with a resolution to enjoy it if he could (Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:5).2. Sinful lusts and affections (James 1:15).3. Unclean thoughts. II. Outward. Adultery, fornication, incest or nameless infamies. (Bishop Beveridge.)Lasciviousness Wantonness, whereby the soul is inflamed to the other sins, expressed: I. In apparel.1. Excess.2. Lightness (Proverbs 7:10).3. Singularity (2 Samuel 13:18).4. Of a contrary sex, II. Gestures.1. Wanton looks, etc. (2 Peter 2:14; Job 31:1).2. Wanton walking, etc. (Isaiah 3:16). III. Meat and drink.1. The quantity (Ezekiel 16:49).2. The quality (Luke 16:19). IV. Words.1. Foolish (Ephesians 5:3-4).2. Obscene talking (1 Corinthians 15:33). (Bishop Beveridge.)Idolatry I. Its nature. The worshipping of anything besides God, so as--1. To pray to them (Isaiah 44:17),2. To sacrifice to them (2 Kings 17:35).3. To build temples and altars to them (Hosea 12:11).4. Asking counsel of them (Hosea 4:12).5. Thanking them (Judges 16:23-24; Daniel 5:4). II. Those who are guilty of it.1. Heathens, who worship-- (1) Men; as Jupiter, Saturn, etc.(2) Devils.(3) Beasts.(4) Stars.(5) Images. 2. Christians. (1) Popish, who worship the sacramental bread, saints, images, relics.(2) Protestants: the covetous (Colossians 3:5; Ephesians 5:5); voluptuous (Philippians 3:19); ambitious; sinful. III. the greatness of the sin.1. It is frequently forbidden (Exodus 20:3-4).2. Severely punished (Exodus 22:20 : Deuteronomy 17:3-5).3. No sin can bring greater dishonour to God (Jeremiah 2:13).4. It will certainly bring thee to hell (Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:15). Witchcraft I. The biblical estimate of it.1. As a stern and diabolical reality (Leviticus 20:27; Deuteronomy 18:19).2. As unlawful trafficking with the unseen world (Leviticus 19:31; Isaiah 8:19).3. As sometimes trickery and imposture (Isaiah 8:19).4. As filthy defilement (Leviticus 19:31).5. As deserving death (Leviticus 20:6; Exodus 22:18).6. As one of the crimes for which the Canaanites were destroyed.7. As inconsistent with a trust in God (Isaiah 8:19).8. As frustrated by God (Isaiah 44:25).9. As a power from which the godly have nothing to fear. II. Its prevalence.1. Amongst the heathen. Pythagoras, Plutarch, Pompey, Croesus, Caesar, were all under its spell.2. The progress of modern civilization has not exterminated it.3. But whilst it assumes the form of astrology, with its star-gazing; palmistry, with its handwriting; or spiritualism, with its media and trances and dark seances; it is the same abomination reprobated in the Word of God. Hatred (of God)I. What is this? (Romans 1:30).1. God is the chiefest good (Luke 18:19): the essential, original, universal, infinite, satisfying, necessary, and eternal good.2. Therefore He ought to be loved supremely.3. The want of this love is accounted as hatred. II. Who are guilty of it.1. Those who wish there were no God (Psalms 14:1).2. “ Who hate the knowledge of Him (Psalms 50:17; Job 21:14; Proverbs 8:36).3. Who hate His ways and ordinances.4. Who love other things more than God (2 Timothy 3:4).5. Who love sin.6. Who break His commandments (Exodus 20:5-6; John 14:15). (Bishop Beveridge.)Hatred (of man)I. Its nature: the transgression of the commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves. II. Its sinfulness.1. It is contrary to the law.2. It is the cause of many sins, as-- (1) Anger (Ephesians 4:26; Ephesians 4:31).(2) Envy (James 3:14).(3) Unmercifulness (Romans 1:31; Amos 6:6).(4) Cruelty (Psalms 5:6).(5) Pride (Proverbs 13:10).(6) Desire of revenge (Romans 12:19).(7) Uncharitable suspicions (1 Corinthians 13:5-7).(8) Refractoriness (Romans 1:31). 3. It is the breaking of the whole law (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14). III. Who are guilty of it? All who--1. Wish their neighbours evil, or not good.2. Who do not what good they can.3. Who do not reprove of sin and excite to good (Leviticus 19:17; Hebrews 10:24).4. Who bear any secret grudge and malice. (Bishop Beveridge.)Variance I. Its nature. A sin opposed to amity.1. In opinion (Ephesians 4:13).2. Affection (Ephesians 4:3). II. Its sinfulness.1. It is contrary to God’ s law.2. It springs from-- (1) Pride and ambition (Proverbs 13:10).(2) Want of true love. 3. Its effects are sinful. (1) Vexation and trouble to self and others.(2) Hatred. III. Those guilty of it.1. Infidels.2. Such as fall out for trifles.3. Such as being fallen out refuse to be reconciled. (Bishop Beveridge.)Emulation I. What is it? Twofold.1. Good (Galatians 4:18).2. Evil. (1) To grieve for another’ s excelling us.(2) To desire to excel him. II. IT IS A SIN.1. It proceeds from an evil root. (1) Error.(2) Pride. 2. It brings forth sinful fruit. (1) Contention.(2) Envy. III. Who are guilty of it.1. Such as are zealous in a bad cause.2. In a good cause in a bad manner (Romans 10:2).3. More for themselves than God.4. Such as love to see nobody above them. (Bishop Beveridge.)Anger It is sinful when with--1. The providence of God.2. The laws of God.3. The doctrines of the gospel.4. The good we see in others.5. Those who differ from us in religious sentiments.6. Reproof.7. Our reprover, wishing him evil.8. When we use unlawful means to avenge ourselves. (J. Beaumont, M. D.)I. What is it? A passion raised up in the mind against some present evil that cannot easily be removed. II. Whether a man may be ever lawfully angry? Yes (Ephesians 4:26).1. When it proceeds from a lawful cause (Mark 3:5).2. When it is placed on a lawful object (Exodus 11:8; Exodus 32:19; Leviticus 10:16-17).3. In a lawful manner (Matthew 8:22).4. To a lawful end. III. Who sin in their anger? Such as are angry--1. Not so much at the offence as the offender.2. At anything rather because it dishonours them than God.3. Without a cause (Matthew 5:22).4. Excessively, though in a good cause (Genesis 49:7).5. And hateful.6. And curse (Psalms 106:33).7. And therefore indisposed to duties.8. From sinful causes.9. For a wrong end. 10. And continue long in their auger (Ephesians 4:26). IV. Motives against it.1. God forbids it (Ephesians 4:31; Colossians 3:8).2. It disturbs soul and body.3. It is not only a sin but a folly (Ecclesiastes 7:9; Proverbs 14:17; Proverbs 14:29).4. It may prove thy ruin.5. It may keep thee out of heaven. (Bishop Beveridge.)Strife I. Lawful.1. Which should bring the most glory to God’ s name.2. Perform the exactest obedience to His precepts (Philippians 3:10-13).3. Believe the firmest in His Son.4. Grow the fastest in His grace (2 Peter 3:18).5. Make our calling and election surest (2 Peter 1:10). II. Sinful.1. When proceeding from anger and malice.2. About trifles.3. In opprobrious terms.4. Ending in hatred and revenge. (Bishop Beveridge.)Seditions I. To oppose lawful governors (Romans 13:1). II. To consent to and connive at those who do it. III. To raise tumults in a kingdom, commonwealth, or parish. (Bishop Beveridge.)Heresies There is no heresy in the long list of heresies which have invaded the Church, like the heresy of negativeness, of inaction, of death. The dead man is the great heresiarch. (H. W. Beecher.)Envyings I. In what consists the sinfulness of envy.1. It is contrary to God’ s command (Romans 13:13; 1 Peter 2:1).2. Repining at God’ s providence and goodness.3. The fruit of pride.4. The root of confusion and evil (James 3:16).5. The cause of hatred. II. Have a care of it.1. Thou art never the worse for others being better.2. Envy makes him never the worse, nor thee the better.3. Thou hast more cause to rejoice than to be troubled at another’ s goodness.4. Thy envying God’ s goodness to others may hinder it to thyself. (Bishop Beveridge.)I. Its nature.1. Its object is something good, natural, or acquired, even religious excellence.2. Something in the possession of another which is grudged and desired,3. Something not altogether unattainable. II. Its properties.1. It is common.2. Odious.3. Destructive. III. Its cure.1. A scriptural estimate of the objects which excite envy. They are not so valuable as they appear to be.2. A just opinion of ourselves. We do not deserve as much as we imagine.3. An entire change of heart. Application: 1. Do not needlessly provoke envy.2. Do not wickedly indulge it.3. Do net basely fear it.4. Do not angrily resent it. (G. Brooks.)Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of revenge and murder, the beginning of sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. (Socrates.)Murders Life is threefold of the body, mind, and spirit; and murder against each may be deliberate or careless, resulting from action or inaction.1. Deliberate murder is life taken by malice aforethought. 2. Careless murder, resulting from careless or culpable ignorance; e.g., the builder who neglects the drains; the parent who spreads an infectious disorder through sending his children to school while tainted with it. 3. Inactive murder (James 4:17), e.g., a man who allows another to commit murder, or who neglects to save life physical or moral. (C. A. Goodheart.)Murder is not mere blood-shedding. 1. Anger without cause is murder.2. So is oppression of the weak.3. So is depriving a man of the means of getting his livelihood to gratify revenge.4. Whosoever hateth his brother in his heart is a murderer. (J. Parker, D. D.)Drunkenness I. What is it? An immoderate use of any liquor (Ephesians 5:18). II. Its sinfulness.1. It transgresses the law (Ephesians 5:18; Romans 13:13).2. Abuses the creature.3. Destroys the body (Proverbs 23:29).4. Disturbs the soul (Hosea 4:11).5. Spends time.6. Unfits for employment (Luke 21:34).7. Entails woe (Isaiah 5:11). (Bishop Beveridge.)Evil of hatred If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. (Plutarch.)All sin is seen by God In Mr. Ralph Wells’ s school the other day, the lesson was about God’ s all-seeing eye. On the blackboard, Mr. Wells placed the words, “ Thou God seest me.” He then held up a vase of water, in which a gold-fish was swimming about. “ Now, children,” said Mr. Wells, “ see this fish hide. Do you see him now?” “ Yes, sir,” the children shouted. “ Do you see him now?” “ Yes, sir.” “ Now do you see him?” “ Yes, sir: yes, sir,” they all said. “ Can’ t he hide from you? No, sir.” “ Why?” “ Because we see right through the glass.” “ So,” said Mr. Wells, “ God sees right through our hearts. We cannot hide from Him.” (Picture Paper.)Fleshly sins The list of fleshly sins here given is not an exhaustive one; merely samples. Seventeen distinct sins are specified, which may be roughly grouped in four classes.1. Sensuality--viz., “ adultery, fornication, uncleanness, wantonness.” 2. Idolatry, or unlawful dealing in things spiritual; consisting of “ idolatry,” or the open recognition of false gods, and “ sorcery or witchcraft,” the secret tampering with the powers of evil. 3. Malice, or violation of the principle of brotherly love; such as “ hatreds, strife, rivalry, outbursts of wrath, cabals, dissensions, heretical factions, envyings, murders.” 4. Intemperance--viz., “ drunkenness and riotous revelry.” These vices are probably named by St. Paul as being those to which the Galatians had been specially addicted, and to which they might now be tempted. From early habit a Gentile Church would be exposed to sins of the first two classes, sensuality and idolatry. Sins of the third class, consisting of breaches of brotherly love, would be a probable consequence of their religious dissensions. Vices of the fourth class, when once established, are not easily shaken off, and, as we know from the example of the Corinthian Church, may even find their way into the holiest services of the Christian religion. But we must not confine this catalogue of sins to the Galatians, as though it had no application to ourselves (1 Corinthians 10:11-12). (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The old life As St. Paul looks back at that bad life out of which he had snatched the souls of his Gentile converts, it is its bitter brutality that he most vividly remembers and recalls. It was a jarring life, in which there was no tenderness, no courtesy, no kindliness, no peace. It was full of collisions, of frictions, of wounds, of sores. It was a loud and violent life, in which men fought, and hit, and swore. As he runs over his list of old habits once familiar to them, his picture is as of some back alley in our crowded towns, in which all is shrill, rough, boisterous, with women screaming, with children shrieking, a nest of noises, a swarm of jangling cries. This is what they have left behind, this which had made life one long quarrel, pitiless and brutal. They had left it, mastered and enthralled by the sweet vision of Him, the Man of peace, and meekness, and lowliness, who had been led, quiet and patient, as a lamb to the slaughter, and, as a sheep before its shearers, had never opened His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; and when He was threatened, threatened not; One who never gave back railing for railing, but only blessing. “ You all remember it” , he keeps crying to them, “ those old days, so merciless, so angry, so cruel; how you grated on one another, how you rasped one another, how you bit and devoured one another like snarling dogs.” It had been one long quarrel, a life of wrath, “ full of bitterness, clamour, evil speaking” ; they knew it all but too well what he meant, for “ the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these--hatred,” etc. “ Works of the flesh,” he calls them His keen eye sweeps over the whole range of this loud quarrelling; to him, it is no senseless storm that rages on without rhyme or reason. Nay! it has, all of it, a story and a cause; it is the witness, on the surface of life, to inner disorder. These rough oaths, these venomous taunts, this bitter tumult--these are the natural issues of the root from which they spring. They are “ works” --normal, and anticipated, and legitimate deeds, which appear in obedience to a law of rational production. They are “ fruits” --results that grow out of certain creative activities, as accurately and inevitably as grapes from vines and figs from fig-trees. And what is this root which so legitimately flowers into these uncomfortable blossoms? “ The flesh,” St. Paul names it; the flesh is as much the seat and home of this passionate violence as it is of those other passions and appetites with which we commonly identify it. This petulance, this savagery, this hail of malice, this outcry of rage, this havoc of revenge, this recklessness of cruelty--all this finds its principle, its origin, its motive-cause in that same activity of the flesh. Set the law of the flesh in action, and you must have quarrels. Out of the flesh they fly, these oaths and screams, just as sparks out of a smitten flint. It would be a miracle if men who lived after the methods of the flesh failed to envy and to hate one another. (Canon Scott Holland.)St. Paul’ s conception of “ the flesh” Try to enter into the solid and broad meaning which St. Paul attaches to this, his favourite term for the root-principle of human sin--“ the flesh.” Obviously, it is much more to him than the mere matter of animal passions. It expresses to him the typical nature, the essential form, of all that can be set in antithesis to spirit. It includes the pride and the falsity of intellect. It embraces the disorder and stubbornness of the will. What, then, is this “ flesh?” How can we describe and define it?… “ The flesh” represents all that a man is, when he is his own aim, his own end. His power of self-observation, that Divine gift, in possessing which he is the image of his God, has about its use this terrible risk--that he may cease to observe himself as he is in God, as he is in God’ s ordered world, set to fulfil an office in combination with his fellows, the member of a vast body, pledged to a peculiar or disciplined service; he may forget all this, and only observe himself, himself just as he stands, with his own private appetites, likes, gifts, feelings. And, so observing, he may separate himself off from all else, hold himself up before his own eyes, and fasten upon himself all his interest, all his thought, and his imagination, and his pains; and may spend his every effort in scheming how best to serve, in richness of pleasurable experience, this self, who has become his idol, and before which he bows himself to minister as to a god. This he may do; and that which a man has then in front of him as his aim or end whether it be low and gross, or whether it be delicate and intellectual--that is “ the flesh.” And the life that he lives in obeying its behest, that is “ the life after the flesh” ; that is “ minding the things of the flesh” ; that is “ walking after the flesh.” And the end of that walk is Death. (Canon Scott Holland.)Result of walking after the flesh We can easily understand why life in the flesh is a life of jars and quarrels, as much as a life of passion and lust. The man who walks after the flesh is absorbed in self-interests. He has dropped his eyes from their outward gaze at that busy and social world which encompasses him. That world is calling to him with all its voices, but he hears them no longer; it is appealing to him to act, to hope, to aspire, to give, but he pays no heed to its invocations. He has forgotten its wants and its movements; he is dead to its touch and to its cry. His brothers look to him for help, but they have ceased to interest him: his sisters turn to him for tenderness, but he is chill as a blind stone. All this crowded scene of our human story has lost for him its charm, its colour, its warmth, its neighbourly friendliness. He has turned his eyes within; he has bent all his gaze in upon himself; it is his own feelings that alone have an interest to him, his own needs that alone entice. He is busy night and day in considering himself; he is picturing his own success; he is planning his own pleasures; he is brooding over his own possibilities; he is filled with his own imaginations. Round and round himself he is always weaving the ever-thickening web of his own fancies, and his own schemes; and fainter and more distant grows the sound of outward things. He walks abroad, brimming with self-interests; and he is bent on things fulfilling themselves according to his fostered expectations; and so, walking, he must of necessity jar at once against a world that he has not taken the pains to study, or understand, or revere. He clashes against it, as against a wall; he is pushed and squeezed by the crowd of bustling men, who have no time to give to his breedings, and are at variance with his designs, and upset his favourite plans, and traverse his ambitions. He is disappointed, as he must be; for this earth demands of us a social temper,.and he is hopelessly and helplessly individual; it asks us to give, and he is proposing only to take. He is wholly out of tune with a world that exists only through self-sacrifice, and is bonded together by the grace of humility; he must be repudiated by it, he must be disregarded, he is bound to be checked at every turn, and he gets cross, angry, bitter. The world ignores him, laughs at him, brushes him aside, bowls him over. And the man, so treated, grows more and more wounded, hurt, indignant. Perhaps he rails and storms at the world that he finds so hard, at the men whom he thinks so unsympathetic and so cruel. Perhaps he retreats into sulky silence, and shuts himself up in clouds of vaporous passion, and fumes out his angry soul in secret breedings, and hugs himself the closer, and vents his grudge against life in spite, and scorn, and uncomfortable depression. (Canon Scott Holland.)Remedy for selfishness Self-pre-occupation, self-breedings, self.interest, self-love--these are the reasons why you go jarring against your fellows. Turn your eyes off yourself; forget your own pet schemes, the hopes you are always nursing to yourself, the self-importance that you hug. Forget them, throw them aside, push through them. Look up, and out! There is a larger world outside you, brimming over with far other hopes than yours, illumined by a vaster sun, travelling to some far historic goal. Look up, and out upon it! It has its interests, its purposes, its ends, which it is your glad privilege to learn, and, by learning, to obey and follow. Give it your heart, and it will show you its own. Take its road, and it will, then, take yours. Look up, and out! There are men, your brothers, and women, your sisters; they have needs that you can aid. Listen for their confidences; keep your heart wide open to their calls, and your hands alert for their service. Learn to give, and not to take; to drown your own hungry wants in the happiness of lending yourself to fulfil the interests of those nearest or dearest. Break through your own moody musings, and run out abroad, from these closed and darkened chambers of self-consideration--out into the wide and teeming earth, where not your scheme, but God’ s great hope, is working out its world-wide triumph. Look up and out, from this narrow, cabined self of yours, and you will jar no longer, you will fret no more, you will provoke no more, you will quarrel no more; but you will, to your own glad surprise, find the secret of “ the meekness and the gentleness of Jesus” ; and “ the peace of God which passeth all understanding” will drop down like dew upon your happy-hearted days; and the fruits of the Spirit will all bud and blossom from out of your life--“ love, joy, peace, gentleness, meekness, goodness, long-suffering, faith, temperance.” (Canon Scott Holland.)The spirit above nature I. Natural desires are never to rule, always to be ruled. II. By the help of the Spirit of God they are kept in subjections. III. Unrestrained, they produce all kinds of wickedness. IV. Present goodness and happiness are the fruit of the Spirit of God. V. Self-denial and suffering are requisite for the highest good. VI. By faith in Christ men follow Him and become like Him. (J. H. Godwin.)Drunkenness, revellings The apostle is not speaking merely of the habit and custom of drinking; therefore it is a false excuse if any one thinks that a debauch is no sin if one does not make a business of it. The devil invented this excuse. When any one so overfills himself that he is unfit for prayer and the business of his calling, that is drunkenness. What, then, are we to think of the respectable world with its sinful and damnable Christian drinking bouts? and what, too, of this continual drinking of healths, but as of a temptation to swill down liquor? (Starke.)The list of vices These works of the flesh have often been divided into four classes. Any classification or system, however, is scarcely to be expected; but each term of the catalogue may have been suggested by some law of association, especially as some of the terms are similarly arranged in other places. In the first class are sensual sins--fornication, impurity, wantonness; in the second class are sins of superstition--idolatry and sorcery; in the third class, sins of malice and social disorder--hatred, strife, jealousy, wraths, caballing, divisions, heresies, envying, murders; and in the fourth class-are sins of personal excess--drunkenness and revellings. In the first class, the first term, which has a distinct meaning, may have suggested the other and allied vices--miscellaneous and grosser aspects of forbidden indulgence. The two terms of the second class are somewhat similar--the first more precise in meaning, and the second more comprehensive--all occult dealings with the powers of evil. In the third class there is a climatic enumeration--hatreds ripening into strife; jealousy venting itself in passionate outbursts; cabals yet darker and more selfish; divisions, the result of deepening hostility; envyings quite fiendish in nature; and murders--the extreme result, and no uncommon thing in such countries, to obtain an end and consummate an intrigue by the removal of a rival. In the fourth class are first the simple term drunkenness, and the more inclusive term after it, referring either to scenes of dissipation so gay and wanton, or to orgies so gross and sensual, that they may not be described. (John Eadie, D. D.) Galatians 5:21 That they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.Sin’ s dominion fatal to the soul It is not said: They that do such things daily; for even though one does any such thing only now and then, on certain occasions, yea even only once, but voluntarily, he forfeits the Kingdom of God, so long as he remains under the dominion of this work of the flesh. Nor is it said: They that do all this. It is not needful for a man to do all these sins, or many such, to fall under the penalty; it is enough if he lets one single sin rule over him, let it be what it will. Now it rules over him, not only while he is committing it, but so long as the purpose never to commit it again is not fully fixed They shall not only not procure eternal life by their works of the flesh (as may well be supposed), but, if they set their hopes, not upon earning eternal life by their works, but receiving it as a gift to be received by faith, they will not, leading a dissolute life, inherit it any more than earn it. Such a man inherits not the kingdom of grace, still less the kingdom of glory, even though his funeral sermon extols him as blessed. (Starke.)Shall not inherit the Kingdom of God I. What is the Kingdom of God? Twofold.1. Of grace (Matthew 5:19-20).2. Glory (Matthew 18:1; Matthew 18:3; Matthew 19:23). Where (1) Jehovah is king(2) the laws are just;(3) the subjects unanimous;(4) sin and misery banished;(5) righteousness triumphant;(6) the citizens happy. II. How it appears that the vicious cannot inherit it.1. From the Word of God (Ephesians 5:5; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Hebrews 12:14).2. The rules of justice.3. The conclusions of reason; because not capable. (Bishop Beveridge.)Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul: it is equally true that there are materials enough in every man’ s mind to make a hell. (H. W. Beecher.)Sin cuts men off from God Were a cup of pleasant wine put into your hands, and you knew for certain that a deadly poison was mixed up with the wine, which would rack you with the fiercest pains, and ere long tear soul and body in sunder, who would drink it?--who would not dash it from him forthwith? Yet, if we had but faith, we should know and feel that sin is deadlier than the deadliest poison, that it racks us with fiercer pains, and gives us over to a more terrible dissolution; for it cuts us off from God--from Him who is the only source of all blessing and peace. (Hare.)Sin and death The tale of the goblet, which the genius of a heathen fashioned, was true; and taught a moral of which many a death-bed furnishes the melancholy illustration. Having made the model of a serpent, he fixed it in the bottom of a cup. Coiled for the spring, a pair of gleaming eyes in its head, and in its open mouth fangs raised to strike, it lay beneath the ruby wine. Nor did he who raised that golden cup to quench his thirst, and quaff the delicious draught, suspect what lay below, till, as he reached the dregs, that dreadful head rose up and glistened before his eyes. So, when life’ s cup is nearly emptied, and sin’ s last pleasure quaffed, and unwilling lips are draining the bitter dregs, shall rise the ghastly terrors of remorse, and death, and judgment, upon the despairing soul. Be assured, a serpent lurks at the bottom of guilt’ s sweetest pleasure. To this awful truth may God, by His Word and Holy Spirit, open your eyes! (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love. The spiritual life The works of the flesh are manifest, known and plain to all. But the fruit of the Spirit is not so manifest: the life of God in the soul is a hidden life: still it is a real life, producing genuine fruit; cherish therefore and cultivate it. I. The Spirit Himself is the source of all spiritual fruit. Ii. The nature of this fruit. The list here given is not exhaustive. Nor does it admit of very definite classification. The following three groups of three each have been suggested.1. Christian states of mind in their more general aspect. 2. Those special qualities which affect a man’ s intercourse with his neighbours. 3. Certain general principles which guide a Christian man’ s conduct. III. The connection between, and mutual dependence upon each other, of the fruits of the Spirit.1. They are all from one and the same source. 2. They all conform to one rule, the law of God. 3. Each Christian must possess them all, at least in germ. Grace in the soul is the reflection of Christ’ s glory (2 Corinthians 3:12); but that can be no true reflection which lacks any leading features of the moral glory of the Saviour. IV. Practical inferences.1. Be careful to cultivate all the graces of the Christian character. Without this there can be no symmetry and harmony. 2. Growth in grace is the best security for the crucifixion of the flesh. 3. Be filled with the Spirit. Avoid whatever grieves and tempts Him to withdraw His presence. Yield readily to His godly motions, His guidance, His teaching. 4. Pray for increase of grace. The daily life must be lived, whether we will or no. It rests with us whether it shall be lived in the power and under the influence of the Spirit. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)Spiritual fertility See the fertility and fruitfulness of the soul that is in a state of grace and therefore in the love of God. First of all, here is the relation of the soul with God Himself: Love is that which unites us with God; joy, which means the thanksgiving and the consciousness of God’ s infinite goodness, in which we live and mote; peace, whereby we are at rest with God, and in ourselves, and with all mankind. Then there are the fruits which have relation to our neighbour; and the first is patience. Do we bear with our neighbours? Are we irritable, revengeful, resentful, malicious? If so, the fruits of the Holy Ghost are not in us, because the benignity of God is not in us. Long-suffering is another name for patience. Just as equity is the most delicate form of justice, long-suffering is the most perfect form of charity, the perpetual radiance of a loving heart, which, in its dealings with all around, looks kindly upon them and judges kindly of their faults. It means also perseverance, the not being wearied in well-doing, not throwing up and saying, “ I have tried to do good for such a one, I have tried to correct his faults. I have tried to win him; but he is ungrateful, incorrigible, and I will have no more to do with him.” Our Lord does not so deal with us. Long-suffering means an unwearied perseverance in doing good. Gentleness means kindness and forbearance, the dissembling of wrong, the absence of the fire of resentment and of the smouldering of ill-will. Next comes goodness; as a fountain pours out pure water, so the good heart is perpetually pouring out goodness and diffusing goodness on all around. Faith means veracity, so that a man’ s word is as good as an oath. And then, lastly, there are certain fruits which have relation to ourselves. They are, first, modesty, (=meekness?) which is both within and without--modesty of bearing, modesty of conduct, of dress, of demeanour, a chastened and sensitive regard for others, in all that is due from us to them, which keeps us from obtrusiveness, and from transgressing the delicate consideration which is their right. Temperance or continence means most especially the repressing of passions--the passion of anger, the inclination to pleasure, to honour, to wealth; it is the transparent purity of the soul, and the custody Of the senses, because they are the avenues to the soul by which sin enters. Such, then, are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Every soul that is in the grace of God has in it this fertility. It may not bear them all in equal measure, but it bears them all in some proportion. (H. E. Manning.)Spiritual fruit in the Church Look at the world before the Son of God came into it. Find one institute of mercy in it. Find a hospital, or an asylum for the widow or for the orphan. Find a home for those who were bereft of reason. Find a ministry of charity to the sick. The culture of classical nations was as cold as the ice, as hard as a stone. The sacred heart of the Incarnate Son of God cast fire upon the earth. And the Christian world kindled and broke forth into all the works of charity. As soon as the widows and the orphans among those who believed were known to be destitute, the apostles set apart a special order--the sacred order of Deacons--to be the ministers of the charity of Jesus Christ to His poor. The law of alms came in, which had no existence in the heathen world. The life of community--not the communism of those that do not believe in Jesus Christ, but the community of all things among those who, being members of His Body, hate a sympathy one with another, and share in each other’ s sorrows, and joys, and in their hunger, and thirst, and nakedness. The miseries of mankind as they were seen by the Son of God Himself are before the eyes of His Church. All the miseries of mankind, of body and soul, are open to the heart that is illuminated and kindled with the love of God and our neighbour. The Church from the beginning has shown an inventiveness of charity, in finding out how it may apply the help of the love and of the mercies of God to every form of human suffering. And what the Church does as a body the saints of the Church have done one by one. The life of St. Charles, the great pastor of Milan, was inexhaustible in compassion. St. Vincent of Paul, who did not commence his works of mercy until he was forty years of age, has filled the whole world with the exercise of the most various forms of Christian love, ministering to every form of disease and suffering. And what there is in the lives of saints there ought to be in its measure in every one of you. Do not say, “ I have a preference for this or/or that kind of charity, and I am not called to other things.” You are called to show all these fruits of the Holy Ghost on every occasion in which it is possible, at least in some measure or in some degree, and that to all. (H. E. Manning.)Man’ s productive capabilities Fruit, regarded in the light of the orchard, the garden, or the vineyard, is the most perfect form of development to which a tree or plant can come. Fruit is the thing for which all the enginery of roots and branches and leaves was appointed. All these are servants. They toil and wait. The fruit only sits regent; it is the final result--the perfect; thing. The tree can never go a step further than its fruit. It can stop, and go back and begin again; but it goes only to that limit; and when it has reached that, it has reached perfection. The fruit is the measure of the tree’ s possibility. So when we speak of man as a tree, or a vine, and when we speak of the fruit of that tree or vine, we refer to that Divine summer which quickens man, and renders him productive, and brings forth in him the highest results of which he is capable. When a man comes to that which is called “ the fruit of the Spirit,” he reaches his full limit as a creature of time. When the fruit of the Spirit in man is spoken of, that which is meant is the fairest, the noblest, the best thing that he can be brought to, by the brooding of the Divine mind. It is the final result which is wrought out by all the influences for good which are brought to bear upon him. It is that which his higher nature ultimates in …. Here is the ideal of a perfect manhood. It must have these marks--love, joy, peace, etc. It must be characterized by these qualities. A man may be resplendent; he may dramatise as Shakespeare; he may paint as Raphael; he may carve as Michael Angelo; he may colour as Titian; he may build as Bramante; he may subdue the material globe, and conquer by physical forces; but these things do not represent manhood. A man may think till his thoughts shoot as far as the starlight shoots; a man may speak with an eloquence which is transcendent; a man may be endowed with all conceivable intellectual endowments; but these do not represent manhood. That which distinguishes the true man is not the capacity to command physical substances. It is not the power to analyse and use things created out of material. It is not any of the lower forms of power; nor even the influence of mental strength. None of these things constitute the truest manhood. It is the fruit of the Spirit--man being the stalk on which that fruit is growing, and out of which it is to be developed. (H. W. Beecher.)Fruit of the Spirit This is a rich coronet of graces, with which the apostle decks the character of the Christian believer. He tells us here what a spiritual life in Christ means, a life that has its ripe fruit in these real virtues of the man. It is no exact classification of the religious graces, but we may find an inward harmony, as if he thought of them as following a law of personal growth. Love, joy, and peace are the inmost dispositions of the heart, flowing from communion with the heart of Christ; long-suffering, gentleness, goodness are social dispositions toward others; and faith, meekness, temperance (or self-restraint) are qualities of conduct. (E. A. Washburn, D. D.)Spiritual tests We believe that we pass from sin to holiness, not of ourselves, but by the grace of God working in us. How, then, do we recognize the reality of such a Divine life? It must be by the real dispositions and the real graces that are in us. There is no other possible way. What is the grace of the Spirit? If a spiritual grace be a mysterious something, which has no test save our individual feeling, it may be an imagination. If a man should say, I see the grass to be red: it may be so to his eyes, but it only shows his eyes to be in a diseased state. So with our spiritual perceptions. If a man should say, The spirit has revealed to me that Christ shall appear next week on the earth: we should reply, What proof do you bring that you are not an enthusiast? And so if any one say, I am assured that at a certain time I was convicted of sin, and passed from death to life; we have still to ask, How do you know that this is not a fancy, a will o’ the wisp, shining out of the swamp of a morbid feeling. It is not enough to say, I have an extraordinary peace of conscience, a sense of pardon and joy; for any one who knows human nature and his own, knows that we can be more readily cheated by our religious emotions than all else, and may mistake the spirit of self-conceit for the Spirit of God. It must be a test beyond our inner feeling. It must be a test seen and known by others. It must be a test of a permanent kind. What is it? There can be only one answer. We know the Divine Spirit by the likeness of our characters to His, as we know the sun in his beams, the plant in its blossom. The Spirit of Christ is of love and peace; it shows itself in the conquest of our unloving, warring passions. It is of long-suffering and goodness; it is known in our unselfish goodness toward our fellowmen. It is of meekness and temperance; it is known in our self-restraint. This is reality. There is no outward surface morality in it; but the genuine morality of heart and life. If we have these positive graces, if our religion create this true joy of a cheerful, happy spirit; this peace not of a self-satisfied conscience, but of one void of offence; this gentleness, this goodness which prompts our action in daily life; this temperance, which keeps us from all unholy appetites of wealth or selfish pleasure; if it be this in the household, in the social circle, in the calling of business--then we have the only assurance we can have of the presence of the Holy Spirit. “ There can be no mistake about it. And so as to others. If I recognize these genuine graces in any, whether his religious experiences tally with mine or no, I know that he is a living disciple of Christ, as I know the flavour of a peach, although it may not be of my garden. (E. A. Washburn, D. D.)Danger of substituting any other test for this “ There is a religion calling itself spiritual, which substitutes a vague notion of the Divine grace for the plain rule of the apostle. Let such a notion enter, and what more sure to make the doctrine of the Holy Spirit the apology for every morbid mistake! What strange doubts in regard to the plainest duty, what vagaries in feeling, what contradictions between faith and life? You meet one class of sincere Christians, who make religion an inward self-torment; always asking whether they can find signs of their conversion, distressed about their states of mind, instead of testing the grace of God by their simple acceptance of His promises and daily growth in duty. It is the saddest of inversions. As well dig up the roots of the rose bush every hour to know if it have life, when you should see it in the fragrance and bloom of the rose. You meet others, who believe that some strong conviction is the assurance of the Spirit. I know nothing more unreal than that. In proportion as we believe in this assurance of our own unchanging state, we lose our humble sense of our weakness. The assurance we have is in God. But there is none that we have that life in us, unless we keep it by our growth. I have even known those, who hold this notion of religion, speak very doubtfully of the moral virtues, of integrity, honour, purity, benevolence, as a “ mere morality” which might be without any spiritual piety at all. Let us beware of such conceits. When men indulge in this theory, it often ends in machinery, in the mechanical exercise of feeling, and leaves the real life barren. Try the spirits by the rule of Christ; and when you see that the figs do not grow on the thistles, that the spiritual experience is one thing, and the real man another; a lofty faith here, and a selfish conduct there; grace that has no graces; a change within that makes no change without--then learn the difference between the subtleties of men and the plain Word of God. (E. A. Washburn, D. D.)New leaves pushing off the old “ Old leaves, if they remain upon the trees through the autumn and the winter, fall off in the spring.” We have seen a hedge all thick with dry leaves throughout the winter, and neither frost nor wind has removed the withered foliage, but the spring has soon made a clearance. The new life dislodges the old, pushing it away as unsuitable to it. So our old corruptions are best removed by the growth of new graces. “ Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” It is as the new life buds and opens that the old worn-out things of our former state are compelled to quit their hold of us, Our wisdom lies in living near to God, that by the power of His Holy Spirit all our graces may be vigorous, and may exercise a sin-expelling power over our lives: the new leaves of grace pushing off our old sere affections and habits of sin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The fruit of the Spirit visible If the sun is sparkling on the healthy leaves of a fruit-tree, and heavenly airs are fanning them, and the good soil lies below, we do not try to prove by abstract rules that probably the fruit will somehow drop down of a sudden on the twigs. The eye sees the work going on, and doubts about contingencies and dangers seldom disturb the husbandman. If there is a work of grace now stirring, if the Christ-thoughts become more and more our thoughts, if the world below sinks in value, and the character deepens on sound things, on truer judgments, on simpler goodness and wisdom, we need not to look to some far-off future to find hope. (C. H. Hall, D. D.)Symmetrical fertility “ The fruits of the Spirit” do not always appear, even in every true Christian, in their Divine order and symmetrical proportion. Grace works on very different natures, and is subject to an endless variety of conditions and modifying influences; so that while the great change has been wrought, the seeds of the new life have taken root in the heart, the form and degree of development will greatly vary in different persons, and different conditions and surroundings. In one, faith predominates, in another, love, in another, charity, etc. Seldom do we see in this world a perfectly rounded symmetrical Christian character. Grace has not its perfect work here: and yet the conversion may be genuine. The believer should not despair, if he fails to discover in his heart and daily life, at one and the same time, all the fruits of grace here enumerated. (American Homeletic Review.)Catechism of religion When I ask you, “ Do you believe in religion?” I do not mean to ask you whether you believe in creeds, and ordinances, and Church organisations. When I want to know whether a man believes in religion or not, I do not ask, “ Do you believe in Sunday, and in ministers, and in the Bible” For a man may believe in all these things, and not believe in religion. And a man might not believe in any of them, and yet believe in religion. If I were going to question you to ascertain whether you were a Christian or not, I would say, “ Do you, sir, believe in love, as the transcendent element of manhood?” Where is the man who would say “ No” to that? Where, in the whole round of creation, would be found a man who, if the question were put to him, “ Do you believe in the validity, and authority, and divinity of love?” I would not say, “ I believe?” That is the first question in the catechism. The second is, “ Do you believe in joy, supernal, ineffable, Divine, bred in the soul of man, and in the highest realm of the soul? Do you believe that all the faculties of man, like the pipes of an organ, conspire in ringing out sweet symphonies?” If the question were asked, “ Do you believe in joy?” where is the man who would not say, “ I believe?” “ Do you believe in peace?” “ I believe.” “ Do you believe in long-suffering?” “ I believe.” “ Do you believe in gentleness?” “ I believe.” “ Do you believe in goodness?” “ I believe.” “ Do you believe in faith?” “ I believe.” “ Do you believe in meekness and temperance?” “ I believe.” Answer me, hungry heart--you that have wandered from church to church, and have not been fed; you that have tried pleasure, and aspiration, and ambition, without being satisfied, and have become wearied and discouraged; you that have listened to discourse on discourse, and enigma on enigma, and had spectacular views which purported to be religion, and have fallen off, wearily saying, “ Ah, there is no religion in these things!” --is there no religion? Do not you believe in religion? If you were to see a man filled with the fruit of the Spirit, would you not believe in that man? “ Yes,” you say, “ but there is no such man.” But is not that an ambition which every man may most worthily set before him, and press toward with all the power that is in him? Is not that worth living for? And if men come together, and say, “ We will bear with each other, and will uphold each other, and together we will press toward that high conception of manhood,” is not that a worthy reason for coming together? Is there anything in pleasure, or business, or citizenship which is comparable in dignity and worth to coming together earnestly bent on having the fruit of the Spirit as it is here depicted?… I spread before you this reality of love, and joy, and peace, and long-suffering, and gentleness, and goodness, and faith, and meekness, and temperance, and say, “ This is what you are to be and to do. And you can help each other to be and to do that. Take hold of hands. Avail yourselves of what advantage there may be in social power. If you are wanderers and discouraged, join one with another that you may inspire each other with hope and find rest.” This is the whole economy of religion. It is the whole philosophy of the Church. (H. W. Beecher.)The influence of the Holy Spirit perceptible When the rays of the sun fall on the surface of a material object, part of those rays are absorbed; part of them are reflected back in straight lines; and part of them refracted this way and that in various directions. When the Holy Ghost shines upon our souls, part of the grace He inspires is absorbed to our own particular comforts; part of it is reflected back in acts of love, joy, prayer, praise; and part of it is refracted every way in acts of benevolence, beneficency, and all moral and social duty. (A. M. Toplady.)The fruit of the Spirit is love: Love an abiding quality Not love like a June day breaking out in March, and everybody saying, “ Was there ever such a beautiful day? But you mustn’ t expect more such days.” There are a good ‘ many people who have love like that. It is a rare thing with them. But the quality is to be permanent, pervading, atmospheric, automatic, spontaneous. You are to be clothed with it, and it is to abide with you. What if men had to run to an air reservoir every time they wanted any atmosphere--taking a breath, then going as long as they could, and then going back to get another breath! But in this world of hurlyburly, strifes, conflicts, envyings, jealousies, selfishness, and various attrition, a sweet, universal, unvarying, atmospheric love is almost as rare as the illustration would indicate. Yet we are brought into circumstances where every vengeful passion plays, and threatens to supersede all our grace. We have to get up our grace. It is as if a man, having laid aside his armour in time of warfare, and hearing some warning bell strike, and being in his house, should spring up and cry, “ Where is my spear, my arrow, my armour? I must get on my things, and go out to fight.” That may do for warfare; but so sharp are our appetites and temptations, that we have no time to put on our armour. Circumstances require us to wear it all the time. “ Put on the whole armour of God.” If you leave off any piece at any time, that is the point where death will enter. Love, automatic, continuous. You see it now and then. You will see it in a greatsouled man. He never moves from the stability of that state of mind; or if he moves, it is only as an overfull vessel sometimes spills herself on one side and on the other. Now and then you see it in a great-souled and saintly woman, not only where she makes herself radiant, but where the whole household is filled with the atmosphere of her graciousness and her goodness. This is what you see in the Indian summer of life in the aged often--namely, that they have worn out, as it were burned out, the passions, and have been released little by little from the temptations of the aggressive life. They have brought themselves into a continued exercise of the higher Christian states of mind, until, as they sit waiting for their sun to go down, that it may rise again and never set, they are luminous and are clothed, and in their right mind. (H. W. Beecher.)The fruit of the Spirit is love: The Christian the only true lover of mankind Is it not the fact, that religion unlocks the closest bosoms, softens the most rugged nature, touches the heart of stone, and melts it into tenderness and love? I have lately been called to watch the last years of an individual, who, during a life of more than eighty years, barred out every feeling of compassion and generosity; but no sooner did the beams of the blessed gospel pierce his heart, than I myself saw every sterner quality at once subdued, and all that was large and generous and sympathizing occupy the vacant place; no sooner did he learn his own condition, as a sinner redeemed with the precious blood of Christ--no sooner had he been taught that, if saved at all, he must be saved by an act of sovereign and unmerited grace and compassion, than the frost of his soul seemed dissolved, his heart expanded, his affections were new-born, he looked over the world with a new eye, and literally drained himself to supply the spiritual and temporal necessities of those around him. And he is not, by any means, an isolated instance; but simply a sample of the Spirit’ s work in the souls of the regenerate. Who, I ask, was Howard--and who are the men that tread in his steps, and dive into the depths of the dungeon, and take the guage of misery in all nations of the world? Who was Wilberforce--and who are those upon whom his mantle has fallen, the men that give tyranny no rest, and count no sacrifice too great “ to break the staff of the oppressor, and let the prisoner go free?” In all cases the answer is the same. These are the men who look to the Spirit of God only, as the source of all that is good and great as the living fountain of love, as their only stay and prop, as the Author and Finisher of all real schemes of benevolence; they are men, in short, whose help and trust are placed in God alone. (J. W. Cunningham, M. A.)The voice of love Oh! there is a voice in love; it speaks a language which is its own; it has an idiom and a brogue which none can mimic; wisdom cannot imitate it; oratory cannot attain unto it; it is love alone which can reach the mourning heart; love is the only handkerchief which can wipe the mourner’ s tears away. And is not the Holy Ghost a loving Comforter? Dost thou know, O saint, how much the Holy Spirit loves thee? Canst thou measure the love of the Spirit? Dost thou know how great is the affection of His soul towards thee? Go, measure heaven with thy span; go, weigh the mountains in scales; go, take the ocean’ s water, and tell each drop; go, count the sand upon the sea’ s wide shore; and when thou hast accomplished this, thou may’ st tell how much He loveth thee! He has loved thee long, He has loved thee well; He loved thee ever, and He still shall love thee; surely He is the person to comfort thee, because He loves. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The harmony of manhood Oh, what a grand thing human nature is when it is working smoothly! There is the will sitting supreme, informed from above, through channels and means, by all the grace of God which the Spirit supplies. There is conscience, its spiritual assessor, waiting and warning and testing with unerring accuracy. There is the inner circle of the intellect, presenting to it all that is good, noble, or useful. Memory, bringing in its treasures from the past. Imagination, bringing in ornament and beauty from the present, and even from the future. There is the body beneath, with its active slaves ceaselessly conveying materials through the senses. There are the passions and the emotions, with their hidden fires, all ministering to the great work which is going on within. And surely it is worth the effort to be all that is meant by spiritual, to set ourselves to work in the best way. And to this end it will be helpful to consider those virtues which the apostle tells us are the “ fruit of the Spirit” --those fruits and productions which spring up within us out of the harmomous working of our being--working, that is, as God means it to work, with all its several parts acting according to the will of God concerning us. It may be that we have not as yet learnt to use the machine aright; perhaps we have shrunk from, it, and God drives us in upon ourselves by the admonition of adversity or the reproofs of conscience. Perhaps, it may be, there is a large piece of this world’ s grit sticking somewhere within which needs to come away. Perhaps there may be a sense that we are, after all, our own masters, instead of workers for God, which hinders our perfection. If so, let us try to think what we might be if all these parts of our being were “ entire,” if we were working smoothly for Him. (W. C. E. Newbolt.)The right use of human capabilities Now it is obvious that this human nature, if rightly used, is a machine of delicate and wonderful powers, only some employ it as they might use some beautiful musical instrument, using but a part of it, with no combination of stops, no intricacies of effect, or concentration of action; while some maim it as they use it, and spoil it altogether. What a frightful perversion, for instance, is the man who is, as it were all body!--in whom the governing power has passed over to the lower senses, who perverts his mental faculties to the procuring of mere animal gratification, who stifles out all the spiritual yearnings and pleadings within him that he may be more and mere carnal and sensual. And if this be so, it is also true that there may be an intellectual deformity as well, higher and nobler if you will, but still a deformity, where the body is despised or dishonoured, where the spirit has been shut off in its higher regions, and is to all intents and purposes without any influence upon life. The first perversion is obvious; we may see it any day at almost any tavern door. But the other may also be traced in many an impartial biography, where on a review of the whole life before us, it cannot be said that the spirit, soul, and body have been preserved “ entire” (ὁλόκληρα), that the owners might be presented “ whole” (ὁλοτελεῖς) before God. (W. C. E. Newbolt.)The fruits of the spirit A hard thing it is, to bring an overweening hypocrite to a true understanding of himself; for pride and hypocrisy are two such things as few men are willing to own. That they might therefore with better certainty be able to discern whether they were indeed spiritual, or but yet carnal, the apostle proceedeth to describe the flesh and the Spirit by their different effects. The thing we are to take notice of now is the differences that may be observed between the titles under which St. Paul hath entered the several particulars of both sorts. “ The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery,” etc., the other in the beginning of Gal 5:22 : “ But the fruit of the Spirit is love,” etc.1. The first difference, which ariseth from the nature of things themselves, as they relate to their several proper causes, is of the four the most obvious and important: and it is this: that whereas the vicious habits and sinful actions catalogued in the former verses are the production of the flesh, the graces and virtues specified in the text are ascribed to’ the Spirit, as to their proper and original cause. They are not the works of the flesh, as the former, but the fruit of the Spirit. First, clear it is, that all the wicked practices recited and condemned in the foregoing verses, with all ether of like quality, do proceed merely from the corruption that is in us, from our own depraved minds and wills, without any the least co-operation of the Holy Spirit of God therein. It cannot stand with the goodness of God to be the principal; and neither with His goodness nor greatness to be an accessory, in any sinful action. He cannot be either the author or the abettor of anything that is evil. Secondly, it is clear also that all the holy affections and performances here mentioned, with all other Christian virtues and graces accompanying salvation, not here mentioned, though performed immediately by us, and with the free consent of cur own wills, are yet the fruit of God’ s Spirit working in us. All those very many passages in the New Testament, which either set forth the unframeableness of our nature to the doing of anything that is good--“ Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think a good thought” ; “ In me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing,” and the like: or else ascribe our best performances to the glory of the grace of God--“ Without me you can do nothing” ; “ All our sufficiency is of God” ; “ Not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” ; “ It is God that worketh in you both the will and the deed,” and the like, are so many clear confirmations of the truth. (1) The necessity of our prayers. It is true, our endeavours are necessary: God that doth our work for us, will not do it without us. (2) A duty of thankfulness. If by His good blessing upon our prayers and endeavours we have been enabled to bring forth any fruit, such as He will graciously accept; take we heed we do not withdraw the least part of the glory of it from Him, to derive it upon ourselves, or our own endeavours. Enough it is for us, that we have the comfort onward, and shall have an unmeasurable reward at the last, for the good we have done (either of both which is infinitely more than we deserve); but far be it from us to claim any share in the glory: let all that be to Him alone. 2. The evil effects proceeding from the flesh are called by the name of “ works” ; and the good effects proceeding from the Spirit are called by the name of “ fruits.” The query is, why, being both effects alike, they are not either both alike called works, or both alike called fruits; but the one works, the other fruit--the works of the flesh there, here, the fruit of the Spirit? For answer whereunto, I shall propose to your choice two conjectures. The one more theological, or rather metaphysical, which is almost as new to me as perhaps it will seem to you (for it came not into my thoughts till I was upon it); the other more moral and popular. For the former, take it thus. Where the immediate agent produceth a work or effect, virtute propria, by his own power, and not in the virtue of a superior agent, both the work itself produced, and the efficacy of the operation whereby it is produced, are to be ascribed to him alone; so as it may be said properly and precisely to be his work. But where the immediate agent operateth virtute aliena, in the strength and virtue of some higher agent, without which he were not able to produce the effect, though the work done may even there also be attributed in some sort to the inferior and subordinate agent, as the immediate cause, yet the efficacy whereby it was wrought cannot be so properly imputed to him, but ought rather to be ascribed to that higher agent in whose virtue he did operate. If this seem but a subtlety and satisfy not, let it go; the other, I presume, will, seeing it is so plain and popular. The word “ fruit” mostly relates to some labour going before. The reason is, because no man would willingly undergo any toil or labour to no end; he would have something or other in his eye that might in some measure recompence his pains; and that is called “ the fruit of his labour.” Where the flesh ruleth all, the work exceedeth the fruit; and therefore, without ever mentioning the fruit, they are called “ the works of the flesh.” But where the Spirit of God ruleth, the fruit exceedeth the work; and therefore, without ever mentioning the work, it is called “ the fruit of the Spirit.” 3. The works of the flesh are spoken of as many, “ works,” in the plural: but the fruit of the Spirit is spoken of as one, “ fruit,” in the singular. Many works, but one fruit. There is such a connection of virtues and graces, that albeit they differ in their objects and natures, yet they are inseparable in the subject. As when many links make up one chain, pull one, and pull all: so he that hath any one spiritual grace in any degree of truth and eminency, cannot be utterly destitute of any other. But as for sins and vices, it is not so with them: they are not only distinct in their hinds, natures, and definitions (for so are virtues too), but they may also be divided from one another, and parted asunder in respect of the subject wherein they are we are told (and if we were not told it, we could not but see reason enough in these times to believe it) that a man may hate idolatry, a work of the flesh; and yet love sacrilege well enough, a work of the flesh too. There is no necessity that a swearer should be an adulterer, or an adulterer a slanderer, or a slanderer an oppressor, or an oppressor a drunkard, or a drunkard a seditious person; and so of many other. The reason of the difference is, because all spiritual graces look one way: they all run to the same indivisible point, wherein they concentre; to wit, almighty God, who is unchangeable and one: even as all moral virtues concentre in the same common point of right reason. But sins, which turn from God to follow the creature; and vices, which are so many deviations from the rule of right reason, do not all necessarily run towards the same point, but may have their several tendencies different one from another. Because though God be one, yet the creatures are manifold; and although the straight way from one place to another can be but one, yet there may be many crooked turnings, by-paths, and deviations. Even as truth is but one and certain, but errors are manifold and endless. 4. The last difference is, that the works of the flesh are expressly said “ to be manifest” ; but no such thing is affirmed of the fruit of the Spirit. The most probable reasons of which difference are, to my seeming, one of these two following. (1) The commonness and frequency of those above these everywhere abroad in the world. The works of the flesh, “ adultery, fornication, uncleanness, wantonness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatreds, emulation, debate, wrath, strifes, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, gluttony, drunkenness, and such like” (I name them, because the bare recital of them will save me the labour of further proof), do so abound in all places, that you can scarce look beside them. Turn your eyes which way you will, ye shall see cursed examples of some or other of these every day, and in every street, and every corner. Alas, the works of the flesh are but too “ manifest!” But the fruits of the Spirit are not so. “ Love, peace, gentleness, faith, meekness, temperance,” and the rest--these are very thin grown in the world; they are rarities not everywhere to be met withal. Hips and haws grow in every hedge, when choicer fruits are but in some few gardens; and every soil almost yields stones and rubbish, but gold and precious stones are found in very few places. (2) The works of the flesh may be said to be manifest, and the fruits of the Spirit not so, with respect to our judgments of them, and the easiness of discerning the one sort more than the other. (Bishop Sanderson.)On the influence of the Holy Spirit I. The reality of the Spirit’ s influence upon the mind. That it is possible, must surely be admitted by all. It is the highest reach of presumption to deny that God can, in a manner far beyond our comprehension, direct and control all the secret springs and movements of the human soul. The only question then is, whether He will, in this way, exert His power and communicate His grace. Scripture leaves us in no doubt as to this. See especially 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 1 Corinthians 6:19. II. The nature of the Spirit’ s influence upon the mind.1. To lighten the understanding, and rectify the judgment (2 Corinthians 4:6; John 16:13-14.)2. To awaken the slumbering conscience, and to subdue the obstinate, rebellious will. Sin is a fatal opiate, by which the soul is intoxicated, and bewildered with visionary pleasures, and rendered insensible to its danger. III. The absolute necessity of the Divine Spirit’ s influence. The perfect purity of heaven forbids us to indulge the thought that either sin, or those who are infected with it, can have admission there. O, let it never be forgotten that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. So great is the change that must pass upon us, before we can be made truly happy, that nothing short of the Holy Spirit can produce it. This change, in the Scriptures, is called a new birth, a resurrection from the dead, and a new creature.1. It is sometimes called a new birth (John 1:12-13; John 3:3.)2. Sometimes the change that must pass upon us before we can be fitted for heaven is called a resurrection from the dead. 3. Sometimes this great change is called a new creation. IV. The evidence of the Holy Spirit’ s influence on the mind.1. One evidence of the Holy Spirit’ s special influence is a strong, prevailing, and permanent aversion to sin, in all its kinds and degrees. The nature of the cause is known by the quality of the effects produced by it. 2. Another evidence of these heavenly influences on the mind is a spirit of humble, unfeigned, and animated devotion. 3. Another evidence of the Holy Spirit’ s influence is a supreme regard to the Word of God as our rule, the glory of God as our end, and the immediate presence of God as our ultimate and complete happiness. 4. An other evidence of the Spirit’ s influence is a sweet persuasion of our acceptance with God, and adoption into the household of “ faith. “ It is,” says Bishop Hopkins, “ but an airy assurance, a void evidence, an insignificant charter for heaven, which hath not on it the print of the Spirit’ s seal. Now the impress of this seal is the very image and superscription of God, which, when the heart is, like wax, made soft and pliable, is, in a man’ s regeneration, enstamped upon it.” V. I shall now answer some objections which are usually urged against this doctrine.1. It has been boldly asserted, that none were ever endowed with the Holy Spirit, but prophets, spastics, and evangelists. But shall we then deny that gracious, though ordinary influence, which renovates the mind, and which was evidently bestowed upon common believers as well as apostles? 2. It is said, the influence of the Spirit on the mind is too mysterious to be comprehended, and therefore the doctrine which teaches it is unworthy to be believed. Who then will dare, in the fulness of his self-conceit, to deny a doctrine of Divine revelation, which has been the comfort of good men in every age, because it surpasses his comprehension? 3. It is objected, that the doctrine of the Spirit’ s influence has a bad tendency, opening a door to licentiousness, opposing the liberty of the human will, and discouraging our honest endeavours. The whole of this objection is founded on a mistake. The same Scriptures which authorize us to expect the Divine influence, require us to honour God in the use of His own appointed means. (John Thornton.)The transition from the works of the flesh to the fruit of the spirit Have you ever heard a clever organist undertaking to show what can be done in the gymnastics of music? He goes screwing his way up through all the chromatic scale with all sorts of thunderous conjunction of sound until he has shown that the organ is devilish, or you feel so, but at last he modulates and gives out some rare strain such as Beethoven and Mozart has given birth to. So out from the cacophony of harsh and ugly affections and passions the text modulates into the very melody and music of religion. (H. W. Beecher.)The fruit of the Spirit I. Contrasts with the produce of the sinful nature. II. Can only be accounted for by the new life and the new influences of the Spirit. III. Is sweet, serviceable, and acceptable, not only to God but to man. (Family Churchman.) I. The soil is prepared by the Spirit of God. II. He quickens the seed--the truth which is instinct with a Divine vitality. III. He fosters the life: like sunshine and showers on the seed sown. IV. He matures the fruit: creating for it a congenial climate. (Family Churchman.)I. We have here the inspired definition of Christianity.1. A great many men have religion who have no Christianity. (1) They are devout, but inspired by fear.(2) Orthodox, being learned in theology.(3) Moral, being controlled by law. 2. Christianity is a life of liberty, spirituality, and joyous love. II. This representation of Christianity is eminently fitted for the young, who are repelled by many representations. III. The inspiration of the ministry is the practical experience of the Spirit and the development of His fruits. IV. The fruit of the Spirit is the antidote to infidelity.1. Men may question the doctrines of Christianity.2. They cannot deny its practical effect. (H. W. Beecher.)Hindering Christianity 1. The secret of Christ’ s power was the goodness of God as manifested in His character and life, raising up a permanent moral influence and capable of remoulding the character and life of man. 2. Why, then, has Christianity made so little advance after nineteen centuries of history? For remember that the growth of Christianity does not consist in the diffusion of the knowledge of it or the extension of its organizations, but in the development of the fruits of the Spirit of Christ. Those who have set forward Christianity have-- I. Adopted a coercive policy. But--1. You cannot coerce men into loyalty in the State.2. You cannot coerce the growths of nature.3. Much less can men be coerced into love, joy, peace, etc. II. Formulated theological and ecclesiastical systems, and endeavoured to extend them, critically, controversially, and in an anathematizing spirit. But it is just as reasonable as placing violets and roses in an atmosphere of biting frost or consuming fire and expect them to grow, as for the fruits of the Spirit to develop in these ways. III. Aimed at knowledge, not charity. Knowledge can only puff a man up; charity will build him up. The knowledge of love may deceive a man that he has it, but will not make him loveable; and, the disunited state of Christendom being witness, has not. IV. Placed organic Christianity in the room of personal Christianity Physical life may be left to organize itself, which it does perfectly. In Christian life the loving, joyous, peaceful, etc., will make the most harmonious and orderly Church. V. Hidden the character of Christ, and misrepresented the character of God. (H. W. Beecher.)The fruit of the Spirit an element of Christian assurance The last witness is the comfort and contentment the conscience takes in doing good works, and bringing forth the fruits of the new obedience; that though he knows his best doings are straitened with corruptions and imperfections, yet because they are the end of his vocation and the justifiers of his faith; because the gospel thereby is graced, wicked men amazed, some of them converted, the rest confounded, weak Christians confirmed, the poor relieved, devils repining at them, angels rejoicing for them, God Himself glorified by them; I say because of these and other reasons he doeth good deeds with humility and cheerfulness, and findeth a singular joy in his soul resulting therefrom. (T. Fuller, D. D.)The ultimatum of Christian life The ultimatum of all vegetation is matured fruit. You take that oak tree; a few months ago it budded and blossomed, and now you see the matured acorn upon it. Since the appearance of the little acorn, the tree has bent all its energies towards furnishing it nutriment; it draws food from its roots, and drinks in from the atmosphere all the vital forces, and pours its life into the little acorn. I see that little acorn growing and developing and extending until, by and by, there is a well-rounded, ripe, symmetrical acorn; and then the tree goes back into its winter quarters. So with all vegetation. Now, I grant that there are many intervening difficulties between the bud and the ripe fruit. There are worms that gnaw at the vitals of the tree; there are the cold winds and the frosts; but the tree is only valuable as it overleaps them all and matures the fruit. Just so the ultimatum of Christian life is the maturing of Christian fruitage. (Samuel P. Jones.)The analysis of grace Dr. J. Hamilton says: “ The chemist who can analyse the fruit of the vine finds many ingredients there. Of these no single one nor any two together would form the juice of the grape, but the combination of all yields the polished and delicious berry which everyone knows so well. In the best specimens nine ingredients are found, but that is not a good cluster where any is wanting.” The application is easy. Love. Love, the fruit of the Spirit The fruit of the Spirit is love. You know what the fruit as it hangs on the tree is. It is the result of many causes. Look at the apple as it hangs ripe and ready for the mouth, on the bough. What a wonderful production! How symmetrical its shape! How beautiful its colour! How mellow its substance! How pure and gracious to the palate is its juice! Whence came it? It came from below and from above. The earth owns part of it; the sun owns part of it; the dews have a claim--even the wind and the stars have done something to make it what it is. A dozen ministries--angels of the earth and the air, ingenious and active, have joined hands in its manufacture. Fruit, then, is the last result--the ultimate product of many forces acting conjunctively. Fruit is not crude; it is finished. It is not a process; it is the end of a process; the end of many processes; the consummation to which time and cause have alike tended. Now there is one result in character which has the Divine Spirit for its cause; it is love. It may be in embryo; it may be in maturity; it may be weak or strong. It may rule the life wholly; it may rule it only in part. But in whatever degree of growth it may be--to whatever point it may have been carried forward and upward, the element and principle of affection in human nature never happens by chance, never occurs by accident. To understand the works of the Spirit, and how its fruits are generated and ripened, you must understand the nature on which it works and the forces in connection with which its potency is rendered efficient. I say forces, for human nature is a forceful nature. It is a co-operative nature. It is not played on like an instrument of music that has only a responsive power; it is powerful itself; it is acted upon and re-acts. It has its own capabilities. It is strong enough to be resistful, and is essentially independent. A great many think of God only as outside of themselves--think of the Spirit as coming down upon them as winds come upon the sea, being blown from afar. The action of the Spirit is thus made to seem instantaneous, and the changes wrought arbitrary. Many even think that it would in some sort disparage the work of the Spirit if its actions were made in any sense dependent on the human will, or to any considerable extent co-operative with human faculties. But, friends, he who exalteth his own power exalteth God; for is not God the maker of his power? The father is honoured in the honour of his son, and the whole family becomes distinguished through the glory of one. Let it be known, then, to all of you, that the work of the Spirit is a co-operative work. He works in alliance with our own natural capacity. Alas! that He is often compelled to work in resistance to it. Nor is the saving work of God sudden. It is a peculiarity of destruction that it is always swift. God kills in an instant, but He grows things slowly. The lightning smites the tree in a flash, which a hundred years with laborious chemistry have grown. Is it less honourable to God that He works through method and climbs to His consummations through spiritual processes? After our way of thinking, the Spirit’ s work in man is a slow work. Exceptions there may be, but swiftness of operation is not the law. Human nature never blooms suddenly. Some are born blossoms, but those that are born in the bud, as most of us were, sweeten, colour, and unfold slowly. The work of the Spirit is to bring back and reinstate in its original regnancy the Divine characteristic of loving. This is what it is striving to do in your bosom, fellow Christian. Faith in the Christ is valuable, because it is the means, the great and glorious means, of this reinstatement. By faith we perceive the loveliness of this principle; by faith we are made appreciative of it and are filled with longing that we may overflow with it; by faith we are thus quickened into this new life of concord and amiability and good-will toward men, and hearty affection toward God. Now, to start with in life, love is selfish. The love of the child, how unlike the love of the mother! Hence, we all say that we love mother better as we grow older. And why is this true? Because the selfishness which was in our early loving is eliminated. To start with, we loved our mothers with our bodies, so to speak. We have grown to love them with our minds and our spirits. Some of us have had them taken from us. In their love for us they have passed out of the body; and we, too, in our love for them have passed out of the body. They are spirits, and we love them with our spirit. And thus has love been perfected in us. The best love is never perfect until it becomes thus unselfish. And the work of the Spirit, as I understand it, is operating in human hearts to this end. When it is made perfect in Christ, or after the manner of Christ’ s love, what will it not do? what will it not bear? what will it not give? And one thing, especially, is worthy of note in respect to this love which is the fruit of the Spirit in the human heart: that it not only prompts them and enables them to die for the Christ, and that truth, wide as the world of being and deep as the nature of things of which He was the embodiment, and is and will be for ever the cardinal illustration: but it qualifies them to die for it as men receive a favour. It was not a task for men and women to give up their mortal lives in evidence of their faith. They counted it joy so to do. They were in love with the immortality which waits upon such sacrifice, and death was to them the happy ministry which wedded them to it for ever. What power is this, that charges into human nature such sublime courage; gives to human minds such forecast of wisdom; and lifts human souls so high that they forget the earth and are mindful only of heaven? What power is this that renews the mind, transforms the spirit, and gives to us inhabitants of the earth the sensation of angels and the serenity of the skies? It is the Spirit. It is the glory of the Christian character that in it, through the work of the Spirit, is generated strength to bear all things and hope all things. The courage that you need is the courage to live--the courage to bear yet a while and faint not; to do this hopefully, patiently; to find happiness amid your tears; to so order your sorrows that they shall bloom; to look at emptiness as if it were fulness, and at poverty as if it were wealth--this can only come as the fruit of the Spirit. The love which enables you to do this must be the love of right things; the love of truth; the love of God. They who have this love have a new sight come to their eyes. They see things far off and far up and far ahead. (W. H. Murray, D. D.)Love produced by the Spirit in regeneration I. I am to show that the Spirit of God, in regeneration, produces nothing but love. He does, indeed, often strive with sinners, and sometimes very powerfully, without softening or subduing their hearts in the least degree. He commonly alarms the fears and awakens the consciences of those sinners whom He intends to renew, some time before He effectually changes their hearts. This He does to prepare them for regeneration, in which He forms them vessels of mercy. The only question now before us is, whether, in the act of regeneration, He produces anything besides love. And here we may safely say that He does not produce anything besides love in regeneration, because there is no need of His producing any other effect in that saving change. Sinners possess all the natural powers and faculties which belong to human nature, and which are necessary to, constitute them moral agents, before they are made the subjects of grace. Manasseh was as capable of doing good as of doing evil, before he was renewed; and Paul was as capable of promoting as of opposing the cause of Christ, before he was converted. This is true of all sinners, who are as much moral agents, and as proper subjects of moral government, before as after regeneration. Whenever, therefore, the Divine Spirit renews, regenerates, or sanctifies them, He has no occasion of producing anything in their minds besides love. II. That love is the effect which He actually does produce in regeneration. “ The fruit of the Spirit is love,” says the apostle in the text. His words are very plain and emphatical. He does not say that the fruit of the Spirit is a new taste, or relish, or disposition, or principle; but is love, and nothing which is previous to it, or the foundation of it. III. That love, which the Holy Spirit produces in regeneration, is the essence and source of all holy or gracious affections. It is generally supposed that regeneration lays the foundation of all the exercises of grace. Benevolent love is the root from which all holy feelings and conduct naturally spring. It produces everything which the law requires, and which is necessary to perfect obedience. When the Holy Spirit produces love in the soul in which there was nothing before but selfishness, he effects an essential change in the heart, and forms the subject of grace after the moral image of God, and prepares him for the kingdom of heaven. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 5:24 And they that are Christ’ s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.On the marks which distinguish a real Christian Thus those that are Christ’ s are occasionally characterized as born of the Spirit; walking in the Spirit; the children of God; the elect of God; the doers of the law; the heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Those that are not Christ’ s are described as walking in the flesh; fulfilling the lusts of the flesh; the children of this world; the unfruitful hearers of the law; the servants of Satan; the heirs of damnation. Let me now endeavour to assist you in judging whether you are living to Christ, or to the flesh, by setting before you some of the scriptural tests, which distinguish from a corrupt and unregenerate world those who belong to the Lord Jesus. I. To crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts, is, in the first place, to make it the business of life to overcome, through the ever present grace of God, the evil dispositions and desires of human nature; and to abstain from the evil actions to which those dispositions and desires would lead. And on what principle are you thus to crucify the flesh? You are to crucify it for the sake of Jesus Christ. You are to abhor and renounce sin because it was the occasion of His sufferings. From love and gratitude to your Redeemer for the unspeakable kindness which He has shown towards yourself, you are to forsake whatever is displeasing in His sight. II. Have you therefore resolved, through the grace of God, to renounce the indulgence of sinful inclinations and practices? Have you thus taken the first step towards living unto Christ? What then is the second? “ Cease to do evil” saith the prophet. What is his next injunction? “ Learn to do well.” III. The characteristics which have hitherto been proposed as tests, by which you may be assisted in forming a judgment whether at present you belong to Christ, have principally been deduced from your proceedings as to the government of unhallowed inclinations and desires, and from your tempers and conduct as exercised towards man. Not that the frame of your heart towards God has been thrown into the background. Love to God through Christ has been assumed as the basis of self-government, and of love to man. From that root must spring every ramification of duty. The disposition, however, of your soul as to subjects more immediately and closely spiritual than those which have been specified is the least dubitable of all the tokens to which you can resort for insight into your actual state. Does the current of your thoughts, when, unchecked by impediments, it selects a course for itself, flow towards God and your Redeemer? IV. Direct your attention to the objects, which, when the affection of the Apostle Paul for his converts expatiated in calling down blessings upon them, uniformly presented themselves to his thoughts (Ephesians 1:16-18; Ephesians 3:16-19; Philippians 1:9-11; Colossians 1:9-11).1. If you are not Christ’ s, what are your hopes? Do you flatter yourself that the Scriptures may prove not to be the word of inspiration? Or do you assume the promises of God as true, and regard His threatenings as empty terrors? Or do you think that Christ, when He comes, will make you an exception to the general rule, and distinguish you by unexampled mercy in spite of your disobedience? Behold the thin and hollow ice on which you propose to cross the gulf of everlasting destruction! 2. If you are already a true Christian; foster the good seed sown in your heart, that the Divine planter may preserve it from being overwhelmed by surrounding tares, and may nourish it unto timely and plentiful maturity. Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Thomas Gisborne.)Crucifixion of the flesh Men who believe in Jesus become purer, holier, better. They are saved from living as they used to live--saved from licentiousness, dishonesty, drunkenness, selfishness, and any other sin they may have lived in. They are different men. There is a change in their heart and soul, conduct and conversation. I. The reception of Jesus Christ by faith is, in itself, an avowal that we have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts. Christ died in our room and stead. By faith we regard ourselves as dead with Him. II. As a matter of fact, the reception of Christ is attended with the crucifixion of sin. Every truly converted man is a proof of this. III. The reception of Jesus Christ into the heart by simple faith is calculated to crucify the flesh.1. The believer has seen the evil of sin. It is a deicide--a killing of God. 2. He has seen in the death of Christ an amazing instance of the great grace of God. 3. He has had a view of the justice of God. 4. He has seen the amazing love of Jesus. How, then, can he go on grieving and offending Him? IV. The Holy Spirit is with the Gospel, and where He is Holiness must be promoted. Wherever Jesus Christ is preached, there is present One sublime in rank and high in degree--the ever-blessed Spirit of God. He takes of the things of Christ, and shows them unto men. His power changes the current of men’ s desires, making them crucify the flesh and its affections, and love things holy, just, and true. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The believer crucifying his sins When I believed that Jesus was the Christ, and rested my soul in Him, I felt in my heart from that moment an intense hatred to sin of every kind. I had loved sin before, some sins particularly, but those sins became from that moment the most obnoxious to me, and, though the propensity to them was still there, yet the love of them was clean gone; and when I at any time transgressed I felt an inward grief and horror at myself for doing the things which aforetime I had allowed and even enjoyed. My relish for sin was gone. The things I once loved I abhorred and blushed to think of. Then I began to search out my sins. I see now a parallel between my experience in reference to sin, and the details of the crucifixion of Christ. They sent Judas into the garden to search for our great Substitute, and just in that way I began to search for sin, even for that which lay concealed amid the thick darkness of my soul. I was ignorant, and did not know sin to be sin, for it was night in my soul; but, being stirred up to destroy the evil, my repenting spirit borrowed lanterns and torches, and went out as against a thief. I searched the garden of my heart through and through, with an intense ardour to find out every sin; and I brought God to help me, saying, “ Search me, O God, and try me, and know my ways;” nor did I cease till I had spied out my secret transgressions. This inward search is one of my most constant occupations; I patrol my nature through and through to try and arrest these felons, these abhorred sins, that they may be crucified with Christ. O ye in whom iniquity lurks under cover of your spiritual ignorance, arouse yourselves to a strict scrutiny of your nature, and no longer endure that your hearts should be the lurking-places of evil. I remember when I found my sin. When I found it I seized it, and I dragged it off to the judgment-seat. Ah, my brethren, you know when that occurred to you, and how stern was the judgment which conscience gave forth. I sat in judgment on myself. I took my sin to one court, and to another. I looked at it as before men, and trembled to think that the badness of my example might have ruined other men’ s souls. I looked at my sin as before God, and I abhorred myself in dust and ashes. My sin was as red as crimson in His sight and in mine also. I judged my sin and I condemned it--condemned it as a felon to a felon’ s death. I heard a voice within me which, Pilate-like, pleaded for it “ I will chastise him and let him go; let it be a little put to shame; let not the wrong deed be done quite so often; let the lust be curbed and kept under.” But, ah, my soul said, “ Let it be crucified! Let it be crucified!” and nothing could shake my heart from this intent, that I would slay all the murderers of Christ if possible, and let not one of them escape; for my soul hated them with a deadly hatred, and would fain nail them all to the tree. I remember, too, how I began to see the shame of sin. As my Lord was spitted upon, and mocked, and despitefully used, so did my soul begin to pour contempt upon all the pride of sin, to scorn its promises of pleasure, and to accuse it of a thousand crimes. It had deceived me, it had led me into ruin, it had well-nigh destroyed me; and I despised it, and poured contempt upon its briberies, and all it offered of sweetness and of pleasure. O sin, how shameful a thing didst thou appear to be! I saw all that is base, mean, and contemptible, concentrated in thee. My heart scourged sin by repentance, smote it with rebukes, and buffeted it with self-denials. Then was it made a reproach and a scorn. But this sufficed not--sin must die. My heart mourned for what sin had done, and I was resolved to avenge my Lord’ s death upon myself. So I led forth my sins to the place of crucifixion. They would fain have escaped, but the power of God prevented them, and like a guard of soldiery, conducted them to the gibbet of mortification. The hand of the Lord was present, and His all-revealing spirit stripped my sin as Christ was stripped; setting it before mine eyes, even my secret sin in the light of His countenance. Oh, what a spectacle it was as I gazed upon it! I had looked before upon its dainty apparel, and the colours with which it had bedizened itself, to make it look as fair as Jezebel when she painted her face; but now I saw its nakedness and horror, and I was well-nigh ready to despair; but my spirit bore me up, for I knew that I was forgiven, and I said, “ Christ Jesus has pardoned me, for I have believed in Him; and I will put the flesh to death, by crucifying it on His Cross.” The driving of the nails I do remember, and how the flesh struggled to maintain its liberty. One, two, three, four, the nails went in, and fastened the accursed thing to the wood with Christ, so that it could neither run nor rule; and now, glory be to God, though my sin is not dead, it is crucified, and must eventually die. It hangs up there; I can see it bleeding out its life. Sometimes it struggles to get down, and tries to wrench away the nails, for it would fain go after vanity; but the sacred nails hold it too fast, it is in the grasp of death, and it cannot escape. Alas, it dies a lingering death, attended with much pain and struggling: still it dies, and soon its heart shall be pierced through with the spear of the love of Christ, and it shall utterly expire. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Self-denial the duty of Christians 1. What is meant by being Christ’ s? To be Christ’ s is to accept of and have an interest in Christ, as He is offered and proposed in the gospel. Now Christ is offered and held forth to every particular person that expects to be saved by Him under three offices-- (1) His prophetical;(2) His kingly; and(3) His sacredotal. 2. In the next place we are to see what is meant by “ the flesh, and the affections and lusts.” In the meantime by flesh we are to understand the whole entire body of sin and corruption, that inbred proneness in our nature to all evil, in one word expressed by “ concupiscence,” usually called by the schoolmen “ fomes” ; that fuel or combustible matter in the soul, that is apt to be fired by every temptation; the womb that conceives and brings forth all actual impurities, styled in the next words, “ affections and lusts.” I. To show why this vitiosity and corrupt habit of nature comes to have this denomination of “ flesh.”1. Because of its situation and place, which is principally in the flesh. Here it is placed, here it is enthroned. Concupiscence itself follows the crasis and temperature of the body; as we know the liquor for the present receives the figure of the vessel into which it is infused. 2. The vitiosity of our nature is called “ flesh,” because of its close, inseparable nearness to the soul. There is an intimate conjunction and union between the soul and sin; and the intimacy o! their coherence is the cause of the intimacy of their friendship. The nearness between these two, our soul and our corruption, is so great, that it arises to a kind of identity; hence to deny and conquer our sin is, in Scripture language, to deny ourselves, implying that sin adheres so dose to us, that it is a kind of second self. 3. A third reason why the vitiosity of our nature is called “ flesh” is because of its dearness to us. And this founded upon the former, for vicinity is one cause of love. Now there is nothing that we prosecute with a more affectionate tenderness than our flesh; for, as the apostle says (Ephesians 5:29), “ No mail ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it.” Nay, take a survey of all the arts, the trades, and the most prized inventions in the world, and you will find ten to four found out and employed either to please or adorn the flesh. It is for this that the artificer labours and the merchant ventures; and we compass sea and land ten times oftener to make a gallant than to make a proselyte. Justly therefore upon this account also does the Spirit express our sin by the name of “ flesh,” for this has an equal share in our love. Now what has been hitherto discoursed of may, by way of inference, suggest these things to our consideration.1. The deplorable estate of fallen man, whose condition is now such that he carries his plague about him, and wears it something nearer to him than his shirt; that he encloses a viper in his bowels, feeds and maintains, and is passionately fond of his mortal enemy; and what is the greatest misery of all, has it not in his power to be otherwise. He has a body that is not so much the instrument, or servant, as the dungeon of his soul: and sin holds him by such bonds of pleasure so strong, so suitable to his perverted and diseased inclinations, that his ruin is presented to him as his interest, and nothing gratifies, delights, or wins upon him, but that which dishonours his Maker, and certainly destroys himself. 2. The next thing offered from hence to cur thoughts is the great difficulty of the duty of mortification. This is a greater work than men are aware of. It is indeed the killing of an enemy, but of such an enemy as a man thinks his friend, and loves as his child; and-how hard it is to put the knife to the throat of an Isaac is easily imaginable. What! part with that that came into the world with me, and has ever since lived and conversed with me, that continually lies down and rises up with me, that has even incorporated itself into my nature, seized all my appetites, and possessed all my faculties, so that it is the centre and principle of all my pleasures, and that which gives a relish and a quickness to every object! This is a hard saying, and a harder undertaking. He must be a good orator that should persuade a man to stick daggers and needles in his flesh, to strip, his bones, and in a manner to tear his nature over his eyes; yet to mortify a sin is something like it. But alas! it would go near to nonplus the most artificial persuader, to bring a man to part with the covering of his body; but how much more with the vestment of his soul! 3. In the third and last place, this declares to us the mean and sordid employment of every sinner. He serves the flesh, that is, he is a drudge and a scavanger to the most inferior part of his nature. II. What is imported by the crucifixion of the flesh.1. The reason of the use of the term here. It is used by way of allusion to Christ, of whose behaviour and sufferings every Christian is to be a living copy and representation. Christ will have His death an example to excite, as well as a sacrifice to save; and there is no passage in His life and death but is intended for our instruction, as well as our salvation. 2. The full force and significance of it. Crucifying therefore, as it is here applied to the corruption and depraved sinful disposition of our nature, imports these four things-- (1) The death of it. The cross is the instrument of death, and to crucify is to kill. A few interrupted assaults and combats with a man’ s corruption will not suffice. He that will crucify his sin must pursue it to the very death. (2) As it implies death, so it further imports a violent death. Sin never dies of age. It is as when a young man dies in the full fire and strength of his youth, by some vehement distemper; it as it were tears, and forces, and fires his soul out of his body. Never think to dispossess him by a bare summons, or imagine that a man can recover the mastery of his heart and his affections by a few prayers and broken humiliations. The conquest had need be glorious, for it will be found by sharp experience that the combat will be dangerous. (3) To crucify the flesh with the affections of it imports a painful, bitter, and vexatious death. Let us but reflect upon our Saviour. He was nailed to the tree, and that through those parts which were most apprehensive of pain, the hands and the feet; which members, by reason of the concurrence of the nerves and sinews there, must needs be of quickest sense. Thus He hung, in the extremity of torture, till, through the insupportable pressures of pain, He at length gave up the ghost. So the mortification of sin is to be so general and diffused as not only to fix upon the bulk and body of sin, but to stretch the inquisition to even the least desire, the most lurking and secret affection, for assuredly there is something more than ordinary implied in this expression of “ crucifying sin;” it cannot but import the most rugged, cruel, and remorseless dealing with it that is imaginable. And however men are nice and favourable to their corruption, yet did they consider what endless pains, what unspeakable torments, their corrupt affections and lusts prepare for them, even self-love could not but be religion enough to make them prevent such miseries, by first inflicting them upon the author. (4) In the fourth and last place, crucifixion denotes a shameful and a cursed death; it is such a one as was marked out and signalized with a peculiar malediction, even of old, by God Himself (Deuteronomy 21:23). Thus, therefore, must the corruption and vitiosity of our nature be dealt with. God has doomed it to death without the benefit of so much as dying honourably. 3. The means for enabling us to perform this duty. Two I shall mention as conducible to this crucifixion of the flesh, with its affections and lusts. (1) The first is a constant and pertinacious denying them in all their cravings for satisfaction. Defraudation of the appetites of sin weakens the whole body of sin and themselves also; as on the other side all satisfaction corroborates and inflames them. (2) The other means to crucify a corrupt affection is to encounter it by actions of the opposite virtue. This differs from the former thus, that that was only the denying of fuel to a fire, but this a pouring of water upon it, and so vanquishing it by the prevalence of a contrary element. (R. South, D. D.)Of the nature, principle, and necessity of mortification Here is what St. Paul says to these Galatians. You all profess yourselves to be members of Christ, to be followers of Him; but how incongruous are these practices to such a profession? Is this the fruit of the dove-like spirit of Christ?1. The subject of the proposition, they that are Christ’ s, viz., true Christians, real members of Christ; such as truly belong to Christ, such as have given themselves up to be governed by Him, and are, indeed, acted by His spirit; such, all such persons (for the indefinite is equipollent to an universal), all such, and none but such. 2. The predicate; they have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts. But he chooses in this place to call it crucifixion, to show, not only the conformity there is betwixt the death of Christ and the death of sin, in respect of shame, pain, and lingering slowness, but to denote also the principle, means, and instrument of mortification, viz., the death, or cross of Jesus Christ, in the virtue whereof believers do mortify the corruptions of their flesh, the great arguments and persuasives to mortification being drawn from the sufferings of Christ for sin. The observation followeth: That a saving interest in Christ may be regularly and strongly inferred and concluded from the mortification of the flesh, with its affections and lusts. I. What the mortification, or crucifixion of sin, imports. And for clearness sake I shall speak to it, both negatively and positively, showing you what is not intended, and what is principally aimed at, by the Spirit of God in this expression. 1. Negatively. (1) The crucifying of the flesh doth not imply the total abolition of sin in believers, or the destruction of its very being and existence in them, for the present. Sanctified souls so put off their corruptions with their bodies at death. This will be the effect of our future glorification, not of our present sanctification. (2) Nor doth the crucifixion of sin consist in the suppression of the external acts of sin only, for sin may reign over the souls of men whilst it doth not break forth into their lives in gross and open actions (2 Peter 2:20; Matthew 12:43). (3) The crucifixion of the flesh does not consist in the cessation of the external acts of sin, for, in that respect the lusts of men may die of their own accord, even a kind of natural death. (4) It does not consist in the severe castigation of the body, and penancing it by stripes, lastings, and pilgrimages. 2. Positively. (1) It implies the soul’ s implantation into Christ, and union with Him. (2) It implies the agency of the Spirit of God in that work, without whose assistances and aids all our endeavours must needs be fruitless. (3) The crucifixion of sin necessarily implies the subversion of its dominion in the soul. (4) A gradual weakening of the power of sin in the soul. (5) The crucifying of the flesh denotes to us the believer’ s designed application of all spiritual means, and sanctified instruments, for the destruction of it. II. Why this work of the Spirit is expressed by crucifying,1. The death of the cross was a painful death, and the mortification of sin is very painful work (Matthew 25:29). 2. The death of the cross was universally painful. Every member, every sense, every sinew, every nerve was the seat and subject of tormenting pain. So is it in the mortification of sin. ‘ Tis not this or that particular member or act, but the whole body of sin that is to be destroyed (Romans 6:6). 3. The death of the cross was a slow and lingering death, denying unto them that suffered it, the favour of a quick dispatch. Just so it is in the death of sin, though the Spirit of God be mortifying it day by day. 4. The death of the cross was a very opprobrious and shameful death. They that died upon the cross were loaded with ignominy. The crimes for which they died were exposed to the public view. After this manner dieth sin, a very shameful and ignominious death. Every true believer draws up a charge against it in every prayer, aggravates and condemns it in every confession, bewails the evil of it with multitudes of tears and groans, making sin as vile and odious as they can find words to express it, though not so vile as it is in its own nature. 5. In a word, the death of the cross was not a natural, but a violent, death. Such also is the death of sin. Sin dies not of its own accord, as Nature dieth in old men, in whom the balsamum radicale, or radical moisture, is consumed, for if the Spirit of God did not kill it, it would live to eternity in the souls of men. III. Why all that are in Christ must be so crucified or mortified unto sin.1. From the inconsistency and contrariety that there is betwixt Christ and unmortified lust (Galatians 5:17). 2. The necessity of mortification appears, from the necessity of conformity betwixt Christ the head and all the members of His mystical body, for how incongruous and uncomely would it be to see a holy, heavenly Christ leading a company of unclean, carnal, and sensual members? (Matthew 11:29). “ Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly.” 3. The necesity of crucifying the flesh appears from the method of salvation, as it is stated in the gospel. 4. The whole stream and current of the gospel puts us under the necessity of mortification. Gospel-precepts have respect unto this (Colossians 3:5; 1 Peter 1:15). Gospel-presidents have respect unto this (Hebrews 12:1). Gospel-threatenings are written for this end, and do all press mortification in a thundering dialect (Romans 8:13; Romans 1:18). The promises of the gospel are written designedly to promote it (2 Corinthians 7:1). But in vain are all these precepts, presidents, threatenings, and promises written in the Scripture, except mortification be the daily study and practice of professors. 5. Mortification is the very scope and aim of our regeneration, and the infusion of the principles of grace (Galatians 5:25). In vain were the habits of grace planted if the fruits of holiness and mortification be not produced; yea, mortification is not only the design and aim, but it is a special part, even the one-half of our sanctification. 6. If mortification be not the daily practice and endeavour of believers, then the way to heaven no way answers to Christ’ s description of it in the gospel. IV. In the next place we are to inquire into the true principle of mortification. ‘ Tis true there are many ways attempted by men for the mortification of sin, and many rules laid down to guide men in that great work, some of which are very trifling and impertinent things. But I shall lay down this as a sure conclusion that the sanctifying Spirit is the only effectual principle of mortification, and without Him no resolutions, vows, abstinences, castigations of the body, or any other external endeavours can ever avail to the mortification of one sin. This work of mortification is peculiar to the Spirit of God (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:17), and the Spirit becomes a principle of mortification in believers two ways, namely--1. By the implantation of contrary habits. 2. By assisting those implanted habits in all the times of need. V. The last query to be satisfied is, how mortification of sin solidly evinceth the soul’ s interest in Christ; and this it doth divers ways, affording the mortified soul many sound evidences thereof. As evidence--1. Whatsoever evidences the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God in us must needs be evidential of a saving interest in Christ, as hath been fully proved before; but the mortification doth plainly evidence the indwelling of the Spirit of God, for it can proceed from no other principle. 2. That which proves a soul to be under the covenant of grace evidently proves its interest in Christ, for Christ is the head of that covenant, and none but sound believers are under the blessings and promises of it. But mortification of sin is a sound evidence of the soul’ s being under the covenant of grace, as is plain from those words of the apostle in Romans 6:12-14. 3. That which is the fruit and evidence of saving faith must needs be a good evidence of our interest in Christ, but mortification of sin is the fruit and evidence of saving faith (Acts 15:9; 1 John 5:4). 4. In a word, there is an intimate and indissoluble connection betwixt the mortification of sin and the life of grace (Romans 6:11). And the life of Christ must needs involve a saving interest in Christ. Application:1. For information. (1) If they that be Christ’ s have crucified the flesh, then the life of Christians is no idle or easy life. The corruptions of the heart will continually fill the hands with work of the most difficult nature. (2) If mortification be the great work of a Christian, then certainly those that give the corruptions of Christians an occasion to revive must needs do them a very ill office. They are not our best friends who stir the pride of our hearts by” the flattery of their lips. (3) Manifold and successive afflictions are no more than what is necessary for the best of Christians. The mortification of our lusts requires them all, be they never so many. (4) How deeply hath sin fixed its roots in our corrupt nature that it should be the constant work of a Christian’ s whole life to mortify and destroy it. 2. For exhortation. (1) The comfort and sweetness resulting from mortification should effectually persuade every believer to more diligence about it. (2) As your comfort depends upon this, so does your fitness for the service of God, (3) Your stability and safety in the hour of temptation depends upon the success of your mortifying endeavours. (4) As temptations will be irresistible, so afflictions will be unsupportable to you without mortification. (5) The reputation and honour of religion is deeply concerned in the mortification of the professors of it, for unmortified professors will, first or last, be the scandals and reproaches of it. (6) What hard work will you have in your dying hour, except you get a heart mortified to this world and all that is in it? Your parting hour is like to be a dreadful hour without the help of mortification. Your corruptions, like glue, fasten your affections to the world, and how hard will it be for such a man to be separated by death. O what a bitter and doleful parting have carnal hearts from carnal things I whereas the mortified soul can receive the messengers of death without trouble, and as cheerfully put off the body at death as a man doth his clothes at night. Death need not pull and hale; such a man goes half-way to meet it (Philippians 1:23). 3. For direction. (1) If ever you will succeed and prosper in the work of mortification, then get and daily exercise more faith. Faith is the great instrument of mortification. (2) Walk in daily communion With God if ever you will mortify the corruptions of nature. That is the apostle’ s own prescription (Galatians 5:16). (3) Keep your consciences under the awe and in the fear of God continually, as ever you hope to be successful in the mortification of sin. The fear of God is the great preservative from sin, without which all the external rules and helps in the world signify nothing. (4) Study the vanity of the creature, and labour to get true notions of the emptiness and transitoriness thereof. (5) Be careful to eat off all the occasions of sin, and keep at the greatest, distance from temptation. (6) Never engage against the Corruptions of your nature in your own single strength. Seek God’ s assistance; then you will succeed, and then only. (7) Set in with the mortifying design of God in the day of -thine affliction; sanctified afflictions are ordered and prescribed in heaven for the purging of our corruptions (Isaiah 27:9). (8) Bend the strength of your duties and endeavours against your proper and special sin. ‘ Tis in vain to lop off branches while the root of bitterness remains untouched. (9) Study the nature and great importance of those things which are to be won or lost according to the success and issue of this conflict. Your life is as a race, eternal glory is the prize; grace and corruption are the antagonists, and, accordingly as either finally prevails, eternal life is won or lost (1 Corinthians 9:24). (10) Accustom your thoughts to such meditations as are proper to mortify sin in your affections, else all endeavours to mortify it will be but faint and languid. (i.) Consider the evil that is in sin, and how terrible the appearances of God will one day be against those that obey it in the lust thereof (Romans 1:18; 1 Thessalonians 1:7-9). (ii.) Think what it cost the Lord Jesus Christ to expiate the guilt of sin by the suffering the wrath of the great and terrible God for it in our room. The meditations of a crucified Christ are very crucifying meditations unto sin (Galatians 6:14). (iii.) Consider what a grief and wound the sins of believers are to the Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:30). (iv.) Consider with yourselves that no real good, either of profit or pleasure, can result from sin. If they do repent, the pleasure of sin will be turned into the gall of asps here; if they do not repent, it will terminate in everlasting howlings hereafter. That’ s a smart question, Romans 6:21. (v.) Consider what the damned suffer for those sins which the devil now tempteth you to commit. (vi.) Bethink yourselves what inexcusable hypocrisy it will be in you to indulge yourselves in the private satisfaction of your lusts under a contrary profession of religion. You are a people that profess holiness, and professedly own yourselves to be under the government and dominion of Christ. And must the worthy name of Christ be only used to cloak and cover your lusts and corruptions, which are so hateful to Him? God forbid. (vii.) Consider with yourselves what hard things some Christians have chosen to endure and suffer, rather than they would defile themselves with guilt; and shall every small temptation ensnare and take your souls? (Bishop Hacker.)The Cross a reality in our life I. What is it to be “ of Christ Jesus” ?1. We must become His in His own way--the way which He appointed when He left the world, and commanded that all nations were to become His disciples by being baptized into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 2. Those who name the name of Christ are His by profession. This is, as it were, subscribing with our hand unto the Lord, and naming ourselves, or having our name named, in the same breath as the Name of God. 3. It is the living faith of the baptized disciple, which proves him to be a Christian, a member of Christ, not merely by virtue of his baptismal adoption (though that is a gift unspeakably great), not merely because of his profession (though it is an honour to him beyond all words, to be allowed a place in the ranks of the glorious Church as it moves on after the Great Commander), not only this, but a member of Christ, “ in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). II. Let us not deceive ourselves, even as we listen to such “ exceeding great and precious promises.” They are meant to brace us to action, not to lull us into security. They should not make us say, “ All is well with me, for I am Christ’ s,” but should rather set us upon earnestly considering our ways and proving our own selves. And the test is no ideal or visionary one. No, indeed, it is most practical: “ have crucified the flesh.” It is not merely that the soul flies high, while the body grovels in the dust, intent on earthly things and passing enjoyments. The body also is being fought with, conquered, mortified. I must be ever, says the Christian, putting to death this rebel body which is at enmity with God, ever, by His grace, keeping under my body and bringing it into subjection, for the Lord Jesus Christ’ s sake. III. It is not the destruction of the body we are to aim at, but its purification for the Lord--its consecration, as it were, upon the Cross, to Him who died thereon--its being devoted to God, by means of the conquest of whatever is sinful therein, and through its union, even here, with the glorious Body. “ The passions and the lusts thereof.” We speak of passion as an active habit; but it is really, as the term implies, a state of suffering; and we know this well enough; for we know, e.g., that he whom we call a passionate man suffers much more himself than those with whom he is angry. Our passions and our lusts then--the lusts and passions of the body--must be crucified, because the body, from our baptism onwards, belongs to Christ crucified, and the lusts which war in our members are ever striving to alienate us from Him. But when we recollect that we are really His--His who actually, and not only in a figure, was put to death in the flesh--we make it our daily aim to imitate Him, at whatever pain and trial to ourselves. (Canon G. E. Jelf.)We must forsake sin I once heard of two men who, under the influence of liquor, came down one night to where their boat was tied; they wanted to return home, so they got in and began to row. When the grey dawn of morning broke, behold, they had never loosed the mooring line, or raised the anchor. And that’ s just the way with many who are striving to enter the kingdom of heaven. They cannot believe, because they are tied to this world. Cut the cord! Cut the cord! Set yourselves free from the clogging weight of earthly things, and you will soon go on toward heaven. (D. L. Moody.)Crucifying the flesh This suggests the story of the old lady whose daughter’ s tooth ached. She sent for a doctor. He came and pulled out a pair of big old-fashioned forceps. “ The old lady screamed out, “ Don’ t put them things in my daughter’ s mouth: pull it with your fingers!” That would be nice if it could be done. But hear me. Do you know the terms on which God will carry you through this world and safely to heaven? Lay down those things that are hurting you, and take up those other things that will help you, and you will have His help in time and in eternity. (Samuel Jones.)Crucifying the flesh I. What is to re crucified?1. What the “ flesh” is may be known by its works (verses 19-21). 2. But it is not the works, but the worker that is to be crucified. From whence, then, do these evils proceed? (1) From the depravity of the heart, says one; which is perfectly true, but somewhat vague, and does not wholly meet the case. (2) From the devil, says another; but while he fosters evil works, he is not the worker. (3) From within, out of the heart, says Christ, out of man’ s true inmost self. From which we learn that sin must not be referred to defective legislation, pernicious training, the force of evil custom and bad example. But you say, “ There are many sins of which I am not guilty:” You need not break all the laws of England to be a law breaker. So one sin evinces the agency of the evil heart. II. What is meant by crucifying it? In physical crucifixion there are three stages. So in moral.1. The old Adam is arraigned, found guilty, sentenced, and visited with all the marks of hatred and contempt, But this is not enough (Romans 7:14; Romans 7:21-24). 2. The old Adam is actually nailed to the cross, and dying--but this is only “ being crucified” ; the flesh still lives and pleads hard. 3. The old Adam dies. When this stage is reached, a glorious power is acquired over self and sin. (Luke H. Wiseman, M. A.)Moral crucifixion Correspondent with Christ’ s. I. Painful. II. Ignominious. III. Lingering. IV. Surely fatal. (J. Hughes.)The Christian’ s Calvary I. The flesh is generally the old man which regeneration does not kill, that must be treated as an interior enemy, having a spiritual body of sin, that must be pierced through without remorse, and Christian men must use every sacred effort to hasten its death. II. It must be denied every gratification. “ If thine enemy thirst, feed him,” etc. must not hold good here. “ Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” If it hunger and thirst for old solaces, we must not gratify it. The least favour gives the dying enemy strength; and if it be habitually nourished, it will gather power to wrench its members from the cross, and come down and save itself, to the loss of the soul that was unfaithful to its trust. III. It must be afflicted, smitten, and opposed in its every movement. “ Mortify, therefore, your members.”1. The affection that passively waits for the solicitations of sin, always ready to be courted by temptation, must be bound to the cross, that it may weaken and languish and die; more or less slowly, but with a certain decline, sinking towards the torpor and death which the voice of no charmer can awaken. 2. The lusts which actually go out in quest of sinful indulgence must be kept firm to the Cross that they may not seek their prey. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)The gospel the guarantee of morality I. The reception of Jesus Christ by faith is, in itself, an avowal that we have crucified that flesh, etc. II. As a matter of fact the reception of Christ is attended with the crucifixion of sin. III. The reception of Christ into the heart by simple faith is calculated to crucify the flesh. The man who has received Christ--1. Has seen the evil of sin. 2. Has seen the death of Christ. An amazing instance of the grace and justice of God. 3. Has seen the infinite love of Jesus; and, therefore, he has been led to hate, renounce, and pursue sin to the death. IV. The Holy Ghost is with the gospel, and where He is holiness must be promoted. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Crucifying the flesh Five persons were studying what were the best means to mortify sin; one said, to meditate on death; the second, to meditate on judgment; the third, to meditate on the joys of heaven; the fourth, on the torments of hell: the fifth, on the blood and sufferings of Jesus; and certainly the last is the choicest and strongest motive of all. (T. Brooks.) Galatians 5:25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.(Cf. Galatians 5:16; Galatians 5:18.) I. The supposition.1. We have been born of the Spirit.2. We are living in the continual exercise of faith in Christ who is our life. II. The obligation.1. Living a life of spirituality in opposition to one of formalism.2. Being addicted to the spiritual contemplation of Divine things.3. Making progress in all that constitutes religion. (W. Cowan, M. A.)Walking in the Spirit I. Suggests that a new birth will invariably be followed by a new life, and conversation (Matthew 7:16-20; Matthew 13:33). The conviction of the inseparable connection between regeneration and sanctification will save us from--1. Practical antinomianism,2. The error that morality is sufficient without a spiritual change. II. Implies that not only the commencement but the continuance of spiritual life depends on the gracious operation of the Spirit of God (Romans 8:9). The Spirit works in us--1. Encouragement.2. Help.3. Watchfulness. III. Prescribes a practical duty. To walk consistently with our past experience and present profession. This walking in the Spirit consists in--1. The habit and exercise of faith in Christ.2. Maintaining a constant conflict with indwelling sin.3. A spiritual frame of mind.4. The cultivation and exercise of all the graces of Christian life (Galatians 5:22-23). (J. Buchanan, D. D.)Walking in the Spirit 1. Life. Walking in the Spirit implies living in the Spirit. There must be a principle of spiritual life, before there Can be any spiritual motions and exercises. And living in the Spirit implies walking in the Spirit. What is a man’ s walk? It is his whole life, his whole conduct, outward and inward--all he thinks, feels, desires, speaks, does, suffers. To walk in the Spirit is to have the Holy Ghost originating, directing, controlling, and governing all these. 2. Progress. A walk is a progress, it has an end in view, and it is a going towards that end, more or less steadily--more or less rapidly. (1) The man who walks in the Spirit has the same end in view which his Master had; he looks for the joy which is set before us, the glory which is to be revealed. (2) He has a guide--Christ, whom the Spirit reveals to him, that he may follow in the footsteps of Him who is our example in all things. (3) He has a rule or map of the way--the Word of God, which the Spirit opens up and makes plain to his soul. (4) He has a motive or gracious spring urging him on--love. 3. The benefit. The old nature is checked, kept down, and not permitted to ripen its bitter fruit. Its nature and tendencies are unchanged, unchangeable, but it is checked and restrained at every point. But the new nature is cultivated, and so it bears its peaceable fruits. The man who walks in the Spirit has less outward stir and bustle than others, but he has more success, for he works in God, and God works in and with him. But why this long, tedious, fluctuating conflict between flesh “ and spirit? It is to show the evil and deceitfulness of sin, to humble, to make watchful, to make us dependent, and make us long for heaven. (John Milne.)A Christian’ s walk “ That man’ s been in the army,” said a gentleman to his friend, the other day, as a stranger passed them in the street; “ I know a soldier by his walk.” Men ought to know Christ’ s soldiers by their walk. But how many are there of us who profess to march under His banner, who compel the world to take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus? Often the community in which a man lives first learns that he was a Christian at his funeral. Galatians 5:26 Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another.I. Disunion may exist in a Christian community. II. Entire sympathy with Christ will heighten man’ s appreciation of man without selfseeking. III. Christianity is the only humanizing and fraternizing religion. Iv. Self-seeking is in utter antagonism to the spirit of Christ. V. Christianity never encourages a degrading view of human nature.1. Paul’ s appeal is for unanimity.2. Want of unanimity is a reflection on the uniting force. (J. Parker, D. D.)Vainglory I. What it is. A branch of pride which makes men refer all they have or can do to show their own private glory and advancement. II. Why the Galatians were admonished of it? They Were adorned with many excellences, and those who are so favoured are frequently the most vainglorious (2 Corinthians 12:7; Matthew 6:5). Other vices feed on evil; this on good. For a man will be proud sometimes, even because he is not proud. III. Where is it to be found?1. In a Church where men make a great show of piety to be praised of men, but not at home to be praised of God. 2. In the world, for honour and renown. IV. What is the remedy?1. Meditation on these facts. (1) God resisteth the proud, etc. (1 Peter 5:5).(2) It is the work of the devil to puff up that he may pull down; but God abases that He may exalt.(3) Vainglory is a sure mark of impiety (John 5:44). 2. Practice. (1) Acknowledge God’ s majesty and our own vileness.(2) God’ s grace and our own indebtedness.(3) Approve ourselves to God first.(4) When reviled, be content; when praised, take heed. (W. Perkins.)Vainglory I. Manifests itself in--1. Display.2. Boasting.3. Presumption.4. Insolence.5. Depreciation of others. II. Springs from--1. Conceit.2. Ignorance.3. Contempt of man.4. Forgetfulness of God. III. Leads to--1. Extravagance.2. Dishonesty.3. Humiliation,4. Ruin. (J. W. Burns.)Unworthy boasts It would be consolatory could we think this exhortation, though necessary in the apostles’ time, had become unnecessary in ours. But, alas, how different is the truth! How much vainglorying is there among the professors of the name of Christ, even among those of whom charity obliges us to hope that their profession is genuine! How do they glory in their distinctions! One boasts of his connection with a rich and powerful, ancient and venerable establishment; another glories in his being a Dissenter. One boasts of the imposing splendour, and another glories in the primitive simplicity, of their respective modes of worship. Even far less discernible marks of distinction become grounds of glorification, and this provokes to angry controversy, and this again produces strife, jealousy, enmity, malignity. Were we more spiritual it would be otherwise. We should glory chiefly in the grand principles of Christian truth, in which all really good men are agreed; and our attachment to these would produce attachments to all who really believe them. While every man sought after, and endeavoured to communicate to his brother those views of truth and duty which he conceived he had obtained from his Bible--“ speaking the truth in love” --there would be no provoking one another, except to love and good works; and instead of envying and hating one another, there would be general edification of the body in love. (John Brown, D. D.)Love of vainglory Love of vainglory is a common vice the whole world through, in all conditions. No village so small but there be one or two peasants therein, that will fain be taken for wiser and better than the rest. It is so pleasant to be pointed at with the finger and hear it said: “ See, there is a man that is fit for anything!” This vice is common, yet nowhere does it such harm as to those who fulfil a spiritual function and service in the Church. (Luther.)Vainglory I recollect a little town where there was a chapel, the people connected with which thought that if they could only buy a chandelier that was on sale, they would cut out all the other chapels entirely, and everybody would feel that they were made weighty and respectable people, and that the place would be filled with people to see the chandelier. I believe for a time it was, but its light grew dim, and they found that was not the way in which the light of the kingdom of God was to be spread. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Galatians 6:1 Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.I. The nature of the fault. Overtaken in it, not overtaking it. II. The duty of the friend. The allusion is to the surgeons who set bones out of joint, although they put their patients to pain. III. The method of service. Swine may be driven violently; brethren must be drawn gently. (G. Swinnock.)A triple duty I. An act of charity; support of the weak (Galatians 6:1-2). II. An act of integrity: proof of ourselves (Galatians 6:3-4). III. An act of equity; support of ministers (Galatians 6:6). (T. Adams.)Christian helpfulness and personal independence I. The motive to mutual helpfulness drawn from self-knowledge. Apply to--1. Infirmities.2. Matters of opinion.3. Sins.4. Unfaithfulness to Church obligations. II. The power of mutual helpfulness arising from the endeavour after Christian integrity.1. The simple unsophisticated conscience never finds consolation in others’ sins. 2. The moral power of sympathy is in proportion to the sincerity of our Christian character. 3. That was the secret of Christ’ s moral power among men. III. The limits of mutual helpfulness imposed by personal independence.1. We cannot stand in another’ s place to answer for his sin. 2. We cannot put ourselves within his being so as to compel his judgment, command his feeling, “ restrain his choice. IV. Practical lessons.1. To call our thoughts from vain longings after the impossible to do what is given us to do. 2. Not to burden with our follies and sins those already bearing burdens of their own. 3. The proper, burden for the Galatians and all who seek a burden is “ the law of Christ.” (A. Mackennal, B. A.)Other men’ s failings I. These things are to be done because they are commanded. II. Christlike piety may be known by its gentleness and helpfulness towards them that Are evil. III. A profound sense of weakness and sinfulness is indispensible to any intelligent charity. IV. The grace of God serves instrumentally by man’ s love. V. The curative sympathy of men does not lead them to look lightly on transgression. Conclusion:1. No man has a right to be absorbed in his own piety: we were born to live together, and no man has a right to shirk the duties he owes to his brother. 2. The bearing of burdens is a duty (1) in the household,(2) in society. (H. W. Beecher.)The sins of others Consider-- I. The effect produced by the falls of others.1. Here is a worldly company. A scandal is disclosed; what malignant joy it occasions. 2. But what shall we say when that detestable joy is shared by Christians? (1) Over the adversaries of the faith,(2) and, alas! over fallen Christians also. 3. Who are we to condemn the fallen? (1) Have we never erred?(2) Have we had no secret inclination to equivalent transgression?(3) Did we strive to prevent our brother falling?(4) Was he blessed with our privileges? 4. Thus a brother’ s fall should produce in us, not censure, but self-examination and humiliation. II. What are we to do is order to wise them?1. The nearer a being lives to God the more deeply it feels compassion and mercy. (1) As proved by the angels who sang hymns of redemption and rejoice over returning sinners.(2) As proved by the infinite tenderness of Christ. 2. The least that we can do is to give our fallen brother our sympathy. 3. But this is not enough. (1) There is a sympathy which is mere weakness.(2) You must have for your brother a love without weakness, a holiness without pride.(3) You must point him to the Saviour.(4) We cannot raise souls en masse, but only by individuals. III. Conclusion:1. What an honour to raise a fallen soul.2. Christ the Raiser has called you to this.3. Have you not lost some soul? (E. Bersier, D. D.)The restoration of the erring I. The Christian view of other men’ s sin.1. The apostle regards it as if it might be the result of a surprise. (1) There are some sins for which we have an inclination. (2) There are those which, seemingly unnatural to us, come upon us unexpectedly. (a) A question may be hurriedly put concerning a secret; not having presence of mind to turn it adroitly, a lie is told. So Peter. (b) Inexperience, a hasty promise, excess of trust, and even generous devotion may have the same effect. 2. The apostle considers it a fault which has left a burden on the erring spirit. (1) It is a chain of entanglement which drags down to fresh sins. (2) It is the burden of the heart weighing on itself which keeps the soul down from good. (3) The weight of secret uncommunicated sin; as evidenced (a) by a mysterious necessity to tell it under the personality of another; (b) by profuse general acknowledgment of guilt; (c) by the longing for confession. (4) The intuitive consciousness of hidden sins in the hearts of others. II. The Christian power of restoration.1. Restoration is possible. 2. Restoration is accomplished by men as instruments. 3. The mode in which it is done; (1) by sympathy;(2) forgiveness. 4. The motive--“ considering thyself,” etc. (J. W. Robertson.)The duty of brotherly admonition and reproof I. What that duty is.1. We are members one of another. 2. It is our interest to keep our members together, and in good health. 3. A means of doing this is timely admonition. II. Rules for its effective discharge.1. It does not follow that where-ever a man sees vice he is bound to rebuke it. Reproof may exasperate. 2. Regard must be had to the circumstances of the offending party. 3. An exact proportion should be preserved between the offence and the rebuke; failings are not necessarily sins. 4. The rebuke should be given privately. 5. Take care not to be chargeable with the same fault yourself. 6. The end in view must not be the gratification of a private pique, but restoration. III. The evil of neglecting it.1. Evil is encouraged by neglect.2. The good are lost for the want of timely interference. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Motives to charity “ Considering thyself.”1. Thine abundance may become poverty; therefore, O man of wealth, “ consider the poor.” 2. Thy happiness may be blighted; therefore, O man on whom all things smile, raise up the mourners. 3. Thou mayest be sick; therefore, O man of health, give aid to the diseased. 4. Thou, too, must die; therefore, O living man, do not forget the bereaved. 5. Thou mayest be deprived of the means of grace, therefore, frequenter of the house of God, succour those to whom the gospel does not come. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Self-knowledge is the knowledge and love of God There are many ways of selfconsideration. I. Self-love, when right and when wrong. II. Self-ignorance. III. Self-knowledge. IV. The knowledge of God’ s love in Christ, on which the noblest self-knowledge rests. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The occasion for the injunction The fervour and pathos of this appeal are perhaps to be explained by certain circumstances which engaged St. Paul’ s attention at this time. A grave offence had been committed in the Church of Corinth. St. Paul had called upon the brethren to punish the offender, and his appeal had been answered with so much promptness that it was necessary to intercede for the guilty one. He commended their indignation, their zeal, their revenge; they had approved themselves clear in the matter (2 Corinthians 7:11); and now they must comfort and forgive their erring brother, lest he be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow (see the striking resemblance in tone of 2 Corinthians 2:6-8, and the text). It was the recollection of this circumstance that dictated this injunction. The Galatians were proverbially passionate and fickle. If a reaction came it might be attended, as at Corinth, with undue severity towards the delinquents. The Epistle, therefore, was probably written while the event was fresh, and perhaps after he had witnessed too evident signs of over severity. (Bishop Lightfoot.)The restoration of the lapsed In the Pauline hypothesis of a perfect society, the rectification of a wrong is not due to the clamour or plaint of that which is immediately distressed, but to the sympathy felt by the whole of the society towards the suffering or injured part. From St. Paul’ s point of view, a social evil sends a pang through the whole body, urging it to take note of the disease, and to discover the remedy. That the remedy can be found and the disease subdued he did not for a moment doubt. Conceive, if you can, a public conscience so keen and tender as to be instantly alive to the moral evils which corrupt, enfeeble, and blemish it, and so wise as to be constantly busying itself with their cure. Imagine men comprehending that the corrective forces of public morality are concerned principally with the purification of mankind from evils which it has contracted. Picture a society employed in finding out the means by which poverty, ignorance, vice, selfishness, can be chastened or healed because itself is degraded and dishonored, and is restless till it has found a cure. Well would it have been if the reformation of man had been continued on these lines laid down by St. Paul; but the utmost that men have done as yet, is to concede a right, perhaps no more than a right, of complaint to the sufferer. (“Paul of Tarsus.”)Methods of restoration Saints, like clocks, made up of curious wheels and engines, are soon discomposed, and therefore often want some workman to set them in order again. A good man, if his friend follow virtue, will be a father to encourage him; if he be full of doubts, he will be a minister to direct him; if he follow vice, will be a magisstrate to correct him. Christians must allow one another for their infirmities, but not in them. (G. Swinnock.)Compassion the law of Christ Compassion is the law of Christ, not because He laid it down in words, but because it was His life. He who left us an example that we should follow His steps, showed that with Him no condition of life was too low for His esteem, no sinner too guilty for His assistance, no enemy too fierce or cruel for His good will. And Christ is the law of His people, not His words alone, but the life He lived and the Person He showed Himself to be. (Archbishop Thomson.)Our duty to the erring The soul which sin has overtaken is like the bruised reed. It must be raised up gently that it may once more aspire heavenwards. (E. Bersier, D. D.)The graceful vase that stands in the drawing-room under a glass shade and never goes to the well, has no great right to despise the rough pitcher that often goes and is broken at last. (A. K. H. B.)Brotherly reproof I. The case which the text describes. Wrong-doing under the influence of sudden temptation. II. Let us endeavour to ascertain the conduct to be persued in such a case. Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one, considering thyself, etc. This applies not simply to such persons as are endowed with spiritual gifts; but to those Christians who are more than ordinarily devoted to religion. A spiritual man is one whom the Holy Ghost hath enlightened and changed. It does not belong to every one in the Church to assume this office. To restore, is a general term, admitting of a variety of applications. It often signifies to amend. In a moral sense, it means to restore the faulty person to the moral feeling which he has lost. He who thus restores, becomes the healer of disease.1. The text intimates that the reproof is to be faithfully administered. To tell another of a fault, even if it be done in the mildest manner, constitutes reproof. Faults are not confined to practical matters, but extend also to doctrinal. Christians are exposed to both, and both are equally dangerous. 2. It is to be done in the spirit of meekness. This is eminently necessary; because we undertake to restore our brother, we assume superior ground. He who inflicts pain willingly and intentionally is a monster. The skilful practitioner will probe the wound to the bottom, but he will do it as gently as possible. A spirit of kindness pervaded the corrections which the Saviour so faithfully applied. It must be obvious, from what has been already said, that if we see a brother overtaken in a fault, and leave him, without an attempt to restore him, we are guilty of serious neglect of a known Christian duty. This will appear even more forcibly, if you consider what was enjoined under the Jewish economy, “ Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart, nor suffer his sin upon him, but rebuke him.” (R. Hall.)Faults and burdens I. The possibility of being morally overcome. II. The duty of restoration. This includes--1. A proper sense of the value of individuals--a man.2. An intense sympathy with Jesus Christ in His saving work.3. A practical knowledge of human nature. III. The work of restoration is to be done in a proper spirit. Dislocated limbs should be handled skilfully. What is involved in restoring a man?1. A proper sense of sin.2. A wise excitement of hope.3. A deep conception of Christ’ s work in relation to fallen men. Beware of encouraging false peace. It is possible to bandage a limb without setting it. (J. Parker, D. D.)The spirit in which restoration should be taken 1. In a spirit of faith.2. Meekness.3. Considerateness.4. Humility. (Clergyman’ s Magazine.)Christian reformation Let us begin this consideration with its proper beginning--the first detection--the first moment that constitutes what society knows as a criminal. The first detection may have followed on a trifling fault, or a mere inadvertence; but once past, the barrier is past with it--the badge is irremovably attached; the words “ convicted criminal” are the strokes of a knell which tolls the man to his grave, be he scores of years from it: we are so determined to be in outward appearance separate from sinners, that we draw the line bold and dark which shall mark the distinction: there shall be no penumbra to that eclipse. Exiles and outcasts, whether their fault has been great or small, from the society of the virtuous or of the undetected--every influence is arrayed, many influences perhaps not unjustly arrayed, against their return to the place whence they have fallen. First of all, in speaking of this duty, let me say something of the spirit in which it is to be performed. “ Restore such an one in the spirit of meekness--considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” Surely this is the very opposite of the spirit of the world, of which we have been speaking. That spirit refuses to consider the possibility of ourselves being tempted: parades a challenge in the face of the world to question our own purity and inviolability, and declares that we are determined never to admit the hypothesis of our becoming like them. Well then, it is here as so often: I have to ask you to put on a spirit directly contrary to that which you find around you in the world: to sit at the feet of a far different Teacher, and learn of Him. We have spoken of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. And this is the very thing which we ask you to do likewise. Our blessed Lord spent His life and shed His blood, in devising means whereby His lost ones might be recovered to Him. And every follower of His--every one who is under the discipline of that great Reformatory which He has founded--is expected not to look only on his own things, but also on the things of others. These criminals are your brethren; your fellow-Christians by profession. And it is only His preventing and upholding grace, which keeps from falling any of us who thinketh he standeth in uprightness. Bearing their burdens, instead of disclaiming them and letting them sink under their weight; and so fulfilling the law of Christ. We may ask, what law? And the answer is very simple. There was one law in which our blessed Lord summed up His social and practical precepts; one, which peculiarly belongs to Him: “ Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.” This is emphatically the law of Christ. (Dean Alford.)On restoring a sinner This restoring of sinners is the primary duty of the members of the brotherhood of Christ. Is it not, too, the great problem of society? It lies as near to the heart of the welfare of homes, of kingdoms, as of Churches. Restore the sinners and you save the State. I. The man overtaken in a fault. It is literally the man “ even caught in a sin.” Putting the case most strongly, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one, despite the open scandal and shame. The sense of our translation, “ overtaken in a fault,” suggesting, I think, the idea of surprise by the sin as well as in the sin, though not the literal sense of the original, is, perhaps, spiritually, not far from the truth. The word for “ sin,” the word for “ restore,” and the allusion to temptation, seem all to point to the case of a man overtaken and snared by a sin. There are those who overtake sin; who seem to catch sins as easily as the vapour of naphtha catches fire. It is not to them that the apostle is here referring. But there are others whom sin overtakes. It is out of the course of their most earnest purpose. It comes as a perversion. It twists, if it does not break, the unity of their lives. David’ s deadly sin was of this character. Sin has caught him, and holds him as a captive. But there is an uprightness there which it has bent but has not prostrated, a love for truth and honour which it has blighted but has not killed. Brethren, take him by the hand and clasp him. Throw the cords of your love around him, and stay him in his mad career. II. Ye which are spiritual. Who are the spiritual? Who knows the secret of this Divine art of restoring souls? The spiritual--those who know that they are the spiritual, and who are the qualified teachers, correctors, and exemplars to their fellow-men. I am not sure that this is the class which is meant by the term, when we hear it on an apostle’ s lips--indeed, I am quite sure that it is not. I am quite sure that Paul speaks of a class of much simpler and humbler men. Men who are not at all sure that they are the spiritual; men who are only sure that sin is a great sorrow to the sinner, a great sorrow to the Saviour, a crushing burden on the spirit, which so fills them with distress and pity, that they can take no rest and know no joy until they have lifted it and borne it away. III. Restore such an one. Restore him. There is but one way. Restore him to God, and you restore him to his brother, to the Church, and to himself. Do not imagine that you can restore him. Man can do just one essential service to his brother: he can bring him to Jesus, and leave him with Him. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)Turning the icy end to our fellows One day, when I was serving my apprenticeship in a factory on the banks of the Marrimac River (says the Hon. N. P. Banks, late Governor of Massachusetts), a party of the hands saw a man a quarter of a mile down tile river struggling among the broken cakes of ice. We could none of us for the moment determine his political complexion or bodily colour, but he proved, in the end, to be a negro in the water. Of course the first care was to rescue him; but twice the victim slipped from the plank that was thrown him. The third time it was evident to our inner hearts that it was the negro’ s last chance, and so he evidently thought; but as he again slipped from the board, he shouted, “ For the love of God, gentle men, give me hold of the wooden end of the plank this time.” We had been holding him the icy end! How often do Christians make the same mistake. We turn the icy end of the plank to our fellows; and then wonder why they do not hold on, and why our efforts do not save them. (Preacher’ s Lantern.)Duty of the Church to the over-tempted The exercise of discipline is ever a delicate and dangerous work. Those who have not themselves fallen are apt to be a little puffed up by the sense of their superior purity, and so to neglect to treat outcasts with true Christian considerateness. I. The duty of Christens to seek to reclaim the over-tempted.1. The light in which many sins are to be viewed--a slip into a pit. Sin not indulged in because loved, but because the sinning one has been surprised, overtaken, entrapped by it. 2. The difficulty of rising after such a fall. Despair settles down on the soul; disgrace; self-reproach. Souls that are in the wild, wide forest of sin, with night coming down, are not likely to find their way out when the notches on the trees--such as the Indians make for guidance--have grown over or been obliterated. Souls that have lost their balance on the narrow ledge of the lofty mountain path, are very likely to fall into the abysmal gorge at their side. Then is the time for Christians to step in and take the erring one by the hand, bestowing interest, affection, fellowship. II. The manner and spirit in which this is to be performed. The spiritual must act in a spiritual manner.1. Setting an example in all good. No moderate indulgence in sin, no laxity, no half-measures. 2. The spirit of meekness. This gives us a fellow-feeling, and makes us act as brothers. 3. Consideration for ourselves. We may one day need the helping hand we are now extending to another. Let us, then, do as we would be done by. No boastful, self-sufficient spirit becomes those who are themselves within reach of temptation. (F. Hastings.)Comprehensiveness of Christ’ s law The law of Christ is the law of universal love; and it requires every man to be interested in every man and in his difficulties; to be in sympathy with him and in all the spirit of helpfulness, although the act may be beyond our power. It requires us also to be in sympathy with men, not only when they are doing right, but when they are doing wrong. A fault is anything inconsistent with the rule of life or duty. In common usage it is a minor transgression, but here undoubtedly it is comprehensive; it includes whatever a man does aside from the rule of rectitude, or aside from any law, ideal, or measure in life by which men are accustomed to be judged. It may respect the man’ s person, his body, health, his strength, or it may respect a man’ s mind, his judgment, temper, disposition generally. It may have respect to a man’ s social connections, neighbourhood; his relations to the family, and to all the collected families. It may have relation to his religious connection; what as a churchman, what as a professing Christian, his faults, feelings, and transgressions. It may have relation to his civil and business duties, commercial or political … Nobody can free himself from the subtle and perpetual influences that work upon the intelligence, the conscience, the ideals of life. We are members of a complex body in family relations or in civil relations; and, as the foot cannot ache without having the whole body ache, and the hand cannot suffer and the whole body not suffer, so every man more or less is so connected by vital nerves with the whole community in which he is, that he comes up with them and goes down with them, and he commits faults simply because he cannot separate and disentangle himself quick enough not to go as the multitude are going. We are all of us in a drove. We are all of us of one nature in the one world, under the one system; and there is not a man living who does not commit faults every day of his life. They may not be of the severest kind. They may not be the faults you dislike the most. You commit them--not as your neighbour does, but in your own way. Everybody does, and everybody, therefore, is dependent upon the charity and the goodwill of his neighbour for himself; and the command is, “ return that goodwill and that charity, since you yourself are liable to suffer in this very way, and are suffering all the time. Treat every man as you would wish him to treat you.”… A brave man would not know that a companion was in captivity among the Indians, and not venture something for him. What if he did caution him not to ride out unattended? What if he did warn him? If the man was careless and heedless, and was snatched up, bound, and hidden away for to-morrow’ s torment, he would creep on his belly until the moon went down, and steal in and cut the man’ s cords and withs, and snake him out, and put himself behind him to defend him if they were discovered, and work him back again into liberty and the settlements …. The scope and the sweep of faults is so great, that you may just as well sit yourself down to this thing, that universal human nature is so poor and so weak and so liable to temptation, and to failure under temptation, that you must have compassion upon all men, or, as it is expressed in Hebrews, you must “ have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way” --compassion universal, continuous, adequate, vital, and active. (H. W. Beecher.)The Christians duty to an erring brother We have here-- I. Christian fallibility. II. The duty of those who stand towards those who fall. III. The reason why we should so act. (A. F. Barfield.)Magnanimous conduct When Conkling precipitated himself from the Senate, it was very much against General Grant’ s judgment, and that was known, and yet he attempted in every way to befriend Mr. Conkling, and shield him; so much so that everybody thought he had gone over to his side, and a man expostulated with him, saying, “ General Grant, how is this You don’ t believe that he did right, do you?” “ No, sir; I don’ t.” “ How is it, then, that you are on his side now?” His reply was worthy to be written in letters of gold. “ When is the time to show a man’ s self friendly, except when his friend has made a mistake? That is not the time to leave a man--when he has made a blunder or a mistake.” That is one of those unimpeachable moral principles which appeal to the universal conscience. Stand by a man who is your friend. Stand by him in his adversity, if you don’ t stand by him at any other time. (H. W. Beecher.)Discretion in censure It is true, open sinners deserve open censures; but private admonitions will best suit private offences. While we seek to heal a wound in our brother’ s actions, we should be careful not to leave a sear upon his person. We give grains of allowance in all current coin. That is a choice friend who conceals our faults from the view of others, and yet discovers them to our own. That medicine which rouses the evil humours of the body, and does not carry them off, only leaves it in a worse condition than it found it. (Archbishop Seeker.)Test of friendship It is one of the severests tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words: but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. (H. W. Beecher.)Tenderness in reproof There is much discretion to be observed in reprehension: a word will do more with some than a blow with others. A Venice glass is not to be rubbed so hard as a brazen kettle. The tender reed is more easily bowed than the sturdy oak. Christ’ s warfare requires no carnal weapons. Dashing storms do but destroy the seed, while gentle showers nourish it. Chariots too furiously driven may be overturned by their own violence. The word “ restore” in this verse signifies, to set in joint again; and to set a dislocated bone requires the lady’ s hand: tenderness, as well as skill. Reprehension is not an act of butchery, but of surgery. Take heed of blunting the instrument, by putting too keen an edge upon it. (Archbishop Secker.)Suitable times for reproving Discretion in the choice of seasons for reproving, is no less necessary than zeal and faithfulness in reproving. Good physicians use not to evacuate the body, in the extremities of heat and cold. Good mariners do not hoist up sail in every wind. (John Trapp.)Reproof begins with self If we would reprove others wisely, we must understand our own hearts. If we give ourselves to the healing of others, and take no remedy for our own mortal disease, we must expect the scorn of men. He would be an ill pastor who busied himself about another’ s parish and neglected his own. (J. G. Pilkington.)Benefit of reproof To reprove a brother is like as, when he has fallen, to help him up again; when he is wounded, to help to cure him; when he has broken a bone, to help to set it; when he is out of the way, to put him into it; when he is fallen into the fire, to pluck him out; when he has contracted defilement, to cleanse him. (Philip Henry.)Considering thyself:--The motive for Christian tenderness What an amount of motive is gathered into these simple words! It has been one of the natural, we might almost say necessary, consequences of the combination of men into societies, possessing all possible variety of condition and circumstance, that there has been a comparative losing sight of the equal liability of all to the several ills to which flesh is heir. In an early stage of society, when men are nearly on a level, and every one is in a measure dependent on his own strivings for the means of subsistence, there is, evidently, much the same exposure to misfortune; and none can be fancied secure against calamities by which others have been or may be overtaken. But the case alters as society is wrought into a finished structure and form, and through the accumulation of capital, certain of its ranks are placed beyond the need of labouring for a livelihood. Then in all the security with which property is fenced, and the ready supplies which it commands, there is something which looks like, and which passes for, evidence that a measure of independence is reached, and that some are in the enjoyment of certainty, whilst others are still within the reach of accident. It is very difficult not to fancy, that the man of large ancestral revenues, inhabiting the baronial hall which proudly surmounts the domain which owns him for its lord, has an exemption from the contingencies and chances of want, which beset the poor peasant who tills one of his fields. And that noble, surrounded by everything which luxury can either invent or desire, might look upon us coldly, and even angrily, if we backed our appeal to him on behalf of some starving cottager, by simply telling him to “ consider himself, lest he should be similarly tried.” It might sound to him as a threat, whether of ignorance or insolence, that it should thus be implied that, notwithstanding all his state, and all his abundance, he might come to want the morsel which we ask him to bestow; and, if he complied with the petition, he would probably spurn the motive by which it had been urged. And, of course, it does need a very thorough and practical recognition of the truth that “ the earth is the Lord’ s and the fulness thereof,” to be able to put aside all the appearances of security and independence, which hoarded wealth furnishes, and to view in every man, whatsoever his circumstances, a pensioner on the bounty of that Omnipotent Parent who “ openeth His hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing.” It is not to be wondered at if the beggar be commonly thought to have to live from day to day on the providence of God, whilst the man of accumulated stores is considered as having provision in hand for his every future necessity. But what actual infidelity--what virtual atheism--may be detected in every such notion. It is a substitution of money for God. I would rather have the security against want, which the meanest of our villagers enjoys, whose daily bread is the subject of daily care and daily toil, than that of the foremost of our capitalists who in any way gives indulgence to the sentiment, “ Soul, thou hast goods laid up for many years.” The one, indeed, has a security--the security of a prayerful dependence on God; the other has no security whatever, but lies exposed to the peril of being punished for presumption. It matters nothing to us, what may be the worldly circumstances of any one, nor how far they may seem to remove him from liability to poverty. If he be a man, he may come to be a starving man; and that, too, without any of these inexplicable occurrences and variations which seem to mark God’ s special interference to bring round the unlooked-for catastrophe. There ought, therefore, to be to him, as much cogency as to the man whose property seems jeopardized, in the words “ lest thou also be tempted,” when it is for the relief of the actually destitute that we appeal to his bounty. And this is, perhaps, the only case in which there is even the appearance of exemption from liability to misfortunes with which we see others oppressed. In every other case we may contend, that even the appearances are wanting; so that there cannot be the shadow of an excuse for denying to the apostle’ s motive the greatest possible force. It cannot be said that any one form of sorrow is appropriated to this class of men, and warded off from that; all are accessible through the same channels, and all are capable of the same wounds. Rank gives no exemption from misfortune. The great and the mean bow beneath the same sorrows, and die of the same sicknesses. Is there not, in consequence, the greatest cogency, whosoever be the party addressed, and whatsoever the affliction, in the words of the apostle, “ considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted!” It is the enlisting of selfishness on the side of the afflicted, and the calling upon us to be merciful, if we would have mercy ourselves. The thing assumed--and it is not a thing to be disputed--is, that God’ s moral government is eminently and avowedly a retributive government. And if, moreover, we live beneath a retributive government, and lie ourselves exposed to all the afflictions with which we see others are visited, then, if only on the principle of self-preservation, we are bound to be merciful to the suffering, lest being brought into similar circumstances ourselves, we find our neglect and churlishness returned to us in kind. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Spirituality of mind possible If you will go to the banks of a little stream, and watch the flies that come to bathe in it, you will notice that, while they plunge their bodies in the water, they keep their wings high out of the water; and, after swimming about a little while, they fly away with their wings unwet through the sunny air. Now, that is a lesson for us. Here we are immersed in the cares and business of the world; but let us keep the wings of our soul, our faith, and our love, out of the world, that, with these unclogged, we may be ready to take our flight to heaven. (J. Inglis.)Meditation promotes spirituality A beautiful flower, the wood-sorrel, grows among the trees in the sylvan scenes of England. It has shining green leaves, and transparent bells with white veins. When it is gathered roughly, or the evening dew falls, or the clouds begin to rain, its foliage closes and droops; but, when the sir is bright and calm, it unfolds all its loveliness. Like this sensitive flower, spirituality of mind, when touched by the rough hand of sin, or the cold dew of worldliness, or the noisy rain of strife, hides itself in the quietude of devout meditation; but, when it feels the influence of sunny and serene piety, it expands in the beauty of holiness, the moral image of God. (P. J. Wright.)The spirit of meekness Meekness is Christian lowlihood. It is the disciple learning to know himself: learning to fear and distrust and abhor himself. It is the disciple learning the defects of his own character, and taking hints from hostile as well as friendly monitors. It is the disciple watching and praying for the improvement of his talents, the mellowing of his temper and the amelioration of his character. It is the loving Christian at the Saviour’ s feet. It is the loving Christian at the Saviour’ s feet learning of Him who is meek and lowly, and finding rest for his own soul. (Dr. T. Hamilton.) Galatians 6:2 Bear ye one another’ s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.Burden-bearing These two principles are:-- I. The brotherhood of souls--“ Bear ye one another’ s burdens.” II. The responsibility of the individual soul--“ Every man shall bear his own burden.” Now these two principles are not really opposed to each other, and neither are the precepts of the text. For if you think of it, you will find it is impossible to obey one part of this law without obeying the other; that it is impossible to bear one, your own burden, without at the same time bearing the burden of others; that it is impossible to realize the awful responsibilities of your being without at the same time realizing the claims of your brothers; impossible to find your own true life without giving up your individual will, without “ merging your personal interests in those of the human brotherhood, and those of the human brotherhood in the light of the life of God.” Take one side of the idea first. “ Every man shall bear his own burden.” There is certainly a very real sense in which this is true, and perhaps no truth has impressed itself more deeply upon the mind of man. Strangest of all things in this wondrous universe is the loneliness of man. Lonely in his birth, lonely in all the great movements of his life, lonely in his death, he comes, he passes, he disappears. Enthroned on the citadel of being, each soul is like a star, and dwells apart. There, in the solitary circuit of its own being, it must patiently revolve, for no star can move in the orbit of another star; it cannot pass the silent deep that lies between; it is alone, and shines in solitary beauty. How then, you ask, is it possible to obey the command of the apostle: “ Bear ye one another’ s burdens” ? My only answer is that which is implied in the words of the text, that it is only by bearing one another’ s burdens that we can really bear our own. Does that seem to be a paradox? If you consider deeply you will not think so, you will see that it is really the law of Christ--the highest phase of that law which rules the rhythmic harmony of the universe--that the true life of man is something higher than a life of individual isolation or of personal interest, and that to attain this you must give up your individual will, you must rise into a life which is your own, and yet not your own, and of which the highest expression must always be, “ I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”1. Take first the illustration which Christ Himself gave in the simplest phase of growing life, the living unity of the tree: “ I am the Vine, ye are the branches.” In the economy of a tree you know there is a function which every member must perform, and without which the vigour of life cannot be maintained. If any part should, so to speak, refuse to exercise its function and to bear the burden of the others, itself must pass away. Give it a separate existence, give it the individuality to which it aspires, and what is the result? When it formed a part of the tree joyfully bearing its own burden, and so also bearing the burden of the others, it shared the glory and the freshness of its life, and all its bloom and beauty. 2. The same principle which is thus exemplified in the tree is seen also in the phenomena of sentient life. It is true that the same law holds throughout the realm of our inorganic life, and even in the subtler relations of organisms as collections of modified cells, with unity of origin and coordination of function, it is clearly shown that life cannot be sustained without that mutual burden-bearing which is part of the very law of God. While each individual member has its part to play, its burden to bear, there is a life of the organism to which it must contribute. The members are not independent of each other, but linked together and mutually helpful. “ The eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have need of you.” Each member must bear its own burden, and in so doing it will bear the burdens of the others. 3. You have seen the principle illustrated in the life of the body. In the structure as it rises from base to summit each stone bears its own burden, and from foundation to cope stone there is none which is useless, all alike sustaining and sustained, rising in gradual ascent according to the plan in the mind of the architect, and growing up into that ideal of beauty and of serviceableness after which he strove, exemplifying in the simplest as well as in the most elaborate form the same principle, and showing that the law which gives its nameless grace to the tiny arch gives also its imposing grandeur to the great cathedral, rising as it does, in ever ascending glory, from its pillars of over-vaulted gloom, with architraves and arches of majestic beauty, “ like a primeval forest,” till all the building fitly framed together grows into a holy temple, meet for the worship of God. 4. And if we pass from these suggestive illustrations we shall also find in the life of man and in the arrangement of society equally forcible illustrations of the same principle; a principle which is indeed the very law of society, and without which society could not cohere. Take, for instance, the very common principle of the division of labour, a principle which was slowly adopted, but which is now one of the axioms of economic science. It is not only of direct utility in increasing the power of labour, justifying the saying of the preacher, “ Two are better than one,” because they have a good reward for their labours. But there is also a higher principle involved. For it is thus by their lower necessities that men are led to see that they have need of each other, and that each and all have their place. I might go on to speak of the basis that has been laid for the law of mutual burden-bearing in the natural constitution of man, in the power of sympathy and natural affection, in the love that binds parent to child, and friend to friend in the sweet charities of human life. There is a similar illustration which may be given in what is called the body politic. What is a State? The true idea of a State is not that of an unconnected collection of individuals, but rather that of an organism, with an organic life and an economy of members, each of which has its own part to play, its own burden to bear, and if it honestly bears that burden, it is also bearing the burdens of the others. For you cannot say that in making the demand Christ makes a demand which is contrary to the nature of things. He merely demands that you should submit yourself to a law which is the expression of God’ s will, and which is the very law of life. He shows that which is the very glory of the Christian faith, that it does not stand in antagonism with any true principle of our nature. We are, as it were, a great army under marching orders. Day by day we are marching onwards. Each of us has his own burden to bear. Each of us must carry his own knapsack, and shoulder his own musket. And as our comrades fall beside us shall we not pause, and carry them to the rear? Would you call that man a true soldier who could see his fellow soldier fall and not seek to relieve him, who would quail before the shot of the enemy and run to save himself when his wounded brother fell? To this it is, my brethren, that the law of Christ calls you. You must renounce your own will, and bow to the will of God. You must give up your own freedom, and find it in a greater and nobler freedom. You must bear the burdens of others or you cannot bear your own. (A. W. Williamson, M. A.)Bearing one another’ s burdens I. Enumerate some of the burdens of the Christian life.1. The greatest of all burdens which the Christian feels is sin. It is this which makes the whole creation groan, and causes an apostle to cry out, “ Oh wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). David also complains and says, “ Mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me” (Psalms 38:4). 2. Bodily infirmities and diseases are in themselves a burden, however providence may intend them for our good, and finally overrule them for our spiritual advantage. 3. Worldly losses, trials and difficulties, are the burden which some are called to bear, and of these there is a heavy load. The unkindness and ingratitude, the malice and opposition of enemies, press heavily on some: the undutifulness of children, and the breaches made by death, on others: and an endless train of disappointed hopes and expectations attend on all. 4. A state of distance from God, and the hidings of His face, are a great grief and burden to the believing soul. “ Thou hidest Thy face,” says David, “ and I am troubled.” II. Our obligations to sympathise with one another, under the various ills and evils of the present life. We cannot so “ bear each other’ s burdens” as to transfer them to ourselves, or suffer in another’ s stead. In this sense Christ bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows, and at length bore our sins in His own body on the tree; and He alone was able to do it.1. Let us bear one another’ s burdens by tenderly sympathising with those who are afflicted. Let us make their griefs, as well as their joys, our own. 2. We are to bear one another’ s burdens by endeavouring to alleviate the afflicted, and comforting them under all their sorrows. 3. The motive by which this duty is enforced is, that in so doing we “ fulfil the law of Christ.” It is according to the new commandment which He has given us, that we should love one another; and according to the old commandment that we should love God, and our neighbour as ourselves. (B. Beddome, M. A.)Mutual burdens I. We must take this text into the sphere of realism. Trouble is not to be treated sentimentally, curiously, inquisitively, but practically Reach out a heart of love and a hand of help to your brother man, not only touching his burden, but bearing it, so that it becomes a matter of prayerful thought, tender remembrance, and gracious kindness. II. This is to be done with great tact and delicacy of feeling. Seek never to lower a brother’ s honour, while helping his need. III. We must do this as the law of life. There is nothing “ occasional” in the Christen spirit. Separate actions do not make good men. IV. We must look at this great teaching along the line of true social economy. Help those who are trying to help themselves. V. Cultivate a tender sense of brotherhood. In sympathising with, and bearing one another’ s burdens, we realize the great fact that we shall have burdens to bear ourselves. So we shall. Those who have most, often say least about them. But God intends these trials to prepare us for Christian service. Every experience brings with it the power of bearing a burden. (W. M. Statham.)Christian generosity So deceitful is the heart, it must be constantly watched, lest under the semblance of piety and religious zeal, we should be led to indulge rancorous and unholy passions. This the apostle seems to have felt; hence the caution (Galatians 5:13-16), the exposure of the fruits both of the flesh and the spirit (verses 19-23), and the exhortation which concludes with the text. I. The duty enjoined. The term “ burden” denotes something which, by uneasy pressure, exhausts the strength and spirits of the person oppressed by it. It may apply to--1. A weight of labour or bodily toil. This is the effect of the original transgression (Genesis 3:19). We may lighten it by manual assistance, by procuring the requisite help, or pecuniary, which would render the excess of labour unnecessary. 2. A weight of personal affliction (Job 7:20). The pressure of this may be relieved by medical aid, kind attendance, the soothing, sympathising language of friendship, or the considerations which religion affords. 3. Domestic affliction and cares. 4. Providential losses, poverty, embarrassment, oppression, etc. 5. Guilt and corruption. In this case especially, is Christian sympathy demanded. 6. Temptation (Ecclesiastes 4:9; Romans 15:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:14). 7. Infirmities, whether of body or mind. Pity rather than upbraid a weak brother. Help his infirmities, instead of exposing them to others. II. The enforcing motive.1. This is worthy of the character of Christ, inasmuch as it is (1) a law of equity,(2) a law of benevolence,(3) a law of general utility, by which society is benefited, the sum of evil being lessened, and that of happiness increased. 2. It is congenial with the Spirit of Christ (Philippians 2:5; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Colossians 3:12-13.)3. It is agreeable with the example of Christ (John 13:13; Philippians 2:6-9; Hebrews 2:14-16). 4. It is deducible from the precepts of Christ (John 13:33-34; John 15:12; John 15:17). 5. It has, and shall have, the approbation of Christ (Matthew 5:7; Matthew 25:34-40). Concluding inferences: (1) Seeing that the text expresses the peculiar genius of the religion by which we hope for salvation, the subject should awaken inquiry (1 John 4:19-21). (2) If examination should happen to lead us to humiliating views of past shortcomings, etc., it should also lead us to unreserved and constant obedience; which may be supported by a consideration of what we owe to (a) ourselves; (b) our brethren; (c) our Saviour, who regards what is done to His followers as done to Himself; (d) our God, who expects such return for His love (1 John 4:9-11). (Theological Sketch-book.)Bearing one another’ s burdens This world is full of burden-bearers. We cannot pass through it without taking a load. Nor can we help fulfilling the injunction of the text in some sense. We do, naturally and inevitably, bear one another’ s burdens. Life is such that every man must take some share of the life of those around. To be in relationships means this; to be in a family as head or member, to be in business, to be one of a social and civilized community, implies it. The text is needed, then, to make that Christian which is simply natural, to change hard necessity into holy duty. Christianity speaks to men who are all struggling and suffering together, and says not, “ Throw off the burden, deny the mutual claim, restrain the hand of help,” but, “ What you must do, do willingly; what you might leave undone, do more willingly still.” I. Some of the burdens we may help others to bear.1. Poverty. Answers to objections-- (1) “ Many of the poor are born so, and do not feel their privations as a burden, not knowing any other state.” True, but we must think of what they may be raised to The poorest man is a man altogether, and capable of all a man can be in soul and circumstances. (2) “ There must be the different classes in society. Christ tells us we shall always have the poor with us.” Yes, but Christ merely refers to a fact He does not commend it, or announce it as one of the laws of His Kingdom. The nature of His Kingdom is, in proportion as its principles prevail, to bring all evils to an end, and poverty undoubtedly tends to produce and perpetuate evil; e.g., it prevents the acquisition of knowledge, makes decency very difficult, quenches nobler strivings, makes life a drudgery. When very deep, it is twin-sister to famine, and behind them both are the darker forms of crime (Proverbs 30:8-9). 2. Infirmity. Weak goodness needs encouragement. Many who fall often are struggling hard all the time. Be willing and ready to hold out a helping hand. Suffer the hasty word to pass in silence, without answering again. Check the ungenerous judgment in your heart. Watch for the best opportunity of suggesting a more excellent way. 3. Trouble. To “ weep with them that weep” is a ministration of love far more intense than to “ rejoice with them that do rejoice.” A friendship of fellowship cemented by sorrow is often both more profitable and more lasting than the fellowship of health, and laughter, and mutual success. Christ’ s fellowship with men is enduring and valuable because it includes all imaginable sympathy. You must fill your own heart with the trouble you would lessen. This is “ Christ in you,” and is probably the presage of Christ in your suffering friend, with increase of soul-strength, and abundance of consolation. II. Motives or inducements.1. The frailty of human nature, and the uncertainties of human life. 2. It is the way to fulfil the law of Christ. And to fulfil that law is to fulfil all laws. More than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, more than all ceremonial and observance, more than all philosophy, more than all morality, more than all religion besides. The keeping of it is the completeness of duty, the substance of goodness, the secret of happiness, and the best preparation for the ineffable glories and joys of heaven. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)Poverty is the load of some, and wealth is the load of others, perhaps the greater load of the two. It may weigh thee down to perdition. Bear the load of thy neighbour’ s poverty, and let him bear with thee the load of thy wealth. Thou lightenest thy load by lightening his. (Bp. Chris. Wordsworth.)What is our whole religion but a burden-bearing? We have our own and also others’ burdens to bear. We are all on a journey; if one is like to give way, the other must refresh him; if one is likely to fall, the other must help him up. (Starke.)Christian sympathy The individual conscience, if sufficiently sensitive, and alive to its responsibilities, will daily find for itself manifold occasions of bearing others’ burdens. We may show our sympathy, for instance, with sickness and suffering, in our liberal support of hospitals and similar appliances for bringing excellent medical skill within reach of those who most need and can least afford it. Those who have leisure to do so, may show it by visiting the sick and afflicted, and alleviating, by gentle acts and kindly attentions, the suffering they find around them. We may sympathise with poverty, either by actual relief of want and destitution, or by the better method, where it is possible, of procuring for them the means of earning an honest livelihood. And our sympathy with such may be most clearly expressed by the delicacy with which the help is tendered, a matter which many benevolent people are apt to forget, and so mar the good they would otherwise do. We may sympathise with age and its attendant evils, by cheerfully tendering the deference and consideration which the better portion of mankind has always combined to accord to increasing years: we may show it, too, by patience of its tediousness, and querulousness, and by diverting attention from failing faculties and enfeebled powers of mind and body. We may sympathise with infirmities of temper in those with whom we may be thrown in contact, by tact and temper, and forbearance on our part, endeavouring to hit the due medium between an undue complaisance, which is no true kindness to the wayward, and a needless and irritating opposition. We may sympathise with ignorance, by excusing it where it is unavoidable and not culpable, by seeking to remedy it in every way that lies in our power, and by readiness to impart whatever knowledge we possess, at whatever cost of time or trouble. We may sympathise with the penitent sinner, if the providence of God has placed us in such a position as to minister to the wounds of a stricken conscience, by encouraging the confidence of those who would repose it in us, by hearing their griefs and troubles and by leading them to Him who alone can heal the ravages of sin and speak peace to the troubled spirit. We may sympathise with distracting doubts and difficulties, whether as to faith or conduct, by patiently hearing all the doubter’ s perplexity, by offering in all humility solutions which have satisfied the minds of others, or, if it be so, by showing how we ourselves have groped our way amid such clouds of the mind from darkness to partial light: or at least we may do so by secret prayer, that God in His own good time will lead all who err or waver into the narrow path which struggles upward towards the truth. (Bishop Mitchinson.)Lightening others’ burdens The application of this law are manifold. Yonder is a poor woman who has more children than she can feed. Take one of them to your own house. Give employment to another of them in your store. That will lift up the load from her, and it will send you to your family altar with a new cause for thanksgiving and praise. Do you not know that in life, sometimes, the breadth of one inch in a railway truck determines whether the cars shall go over the embankment or on the straight track--just the pull of a switch one inch. I know some large-hearted, godly men, who stand by young men when they come to London or New York, and give them the helping hand of sympathy and prayerful support; and that act just pulls the switch one inch, and puts them on the road to success, to happiness, and to God’ s blessing. We have in America our William E. Dodges who are the Lord’ s switch-tenders. I am thankful that in London you have your Samuel Morley, and other faithful servants of the Lord, who rejoice to be God’ s switch-tenders, to turn the needy, and the tempted, and the young into paths of sobriety, prosperity, and blessing. Do you not know that sometimes a very small lift is very timely? A word, an old familiar word--it is like a medicine. A kind word to your neighbour in trouble, an inquiry at the door when crape hangs there, the pressure of the hand: there is not a man in England so high that he is above the reach of the need of sympathy. One of our noblest women, Fidelia Fisk, tells us that when she was in Syria one day, preaching to the native women, she found herself very tired. Here are her own words--“ I had worked hard all day, and I had a prayer-meeting yet to attend that night, and I felt very weary. I longed for a little rest. Just then, as I was sitting on the floor, one of the native Christian women took hold of me, and pulled me over against her and said, ‘ Are you tired? Just lean against me; and if you love me, lean hard--lean hard.’ I did lean against her, and I found myself wonderfully rested. I attended the women’ s prayer-meeting, and I went home that night scarcely tired at all; and oh, how often the words of that woman came to me, ‘ If you love me, lean hard--lean hard.’ And then I thought how the Blessed Saviour says, ‘ If you love Me, lean hard.’” And mothers, mothers, do you not remember how, when you carried that burden of the dying child, pale, feeble, and the breath almost gone, you felt, “ Oh, if it loves me, let it lean hard.” You man, remember you not the time when, night after night, you took up your beloved wife and carried her to her couch, sad at the thought that the load was becoming lighter every moment, and you were ready to say to her, “ My darling, if you love me, lean hard and close.” Oh, blessed Jesus, teach us how to rest our weakness on Thee, and lean hard on the burden-bearer of our sorrows and our weaknesses! (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)The Church a reliever, of burdens In this work of supplying the conditions of human progress, the State has found from time to time its most powerful helper and its most eloquent teacher in the Church of Christ. And in proportion as the State has realized more and more its true idea it has seemed to some to trench upon the work of its best friends. The relief of poverty for instance, the guarantee, that is, of the conditions of life in its lowest form, was long the work of the religious orders. The poor law of Elizabeth was the direct outcome of the suppression of the monasteries. So, too, the education of the people. The Church made manful efforts to supply the defects which the State ignored by its system of parochial schools, and it was not till our own time that the truth came home to men, that national education is a matter of national interest, and can be guaranteed only by the nation itself. So, too, in earlier times the freedom and the sanctity of the individual person were recognized by the Church long before they became embodied in legislation, and in our own time it was the religious instinct of the nation which drove Parliament to sweep away the last trace of slavery. Are we then peevishly to complain of the growth of the responsibility, and activity of the State? Are we to look upon each fresh duty which it undertakes as an invasion of individual rights, or a sort of trespass upon what is the peculiar province of the Church? Shall we not rather see in every successive advance a fresh victory for the Church of Christ? for it shows that the Church has been true to its mission, and has taught its lesson to the world, and has made men feel the truth and the power of the words, “ Bear ye one another’ s burdens” , and so fulfil the law of Christ. (L. R. Phelps.)Burden-bearing I. Different kinds of burdens.1. Those that are necessary.2. Those that are superfluous.3. Those that are imaginary, II. What shall we do with them?1. Reduce their number to the limits of necessity.2. Some of these we are expected to carry ourselves. (American Homiletic Review.)I. Bear ye one another’ s burdens. The late George Moore was accustomed to say that sympathy was the grandest word in the English language. Sympathy overcomes evil and strengthens good, it lies at the root of all religion. The late Mr. Justice Talfourd lamented the lack of it. He said, “ If I were asked what is the great lack of human society, I should say that need is sympathy.” Selfishness is said to be the very root of original sin, and it is the duty of Christianity to break down this selfishness. We have all burdens to bear, but not all equally, and it is the privilege of those who are less burdened than their fellows to minister to the relief of those by whom they are surrounded. Sometimes, under an apparently rough exterior, there is a gentle spirit and genuine kindness. But in offering to these the ministry of Christian love we should avoid everything that is likely to hurt their sensibilities. An air of condescension and a lofty tone of patronage are out of place in Christian service. Genuine Christlike sympathy must be practical. The shedding of sentimental tears will not suffice. It is a mockery and an insult to go to a man and offer him a tract when he wants a loaf, if you have a loaf to spare. Sympathy must be personal. In this age of societies and committees we are in danger of delegating our duty to other people. Real beneficence is simple prudence--to do good is to get good. Be the almoners of your own bounty. This ministry is to be mutual. Human life is very changeful, the picture is constantly being replaced. A man rejoicing to-day may be smitten down by a fell disease tomorrow. The hand that is now ministering to others may sorely need ministration itself. By observing the principles of the text we fulfil the law of Christ. There is a moral power in the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ which is second only to His Divinity. It fitted Him for the ministry of solace. But we are to bear one another’ s burdens in order to fulfil the law of Christ. We fulfil the law of Christ’ s example, as witnessed in the incident at Nain, and at the grave of Lazarus. There Jesus wept in sympathy with Mary and Martha. We fulfil the law of Christ’ s teaching, and that of His apostles. “ A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love another, as I have loved you.” We fulfil the law of Christ’ s administration. It is a law of the kingdom that all His people shall be mutually dependent. Society is bound together by mysterious but mighty ties. II. Every man shall bear his own burden. The two statements of my text are perfectly consistent. There are burdens which we can help other people to bear. But there are others which neither they nor we can bear for purposes of mutual help. There is the burden of responsibility. Life is a magnificent thing. Life in this world may lead to life eternal in the world to come. Then there is the burden of guilt. This is a personal matter. Again, there is the burden of remorse. We all possess a faculty of conscience. Lastly, we have each a burden to bear in the hour of death. (M. C. Osborn.)Fellowship in suffering The apostle here goes even beyond what he has laid down in another very large and comprehensive precept, “ Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” He requires something more than sympathy--more at least than sympathy as commonly understood, though not perhaps more than sympathy in its strict literal import. One man is generally said to sympathize with another, who is pained, when and because that other is pained; and sympathy, as thus understood, is little more than pity or commiseration. But to suffer with another--which is actually to sympathize--this goes much beyond the weeping with another. It is the making the griefs of that other mine own; so that the blow is on me as well as on him, and the wound is in my heart as well as in his. The members of one family accurately sympathize, or suffer together, when death has come in, and snatched one from their circle. The loss is a common loss, affecting all equally, and the sorrow of each is literally the sorrow of every other. A Christian friend or minister may visit the disconsolate household, animated by the kindliest feelings, and sincerely desirous to afford them a measure of consolation, through the manifest interest which he takes in their grief; and he may succeed; for exhibitions of kindliness have the great faculty of going like balm to the heart. The tears which friendship sheds in our woe, possess the wonderful property of staunching our own. But nevertheless, this comforting visitor may rather feel for than with the afflicted. They have lost a brother or a sister, but he does not necessarily feel as though he had lost a brother or a sister. The blow has made them orphans, but he does not necessarily feel as though it had made him an orphan. And thus, whilst he may literally and thoroughly obey the injunction which requires of him that he “ weep with them that weep,” he may yet be far off from that actual sympathy--that suffering with them that suffer--which is described in the text; where you are not only enjoined to commiserate with the oppressed, but so to put yourselves into their position as to bear their burdens. And yet it is evident that so far as Christianity succeeds in restoring the brotherhood which sin has infringed, it will substitute sympathy thus strictly understood, for that which in our present broken state has usurped the definition. It is only needful that I come to regard any one of you as a brother; and when he loses a kinsman, I shall lose a kinsman. I shall not merely be sorry for his bereavement, but I shall feel that the bereavement is my own. So far as two families can be made one, the sorrows of either are the sorrows of both; and if there were but one vast family on the face of the earth, whatsoever afflicted the individual would afflict the mass … Who can tell us what Christian philanthropy would be, if the law of membership were felt and obeyed. You ought--this is what St. Paul seems to enjoin and exhort in the text--you ought to remember the imprisoned and burdened, not merely as being your fellow creatures, but rather as being, in a certain sense, yourselves. What a motive to exertion on their behalf! How earnest, how unremitting, would be that exertion, if that motive were indeed in full force. You tell me, for instance, of unfortunate captives who have fallen into the hands of cruel taskmasters. They are shut out from the cheerful light of day; they eat their bread in bitterness of soul, and almost long for death; and you say to me, Remember them, Remember them! Why, you have told me of myself! It is my own captivity which you have described; it is the clanking of my own chains which you have made me hear; and I must struggle for their emancipation, that my limbs may be free, and that I may breathe the fresh air of heaven. O Christians 1 what would be your benevolence, if you felt that they were your own members which you were invited to succour? And it is quite evident from the text, that nothing less is expected of you as professed disciples of Christ. The apostle introduces the principle of membership, just as he might the simplest and most elementary of truths. He is not proposing any rule or standard to which men were unaccustomed, but, on the contrary, one which, as being generally acknowledged, needed only to be indicated by a passing remark. And yet it is possible enough, that the doctrine which we have now endeavoured to lay down, will appear to many of you to have the air of a new and far-fetched speculation. “ Give us,” you are ready to say, “ pictures or descriptions of distress; expatiate upon the miseries by which numbers are oppressed; and move our feelings by a touching tale of human grief; but as to wishing us to make the wretchedness our own--that we should labour for its alleviation, just as though it were pressing upon ourselves--that is altogether beyond nature, and its possibility is but the fiction of an exaggerated theology!” Beyond nature, we confess it; but not beyond grace. The Christian is not to be content until, in relieving the distressed, he can feel that he acts upon the great principle of membership. It must not be enough for him that his heart yearns at the tale of calamity, and that he is ready to employ his money and his time in lightening the pressure of which he has been told; he must see to it that he have part in the bearing, as well as in the relieving of the calamity. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Helping men to bear their own burdens Many persons are caught with the most superficial contradiction. Here St. Paul says, “ Bear ye one another’ s burdens” ; and in the fifth verse of this same chapter, be says, “ Every man shall bear his own burden.” As if both of the statements could not be true! As if a man carrying a burden for which he is especially responsible, might not have it lightened somewhat by one who walked by his side and helped him! As if a little child carrying a heavily-laden basket--which it was his task and business to carry, and which he had to take care of--might not be helped by another child walking by his side and taking hold of the handle! so that it might be said to one of them, “ This is your burden, and you must see to it,” and to the other, “ Help him with his burden.” And yet, persons suppose, because here it is said, “ Bear ye one another’ s burdens,” and further on, “ Every man shall bear his own burden,” there is some contradiction. No; there is co-operation. The reponsibility is on each man to carry himself and his trials and troubles through life. All the more, therefore, as far as in us lies, we should help each other. For, to “ bear one another’ s burdens,” does not mean to take them off from one another’ s shoulders, but to help each other to carry them. We are to assist others in bearing their own burdens. We are to contribute to their strength and to their courage. We are to render them as much help as, by sympathy or otherwise, we may. Taken in connection with the preceding verse this precept means: Whatever thing tends to bend a man, to warp him in his habit of thought, in the conduct of his moral feelings, in the administration of his affections, in the whole range of his social life; whatever may be a man’ s imperfection, or misdemeanour, or fault, or failing, the command is--“ Help him.” (H. W. Beecher.)Helpfulness To bear the burden of a person who has a heavy load of laborious duty, is either to assist him directly in the performance of it, or to act towards him in such a manner as shall make the performance of it more easy; to bear the burden of a person who is oppressed with affliction, is to commiserate him, and do what we can to relieve and comfort him; to bear the burden of one who is encumbered with mistaken views, mental weakness, strong prejudices, and bad temper, is patiently to bear the annoyance which these unavoidably occasion; at the same time employing all proper means for correcting these intellectual and moral obliquities, weaknesses, and faults To bear the mistakes and faults of our fellow Christians does not by any means imply that we flatter them in their erroneous opinions or improper habits: but it does imply that we, cherishing a deep-felt sense of our own intellectual and moral deficiencies and improprieties, bear patiently the inconveniences which their mistakes and faults occasion to us, and in a truly friendly disposition do everything in our power to remove these mistakes and faults. Chrysostom well says on this point--“ He who is quick and irritable, let him bear with the slow and sluggish; and let the slow, in his turn, bear with the impetuosity of his fiery brother; each knowing that the burden is heavier to him who bears it than to him who bears with it.” When a Christian brother under his burden stumbles and falls, we are not to let him lie on the ground and recover his feet the best way he may; far less are we to insult him as he lies prostrate, and point him out to the scorn and derision of the world. We are to take him by the hand and raise him up; and as we have all our burdens, we are to journey on, hand in hand, endeavouring to keep one another from falling, and to press in a body forward along the prescribed course, that we may all obtain the prize of our high calling, in that better country, where we shall be relieved from all our burdens at once and for ever. (John Brown, D. D.)The spirit that restores a fallen brother should pervade ordinary Christian relations The “ burdens” have been unduly narrowed in the definition of them. They are not weaknesses simply, as in Romans 15:1, but also errors, trials, sorrows, sins, without any distinct specification. And they are not merely to be tolerated; they are to be taken up as burdens (Matthew 20:12; Acts 15:10). Whatever forms a burden to our brethren we are to take upon ourselves, and carry it for them or with them, in the spirit of Him who “ bore our sins and carried our sorrows.” The emphasis is on “ one another’ s,” giving distinctness to the duty as a mutual duty. Mutual interposition in sympathy and for succour in any emergency--fellow-feeling and fellow-helping--is the duty inculcated, as opposed to that selfish isolation which stands aloof, or contents itself with a cheap expression of commiseration, or an offer of assistance so framed as to be worthless in the time or the shape of it (2 Corinthians 11:29). (John Eadie, D. D.)The best burden and the highest law “ If you must needs impose burdens on yourselves, let them be the burdens of mutual sympathy. If you must needs observe a law, let it be the law of Christ.” (Bishop Lightfoot.)Christian socialism No other law but the law of Christ ever taught this maxim; the proper discharge of social duties is regulated nowhere but in the law of Christ, which is the law of love, “ for love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” All those social symptoms which rise like the foam out of the agitated elements of the present generation, disappear in rapid succession, because they have no other foundation than the wave which cannot rest; and they are at best but mere spurious imitations of that fraternity which was founded by Jesus Christ. It is some tribute to the origin of our holy religion, that men in their most extravagant aberrations, and amidst the wildest theories for promoting the happiness of the many, should appeal to the Divine founder of Christianity, as having first introduced the system which they are seeking to propagate; but, inasmuch as they know nothing of the law of love, which He taught us the moving spring of every good word and work, they do but wander on the outside of the Christian system …. In the general history of mankind, the maxim of the text, so far from being acted out, has been reversed; instead of men sharing or bearing one another’ s burdens, they appear to act upon the rule of laying them on each other’ s shoulders, with the view of getting rid of their portion of the weight. In the times of classical antiquity, which our youth are taught to hold in admiration; in the days of heroism and splendid war, which poets have sung and historians have embellished, there were the degraded classes of the community, made to bear the burdens of the rest. The helots of Sparta, and the slaves of Greece, the gladiators of Rome, and the captives of barbarian invaders, were but the beasts of burden for the more favoured portion of the community. What cared the Roman citizen for the slave that went his round of ceaseless toil? What thought had the feudal lord for the drudge that wore out his brief existence in subterranean damps to do his master’ s pleasure? Who, even in our Christian land for many generations, heeded the heavy burdens laid upon the negro slave, or the tender females working in our mines, or the helpless children in our factories? What thought or care among hundreds and thousands now, who refuse to give to the man who has done his six days’ labour, the day of rest which is his due, because they will not forego one single particle of their ordinary luxury, nor bear any portion of their brother’ s burden? St. Paul here appears to take it for granted that every man has a burden; and shortly afterwards he says that “ every man shall bear his own burden.” There must be no such shifting away of the trial or hardship, which, in the course of providence, he has to bear, as will exempt him from the ordinary lot of humanity. It is not at all a question of getting everything done for us, so that we may have a smooth and easy path at others’ expense and toil; but it is just that there may be a mutual succour, which will help every man to “ bear his own burden,” such, e.g., as the burdens of poverty, affliction, excessive labour, etc. (R. Burgess, B. D.)Loving ministrations There lay recently, in an infirmary in New York, in a darkened room, helpless and sightless, a man made blind by cataract. He had crossed half a continent in the faint hope of finding a relief or cure. Beside him, when I saw him, sat his daughter, who, as I learned afterwards, had taken up his work--a work involving long and exposed journeys through a wild and thinly settled country on our western frontier, and who left it, now, only to minister to this helpless and suffering parent while he lay shrinking and quivering under the surgeon’ s knife. It seemed doubtful whether the operation would be successful, and equally doubtful whether all this filial devotion would not be wasted time and worthless endeavour. But, as one looked at that woman’ s face of heroic sacrifice and utter self-abnegation, one read in it how out of love’ s Divine unselfishness there comes a sweeter and nobler fruitage than any that could be garnered without it, even though to-morrow all sorrow and pain and helplessness should be swept out of the world for ever. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)Sympathy aided by sight Consider how you would act if these vices and monstrous passions, instead of being a part of the machinery of rational, intelligent, and responsible agents, were transformed in the actual forms of wild beasts. Is it intemperance? suppose you figure to yourself a lion in ambush springing out upon a man; suppose you saw the man trembling under the lion’ s paw, how would you feel? But suppose, instead of being a lion, it was Satan in the form of an intemperate appetite, worse a thousand times to the man than any real lion of the desert? You would run to rescue a man from an outside lion: will you not do anything for a man who has one inside? What if it were sickness? What if it were a man swollen with dropsy? What if it were a man crying out for water, with lips parched by merciless fever? Would you not moisten his tongue and his brow, and fan the fever away? But is any fever of the body so pitiable as the fevers which come upon the soul? Would you have compassion upon a man who was attacked by an outward disease, and none for a man whose soul was diseased Are there no bearers of men’ s inward burdens? Are not these burdens to be borne, even though men may have brought them upon themselves? Are not bad men punished by what they suffer from their transgressions? Is it not enough that such men have to live with themselves, and take the consequences of their own actions? And is not a man, the consequences of whose conduct are going on, working, and laying up wrath against the day of wrath, to be pitied? Is not he to be pitied who for his transgression has to bear the infliction of law, of public sentiment, and of his own nature? In all ways of looking at it, he is most to be pitied who is most variously and most hopelessly wicked. (H. W. Beecher.)Sympathy not separation But it will be objected, “ Are we not commanded to abhor that which is evil, and to cleave to that which is good?” Certainly; but are we anywhere commanded to abhor sinners because we abhor sin? What is it to abhor evil? Is it the sudden disgust which arises, which ought to be momentary, and which is designed to put us upon our guard, and to inspire us with self-defensory power, till we have time to lay our course more deliberately? Every man ought at the first impulse of the evil to feel repugnance at it; but that is not the higher kind of abhorrence of evil. It is an inspiration of a lower kind. He hates evil most who hates it so that he will annihilate it. There is animal hatred, and there is Divine hatred. Two men hate malaria. One says, “ I will not settle here; I will pack up my things, and clear out.” The other says, “ I hate it; but I am going to work to morrow morning, with my whole force, to drain that marsh.” He goes to work and digs a ditch through it, risking his health, and removes the stagnant water. Who hated the malaria most, the one who ran away from it, or the one who cured it? Is not a cure a witness of dislike more than neglect? A mother hates the disease that is in her child; but does she abandon the child, saying, “ I hate morbid conditions of every kind,” and let the child die, as a testimony to her dislike of violations of natural law? Is it not a better testimony to her hatred of disease, that night and day she lingers over the little sufferer till she brings it back to good health? Is not that a better way of hating disease than the other would be? That is the true hatred of sin which kills it by kindness. (H. W. Beecher.)Open hearts and ready hands One day a teacher said to his class, “ Boys, you can all be useful if you will. If you cannot do good by great deeds you can by little ones.” These boys said nothing, but the teacher saw by their looks that they thought he was mistaken. They did not believe that they could be of any use. So he continued: “ You think it is not so; but suppose you just try it for a week.” “ How shall we try it?” asked one of them. “ Just keep your eyes open and your hands ready to do anything good that comes in your way this week, and tell me next Sabbath if you have not managed to be useful in some way or other,” said the teacher. “ Agreed,” said the lads; and so they parted. The next Sabbath those boys gathered round the teacher with smiling lips and eyes so full of light that they fairly twinkled like the stars. “ Ah, lads, I see by your looks that you have something to tell me.” “ We have, sir; we have!” they said all together. Then each told his story. “ I,” said one, “ thought of going to the well for a pail of water every morning to save mother the trouble and time. She thanked me so much, was so greatly pleased, that I mean to keep on doing it for her.” “ And I,” said another boy, “ thought of a poor old woman, whose eyes were too dim to read. I went to her house every day and read a chapter to her from the Bible. It seems to give her a great deal of comfort. I cannot tell how she thanked me.” “ I was walking with my eyes open and my hands ready, as you told us,” said the fourth boy, “ when I saw a little fellow crying because he had lost some pennies. I found them, and he dried his tears, and ran off feeling very happy.” A fifth boy said: “ I saw my mother was very tired one day. The baby was cross, and mother looked sick and sad. I asked mother to put baby into my little waggon. She did so, and I gave him a grand ride round the garden. If you had only heard him crow, and seen him clap his hands, it would have done you good; and oh! how much brighter mother looked when I took the baby indoors again!” The value of sympathy An eminent clergyman sat in his study, busily engaged in preparing his Sunday sermon, when his little boy toddled into the room, and holding up his pinched finger, said, with an expression of suffering, “ Look, pa, how I hurt it!” The father, interrupted in the middle of a sentence, glanced hastily at him, and with just the slightest tone of impatience, said, “ I can’ t help it.” The little fellow’ s eyes grew bigger, and as he turned to go out, he said in a low voice, “ Yes, you could; you might have said ‘ Oh!’” Alas! how many of us “ children of a larger growth” have gone away hugging our hurt, with a sadder hurt in our hearts for lack of one little sympathizing word. To most of us, in the great trials of life, sympathy comes freely enough; but for the small aches and hurts, the daily smarts and bruises, how many a heart hungers in vain for the meagrest dole! “ It is such a briery world!” said a little girl one day, while making her way through a blackberry thicket. The briers meet us at every turn, and there is nothing like sympathy to ease their pricks and stings. (Christian Age.)The power of a kind word There are no readier or sweeter sympathizers in the world than little children, and they seem to know intuitively when sympathy is needed. A friend of ours had the misfortune to break a valuable dish not long ago, and naturally enough was inclined to blame herself for her carelessness. A little four-year-old girl looked up from her play as the dish fell to the floor, and touched by the mother’ s troubled face she stole to her side, and softly stroking her hand, whispered, “ Nice mamma.” Blessed little comforter! What mother would not cheerfully have given the price of a dozen dishes for the sake of such sweet sympathy? And what mother in the world would have the heart to reprove such a child for a similar mishap?--for to reprove when the little one is already quivering with dismay at the mischief it has wrought, is sheer cruelty. It is a wise mother who at such a time folds the darling in her arms with a gentle, “ Never mind.” (Mary B. Sleight.)Fulfil the law of Christ--not “ fulfil,” but “ complete” He says not “ fulfil,” but “ complete;” i.e., make it up all of you in common by the things wherein ye bear with one another. This man is irascible, thou art dull-tempered; bear therefore with his vehemence, that he in turn may bear with thy sluggishness; and thus neither will he, through thy support, transgress, nor wilt thou offend in the points where thy defects lie, through thy brother’ s forbearance. So do ye reach forth a hand one to another when about to fall, and one with another fulfil the law in common, each completing what is wanting in his neighbour by his own endurance. (Chrysostom.)The bearing of burdens These passages seem to be contradictory; but the opposition is only apparent, not real. One asserts a Christian obligation, the other states a solemn fact. I. There are burdens to be shared. Our relationship to each other, and our possession of advantages and talents, involve us in manifold responsibilities.1. Burdens of ignorance. It is our duty to diffuse the knowledge of God, and to attempt to remove the evils of darkness and superstition. 2. Burdens of sorrow. Calamities, distress, bereavement, appeal for sympathy and ministry; and we cannot escape the demands upon us for consideration and help. 3. Burdens of infirmity. All are in jeopardy. The strongest are not always strong. Christians are not to rejoice in iniquity, or affect a disdainful sanctity, but to seek with Christlike gentleness and grace the recovery of the erring one (James 5:19-20). The Christian has two noble attitudes or possibillties--he can look up, and he can lift up. Think of the animating motive, “ and so fulfil,” etc. Christ taught the law of action by (a) His precepts, (b) His life, (c) His death. II. There are burdens which cannot be shared.1. The burden of personal duty.2. The burden of sinful character.3. The burden of individual responsibility.4. The burden of death. Conclusion: Do you carry an anxious heart, or a weary soul, or a guilty conscience? Get rid of the heavy burden. Carry the load not a moment longer (Psalms 55:22). (M. Braithwaite.)Mutual help in burden-bearing You have often noticed, if you have any special disease or malady, how strangely you begin to learn of others who have the same. There is this sympathetic instinct in our mental and spiritual maladies It is when we have learned in our own personal experience the struggles of mind and heart, the manifold bonds of human life, that we have gained the only power to help our fellow-men. It may be said most truly that it is only the man or woman who has suffered, who has any real feeling of kindred with the heart of man. The child is often cruel to the child, the young are impatient of the sight of sorrow, because they do not know the reality of it. The deepest cause of our uncharitableness is our ignorance. Who of us has ever known the weary burden of doubt, the earnest craving for a truth to rest on amidst the chaos of opinion, who that has at last found it does not know how many there are like himself who only need a word of wise counsel, a ray of kindly light, to lead them into the path? It is that spirit the Christian believer must cherish. And who, again, has felt the hard struggles of his conscience in this daily life, the temptations that have met him, the weakness of his own will, and yet through God’ s grace has kept his purity, does not know somewhat of the burdens that crush others less happy than himself in the results of the trial? Yes, this is the lesson we all need We cannot change all the inequalities of the world, or heal all its diseases. But we can do much to help it by the spirit in which we strive to understand and reach human need. It is not our wealth or our cold, condescending pity men and women need; it is the Christian fellowship that makes them feel that “ we have all of us one human heart,” that sees in every class or lot creatures of “ like passions” with us, the same infirmities, and the same redeeming graces. It is this gospel which teaches no envy of the rich and no scorn of the poor, but that all these differences of lot, to the believer in Christ, are not barriers to sever, but bonds to bind us in one. And as we have so learned it in our personal experience, we have found happiness in this joy of human sympathy. Our grief is healed as we go out of our own cell of brooding thought to find our fellow-sufferers. It is the only antidote. For then we learn always that there are sadder hearts to be healed, and we feel ashamed of our own trouble in the presence of a greater, and as we minister to them the mercy of our God steals into our own souls, and brings the consolation we never knew before. And so our happiness is enlarged only as it enters into the enlarged heart. If we have brought our sunshine into the life of others, if we have given of our comfort to those whose lot is less fortunate, we can enjoy the wealth with a new sense of His goodness who has made us stewards. I have read of a Christian man, who, to know the reality of poverty, put on the dress of a beggar, and went into the hard lodging-house, where the poor outcasts have a comfortless pallet of straw and a ration of bad food, and after a week of experience gave this evidence, that it was worth to him ten years of study, and the source of the most intense pleasure in his lifetime. Such a voluntary exile is not often sought or found by most of us. But each in his degree, if he have come face to face with human wretchedness, has learned the meaning of this Christian experience. Each has found the recompense of the reward; as we have borne the burden of others, we have borne our own more bravely. (E. A. Washburn, D. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 6:3 For if a man think himself to be something, when he Is nothing, he deceiveth himself.Caution against over self-estimation These words admit of two different interpretations, according as you connect the middle with the first or with the last clause.1. If we connect the middle clause with the first one, as our translators have done, the meaning is, If a man think himself to be a Christian of a high order, while he either is not a Christian at all, or, at any rate, a Christian of a very inferior order, he commits an important mistake and falls into a hazardous error. The man who supposes himself arrived at the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when in reality only a babe in Christ, deceives himself, and throws important obstacles in the way of his own improvement. In their own estimation they have little to learn, while the truth is, they have learned but little. But the mistake is much more deplorable when a man flatters himself into the belief that he is a Christian, perhaps a Christian of the first order, while in reality he is not a Christian at all. The thing is quite possible--I fear not uncommon. We pity the poor maniac mendicant who thinks himself a king; we pity the man who has persuaded himself he is a man of wealth, while in reality he is in immediate hazard of bankruptcy; we pity the man who is assuring himself of long life, when he is tottering on the brink of the grave; but how much more to be pitied is the man who thinks himself secure of the favour of God, and of eternal happiness, while in reality the wrath of God is abiding on him, and a miserable eternity lies before him! No kinder office can be done to such a person than to arouse him from his state of carnal security, to undeceive him, to convince him of his wants while they may be supplied, of his danger while it may be averted. A woe is denounced against such as are thus at ease in Zion. 2. Perhaps, however, the apostle’ s meaning is, “ If any man think he is something, he deceiveth himself, for he is nothing.” The apostle is cautioning the Galatians against a vainglorious disposition; and in this verse I apprehend he means that the habitual indulgence of vainglory is utterly inconsistent with the possession of genuine Christianity. Humility is a leading trait in the character of every genuine Christian. He knows and believes that he is guilty before the God of heaven exceedingly, and he feels that he is an ignorant, foolish, depraved creature, that of himself he is nothing, less than nothing, and vanity. Feeling thus his insignificance as a creature, and his demerit and depravity as a sinner, he is not--he cannot be--vainglorlous. Whatever he is that is good, he knows God has made him to be. Whatever he has that is good, he knows God has given him. The falls of others excite in him not self-glorification, but gratitude. (John Brown, D. D.)Self-magnifiers A friend had fitted two glasses into a little ivory tube in such a way that any small object, like a midge or other insect, when put into it, and viewed through the smaller and upper glass, seemed of enormous magnitude, with all its parts, however diminutive, distinctly visible. If, however, the tube was reversed, and the objects contemplated through the larger glass, they then appeared to shrink below the usual size. Gotthold looked upon the contrivance with no ordinary pleasure, and said: “ I know not what better name to give this instrument than ‘ the magnifier.’” In my opinion, however, the hearts of the proud and of the hypocritical are of the same construction. When they contemplate what is their own--their virtues and talents--they see through a glass which self-love has so artfully prepared that all seems of vast dimensions, and they imagine that they have good reason to boast and congratulate themselves upon their gifts. If, however, they have occasion to look at their neighbour and his good points, they turn the instrument upside down, and then all seems small and commonplace. In like manner, their own faults and vices they observe through the diminishing glass, and reckon them very inconsiderable; while they contemplate their neighbour’ s from the opposite side, and so convert a midge into an elephant: The greatest of all delusions in the world is that which man voluntarily practises upon himself, and which betrays him, with his eyes open, into pride, self-esteem, and contempt of others. You will own that the heart of the Pharisee, who looked upon himself as a mighty saint, and upon the publican as a brand fit for the burning, was of this description. That Pharisee, however, has left behind him a numerous breed, and spread his line over the whole earth. In fact, I do not believe there exists a man who has not sometimes used such an instrument in the way we have described. (Scriver.)Self-deception Boswell relates that Dr. Johnson told him that when his father’ s workshop, which was a detached building, had partly fallen down for want of being repaired, he was no less diligent to lock the door every night, though he saw that anybody might walk in at the back. Even so do many persons, guarding themselves against one approach of sin only, while they are exposed to danger from some other point, vainly suppose themselves safe from their spiritual foes. (R. Brewin.)I. Men are nothing of themselves.1. The gifts of God, whether of nature or grace, are not ours, but God’ s. 2. In the use of these gifts the best fall far short of what they ought to be (1 Corinthians 15:10; 1 Corinthians 8:2). II. Though men are nothing, yet they seem to be something, and that of themselves. This arises from--(1) Pride;(2) the excessive consideration of our good things;(3) the comparing of ourselves with the infirmities of others;(4) the flattery of men. III. In so doing, men deceive themselves. Self-deception is (1) The worst deception (James 1:22; James 1:26);(2) the most dangerous deception;(3) self-degradation;(4) spiritual impotence. Conceit is fatal to the duty of burdenbearing, for it is the death of love. IV. The remedies against the overweening of ourselves.1. To look ourselves in the glass of the law (1 Corinthians 3:18). 2. To remember that the gifts on which we pride ourselves are ours only for a time (Luke 16:2), and for the use of them we shall be held responsible. 3. To compare ourselves with God’ s majesty (Psalms 8:4). (R. Cudworth.)Self-complacency One day Narcissus, who had resisted all the charms of others, came to an open fountain of silvery clearness. He stooped down to drink, and saw his own image, and thought it some beautiful water-spirit living in the fountain. He gazed, and admired the eyes, the neck, the hair, the lips. He fell in love with himself. In vain he sought a kiss and an embrace. He talked to the charmer, but received no response. He could not break the fascination, and so he pined away and died. The moral is, Think not too much nor too highly of yourself. A man’ s talk better than himself A hungry man once caught and killed a nightingale that filled a grove with its song. A bird that makes so much noise, thought he, must be something. So he plucked it. And lo! it was no bigger than a sparrow. “ Ah!” said the man, “ I see what you are. You are voice and nothing else.” So it is with not a few. They are full of vauntings, they talk of their goodness, their liberality the whole parish rings with the praises of themselves, which they warble so well. But pluck them, strip them of all appearances, and you will find them “ voice and nothing else.” A great deal of talk, and very little action. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Galatians 6:4 But let every man prove his own work.Faithful self-examination Let us be careful to get the true balance to weigh ourselves. There are the scales in which the world weighs men and things, and decides their amount of good or evil. But these, or the like balance, are so appended to the beam as to favour one scale more than the other. They will therefore deceive us in forming our estimate of things; for sin, when put into them, and love for God, and devotedness to Him, like two feathers east into the scale, will weigh so light that they will kick the beam when the meanest worldly trifle is weighed against them, while the scale in which the world weighs their virtues will have a vast preponderance in their favour. There is also the balance of conscience, and this is more false and deceitful (if possible) than the other. The conscience of the natural man is like a fraudulent man with false weights and measures, from whom we shall be sure to have no just weight. We must therefore take the golden balance of the sanctuary. Here, indeed, even our best services, when weighed with the law of God, will be found wanting; but the fulness of the redemption in the blood of Jesus, the freeness of His promises to every repenting sinner, the merit of His sinless obedience--these, on which the believer builds his hopes, however nicely weighed in the balance of truth, will want nothing of that true weight which the justice of God will demand at our hands. (H. G. Salter.)Necessity of self-examination The reason why there is so little self-condemnation is because there is so little self-examination. For want of this many persons are like travellers, skilled in other countries, but ignorant of their own. (Archbishop Seeker.)True self-examination Around the masterpieces in the galleries of Europe artists are always congregated. You may see them standing before Raphael’ s transfiguration, copying with the nicest care every line and tint of that matchless work, glancing constantly from their canvas to the picture, that, even in the minutest parts, they may reproduce the original. But if, at one side, you saw an artist who only looked up occasionally from his work and drew a line, but filled in there a tree or a waterfall, and there a deer or a cottage, just as his fancy suggested, what kind of a copyist would you call him? Now, true self-examination lies in ascertaining how nearly we are reproducing Christ. He has painted for us in no gallery; but His life glows fourfold in the Gospels, and our hearts are the canvas upon which we are to copy it. Let us not take occasional glimpses, and work meanwhile upon earthly designs; but let us look long and earnestly till our lives reflect the whole Divine image. (H. W. Beecher.)Dread of self-examination As it is an evidence that those tradesmen are embarrassed in their estates, who are afraid to look into their books, so it is plain that there is something wrong within, among all those who are afraid to look within He that buys a jewel in a case deserves to be cozened with a Bristol stone. (Archbishop Seeker.)Urgency of self-examination Remember that the time you have for self-examination is, after all, very short. Soon thou wilt know the great secret. I may not say words rough enough to rend off the mask which thou hast now upon thee; but there is one called Death who will stand no compliment. You may masquerade it out to-day in the dress of a saint; but Death will soon strip you, and you must stand before the judgment-seat after Death has discovered you in all your nakedness, be that naked innocence or naked guilt. (C. H. Spurgeon.)True and false standards of character I. The false standard of character. There is a very common mode of judging of ourselves and our friends which is in itself utterly false and unsatisfactory; I mean that mode of estimating character and works, not by what these are in themselves, but by what they are in comparison with the life of others. “ I may not be what I ought to be,” a man says; “ but, side by side with my neighbour, I have no cause to be ashamed.” The picture seems fairer if it has a dark background; and we fall into the habit of measuring our own goodness by other men’ s want of goodness. Instead of making conscience the standard of duty, they practically make other men’ s want of conscience the standard. They have no sorrow or compunction for anything they have done or left undone, so long as they can point to others who are more to blame than themselves--as if health were to be measured, not by the pulse and vigour of the patient, but by the feverishness and insensibility of another patient lying at his side! II. The true standard of character. Let every man prove his own work; let him test it on its own merits and for its own sake; and let it be judged, not by the indolence and failures of others, but by its own character and worth. This method of judgment, whereby every man must; prove his own work, is in accordance with facts of the spiritual world; for “ every man must bear his own burden.” The character is the outcome of a man’ s life and labours. What the man is, is really the fruit of what he does, and of what he thinks and speaks day by day. The character of every man is the measure of his works. The character will continue to tell what a man’ s life has been, and what in its inmost nature it continues to be. And in this matter each man bears his own burden--a burden in which others may sympathize, but which no human sympathy can relieve him of. God has made visible in man His eternal law, that every man’ s own work is proved, so as to give him rejoicing or sorrow, as the case may be, in himself, and not in another. And there is all the more need to test and prove our own work, that the time for doing our work is fast passing away. Our influence is gradually, and in modes unnoticed and unseen, pervading all around us; and that influence for good and evil is what we are responsible for. (A. Watson, D. D.)Self-examination Mind is the principal distinguishing attribute of man. This undying principle enables us to reflect on our condition as accountable creatures, and on the connection between our present state and final destiny. It is to man, thus constituted, that Divine revelation is addressed. It regards him as capable of reasoning as well as feeling. Every man is required to prove his own work. Those who most need this counsel will probably least feel their need of it, which is the strongest argument for attempting to enforce it. The text prescribes an important measure, and enforces it by weighty considerations. Let us advert-- I. To the measure which it prescribes. “ Let every man prove his own work.” This seems to imply that every man should be seriously concerned to ascertain his own real character and condition before God; and that in order to this he should carefully examine both his principles and practice, his heart and life, and thus prove his own work. Probably there is in these words an allusion to the process of proving the genuineness of metals, by putting them to the test.1. The text supposes the existence of an authorized test. In the absence of a test the process of proof is impracticable. Every man must have some rule by which to try his work, or he cannot prove his own work. The Word of God, and nothing but the Word of God, is the authorized test of Christian character. 2. It requires the application of this test by every man to himself. The application of this test includes two things, namely, the examination of the Scriptures, and the examination of ourselves by the Scriptures. If either of these is neglected, the examination is but partial. II. The motives by which this measure is enforced. Beyond the obvious importance and necessity of this self-scrutiny, the apostle adduces two considerations to prompt every man to the adoption of the measure.1. He adduces the advantage that may arise from it at present. “ Then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.” The apostle supposes a favourable result of the investigation, and in this case he affirms it would yield peculiar satisfaction and joy. He whose own work is thus proved to be genuine has just ground for rejoicing. (1) As it respects the question decided. Many questions about which we often perplex our minds and waste our time are after all but trifling, comparatively very trifling! But in the case before us the question is of the highest importance, of infinite moment. The extremes of bliss and woe, immortal bliss and endless woe, are involved in this question. (2) As it respects the manner of deciding it. “ Then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.” His rejoicing arises from the testimony of his own conscience, and not from the opinion of others respecting him. He has not rested in the vain conceit of his own imagination. 2. He adduces the nature of the proceedings of the last great day. “ For every man shall bear his own burden.” Having endeavoured to explain the measure which the text prescribes, and the motives by which it enforces this measure, I shall close by--1. Urging its immediate adoption.2. By attempting to obviate sonic difficulties attending it. In undertaking and prosecuting an examination of ourselves, we shall probably discover many and great defects. If the trial be impartial, this will certainly be the case. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)Self-proving I. A duty. Our work is good, and approved by God, if it have--1. A good ground, viz., the will and Word of God, and not will-worship and human invention. 2. A good performance. Sincere, as in the presence of God, and with an honest heart. 3. A good end. (1) God’ s glory (1 Corinthians 10:30).(2) Our brother’ s good (1 Corinthians 14:26). II. A privilege.1. Independence of men. 2. The blessed testimony of a good conscience (2 Corinthians 1:12). Hence learn-- (1) That if we would have a light heart we must approve ourselves unto God. (2) That the common estimate of religion as gloomy is false (Proverbs 15:15; 1 Peter 1:18). (3) That there is much spurious joy in the world, which arises, not from within, but without. There are those (a) who rejoice in the opinions of others; (b) in the fact that they have not been open offenders; (c) in the virtue of their ancestors (John 8:33; Matthew 3:9); (d) in that others are worse than themselves. (R. Cudworth.) Galatians 6:5 For every man shall bear his own burden.Here are some of the burdens which each man must bear for himself alone 1. The burden of personality. Each individual is open to manifold influence--may be impressed, drawn, turned, melted, inflamed, according to the powers that play upon him; but he is himself in all. He abides in the eye of God a separate, complete, individual soul for ever. 2. The burden of responsibility. This arises of necessity out of the personality. Man is moral, therefore responsible. The separate threads of each one’ s life are singled out by God for judgment. 3. The burden of guilt. Where guilt gathers, there guilt must rest until God shall remove it. And what a load it is. ‘ Tis this which turns the moisture into the drought of summer, which breaks the bones, drinks up the spirit, weakens strength by the way, quenches the light of hope, and cleaves and clings to the soul a burden of present judgment, and daily foretelling of doom. 4. Immortality is a man’ s own burden. Each is to live for ever--his own life and not another’ s: carrying forward with him through eternity its accumulating elements of happiness or woe. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)The individual burden A man often ceases to feel it for a while. He mingles in some great and gay assemblage, and for the time feels as though his personality were gone, or in suspense. He is not as a separate drop, he is lost in an ocean of life. But in a little while the great assemblage melts all away--only the individuals are left; that which they constituted when they were together has gone for ever; and the man whose life seemed to be almost absorbed and lost in an ocean of multitudinous existence--where is he now? He is going home there pensively under the shadow of the trees, and deeply conscious of himself; with his own joys and sorrows, with his own thoughts and plans, with his soul in all its powers and affections untouched. He is bearing his own burden. Or, in a time of sorrow, other souls come around with watchful yearning love. He has letters breathing the intensest sympathy. He has visits of sincere and sorrowing affection, or he has in the house with him those who feel so deeply and truly with himself that they hardly seem to be divided in the grief. But, the letters are read, the visits are paid, the tears are shed, and then--he retires into his personality, and feels that his sorrow is his own, that none can tell the loss to him, that none can feel as he feels, that he possesses his sorrow because he possesses his soul, and that he, as every man, shall bear his own burden. A man is born alone--has his being moulded with God’ s plastic hand, has all his powers implanted, and the awful image of God impressed, to be carried in glory or in ruin for ever. In all the stages really, and in all the critical and important times of his life consciously, he is alone, as distinct as a tree in the forest, separate as a star in the sky. And in death he leaveth all his friends, and goeth out along the darksome valley without a hand to help, without a voice to cheer--when the dying really comes. He goeth out bearing his own burden of life from one world into another--from the things which are seen to the things which are not seen, from those which are temporal to those which are eternal …. We must think of this if we wish to be faithful and true men. It may be to some the taking up of the cross; but it must be done. Let a man examine himself. Let him sit down to weigh his burden and think: “ I am one--personal, complete. I cannot mingle my being in a general tide. I cannot lose one atom of my personality. I must be myself for ever!” (A. Raleigh, D. D.)The believer’ s freight The Greek word (φροτίον) is different from the word translated “ burden” (βάρος) in Galatians 6:2; and signifies “ a burden or load, especially a ship’ s freight or lading.” Paul was a native of Tarsus, which was situated on the Cydnus, about twenty miles from the sea; and, in Paul’ s time, was in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean almost what Marseilles was in the Western. It was a place of much commerce; and St. Basil describes it as a point of union for Syrians Cilicians, Isaurians, and Cappadocians. Such was the city in which Paul was born and brought up, and from which he must have repeatedly sailed as a passenger in merchant ships going from one port to another to take in or unlade their freight (φορτίον). And thus, from his very childhood, Paul must have been quite familiar with this word as signifying a ship’ s freight, and he could scarcely ever have connected it with any other idea than that of something precious and valuable. This is the only place in his writings in which he uses the word. May we not suppose that he here compares believers to vessels carrying off their respective freights, varying in value; and that he means, by this nautical phrase, that each one will receive his due reward at the last day? Elsewhere he speaks of the believer’ s receiving a “ burden (βάρος) of glory,” which is a somewhat similar figure, and certainly not less harsh to our ears than the one here used (2 Corinthians 4:17). Thus translated, the connection is clear. Let each one take care to have his ground of rejoicing in his own consistent life, and not in the falls of others; and this is the reason why he should do so--viz., that each one will have a reward according to what his own life has been, without reference to what the lives of his brethren were. (John Venn, M. A.)The separate burden of each soul I hope you will not associate with burden-bearing anything menial or degraded. Remember that our Blessed Saviour consecrated labour with the axe and the adze and the mallet at Nazareth; and labour is a crown of glory, never of degradation. Everybody, high or humble, ought to have some work to do. I remember how, in the days of the old dispensation in America, before slavery committed suicide, I was once the guest of a hospitable planter, and I stood by the river bank and watched the long line of negro men and women carrying bags of rice on their heads to load a vessel, and chanting the rich melodious song with which Africa’ s daughters seem to have cheered themselves in the hours of their bondage. They were carrying their burdens. I went into the house, and the head of the family said to me, very thoughtfully; “ Sir, it is a tremendous thing to be the owner of a hundred immortal beings.” That was his burden then. The burden in the one case was physical, and in the other mental, moral, spiritual. Well, in the same way, everybody has his own burden. Bear that in mind. The merchant goes to-morrow to his warehouse, and he says, “ What an easy time my porter has! He has nothing to do but to load up the dray. He has no care. What an easy time my clerk has--my book-keeper. He has nothing to do but to perform my work and receive his salary, and I have the care of the whole establishment.” But, on the other hand, says the workman: “ What an easy time my master has. He has nothing to do but to ride here in his carriage, and sign cheques, and go home to his country seat.” Ah, and the brain of the employer is the bread of the workman, and the toil of the workman is the prosperity of the master. Capital and labour God has joined together, and what God has joined together let no agrarian or communist ever tear asunder. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)Our burden our blessing Here is a man, who has “ come in” for a good fortune and a good business. He has not made either the one or the ether. Those who did make the business, who watched and nurtured it from a tiny seed to a great tree with many branches, nourished and organized it so wisely that, even after they are gone, it continues, at least for a time, to grow and thrive and bring forth fruit well-nigh of itself. The man has no serious difficulties to encounter, no rubs, no hardships, no heart-tormenting cares. He lives at his ease, carelessly, luxuriously--drives down to his counting-house now and then, but gives most of his time to pleasure or to self-pleasing pursuits. Is he likely to be either a good man or a good man of business? It is nothing short of a miracle if he is. How should he feel the gravity of life, its solemn responsibilities, or even its true joys? For want of a burden he is only too likely to leave the straight path. With nothing to bear, nothing to conquer, and not much to do, he grows indolent, self-indulgent, fastidious, perhaps hypochondriacal; and, because he has no other burden, becomes a burden to himself. But here is another man who has had to “ begin life for himself.” Under the pressure of necessity, he has been industrious, frugal, temperate, contriving; he knows all the ins and outs of his work; he has mastered the secrets of his craft, studied his markets, adapted himself to the time, won a good name, inspired his neighbours with respect for his ability, with confidence in his trustworthiness. In short, his burdens have made a man of him, and a true man of business. He is likely to succeed, and to be happy in his success. Up to a certain point, let us say, he has succeeded. He has a good and growing business, a considerable capital embarked in it, a comfortable home, a family trained in habits similar to his own. If you set such an one talking of his past career, you soon find that he sees how much he owes to his burdens. He will tell you himself that he thanks God for the very difficulties he once found it so hard to bear; for the obstacles which stood in his way, but which he has surmounted. If he is a thoughtful Christian man, he will also acknowledge that he has gained in character, in judgment, in patience, in energy of will, in faith in God, in charity with his neighbours, by the very trials and hardships he has had to endure. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to hear “ a self-made man” refer boastfully, or thankfully, to the disadvantages, the unfavourable conditions, which he has overcome, and confess that but for these, and his resolute struggle with them, he would never have been the man he is. Whatever else, or more, a family may be, no one will deny that it is a burden. The father’ s broad shoulders take a new weight with every child that is born to him. He must work harder; he must think and plan, and strive not for himself alone, but that he may feed, clothe, and educate his children. Most of you fathers have, no doubt, felt at times how heavy this load is; how sharp and painful is the pressure of the anxieties it entails. But you have also felt how this burden is your help and blessing. For your children’ s sake you rule and deny yourselves. You know very well that if you would have them grow up with good habits, your habits must be good; that you cannot expect them to be punctual, orderly, temperate, industrious, considerate, kind, if you are unkind, thoughtless, indolent, passionate, disorderly, irregular. That you may train them in the way they should go, you try to keep the right way, to set them a good example. And thus they help you to acquire the very habits which make your own life sweet and pure, to keep the only course which leads to peace on earth or in heaven. Your burden is your benediction. Despite your good example and careful training, some of your children (let us suppose so cruel a case) do not turn out what you wish them to be: they are lazy, though you have tried to make them industrious; self-pleasing, though you have taught them self-denial; passionate and ungovernable, though you have striven to make them temperate and obedient; or even vicious, though you have done your utmost to keep them pure. And as the sad conviction grows on you that your labour has been lost, that they are settling into the very habits from which you would have made any sacrifice to preserve them, your heart fails you, and you almost give up the hope of reclaiming them. This new burden is, you say, heavier than you can bear. Oh, weak and faithless that we are! Oh, thankless and inobservant! Though every past burden has helped us, no sooner is a new and strange burden laid on us than we declare it beyond our strength. How does God prove Himself the perfect Father? What is it that we most admire in His paternal goodness? Is it that He sits among His unfallen children, shedding a heavenly bliss into their pure obedient hearts? Is it not, rather, that He comes into this fallen world to dwell with us--His prodigal and unthankful children--to suffer in and for our sins, to bear our sorrows, to pursue us with His lovingkindness and tender mercy? Is it not, rather, that He will not cease to hope for us, however hopeless and wicked we may be; that He lavishes His love upon us, even when we do not love Him, and saves and conquers us at last by a goodness which has no limit, and will not be repelled? And how shall we be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, unless we, too, bear the burdens of the weak and erring, patiently endure the ingratitude of the thankless, and overcome the evil of the wicked with our good? How shall you, fathers and mothers, become, and prove yourselves, perfect parents if you can only love the children that love you, if you cannot be patient with the disobedient, if you cannot take thought and pains to bring back those who have gone astray? This new terrible burden of sorrow and care is a new honour which God has put upon you, a new call to perfection. It is because you are strong that He asks you to bear the infirmities of the weak. It is because you are capable of the most heroic tasks of love that he taxes your love, and, by taxing, strengthens and deepens it. But take, for one example, the burden of mystery which lies on the sacred page. Most thoughtful men have felt its weight; in these days, indeed, it is hardly possible to escape its pressure. When we seek to acquaint ourselves with the truth, which is one, lo! we find it manifold; the simple and sincere Word bristles with paradox and contradiction; it opens up depths we cannot fathom, and suggests problems we cannot solve. Yet is not this burden a veritable blessing? If the inspired Word were simple and plain through-out--if it were level to the meanest understanding, and disclosed its inmost secrets to the most cursory and fugitive attention, could we study and love it as we do? (S. Cox, D. D.)Burden-bearing strengthens The Christian gets stronger for his load, or he ought to. Train up your boy indoors; give him as much spending money as he wants; never put the boy to any work; and the poor little flabby creature will get to be mere pulp. But turn him out to work for himself, load on him study, toil, the necessity of supporting himself, and you graduate him to manhood. That man, at whose departure a world is mourning, fought his way up from poverty by hard struggle, until he attained that place which he filled in the eyes of the country and of the world. Now, that is the way God deals with His children. He burdens them to make them strong. He says to one of His spiritual children, “ Every man shall bear his own burden; carry that;” and to another, “ Every man to his work; do that:” and to another, “ Every man his own cross; carry that.” Between here and heaven lies many a Hill of Difficulty, as Bunyan describes it, where you and I have got to give over running for walking, and to give over walking for climbing on the knees. I have lived long enough to thank God for difficulties. They make you strong, they sinew your heart; they enlarge your faith; they bring you near to God. Burden-bearing strengthens; grappling with difficulties gives us what we so much need, and that is force; and in God’ s school some hard lessons have to be learnt. I think we learn our most precious lessons when we look at them through tears which make a lens for the eye. I have found the hardest lesson in this world is--what? It is to let God have His way; and the man or woman who has learnt how to let God have His way has attained the higher life--the highest on earth. (S. Cox, D. D.)Religion must be personal A little girl, whom we will call Ellen, was some time ago helping to nurse a sick gentleman whom she loved very dearly. One day he said to her, “ Ellen, it is time for me to take my medicine, I think. Will you pour it out for me? You must measure just a table-spoonful, and then put it in that wine-glass close by.” Ellen quickly did so, and brought it to his bedside; but, instead of taking it in his own hand, he quietly said, “ Now, dear, will you drink it for me?” “ Will I drink it? What do you mean? I am sure I would, in a minute, if it would cure you all the same; but you know it won’ t do you any good, unless you take it yourself.” “ Won’ t it, really?” the gentleman replied. “ No, I suppose it will not. But Ellen, if you can’ t take my medicine for me, I can’ t take your salvation for you. You must go to Jesus, and believe in Him for yourself.” In this way he tried to teach his little friend that each human being must seek salvation for him-self--repent, believe, obey, for himself: that this is a burden which no man can bear for his brother. Doing duty by proxy Bishop Burnet, in his charges to the clergy of his diocese, used to be extremely vehement in his declamations against pluralities. In his first visitation to Salisbury he urged the authority of St. Bernard; who being consulted by one of his followers, whether he might accept of two benefices, replied, “ And how will, you be able to serve them both?” “ I intend,” answered the priest, “ to officiate in one of them by a deputy.” “ will your deputy suffer eternal punishment for you too?” asked the saint. “ Believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must suffer the penalty in person.” This anecdote made such an impression on Mr. Kelsey, a pious and wealthy clergyman then present, that he immediately resigned the rectory of Bernerton, in Berkshire, worth two hundred a year, which he then held with one of great value. Burden-bearing I. Self-help.1. This is inevitable. Each has his burden of (1) work;(2) sorrow; (3) responsibility;(4) bodily infirmities;(5) waiting. 2. This is salutary. (1) To utilize our powers.(2) To develope our excellences. II. Brotherly help (Galatians 6:2). The carrying of our own load gives strength to carry the burden of others. (1) The burden of trial.(2) Of poverty.(3) Of bearing a wandering brother to Christ. III. Divine help (Psalms 55:22).(1) The burden of anxiety.(2) Of sin. (T. L. Cuyler.)I. Man is independent, φορτίον, one’ s own proper burden, a packman’ s bag, a soldier’ s kit. Responsibilities of life, of parents, masters, teachers, is not a curse but a privilege, which is thrown away when we endeavour to throw it on others.2. Fruits of past conduct. II. Men are interdependent (Galatians 6:2), βαρη, burdens which may be shifted or borne by another. 1. A man’ s infirmities, temptations, poverty, stumblings (Galatians 6:1).2. The mutual blessedness of this interdependence. III. Men are absolutely dependent. (Psalms 55:22): burdens sent as a portion from God.1. Affliction.2. Consciousness of guilt. (D. A. Taylor, M. A.)Burdens I. Our own. II. Our brother’ s (Galatians 6:2). III. Our Lord’ s (Galatians 6:17) By bearing the first we relieve our Lord’ s trouble: if every man bore his own burden, instead of shirking it, the will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. By bearing the second we relieve our brother’ s trouble. Either by sympathy or substitution. By bearing the third we relieve our own: the trouble of doubt, of sin, of controversy. IV. Personality an awful gift. This short verse-- I. Singles us out from all the multitude around us. II. Bids us remember, what the world would hide from us, that we are each of us one.1. This is a great thought.2. An awful thought.3. A thought we cannot shake off. III. Ordinary life witnesses to this truth.1. All deep thinking people live apart from others.2. Sympathy may lighten their burden, but still it is their own.3. Pain and death prove this. IV. The present life cannot explain all this. We must go to Revelation: there we find--1. That this great mystery is the gift of individual being from God (Genesis 2:7).2. That we have a will that can resist the almighty will of God.3. That the whole volume is a history of the conflict of the human will with the Divine, and of God’ s endeavour to win the human will by redemption.4. That every healed will owes its healing to Divine grace. V. Hence the unspeakable worth of every life.1. The will is either hardening itself against God, or-- 2. is being drawn into harmonious action with the will of God. VI. Practical lessons.1. The great importance of acting in the remembrance of our responsibility.2. The necessity of securing times for self-examination and prayer.3. The need of claiming our place in Christ the new and living man. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.)How to bear our burden The world proposes rest by the removal of a burden. The Redeemer gives rest by giving us the spirit and power to bear the burden. (F. W. Robertson.)Burden-bearing I. This, then, is my first proposition, namely, that every one must bear the burden of his own sins, both as concerns this life and the next. The results of sin are strictly individual. It is with the soul as with the body, with the spirit as with the flesh. If you thrust a knife into your arm, it does not affect me. You yourself feel the pain; you yourself must endure the agony. I may sympathize, I may pity, I may bandage the gash, but the severed flesh, and the lacerated fibres are yours, and along your nerves nature telegraphs the pain. So it is with the soul. A man who stabs himself with a bad habit, who opens the arteries of his higher life with the lancet of his passions, and drains them of the vital fluid, who inserts his head within the noose of appetite and swings himself off from the pedestal of his self-control, must endure the suffering, the weakness, and the loss which are the issue of his insane conduct. In morals there is no copartnership, no pro rata division of profit and loss. Each man receives according to the summation of his own account. II. I have alluded to the individuality of moral responsibility. I have striven to show you that each one must endure his own sufferings, and abide the result of his own actions, and that in this no one can share with him. Not only is this true in respect to moral responsibility, but it is equally true in respect to moral growth. You may place two trees side by side, so that their branches shall interlace, and the fragrance of their blossoms intermingle, and yet in their growth each is separate. Covered by the same soil, moistened by the same drop, warmed by the same ray, the roots of either collect and reinforce the trunks of each, with their respective nourishment. Each tree grows by a law of its own growth, and the law of its own effort. The sap of one, in its upward or downward flow, cannot desert its own channels and feed the fibres of the other. So it is with two Christians. Planted in the same soil, drawing their sustenance from the same source, they, nevertheless, extract it through individual processes of thought and life. In daily contact and communion, whether in floral or fruitful states intermingling, equal in girth and height, equal in the results of their growth, the spiritualized currents of the one mind cannot become the property of the other. They cannot exchange duties. They cannot exchange hopes. I cannot think for you, or you for me. We cannot meditate for one another. Soul-food, like bodily food, is assimilated by each man for himself. See what determination the world manifests in pursuit of carnal things; over what sharp obstacles men mount to honour and wealth. A worldly man asks no help from another. He plays the game of life boldly, asking no odds. When he comes to an obstruction, he puts his shoulder bravely against it, and rolls it aside or climbs over it. Nay, more, out of the very fragments of a previous overthrow he erects a triumph. Nothing overawes him nor discourages him. He asks no one to bear his burden. He bears it himself, and finds it to be a source of strength and power. And shall a Christian shrink from what a worldling bravely attempts? Shall we unto whom the heavens minister, faint when those to whom the gates of power are shut persevere? These things ought not so to be. What is a slip? What is a scar? What is a fall? They will all testify to the perils you endured, and the heroism of your perseverance, at the Last Day. Think not of these. Write on your banner, where, living or dying, your eyes shall behold them, these words: “ He who endureth unto the end shall be saved. (W. H. H. Murray.) Galatians 6:6 Let him that is taught in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.The duty of ministerial support It is one of the tricks of Satan to defraud godly ministers of support, that the Church may be deprived of their services. Paul’ s recommendation arose from a desire to preserve a gospel ministry. (Calvin.)I do not love to expound such sentences which speak for us that are ministers of the Word; moreover, it may look, if one is zealous to treat such texts before the people, as if he did it on account of avarice. But one must nevertheless instruct the people thereabout, that they may know what degree of honour and support they owe to their teachers. This is also good for us, that are in the ministry, to know that we may not take our deserved recompense with uneasy conscience, as if we had no right to it. (Luther.)A fair exchange Between teachers and hearers there should be a lovely exchange and joyful barter. A hearer needs not to complain as though he suffered disadvantage in this exchange. Whoever will not give our Lord God a penny, gets his due when he is forced to give the devil a dollar. (Starke.)The support of the ministry I. A children are bound to maintain their parents (1 Timothy 5:4), so believers their spiritual parents (Galatians 4:19; 1 Corinthians 4:15). II. The Old Testament enjoins this (Deuteronomy 12:19), much more the New. III. Every calling maintains those who live therein: the highest calling should do no less. IV. Ministers are God’ s soldiers, and should not go a warfare at their own cost; the Lord’ s labourers, and therefore worthy of their hire; the Lord’ s shepherds, and thereforeworthy the milk of the flock (see also Deuteronomy 25:4; cf. 1 Corinthians 9:9-10; 1 Timothy 5:17). V. Ministers are to give themselves wholly to their work (2 Timothy 4:13-16), and therefore must not be entangled in the affairs of this life (2 Timothy 2:4). VI. It is the ordinance of God that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:14). (R. Cudworth.)Material aids needful Some people give as though they only half believed that Christ has ordained the money power as one of the powers of His cause; as if in travelling from place to place the missionary cost no more than the flight of an angel; as if the Philip of to-day might be “ caught away by the Spirit,” and then suddenly be “ found at Azotus “ ; as if bills could be paid by devout emotions or declaratory words; as if lives could be sustained on mere air; as if ravens might be expected to bring food to fainting prophets; as if miracles of providence would provide for ministers of grace. But this is not God’ s method of working now. You must furnish material supplies for material apparatus. (C. Stanford, D. D.)Paying the minister In 1662, the town of Eastham agreed that a part of every whale cast on shore be appropriated for the support of the ministry. The ministers must have sat on the cliffs in every storm, and watched the shore with anxiety. And for my part, if I were a minister, I would rather trust to the bowels of the billows to cast up a whale for me than to the generosity of many a country parish that I know. (Thoreau.)Liberality to ministers The people of one of the out parishes of Virginia wrote to Dr. Rice, then at the Theological Seminary in Prince Edward, for a minister. They wanted a man of first-rate talents, for they had run down considerably, and needed building up. They wanted one who could write well, for some of the young people were nice about that matter. They wanted one who could visit a good deal, for their former minister had neglected that, and they wanted to bring that up. They wanted a man of very gentlemanly depoitment, for some thought a great deal of that, and so they went on describing a perfect minister. The last thing mentioned was that they gave their last minister £70, but if the Doctor would send them such a man as they described, they would raise another £10, making it £80. The Doctor sat down and wrote them a reply, telling them they had better, forthwith make out a call for old Doctor Dwight in heaven, for he did not know of any one in this world who answered the description; and as Dr. Dwight had been living so long on spiritual food, he might not need so much for the body, and possibly he might live on £80. (Dr. Haven.)It is my intention to expound and to defend this financial law of the Christian Church: “ Let him that is taught in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.” I. Let us expound this financial law of the Christian Church. The phrase “ in all good things” may be connected either with the words “ him that teacheth;” or with the words “ him that communicateth.” It may mean either, first, “ Let him who is instructed in all good things communicate to him who thus instructs him;” or, secondly, “ Let him who is instructed communicate all good things to him who instructs him.” The necessity of a distinct order of men for the purpose of Christian instruction might be easily rested on rational principles. But I choose rather now to appeal to the will of the great Legislator” I appeal to that passage contained in Ephesians 4:1-32.: “ When He ascended up on high He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men;” and among these gifts he gave “ pastors and teachers.” It is plain, from Scripture, that there ought to be an order of men devoted to this work. It is evident, also, that they should devote their whole time and attention to its duties: this might be grounded on rational principles, arising from the nature and number of the subjects which must necessarily be included in such instructions; but here, again, I shall refer to the will of the great Lawgiver. His determination is, that those who minister should “ wait on their ministering, and he that teacheth, on teaching;” that such should “ give attendance to reading and exhortation;” that they should “ meditate upon these things,” and “ give themselves wholly to them.” We are not to look at this subject as we look at our Missionary Societies, and Bible and Educational Societies: these are human institutions, and we may support them by human plans; but the Christian ministry is a divinely appointed means for a divinely appointed end; and the means of its support are divinely appointed too. We may as much err by using means different from those which Christ has instituted, as if we lost sight of the end itself. II. Let us defend this financial law of the Christian Church. Like all the other laws of Christ it is “ holy, just, and good.” It is an arrangement which is alike just, generous, and useful.1. It is a just arrangement. 2. This is a generous as well as a just principle. Men who thus believe are brought under the influence of the love of Christ; and on this principle Christ secures the maintenance of His ministers in Christian Churches to the end of time. 3. This is a useful arrangement also. But objections have been made. First, it is said, “ Such an arrangement has a great tendency to degrade the Christian ministry.” In one sense we may ask, Do such persons expect the Christian minister to be altogether independent? We are all dependent, and must necessarily be so. And who applies this mode of reasoning to other professions? Who would think of saying of a lawyer, or of a medical man, that they are low-spirited, time-serving, dependent men, because the one is dependent on his clients, and the other on his patients, for subsistence. Are they degraded by such dependence as this? Is the minister of Christ to be degraded, because he is supported by the same means by which Christ his Master was supported? It may seem strange that those who are to be accounted “ worthy of double honour,” should be dependent for their support on the bounty of others. But when it is founded on such a principle as Christian love, I know not of a more honourable way than to be dependent on the will and love of others. Secondly, as to the objection that “ this arrangement throws difficulties in the way of the minister, by making it necessary for him to submit to much in order to cultivate the good-will of those to whom he preaches.” But let them continue a Christian people, and then tell me how such a man should please such a people but by doing his duty towards them as a Christian minister. Thirdly, it is objected that “ it makes the subsistence of Christian ministers uncertain; and that it endangers the existence of the Christian ministry, and by this means, Christianity itself.” I might say here, that all below is insecure; but I would say also, it does not appear that the subsistence of the Christian minister is more uncertain than that of other men. (J. Brown, M. A.) Galatians 6:7-8 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.The present seed-sowing, decisive of the future harvest And I suppose, that nature is full of spiritual instruction, in all its subdivisions and departments, if we had but an eye to see it. And for anything I know, it may be as much the purpose and design of God, to teach us by all the objects and operations in His world and in His works round about us, as it was the object and design of God to teach us by the furniture and all the preparations of the Hebrew sanctuary. Our Lord frequently adverted to the harvest. I. And first, then, for the sentiment and doctrine, which the text contains. I think that the text necessarily carries out our thoughts to the future life. If we sow to the Spirit, we shall “ of the Spirit reap life everlasting;” which can, as it seems to me, have no reference to the existing economy of things, where every object around us is transient and perishing and passes away. And if “ sowing to the Spirit,” leading to a harvest of “ life everlasting,” directs our view to the future world, then “ sowing to the flesh,” involving in it “ corruption,” must also necessarily relate to the future life; the two being parallel to each other, both must have reference to the result of good and evil actions in the world to come. What is “ sowing to the flesh?” By “ the flesh” understand, not the body as in contradistinction to the mind; but understand depravity as in opposition to holiness. They will “ reap corruption.” That which is defiled, that which is worthless, that which is filthy, that which is abominable--corrupted in body, corrupted in mind, corrupted in associates--all the corrupt deeds of the guilty past, of the unforgiven, unrenovated, human population, concentrated, amassed for them. A harvest of corruption. Let me turn, therefore, to the other question, respecting “ sowing to the Spirit.” And the “ sowing to the Spirit,” again, here, is the same thing with bringing forth “ the fruits of the Spirit,” of which we read in the foregoing chapter. But of the principle, of the fact, of the truth, we have the deepest certainty--that as we “ sow to the Spirit,” we shall “ reap life everlasting.” And this notwithstanding the time, be it what it may, longer or shorter, more or less, which may intervene between the period of the sowing and the period of the reaping. In the ease of the natural harvest, as you are aware, there is a considerable period intervening. But I think that time has respect purely and exclusively to man, and not to God at all. Neither does it matter how entirely the sowing of the seed may have been forgotten. It does not appear that the memory of the husbandman has any influence whatever upon the seed sown. There it is; it takes root, germinates, buds, comes to perfection, whether he remembers and thinks of it or does not. Now we know nothing of man’ s memory. We cannot explain what man’ s memory is; we do not know how it was created, or in what manner it acts; we can give no explanation of the diversities of memory--why is it that one man’ s memory retains clearly all things, and another man’ s memory is like a sieve which lets all things through; we cannot tell how this is, or why this is. But in the future life memory may be a perfected capacity; so that, as I have intimated, all things may be as fresh and vivid, as powerful and direct upon the spirit, as if no time had intervened whatever. Therefore, though there maybe a non-recollection now, an utter forgetfulness of what kind and manner of seed we may have sown for the last seven years, or the last twenty years, this is no proof whatever against the principle of the text--that the seed has been sown, and that the harvest will be reaped, and that when the harvest is reaped, either for good or for evil, we may have brought powerfully to our recollection the seed that has been sown. Neither is it of any consequence, that we cannot understand the nature of the connection between the process of the sowing of the seed and the coming of the harvest. If you saw a man casting seed into the soil, and were not perfectly acquainted with the probable result--if you or I were not acquainted with the fact, that the seed-time always precedes the harvest, we should think the man was throwing the seed away; we should ask--“ What is he doing? he is casting his bread into the ground.” But we know what he is doing. Yet we do not understand any one of the principles, which bring to pass the harvest in connection with the seed sowing; we only know the fact. And exactly in the same manner, though I cannot explain what is the nature of the thing, or what are the manifold causes which are at work and in operation so as eventually to evolve a harvest of glory or of corruption, yet as I see the close connection subsisting in the one case in nature, why should I doubt an equally close or a stronger connection in morals, when I have reason on my side and God’ s Word declares it? And I think, the principle to which I have now adverted, which is the resurrection of character, the re-appearance of our moral actions, stands in close connection with the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. I believe, as I have said, from Scripture, that there is to be a resurrection of man’ s body; but that is comparatively a mere small matter. Suppose it be a resurrection of the body in glory; well, let the body in glory stand by itself, alone in its glory, what is it?--(I mean, without its mind, and without its character and these transactions.) What is it? A statue, that shines and glitters; that is all. A statue; nothing but a statue., You must have the mind; not the mere intellect--you must have the moral state and condition; you must have the virtues, with which the mind is endued and ingrained; you must have the achievements, if there are any--or the softer and milder emanations of moral beauty, if there is nothing that is great and grand. II. Now I have to state, secondly and more briefly, the evidence and authority by which it is sustained. And I might remark, it is God’ s ordinance--God’ s constitution. It is His arrangement and His pleasure; and we can even see wisdom and reason in it. The connection between seed time and harvest is of Divine constitution. All that we see in the processes of nature round about us, from the one period to the other, is of Divine arrangement and according to the will of heaven, The elements work, all the agencies and causes are in action, under the presidency and direction of the unerring and infinite Mind. The connection by man cannot be destroyed. God’ s ordinance by God will be carried into effect. So it is in morals. It is certain; it is irresistible; it will be triumphant. The sower to the flesh shall reap his corruption; the sower to the Spirit shall reap life everlasting. Secondly, this is plainly revealed to us in Scripture. We have it in various other forms, besides that of the passage which is now before us. There is the parable of the talents. And, thirdly, I observe, that it is sustained by the justice and fidelity of God. Without this, there is no explanation of the exceeding mysteries of the Divine providence. Hereafter good is to have its day--justice its day. It is the day of God. Now, he says, “ they call the proud happy;” now they say that those who blaspheme God are in honour; then--hereafter--“ shall ye discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.” There are various kinds and degrees of vice and virtue, According to the kind and according to the degree, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Not only according to the quality and the degree, but the quantity. And I think the text implies the principle of reproduction. The seed produces itself over and over again. And the principle of multiplication is seen in a vicious action or in a vicious principle. It existed and was manifested in you; it may be copied--re-produced--in your sons and in your daughters; and it may go on from them illimitably. Or it went forth from you and took root in society; and it went on, and reproduced itself in its own unslightliness and enormity over and over again. Or take the other view of it. There is a virtue and an excellency in you; it reproduces itself; it is seen in your family, it shines in your sons and your daughters; it is copied; it reproduces itself in your circle; it goes on to posterity; no man can tell where it goes, any more than a man can tell what will be the result and produce of a handful of corn planted upon the top of the mountains. And this principle of reproduction I hold to be one of the greatest importance, and consolatory in the highest degree to good men. It is what is intended in Scripture by “ the dead yet speaking;” because their thoughts and their actions go on. Especially note the influence of it in the compositions of wise and holy men--such men as Owen, and Howe, and Baxter, and Jeremy Taylor, and Bishop Hall; view their thoughts, their character, their writings, re-produced over and over again, till nobody knows to what extent they scatter the principles of truth. And on the other hand, the principle is terrific in respect to vice. Take up such a writer as Hobbes, Voltaire, Hume, Lord Byron; think of the mischief done by such men, the evil which comes over and over again--the seeds of pestilential doctrine, the mischief of bad and malign passions, over and over again. Yes; reproduction--multiplication--again and again. A harvest of evil, a harvest of corruption--a harvest of good, a harvest of glory--in the life that is for ever and ever. So it will be. III. The danger of our being deceived. “ Be not deceived.” What is the danger? Why, the heart is very deceitful, “ deceitful above all things;” and there may be reasoning, very acceptable but very delusive, that men may indulge in sin and yet escape any punishment--that they may not serve God and yet arrive in heaven. I find Scripture, in several emphatic places, giving this caution--the caution “ not to be deceived” in connection with the indulgence of sin. If this be true, what importance attaches itself to our dally life! You rise in the morning, and go through the day; you are sowing seed of some kind or other. You rise without God, live without Christ, go up and down among men unjust, a thundercloud, hating, angry, backbiting; what are you sowing? You rise in the morning; your first thoughts consecrated to God; you come into your family, meek, gentle, bland; among men, just, upright, good, generous; what seed are you sowing? See; the harvest you shall reap in the world to come. (J. Stratten, M. A.)Christian liberality The metaphor of seedtime and harvest, although capable of an almost universal application, is primarily applicable to the principle of Christian liberality, and the earnestness of St. Paul’ s admonition finds its probable explanation in an allusion in 1 Corinthians 16:1 : “ Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given Order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye.” He had at his former visit urged them to contribute to the support of their suffering brethren of Judea; but Gallic avarice was proverbial. And is it not reasonable to suppose that the messenger who had brought the apostle word of their defection from the faith, reported also unfavourably of their liberality? Hence his strong statement concerning sowing and reaping; hence his earnest exhortation to support their teachers, to do good unto all men. And surely, brethren, the money test is one of the truest tests by which the genuineness of a man’ s religion can be tried. It was the money test which our Lord applied to the rich young ruler, and from which he shrank; it was the money test which proved too much for Achan and Gehazi in the Old Testament, for the Apostle Judas, and for Ananiss and Sapphira in the New. And the money test has not, I believe, lost its practical value now. The love of money is the root of as much evil in England as it was in Gallatia or Judea; it is equally now as then a lust of the flesh which needs greatly to be crucified. Show me a liberal and large-hearted man--one whose delight it is to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked; a generous, ungrudging, cheerful giver. His creed may possibly be defective, his knowledge limited; yet surely it may be said of such an one, that he is not far from the kingdom of heaven; for is it not promised that “ if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday.” But let a man be close and miserly in his habits--more ready to hoard than to give--one that knoweth to do good, but doeth it not--then, however accurate his creed, however strict and orthodox his profession, he lacks surely the vitality of grace; he has a name to live, but is dead. All separation between knowledge and action is ruinous and enfeebling, and faith in Christ as dying for us is worth little, unless there be also faith in Christ as living in us … There is no alternative between sowing to the spirit and sowing to the flesh. No middle course is possible. The policy of inaction, whilst the great contest between good and evil is raging around us, is nothing else than the policy of selfishness, and many a life, which drifts along in amiable, aimless inactivity, is just as truly a sowing to the flesh as is the life of the most abandoned. According to the context, the man who soweth to his flesh is he who spends upon himself that which he ought to spend upon others--the niggardly Galatian who neglects his Christian teacher, or the poor saints at Jerusalem, that he may hoard or squander his gains--the professing Christian of every age who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God. It is in such things that self-deception is so easy. The profligate, the drunkard, or the murderer cannot doubt for a moment how he is sowing: his works of the flesh are manifest. But the man of Christian profession may conceal his selfishness beneath such a veil of devout behaviour as to deceive others, and perhaps himself. Hence the warning of the apostle--“ Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” If Christ would have His followers count the cost of becoming His disciples, He would have all men count the cost of serving sin, whether in its grosser or in its more polished form; He would have no man cheat himself into believing that a life of self-indulgence, however amiable and engaging it may be, can issue in aught but ruin. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The danger of self-deception Man is both deceitful and deceived; and being so, it is difficult to undeceive him. We have also to do with a deceitful enemy. Moreover, everything around us is deceitful. Riches are so. Favour is deceitful. The heart also is deceitful. Sin also is said to be deceitful; and there is therefore great need of the caution in the text--“ Be not deceived.” I. Consider some of the instances in which we are liable to be deceived. Men in general have mistaken apprehensions of the character of God. We are also much deceived about our fellow-creatures. We call the proud happy, and regard the poor as miserable: we despise those whom God honours, and applaud those whom He condemns. But, above all, we are in danger of being deceived about ourselves.1. Those are certainly deceived who entertain lessening apprehensions of the evil of sin, saying of this and the other transgression of God’ s holy law, as Lot did of Zoar, “ Is it not a little one? and my soul shall live.” 2. Those are deceived who think that the wrath of God against sin is represented in too strong a light. 3. Those who amuse themselves with the hope of a death-bed repentance, are in danger of being deceived. 4. Those who flatter themselves with the idea of safety, while they continually expose themselves to danger, are under great deception. 5. Those are awfully deceived who think their state to be good when it is really otherwise. Many imagine that they are justified and pardoned when they are in a state of wrath and condemnation. II. Consider the evil and danger of self-deception.1. It leaves us in a state of painful uncertainty. Those who are under the power of it will still be in suspense, and never attain to full satisfaction: they will be continually fluctuating between hope and fear, neither enjoying the pleasures of sin nor the contentments of piety. 2. Remember, God cannot be deceived. He knoweth them that are His, and them that are not so. 3. Those who are deceived will one day be undeceived, and that perhaps when it will be too late. 4. Self-deception discourages from the use of means. Those who fancy themselves safe and right, though they have the greatest need of a Saviour, are not likely to apply to Him. 5. Present deception will aggravate future misery. None sink so deep in hell as hypocrites and self-deceivers. Hence we may learn--1. The necessity of self-examination.2. The advantage of a soul-searching ministry.3. When we have examined ourselves, and have been tried by others to the utmost, still there is a need to prostrate ourselves before the throne, and to pray with the Psalmist, “ Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts!” (Psalms 139:23-24). (B. Beddome, M. A.)The reward of the work “ Whatsoever” --both in kind and in degree. The law runs through all creation, from the natural up to the supernatural life--from the world of sensation to the world of spirits--from this earthly existence to life eternal. The what and the how much are proportionate. The wheat-seed comes not up as barley, and the scanty sowing sends not forth an abundant harvest. The acorn comes not up as the sycamore, nor does the orange seed produce the fig-tree. Each has its own crop. What we put into the earth, that we know will come back to us after many days. Or rise into the world of man. Here the same law obtains. What man labours for, that he for the most part achieves. What man labours for, that he achieves, and in proportion to his labour. The years given to intellectual study do not produce the athletic champion of his country. These form the student. The keen politician does not find his meed in the peace and retirement of a learned leisure. Each man works to an end; and the appropriate end for which he works, that he obtains. He gets his own reward, and not another’ s. Now let us go a step further. We have found this great law of God pervading physical and intellectual life--does it extend into the spiritual life? The text gives us the answer--“ God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” The law of the natural harvest, of the intellectual harvest, of the spiritual harvest, is one; and that law is the law, so universal, so all-encircling, that the heathen in their blindness supposed it a Deity--Retribution. I. The life of the flesh. There is a gross sowing to the flesh in the indulgence of the carnal desires of the flesh in their coarsest form. Not only is there retribution here, but retribution in its most evident form. The man who lives for the purpose of indulging his passions does so with effect. He makes a science of sinning. The whole powers of his mind are bent upon compassing his desires, and by the great law of life, he succeeds beyond other men. Occasions of evil, by an inscrutable mystery, present themselves to him beyond others. Success attends his efforts in evil, as we see in the luck which attends the incipient gamester. He has good fortunes (as another nation terms such offences) in his iniquity. He reaps the meed of the care, and thought, and time, and money he has expended upon his favourite faults. But this very harvest is--corruption. The very success is ruin. Linked as cause and effect with the fortunate perpetration of sin comes the destruction of all the aspiring part of man. And what is the condition of things when this fearful degeneracy has budded and flowered and brought forth its fruit in the world to come? What a sight will it be in the sunlight of the new creation to behold the haggard, scowling, bloated features of the victim of past sin; how fearful will it be to fix our eyes upon those hardened and deformed lineaments in which weakness and brutality, coarseness and emaciate sickliness in marvellous combination, alike have their part and portion. But what will this be to the state of their souls? The measure of iniquity has been fulfilled; not one unit from the full sum of absolute degradation is wanting,--the natural powers have been perverted--the spiritual ones are lost, gone for ever, or only exist in the increased responsibility which attends them, and nought remains but the full measure of the fruits of sin--the pain of the loss of God’ s presence--the agony of the undying worm, inextinguishable despair, and absolute hatred of God. II. The life of the Spirit. He that sows to the Spirit shall also reap, both in degree and in kind. In degree he will reap in proportion. He that soweth sparingly, shall reap sparingly; and he that soweth plentifully shall reap plentifully. A scanty obedience will produce a scanty reward: scanty, both here and hereafter; scanty in the graces and comforts accorded by the blessed Spirit of God as the consolation of our pilgrimage here below; scanty, alas! also in the jewels of our eternal crown. A plentiful sowing on the other hand will produce its proportionate harvest. For everything done for Christ we shall have our own reward; and in the degree that we work for Him so shall that reward be. The same law of retribution will run through the apportionment of every seat in heaven. Everything in the way of faithful obedience done here below will determine and establish its own peculiar glory and bliss in the world to come. (Bishop A. P. Forbes.)Sowing and reaping I. God is not to be trifled with.1. Either by the notion that there will be no rewards and punishments.2. Or by the idea that a bare profession will suffice to save us.3. Or by the fancy that we shall escape in the crowd.4. Or by the superstitious supposition that certain rites will set all straight at last, whatever our lives may be.5. Or by a reliance upon an orthodox creed, a supposed conversion, a presumptuous faith, and a little almsgiving. II. The laws of His government cannot be set aside.1. It is so in nature. Law is inexorable. Gravitation crushes the man who opposes it.2. It is so in providence. Evil results surely follow social wrong.3. Conscience tells us it must be so. Sin must be punished.4. The Word of God is very clear upon this point.5. To alter laws would disarrange the universe, and remove the foundation of the hopes of the righteous. III. Evil sowing wilt bring evil reaping.1. This is seen in the present result of certain sins. Sins of lust bring disease into the bodily frame. Sins of idolatry have led men to cruel and degrading practices. Sins of temper have caused murders, wars, strifes, and misery. Sins of appetite, especially drunkenness, cause want, misery, delirium, etc. 2. This is seen in the minds becoming more and more corrupt, and less able to see the evil of sin, or to resist temptation. 3. This is seen when the man becomes evidently obnoxious to God and man, so as to need restraint, and invite punishment. 4. This is seen when the sinner becomes himself disappointed in the result of his conduct. His malice eats his heart; his greed devours his soul; his infidelity destroys his comfort; his raging passions agitate his spirit. 5. This is seen when the impenitent is confirmed in evil, and eternally punished with remorse. Hell will be the harvest of a man’ s own sin. Conscience is the worm which gnaws him. IV. Good sowing will bring good reaping. The rule holds good both ways. Let us, therefore, inquire as to this good sowing.1. In what power is it to be done? 2. In what manner and spirit shall we set about it? 3. What are its seeds? (1) Towards God, we sow in the Spirit, faith, and obedience.(2) Towards men, love, truth, justice, kindness, forbearance.(3) Towards self, control of appetite, purity, etc. 4. What is the reaping of the Spirit? Life everlasting, dwelling within us and abiding there for ever. Conclusion:1. Let us sow good seed always.2. Let us sow it plentifully, that we may reap in proportion.3. Let us begin to sow it at once. (C. H. Spurgeon.)No loss from sowing good seed Doth any think he shall lose by his charity? No worldling, when he sows his seed, thinks he shall lose his seed; he hopes for increase at harvest. Darest thou trust the ground, and not God? Sure, God is a better paymaster than the earth; grace doth give a larger recompense than nature. Below, thou mayest receive forty grains for one; but in heaven (by the promise of Christ) a hundred-fold: a measure heapen, and shaken, and thrust together, and yet running over. “ Blessed is he that considereth the poor” ; there is the seeding: “ The Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble” (Psalms 41:1); there is the harvest. Is that all? No; Matthew 25:35 : “ Ye fed him when I was hungry, and gave Me drink when thirsty” --comforted Me in misery; there is the sowing. Venite, beati. “ Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you” ; there is the harvest. (Thomas Adams.)Christian diligence The days and hours of this present state, which often flit by so little heeded, are of immense consequence to us all. They contain the seeds, the concentrated germs, of an endless future life. As the seed enwraps the plant that shall be, so the thought, the word, the act of time, enwraps the expansion of the man in eternity. Now, what does the Christian sow? and what shall he reap? In the answer to this question, comes in a deep and most important truth, to which I will beg your earnest attention. When the husbandman has sown, and tended the seed, and waited the appointed months till the harvest come, what,--of what kind, is his reward? It is not a bestowal of something different, and from without, as a recompense for his labours; but the fruit and expansion of those labours themselves; that which he has sown, the same does he reap, not, it is true, as it was sown, but enriched with God’ s abundant blessing, increased thirty and sixty and an hundred fold, still, however, the same; the very thing which he deposited, so unpromising itself, in ground so unpromising, does he now gather into his bosom, a full and rich reward, satisfying him and gladdening him, and filling his heart with praise. Again then, what does the Christian sow? for that also, not a reward or recompense external to and separate from that, shall he reap; that same, but blessed and expanded and glorified, and become his exceeding great reward. The Christian, brethren, sows to the Spirit, not to the flesh. Let us try to give a plain practical interpretation to these words. The sowing being interpreted to mean the thoughts, words, and acts of this present life--the Christian thinks, speaks, and acts with reference to the Spirit--to his higher, his Divine part; to that part of him which being dwelt in by God’ s Holy Spirit, aims at God’ s glory; loves Him, serves Him, converges to Him in its desires and motions. His Spirit, the abode of the Divine witness within him--the highest part, which aspires after God and His glory--this deserves especial culture of its own, but not exclusive culture. It must reign in him, not by sitting on a height apart, not by dignified slumber only broken on solemn occasions, but by watchful and constant rule, by claiming fur itself and for God the subordinate thoughts and plans and desires. And it is among these that the Christian’ s sowing for eternity will most commonly and most busily take place. Educate for God by drawing forth, and as you draw them forth, balancing with love and with wisdom those mental and bodily capacities, and the several parts of that spiritual character, which God has entrusted to your care. But do not educate for self and for the world, for the display of person and of attainment; for this is sowing to the flesh, and the harvest shall be accordingly. (Dean Alford.)Men reap as they sow Human actions draw after them consequences corresponding with the nature of those actions. I shall begin with offering a few familiar illustrations of this principle as witnessed in the common affairs of life, in the hope that I shall thus be able to show more clearly and usefully its bearing on the higher interest of the soul and eternity. I remark then--1. The assertion of our text is literally true. Whenever the husbandman goes forth and sows his prepared acres, or the reaper gathers in the harvest, or the passer-by surveys the crop as he looks abroad upon the fields, waving with the ripening grain, and fruits of various kind, a voice continually sounds in the ears of each, “ Whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap.” It is the voice of nature repeating the voice of revelation. 2. We see the principle of our text illustrated in the culture of the mind. Here it holds true that whatsoever a man soweth, that he also reaps. 3. The same truth is illustrated in all the various occupations and pursuits of life. The lawyer, who sets his mark high in his profession and pursues his object with earnest, persevering application, is sure to acquire a reputation and an influence corresponding with his efforts. The physician, who gives himself to his calling, and is judicious and thorough in his practice, draws around him, if not suddenly, yet certainly, the confidence and patronage of the community, and in the end reaps the rewards of his diligence and skill, while the pretender and the quack are of ephemeral reputation, and soon pass away and are forgotten. The master mechanic and the merchant, and men of business of every name, know well how universally applicable to their respective callings is the principle we are considering. They know that success depends on diligence, industry, perseverance, and that to expect to rise to eminence or to wealth without corresponding efforts, would be as vain as to expect to reap a harvest without the previous labours of sowing and cultivation. 4. Apply this principle to another case: the acquisition and use of property. The moral law of accumulation is but little understood. We are not our own masters, but God’ s stewards. So long as we plan and toil on this principle, we act in accordance with the will of God and for our own best and highest interests. We are sowing our seed well, and we shall reap a plentiful harvest both here and hereafter. But when the law here referred to is transgressed, and the just limits of accumulation are disregarded; when a man comes to feel that he is his own master, and gives himself up to the getting and laying up money for his own selfish purposes, to gratify his worldliness and love of gain, or to heap up treasures for his children, he just as surely sows to the flesh, and of the flesh shall reap corruption, as that he is a living man. 5. The truth of the maxim declared in our text is also strikingly illustrated in the training of families. The family state, the first ordained of God in Paradise was expressly appointed, as He tells us in His Word, “ that He might seek a godly seed,” in other words, to spread and perpetuate truth and piety in the world, and no institution can be conceived more wisely adapted to this end. There is no so hopeful a vineyard for cultivation as a young, rising family. The soil is rich and mellow, as yet unoccupied by noxious plants, and ready to receive whatever seed may be cast into it. 6. The principle of our text holds true in regard to the attainment and growth of personal religion, Every man, while life lasts, may be regarded as entrusted with the care of a moral vineyard, which he is required to cultivate, and the harvest he reaps is sure to correspond with the seed he sows in it. A part of this vineyard, if I may so speak, lies in his own bosom. It is his mind, his heart, his conscience, his affections, his character. 7. The principle we are considering will be fully illustrated in the retributions of eternity. Men are now forming the characters in which they are to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. (J. Hawes, D. D.)It is impossible for a man continuously and successfully to practise a fraud. I. Upon his own immortality. II. Upon his neighbour. III. Upon his God. (Samuel P. Jones.)The double harvest I. Our present life is a moral trial for another to come. II. Human life has one or other of two great characters, and will issue in one or other of two great results. III. We are liable to delusions with respect to these great verities. (J. B. Geden, D. D.)The principle of the spiritual harvest I. The principle.1. There are two kinds of good possible to man; the one enjoyed by our animal being, the other by our spirits. There are two kinds of harvest, and the labour which procures the one has no tendency to produce the other. 2. Everything has its price, and the price buys that and nothing else: the soldier pays his price for glory and gets it: the recluse does not. 3. The mistake men make is that they sow for earth and expect to win spiritual blessings, and vice versa. Christian men complain that the unprincipled get on in life, and that the saints are kept back. But the saints must pay the price: “ they have as their reward something better for which they do pay. No man can have two harvests for one sowing. II. The application of the principle.1. Sowing to the flesh includes (1) open riot, whose harvest is disappointment and remorse.(2) Worldliness whose harvest being with earth perishes. 2. Sowing to the spirit, which is “ well doing,” the harvest of which is (1) Life eternal; here and hereafter.(2) Not arbitrary but natural: the seed sown contains the harvest. (F. W. Robertson.)Man’ s seed time and harvest I. A caution which is--1. Dissuasive--“ Be not deceived” (Ephesians 5:6). To prevent the deceivings of sin (Hebrews 3:13.) The pretexts for sin are-- (1) Predestination.(2) God saw it and might have prevented it.(3) Ignorance.(4) Good deeds outweigh it.(5) God is merciful.(6) Christ died for it.(7) I shall repent of it. 2. Persuasive--God is not mocked (2 Chronicles 6:30; Acts 1:24). Hypocrisy and gold can cozen men, but not God. II. The reason. “ Whatsoever,” be it good or evil, blessing or cursing, truth or hypocrisy, “ a man,” Jew, Turk, heathen or Christian, prince or subject, rich or poor, “ soweth,” etc.1. To begin with the wicked. They shall reap what they have sown. (1) “ In kind (Obadiah 1:15; Ezekiel 35:15).(2) In proportion (James 2:13; Hosea 10:13). 2. The godly. They sow (1) in faith, and have eternal life (John 5:24).(2) In obedience, and have a sense of God’ s love (John 15:10).(3) In tears, and reap in joy (Psalms 126:5; Matthew 5:4).(4) In charity, and have heaven’ s abundance (Matthew 10:42; 2 Corinthians 9:6; Matthew 25:35) (Thomas Adams.)Sowing and Reaping I. The solemnity of the apostle’ s warning.1. The nature of self-deception. It is sad to be deceived in (1) a friend;(2) our state of health;(3) our means--but these are not beyond remedy--but(4) to be deceived about the soul’ s condition is irreparable. 2. Its cause. (1) Living upon the memories of the past.(2) Zeal for the ordinances of religion.(3) Taking safety for granted. 3. Its futility. While you deceive yourselves God is not mocked. II. The importance of the apostle’ s statement.1. Flesh includes all desires whether sensual or refined that does not lead us to God: the Spirit those desires which spring from His inspiration and find in Him their response and their joy. 2. The underlying principle here is that we have largely the making and marring of our own future. 3. The marring is when by sowing to the flesh in, e.g., pride, covetousness, ungodliness, a man reaps corruption, i.e., desolation and decay; the making when by sowing to the Spirit we reap everlasting life, something that shall not pass away. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)I. A man expects to reap that which he sows. II. He expects to reap a crop of the same kind that he has sown. III. He expects to reap more than he sows. IV. Ignorance of the kind of seed sown well make no difference to the crop. (D. L. Moody.)I. Righteousness and sin always yield their harvests: the moral results of our actions are determined by definite and irresistible laws. II. Yet in the lower provinces of life there is a good deal of sowing that is followed by no reaping.1. In business;2. Politics;3. Science;4. Home and society. III. The disappointments in these lower provinces make us cynical, but God permits them in order to warn us against sowing too much seed where it may be blighted. IV. God is the only master who always gives His servants the wages they work for. Serve Him--1. In business, and whether you make money or not, you will increase your treasure in heaven. 2. In the service of the public, and whether you have your reward or not you will have honorable distinction in the kingdom of God. V. The harvest may not be tomorrow or the day after, but in due season we shall reap. VI. Enough, however, is reaped now to save men from despair. Work done for God is never wasted.1. Take the social and political improvements of recent years.2. The advance of the kingdom of God. (R. W. Dale, D. D.)Man’ s work and his certain reward 1. A timely caution: God’ s omniscience renders it impossible that He should be mocked. 2. A great principle stated: what is true in nature is true in morals. 3. This great principle in its application to man’ s probation. The work of man is-- I. That of sowing to the flesh.1. Pleasure seeking.2. Money making.3. Knowledge acquiring. This must reap corruption, because (1) the corruption of death will put an end to most earthly accomplishments.(2) That which survives the work of corruption will entail the agonies of spiritual corruption. II. That of sowing to the spirit.1. Those who yield their heart a willing sacrifice to God.2. Who consecrate their substance to God.3. Who devote all their energies to the service of God, sow to the Spirit; (1) because they enter into sympathy with the strongest elements, laws, and forces of the spiritual universe: and(2) in eternity reap in quantity and quality what they have sown here. (S. B.)Retribution and grace I. The preacher of justification by faith lays down the principle of retribution.1. This principle is of universal application.2. It is applied to man not only as the agent but as the one on whom it is to operate.3. In virtue of it we can be prophets of our future. II. The laws of grace and retribution are perfectly harmonious.1. Salvation is a gift.2. But we have to take advantage of this gift.3. This is accomplished by faith.4. But faith is a continuous act, and involves obedience as well as trust. (S. Pearson, M. A.)Three dualities I. A duality of nature.1. “ Flesh,” representing that which connects man with time and sense.2. “ Spirit,” that which connects man with the immutable and the Divine. II. A duality of procedure.1. Sowing to the flesh: cultivating the animal powers and propensities.2. Sowing to the Spirit: cultivating the spiritual powers and propensities. III. A duality of result.1. Corruption.2. Everlasting life. (D. Thomas, D. D.)True moral culture I. The spirituality of the work.1. The spirit requires moral cultivation. In its unregenerate state its ground is fallen; it is a wilderness, full of the germs of evil. 2. The spirit is capable of moral cultivation. Facts show this: what moral changes have taken place in human nature: read the history of Paul. II. The eternity of the work.1. The soil is everlasting.2. The seed is everlasting: we are sowing for eternity.3. The uniformity of the work. (1) Of kind. The kind you sow you will reap.(2) Of amount. If little, reap little. All this is ensured by the laws of causation, habit, memory, retribution. Every deed is a seed sown in our nature, either good or evil, and according to the seed will be the harvest. (D. Thomas, D. D.)God is not mocked I could both sigh and smile at the simplicity of a native American, sent by a Spaniard, his master, with a basket of figs, and a letter wherein the figs were mentioned, to carry them both to one of his master’ s friends. By the way this messenger eat up the figs, but delivered the letter, whereby his deed was discovered, and he soundly punished. Being sent a second time on the like message, he first took the letter, which he conceived had eyes as well as a tongue, and hid it in the ground, sitting himself on the place where he had put it; and then securely fell to feed on his figs, presuming that that paper which saw nothing, could tell nothing. Then taking it again out of the ground, he delivered it to his master’ s friend, whereby his fault was perceived, and he worse beaten than before. Men conceive they can manage their sins with secrecy, but they carry about them a letter, or a book rather, written by God’ s finger, their conscience bearing witness to all their actions. But sinners, being often detected and accused, hereby grow wary at last, and to prevent this speaking paper from telling tales, do smother, stifle, and suppress it, when they go about the committing of any wickedness. Yet conscience (though buried for a time in silence) hath afterwards a resurrection, and discovers all, to their greater shame and heavier punishment. (T. Fuller.)The folly of sowing to the flesh If you saw a man with a seed basket on his shoulder, who had a field which by proper cultivation would yield a plentiful crop and profit, and there he was with his basket filled with thistles and nettles, and all noxious weeds that he could lay his hand on, and he was sowing that field with these from morning to night and on Sunday too--you would say, “ I doubt yon man is spoiling that field, sowing it with that stuff;” and if you saw him sowing still all day long, and on Sunday more than any day, you would say, “ I think it is time yon man was stopped, he must be a madman,” and suppose you talked with a person that saw it too, and he said to you, “ Do you know what the end will be?” “ Why,” you would say, “ he is ruining his field, it must be all undone before any crop can be got from it again.” “ Ah! but (says the other) do you know these seeds that he is sowing will rise and prove to be a plentiful harvest, and they will touch the clouds, and then afterwards the field is to be cleared of them, and there is to be a fire made of them in which the man himself will be consumed?” “ Do you say so?” “ That is the truth.” “ Why then, surely he must be undeceived; let us try to undeceive him.” Ah, friends, I am afraid that there are many such madmen here to night. (William Dawson.)Self-deceived A Neapolitan shepherd came in great anguish to his priest. “ Father, have mercy on a miserable sinner! It is the holy season of Lent, and, while I was busy at work, some whey, spurting from the cheese-press, flew into my mouth, and wretched man! I swallowed it. Free my distressed conscience from its agonies by absolving me from my guilt!” “ Have you no other sin to confess?” said his spiritual guide. “ No; I do not know that I have committed any other.” “ There are,” said the priest, “ many robberies and murders from time to time committed on your mountains, and I have reason to believe you are one of the persons concerned in them.” “ Yes,” he replied, “ I am; but these are never accounted a crime; it is a thing practised by us all, and there needs no confession on that account.” (Bagley’ s Family Biblical Instructor.)Sowing and reaping An American minister, towards the close of his sermon, introduced a very powerful and dramatic illustration in allusion to some well-known place where certain blasting was to be carried out. “ The rock is tunnelled, and deep under the solid masses over which men walk with such careless security, there are now laid trains of explosive powder. All seems so safe and firm outwardly, it is hardly possible to imagine that those solid masses will ever be shaken; but the time will come when a tiny spark will fire the whole train, and the mountain will be in a moment rent in the air, and torn to atoms.” “ There are men,” he said, looking round, “ there are men here who are tunnelled, mined; their time will come, not to-day or tomorrow, not for months or years, perhaps, but it will come in a moment, from an unforseen quarter, a trifling incident, their reputations will be blown to atoms, and what they have sown they will reap. There is no dynamite like men’ s lusts and passions.” Sowing and reaping One day as Felix Neff was walking in the city of Lausanne, he saw a man whom he took for one of his intimate friends. He ran up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and asked, “ What is the state of your soul, my friend? “ The stranger turned; Neff perceived his mistake, apologized, and went away. A few years after a stranger came to Neff, saying he was greatly indebted to him. Neff did not recognize the man, and begged him to explain. The stranger replied, “ Have you forgotten an unknown person whose shoulder you touched in the street in Lausanne, and asked, ‘ What is the state of your soul?’ It was I; your question led me to serious reflection, and now I trust it is well with my soul.” Deception in spiritual things There are four subjects which the apostle would have us particularly guard against being deceived in. I. Be not deceived in the character of the being and perfections of God.1. He is omnipresent. 2. He is omniscient. There are no secrets on earth to Him--no secrets in hell: hell is naked before Him, and destruction has no covering; much more the hearts of the children of men. II. Be not deceived regarding your own character as rational and redeemed creatures. You are a probationer for eternity. What infinite importance, then, is stamped on every thought, word, action; they will all spring up again, multiplied a hundredfold at the world’ s great harvest. III. Be not deceived concerning the evil nature and dreadful end of a life of sin. Whenever a man is living according to the principles, appetites, propensities, and passions of his fallen nature, he is sowing to the flesh, and the crop that he must reap is eternal perdition. He can’ t have anything else. IV. Be not deceived concerning the nature and excellency of a life of holiness. “ Sowing to the Spirit” is yielding to the illuminating and quickening energies of the Holy Ghost, living according to the light of the Spirit of God within and without us. Surely this is better than sowing to the flesh. A man who is sowing to the flesh has to labour; and sowing to the Spirit is no more laborious than sowing to the flesh, nor yet so much. The exercises of holiness are no greater than the exercises of sin: so that even in that view the saint has no loss. But then there is the harvest to come; and what a difference then. (W. Dawson.)Deception in matters of religion It is above all things important that in the great and momentous matters of religion we should not be mistaken or deceived, but should have the most correct, exact, and vivid impressions and opinions; because religion deals with such momentous subjects as God, the soul, eternity; and if in these momentous interests we are deceived, and our conduct in consequence be mistaken, the consequences must be to us lamentably and eternally fatal. No other way of acceptance with God, no other refuge from the wrath to come; nor can we offer acceptable worship and service to the Most High, if our impressions of His character be false and incorrect. For, remember, God cannot be deceived. I. Consider our liability to deception.1. Our ignorance. 2. Our natural selfishness. For the most part, men are fearfully inert, awfully indifferent, strangely unconcerned about religion. They won’ t take the trouble to ascertain the truth, 3. Our natural warmth. Susceptible of impressions; easily moved--first one way, then another. Like the chameleon, men are ever shifting the hue of their religious character. The misfortune is, that those who try everything, generally hold fast nothing. II. Some of the ways in which delusion in religion operates.1. It produces satisfaction in externals, and the deluded sinner rests there. 2. It fills the mind with false, distorted views of religion. Eve actually believed Satan when he gave the lie direct to God! Men will rather receive a pleasing error than embrace a self-denying truth. 3. It substitutes mere animal excitement for practical godliness. III. The consequences of such deception.1. Criminality. It is the sinner’ s own fault. No excuse for ignorance or apology for error, because he ought to have sought the truth, which whosoever seeks, shall surely find. 2. Eternal ruin. The mistake is final and fatal Repair it while there is time. (T. Raffles, D. D.)Fallacies in religion If anything is important, religion is all-important. It may be undervalued in health and prosperity; but in sickness and trouble we feel its necessity. When the ship is overtaken by the storm it must have not only a good anchor, but a strong cable. Here are some of the fallacies with which men deceive themselves. I. Ample time in the future for attending to the concerns of the soul. What a mistake! You cannot tell what a moment may bring forth. By delay the heart gets harder. The unwillingness of to-day becomes still deeper to-morrow (2 Corinthians 6:2; Hebrews 3:7-8; Hebrews 3:15; Hebrews 4:7; Ecclesiastes 9:10). II. If elected, we shall be saved; if not elected, we must be lost. But, observe, election is the result of foreknowledge on God’ s part (Romans 8:29). It is our own fault, and only ours, if we are not elected. The gospel has been preached to us, and the offer of salvation extended. III. It will be all the same a hundred years hence. No: it will not, it cannot be. The present is seed-time; the harvest is to come (Galatians 6:7). Our destiny hereafter depends upon our conduct now. IV. Great men have held that there is no future punishment; So we need not fear. A bold assertion, but no proof. Butler’ s argument is unanswerable: that, inasmuch as the visitation of our acts by rewards and punishments takes place in this life, rewards and punishments must be consistent with the attributes of God, and therefore may go on as long as the mind endures. The soul that dies in love with sin and sinful pleasures, may only have that love intensified in the future state. Change of residence brings about no change of moral character. V. We are to be saved by doing the best we can. Nay; but by taking hold on Christ by the hand of faith, and walking with Him in newness of life. (Alex. Brunton.)Be not deceived --Futility of delayed repentance If any of you rely upon the hope or the chance or the possibility of a deathbed repentance as an excuse for sin; if any of you are secretly saying to yourselves, I will go on stoning now; I will repent before or when I die,” --I would say to you briefly and most solemnly, “ Be not deceived; God is not mocked,” but when you wickedly think thus you are mocking, you are insulting, you are defying God, you are, as it were, insolently bidding God to wait your leisure; you are bidding Him to be content with the ragged and bitter lees of life after you have drained to the dregs what should have been its bright libation. You are flinging to Him, as it were, the shrivelled and withered leaves in which you have yourself cherished a canker in the worthless flower. There is an awful truth, if there be also quaintness, in the language of one who said, “ My Lord, heaven is not to be won by short hard work at the last, as some of us take a degree at the university after much irregularity and negligence. I have known,” he says, “ many old playfellows of the devil spring up suddenly from their deathbeds, and strike at him treacherously, while he, without returning the blow, only laughed and made grimaces in the corner of the room.” If you rely on deathbed repentance, you are, believe me, relying on a bruised and broken reed, which will break beneath you and run into your hand. I have seen deathbeds not a few, and I know that he who thinks he can make sure of deathbed repentance, or even a mere semblance of it, is hanging his whole weight upon the thread of a gossamer over a deep and dark abyss. (Archdeacon Farrar.)The law of sowing and reaping No analogy is more easily understood than this. A certain point of resemblance between the thoughts, wishes, affections, purposes of the mind, and the seed-corn cast into the earth at one season of the year; and another between the gathering of the harvest, and the result in our own minds of the thoughts and affections we have cherished during our life. “ Culture” and “ cultivation,” e.g.,--terms originally denoting the tillage of the earth, have been transferred, by the hint of analogy, to the soul. I. Sowing and reaping as an illustration of spiritual law.1. In reference to labour and reward, we cannot reap without previous sowing; we cannot reap where we have not sown; inferior seed will yield a poor return. And we must patiently wait for our crop till “ due season.” 2. In reference to Divine will and operation. God is faithful; He will not fail those who sow in dependence on Him. II. The application of this law to the personal and the social life.1. The life for self distinguished from the life for others. The cultivation of the lower mind and nature in us. There are men who hunt after sensualities as if they were digging for hid treasures, or pressing after the discovery of truth that would bless mankind; they cultivate their propensities as if they were talents that ought to be increased by use, and faculties that might be improved by constant exercise. How they are deceived! They reap the quality of their sowing; and it is a harvest of corruption. A soil that has been forced, and whose virtue has been used up, is the image of their souls. 2. The life for self united with the life for others. “ Flesh” --the ordinary uninspired life of man; “ Spirit” --the inspired life of those who have come under a higher influence. Slavery to custom is life after the flesh, the origin of a thousand corruptions in the whole system of our social life. The ideal of the Christian is the inspired life, sowing to, walking in, being led by the Spirit--the promotion of truth, justice, love, between man and man. III. The application of this law to the present and the future life.1. The present life as a sowing incomplete. To follow the inspiration of God, to live the truly elevated and conscientious life is too hard and fatiguing for many; and the few who do persevere are exposed to terrible temptations to doubt of themselves, and to suspect they would have done better to have walked in the beaten track of the world’ s use and wont. This life does not afford materials for the complete solution of the problem; it leaves room for a multitude of doubts which only the strongest illumination and faith can overcome. 2. Indications of future completeness. Traits of character so Divine, promises of youth cut off by untimely death, loftinesses of the human spirit, buds not yet unfolded, aspirations only starved here--what of these? Surely their harvest is to come. 3. The hope of future perfection and glory. Life will then be rounded and made whole, moving on from true beginnings to worthy ends. Death is not the end of our being, but rather the moment for putting in the sickle, and reaping that fulness and completeness, that purity and intensity of all intellectual and social joy, that glorious revelation of the truth of the spiritual nature, which is included in the great word “ Life Eternal.” (R. Johnson, M. A.)Sowing and reaping I. The sowing. That is a description of our life--a description which very few people, old or young, seem to think of. Our present life is our sowing-time for eternity. You may have been in the country in spring, when the frost and snow have disappeared, and preparations are being made for the work of the coming year. The ground has been ploughed and manured and made ready for receiving the seed, and you may have seen sacks of seed-corn standing all over the field, and men walking up and down the furrows, with bags tied round their waist or slung across their breast, throwing out their arms in a peculiar way. Those of you who have been brought up in towns, may have thought they were taking exercise on a cold spring morning, or were amusing themselves. But if you had asked them, “ What are you doing?” you would have got the answer, “ We are sowing.” If you had stood in their way, or done anything to interrupt them, or put off their time, they would have called out to you, “ Keep out of our way, we are sowing; this is seed-time. After a long winter, we must make the most of spring, for all the rest of the year depends on what we make of it. If we lose the spring, we lose the harvest; and so we want to make the most of every hour. We have not a minute to spare.” Or you have seen in the garden, at the same season of the year, the gardener busy at work. Everybody wanted to have him, and so he was hurrying through with his work, in one garden after another, late and early. If you had asked him, “ What are you doing, gardener?” he would have said, “ I am sowing--pease, and turnips, and lettuce, and carrots, and spinach; or mignonette, and sweet pea, and candytuft, and saponaria, and asters, and marigolds, and wallflower, and stock. If we miss these weeks--if we were not to sow, as we are doing, you would have no vegetables and no flowers. And what would you say to that? All depends on what we are now doing. It is the most important work of the year.” Now, suppose some mischievous boy were to take up a handful of vegetable seeds and to scatter peas and beans and potatoes over the flower-beds; or a handful of flower-seeds, and were to scatter Indian cress, and wallflower, and Virginian stock, and Venus’ looking-glass, and Love-lies-bleeding over the vegetable-beds, the gardener would call to him, “ Stop, boy! do you know what you are doing?” “ Getting a little fun,” he might say. “ Fun is all very good in its own place,” says the gardener, “ but you are sowing. It is not as if you were scattering clay, or stones, or bits of wood. These are seeds, and they will grow; they will spring up again; and what a strange sight the garden will be!” Now your life is just like that. It may seem mere amusement to some; but it is a sowing--a scattering of seed.1. The sowers--who are they? All of you. Every one who lives sows, and sows until he dies. 2. The seed--what is it? Everything that you do. There has never been a day or an hour in which you have not been sowing. You have never done anything else. Your work, your play, your lessons at home or at school during the week or on the Lord’ s Day, when you were at your games, when you were reading some story or other book, when you were amusing yourself or other people--it was a seed which you were sowing--sowing, indeed, for this life, but sowing also for the life to come--for eternity. Some of us have the field or garden of our life well filled up--some have it almost full, almost all sown over. Some have only a tenth of the field filled, and some an eighth, and some a fifth, and some a quarter, and some a half; and by the time we come to die, it will be filled altogether; it will be like a field in which every corner is sown with seed. Have you ever thought of this? Do you ever think of it? No action of your life is done with. It may be out of sight. It may be out of mind. It may have troubled you for a while, and you said, “ I wish I could forget it.” And you have forgotten it. Or you have never thought about it. It has never troubled you. And yet it is no more done with than the seed that is buried in the ground, and that will spring up by and by. “ Whatsoever a man soweth,” is just the same as saying, “ Whatsoever a man does.” 3. The character or kind of the sowing--what is it? All the sowing must be one or other of two kinds. There is an endless variety of seed. If you were to take a seedsman’ s catalogue, you would find an almost endless list of seeds and roots. And so there is no limit to the number and variety of actions which you do. But they may all be divided into two classes. They may all be arranged under two heads. The verse that follows our text tells what these are. The one is “ Sowing to the flesh;” the other, “ Sowing to the Spirit.” Take anything you have done during the past week--anything you are about to do now, and ask yourselves: Is this sowing “ to the flesh, or to the Spirit?” Is it only to please myself, or is it to please God? II. The reaping. Wherever there has been a sowing, people expect a reaping. The harvest follows the spring. It is God’ s arrangement in the world of nature everywhere, and so it is in the moral and spiritual world.1. The reapers--who are they? All of you. As you are all sowers, so you shall all be reapers, every one of you. Every sower shall be a reaper, and he shall reap what he sowed. “ That shall he also reap.” He must do it himself. No one can do it for him. He cannot hand it over to another. 2. The kind of reaping--what shall it be? Of the same kind as the sowing. It must be so. Every kind of seed has fruit of its own kind. Everybody knows to expect this. If a farmer sowed oats, he would not expect to reap wheat or barley. If he sowed turnips, he would not expect to gather potatoes. And just so with your actions, your conduct, your life. You cannot do one kind of action, and expect fruit of a different kind. You cannot have an evil sowing, and expect to reap what is good. You cannot sow to the flesh, and reap what is of the Spirit. And as we saw there are but two kinds of sowing, so there will be but two kinds of reaping--the one, in each case, corresponding to the other. It is not merely that if we do what is wrong, we shall be punished for it. But if we sow evil, we shall reap evil. The one grows out of the other. If you sow nettle seed, the nettle with its sting will come of it. If you sow the thistle, the thistle with its prickles will spring up. And so with sin. And so, also, with good. 3. The measure of the reaping--what shall it be? What is the measure of other reaping, as compared with the sowing? Plant a single grain of corn in the ground, and from the one grain you have several stalks, and each head has many grains. Plant a pea or a potatoe, and how many you get for the one. Some people think sin a very small thing, to have such consequences coming of it. But if it is a seed, and if there is a harvest, must not the increase be as with every other kind of sowing and reaping? 4. The certainty of the reaping. Other harvests sometimes fail. Too dry or too rainy a season, a strong wind brushing off the flower when it is in bloom, or a storm when the corn is all but ripe, may deprive the husbandman of his harvest. In some cases, in a bad season, you will see sowing that has had little or no reaping. The straw is uncut. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 6:9 And let us not be weary in well doing.Perserverance in religious duties The path of duty is often found to be the path of difficulty and discouragement. Efforts to do good are often misunderstood and ill-requited; benevolent plans are ridiculed, motives misrepresented, kindness of heart abused, hopes of success treated as visionary and absurd. Still the conscientious, right-minded, true servant of God is a man of determination; he acts from principle, not impulse; his heart is in the work, therefore he proceeds in it, doing his utmost to discharge the duties God has laid on him. I. The duty. To do what is just and approved in God’ s sight. This refers--1. To ourselves. (1) Starting in the heavenly course.(2) Persevering therein. 2. To our fellow-men. (1) Their bodies (James 1:27; Matthew 25:35-36).(2) Their souls. More valuable than body, so ought to be more regarded. Sympathy. A word in season. Consideration and regard for other’ s feelings and prejudices. II. The manner of performing it. Unweariedly. Much need for this admonition. We often feel our unfitness and unworthiness to be employed in doing good. Let us take heed lest our supposed humility and self-depreciation proceed really from coldness of heart, apathy, selfishness, deadness of spirit. Great need for diligence, patience, and heartfelt earnestness. III. The motive. “ In due season we shall reap,” etc. Encouraging to know this. God’ s service is not labour without return. He gives to every man according to his work--exactly what he deserves. (George Weight, M. A.)The importance of well-doing The interest of this world arises from the fact that here we lay the foundation of our character for eternity. I. Consider the Christian man’ s vocation in the present world. “ Well-doing.” While other men are setting before themselves, as objects of ultimate attainment, the possession of wealth, of worldly aggrandisement, of luxurious ease, he is to be emulating the example of Him of whom it was said, “ He went about doing good.”1. This life is not merely for contemplation. 2. Nor is it merely for projecting schemes--religious castle-building. We are placed here to do, not to plan or talk. 3. The believer is endowed by God with the capacity for imparting blessing to his fellow-men. II. An incentive to perseverance.1. The fulfilment of the Christian vocation is connected with certain reward in the future. All works done for God are the sowing of seed, the fruits of which will be reaped another day. The earnest prayer, the sympathizing or reproving word, the self-denying and laborious effort--little accounted of here, and perhaps unassociated with any thought of future recompense--are all helping to form the material out of which will be woven the robe of unfading brightness and beauty which the Lord Himself shall cast upon His own, in the great harvest-time to come. 2. This reward will be bestowed at an appropriate period. “ In due season.” God does not act without a deliberate plan of His own, and amid all the apparent conflict and confusion of human events, that plan is being wrought out, and at the proper time appointed by Him will be accomplished. This intimation is admirably calculated to correct our misapprehensions, and evoke our confidence. 3. The assurance of certain reward is a sufficient motive to perseverance under every temptation to weariness. Just as, under the influence of some mighty exciting cause, the human frame can bear an amount of toil, or lift burdens, under which at ordinary times it would utterly bow down; so we, inspirited by the prospect of our glorious future, animated by foretastes of heavenly joy, would be transformed, each one into a spiritual Hercules, equal to all toil, affrighted at no difficulties, ready for all labours, exultant over all opposition. (C. M. Merry.)Exhortation and assistance Our great want is confessedly staying power. Impulse and spasm are common; not so permanence in character and conduct. The wheels of Christian energy begin rolling gaily enough; but are soon checked by weariness, depression, disappointment; and the result, too often, is failure. Against this weariness St. Paul here warns us, and he unfolds his thought in a parable. The husbandman sows his seed, which, in the act of sowing, passes out of sight. He waits with long patience for it to sprout and come forth; but he faints not, knowing that harvest as well as seed-time is an ordinance of God and cannot fail. So, after we have sown the seeds of effort and endeavour, we must not faint if the harvest does not follow on the heel of seed-time. I. The admonition.1. We are sowers. 2. In our sowing, an absence of apparent results will beget weariness. Even Christ grew weary in His work, never of His work. Let us take care that our weariness is like His. 3. Our weariness, unlike Christ’ s, may arise from misunderstanding of the ways of God. His ways are hidden. Results do not appear at once. Slowly He works, but surely, and fast enough. Let us not be in greater haste. II. The assurance. “ Due season” is God’ s time, not ours. For us, it may not even be in this world at all; we may be only sowers here; still we shall reap one day--Christ will be no man’ s debtor. (William Scott.)The commandment against weariness Why is weariness deprecated?1. It invites failure. The task set us is listlessly performed; interest flags; no great results are expected; mechanical routine gradually steals into the holiest service. Our attitude conveys no inspiration, but rather depresses, 2. It may forfeit the reward. Only by waiting and persevering to the end does the toiler secure his harvest. 3. It dishonours Christ. (St. John A. Frere, M. A.)Well-doing Paul himself often weary (2 Corinthians 11:23-28), but he never loses heart. As a minister of the glad tidings, he maintains a cheerful serenity amid discouragements, and exhorts his converts to cultivate the same spirit. I. The Christian’ s duty. “ Well-doing.” Practical religion. Sin is wrong-doing. The faith that saves impels to the opposite.1. Duty to God.2. Duty to self.3. Duty to one’ s neighbour. II. The Christian’ s danger in duty. Weariness of spirit may arise from--1. Physical exhaustion. 2. Spiritual exhaustion--worry.3. Fruitless toil.4. Opposition from those who should help.5. Oppression from the sense of responsibility. III. The Christian’ s encouragement in duty.1. The present is sowing-time.2. The time of reaping is certain.3. There is a right time for such reaping; “ in due season.”4. Each shall gather for himself of his own sowing. (J. E. Flower, M. A.)Reward of perseverance A German musician whose sense of sound was remarkably acute, tells us that a day or two after he landed, he entered one of our churches. The music happened to be most discordant, and his first impulse was to rush out again. “ But this,” said he, “ I feared to do, lest offence might be given; so I resolved to endure the torture with the best fortitude I could assume, when lo! I distinguished, amid the din, the soft, clear voice of a woman, singing in perfect tune. She made no effort to drown the voice of her companions, neither was she disturbed by their noisy discord; but patiently and sweetly she sang in full rich tones; one after another yielded to the gentle influence, and before the tune was finished all were in perfect harmony.” I have often thought of this story, as conveying an instructive lesson to the Christian. The spirit that can thus sing patiently and sweetly in a world of discord, must, indeed, be of the purest kind. The Christian sometimes scarce can hear his own voice amid the multitude; and ever and anon comes the temptation to sing louder than they, and drown the voices that cannot be forced into perfect tune. But the melodious tones, cracked into shrillness, would only increase the tumult. And more frequently comes the temptation to stop singing, and let discord do its own wild work. But blessed are they that endure to the end--singing patiently and sweetly, till all join in with loving acquiescence, and universal harmony prevails without forcing into submission the free discord of a single voice. (Illustrations of Truth.)The way to success It is the old route of labour, along which are many landmarks and many wrecks. It is lesson after lesson with the scholar, blow after blow with the labourer, crop after crop with the farmer, picture after picture with the painter, step after step, and mile after mile with the traveller, that secures what all desire--success. Alexander desired his preceptor to prepare for him some easier and shorter way to learn geometey; but he was told that he must be content to travel the same road as others. Encouragement to steadfastness in religious duties 1. The way of duty is difficult; that of sin easy. 2. After we have received grace, we are still prone to depart from God. 3. The prospect of a happy issue of our labours is a strong support. 4. The gospel encourages us to expect a certain and seasonable recompense. I. When we may be said to be weary in well-doing.1. Well-doing respects every part of a Christian’ s duty. 2. We may apprehend ourselves weary in it when we are not really so. (1) We are not necessarily so because our affections are not so lively as they once were. This may arise from age and infirmity, or an enlarged view of our own depravity. (2) Nor because our corruptions appear to have increased. The more we know of our hearts, the more hideous will they seem. (3) Nor because we do not find enlargement in prayer. Excess of trouble may for a time distract. 3. But we have reason to apprehend that we are weary in well-doing. (1) When we do not make progress m our religious course. No standing still; if we are not advancing, we must be falling back. (2) When we are habitually formal in our religious duties. (3) When we do not carry religion into our worldly business. (4) When our consciences are not tender. We cannot be too much on our guard against such a state. II. The argument used to dissuade us from it.1. The hope only of a harvest is enough to stimulate the husbandman to his labours. But the Christian is sure of a harvest in due time if he faint not. 2. Let this consideration animate us.to steadfastness. The harvest will amply repay the labour. (C. Simeon, M. A.)Necessity of perseverance In the heathery turf you will often find a plant chiefly remarkable for its peculiar roots; from the main stem down to the minutest fibre, you will find them all abruptly terminate, as if shorn or bitten off, and the quaint superstition of the country people alleges, that once on a time it was a plant of singular potency for healing all sorts of maladies, and therefore the great enemy of man in his malignity bit off the roots, in which its virtues resided. The plant with this odd history, is a very good emblem of many well.meaning but little-effecting people. They might be defined as radicibus praemorsis, or rather inceptis succisis. The efficacy of every good work lies in its completion, and all their good works terminate abruptly, and are left off unfinished. The devil frustrates their efficacy by cutting off their ends; their unprofitable history is made up of plans and projects, schemes of usefulness that were never gone about, and magnificent undertakings that were never carried forward; societies that were set ageing, then left to shift for themselves, and forlorn beings who for a time were taken up and instructed, and just when they were beginning to show symptoms of improvement were cast on the world again. (James Hamilton, D. D.)Reward of perseverance An old man in Walton, whom Mr. Thornton had in vain urged to come to church, was taken ill and confined to his bed. Mr. Thornton went to the cottage, and asked to see him. The old man, hearing his voice below, answered in no very courteous tone, “ I don’ t want you here; you may go away.” The following day he returned to the charge. “ Well, my friend, may I come up to-day and sit beside you?” Again he received the same reply, “ I don’ t want you here.” Twenty-one days successively Mr. Thornton paid his visit to thee cottage, and on the twenty-second his perseverance was rewarded. He was permitted to enter the room of the aged sufferer, to read the Bible, and pray by his bedside. The poor man recovered and became one of the most regular attendants at the House of God. Little efforts, if continuous, produce great results A poor woman had a supply of coal laid at her door by a charitable neighbour. A very little girl came out with a small fire-shovel, and began to take up a shovelful at a time, and carry it to a sort of bin in the cellar. I said to the child, “ Do you expect to get all that coal in with that little shovel?” She was quite confused at my question, but her answer was very striking: “ Yes, sir, if I work long enough.” So it is with everything in life. Humble worker, make up for your want of ability by continuous effort, and your lifework will not be trivial. Sowing and reaping Mr. Garrison’ s last recorded public utterances in England closed with these memorable words:--“ I began my advocacy of the anti-slavery cause in the Northern States of America, in the midst of brickbats and rotten eggs, and ended it on the soil of South Carolina, almost literally buried beneath the wreaths and flowers which were heaped upon me by her liberated bondmen.” Reaping in due season We must not look to sow and to reap in a day, as he saith of the people far north that they sow shortly after the sun rises with them, and reap before it sets, that is, because the whole half year is one continued day with them. (Trapp.)The harvest delayed, but sure Many years ago, in England, a lad heard Mr. Flavel preach from the text: “ If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha.” Years passed on. The lad became a man. He came to this country. He lived to be a hundred years old and yet had not found the Lord. Standing at that age in the field one day, he bethought himself of a sermon which he had heard eighty-five years before, and of the fact that when Mr. Flavel had finished the discourse and came to the close of the service, he said, “ I shall not pronounce the benediction. I cannot pronounce it when there may be in this audience those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ and are anathema maranatha.” The memory of that old scene came over him, and then and there he gave his heart to God--the old sermon eighty-five years before preached coming to resurrection in the man’ s salvation. Would God that those of us who now preach the gospel of Jesus Christ might utter some word that will resound in helpfulness and in redemption long after we are dead! (Dr. Talmage.)We’ ll doing, good doing But more than this. I must be “ well-doing.” The Greek word expresses beauty, and this enters into the apostolic thought. True piety is lovely. Just so far as it comes short in the beautiful, it becomes monstrous. But as used by Paul it goes far beyond this, and signifies all moral excellence. Activity is not enough; for activity the intensest may be evil. Lucifer is as active, as constantly and earnestly, as Gabriel. But the one is a fiend and the other a seraph. Any activity that is not good is a curse always and only. Better be dead, inert matter--a stone, a clod--than a stinging reptile, or a destroying demon. And herein lies the great practical change in regeneration. It transforms the mere doer into a well-doer. It is not so much a change in the energy as in the direction. “ We must be doing good.” (C. Wadsworth, D. D.)Constancy in well-doing I. The engagement referred to. “ Well-doing.” What is well-doing?(1) It cannot be confounded with evil doing.(2) Resolving is not doing.(3) Professing is not doing.(4) Feeling is not doing. 1. Well-doing must respect ourselves. And this supposes that we have been converted from the evil of our ways, for we cannot do well in the ways of depravity and practical evil. 2. Well-doing must respect the Church. Our first concern must be our personal salvation and happiness, then the mystical body of Christ, the Church. We must be eyes to see, ears to harken, mouths to plead, hands to labour, feet to walk, or shoulders to bear for the body the Church (1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 4:11-13). 3. Well-doing must respect the world. Believers are not of it, or conformed to it; but they are in it, and they must live to promote its welfare. II. The exhortation given.1. The text supposes that there is danger of wearying. This may arise from various causes. (1) Some are constitutionally wavering and unsettled.(2) Doing implies toil, and human nature is fond of ease. (3) Often difficulties in the way of well-doing, and resolution is indispensable.(4) Well-doing requires sacrifices, and we are prone to selfishness.(5) Satan and the world will be against us, so that we must fight and wrestle even in doing good. (6) Often our labours appear useless, and we are in danger of being discouraged. 2. Constancy and perseverance. (1) Because God has formed us especially for well-doing.(2) Because this is the great end of our regeneration, that we may live to God.(3) Because well-doing is inseparably connected with our safety.(4) Because it is always identified with our happiness.(5) Because it associates us with the highest orders of beings. All holy men have been acquainted practically with well-doing. Angels are always engaged in well-doing. But there is another consideration, which is-- III. The motive the text assigns. “ We shall reap if we faint not.” “ We shall reap.”1. The first-fruits here. In doing good we obtain good. 2. The full harvest hereafter. “ In due season.” (1) Be graciously abundant.(2) Be proportionate to our well-doing.(3) Our reaping is absolutely certain. Application:1. Evil-doers shall also reap--wretchedness and anxiety here, and eternal woe hereafter. 2. Those who cease well-doing cannot obtain the promised reward. (J. Burns, D. D.)Weariness in well-doing Well-doing may be of two kinds--subjective, the doing well to ourselves simply; objective, the doing well towards others. It is quite true that we cannot very well separate these, for, as Seneca says, “ He that does good to another man does good also unto himself, not only in the consequences, but in the very act of doing it, for the conscience of well-doing is an ample reward.” If a man should set himself to improve his mind and manners simply out of a desire to be something better than he had been, he would still, in the doing, be helping others, for he would become a more valuable member of society. And, on the other hand, no man can set himself to do good to others without receiving good himself. Hence, it must appear to us that God, in His providence, has so ordered it that well-doing is neeessary to well-being. It is assumed, however, that there is a strong temptation to grow weary in well-doing, to cease from good activities. And this for three reasons.1. On account of the indolence of our nature. 2. On account of not seeing adequate results to our efforts. We are constantly hearing of the disappointments which come to all Christian workers; indeed of the discouragements which come to all benevolent helpers of all kinds. I grant you that large results are often given. But the word “ results” is a very indefinite kind of word. It may be that the results which God can give are not the results which you mean. “ Only one soul brought to Christ by all my efforts,” says a discouraged Sunday School teacher. Let us look at that expression a moment. Supposing that Sunday School teacher had built the pyramids, it would have been undeniably a great result of persistent labour, but it would have been such labour as would last at the longest for a limited time, and its use would be problematical, for we are not very sure why and for what the pyramids were built. Supposing one soul is brought to Christ, and permanently united to Christ by the love and faith of the heart, so united that that soul becomes a faithful Christian soul, living a life of love and faith, doing good to others, and those others doing good to a wider circle still, and so from generation to generation the influence broadens, how can you calculate the result? 3. And this brings me to a third source of weariness and discouragement in well-doing--our narrow and inadequate views of life. We constantly forget that this life of ours is, as to everything mental and spiritual, the sowing time, not the time of reaping. “ For, in due season, ye shall reap if ye faint not.” And as the farmer has long patience, so ought we to have long patience. Our narrow views of life account for much of our weariness in well-doing. Practically, we plan for this life and this only. Our sentiments may embrace the beyond, our opinions, actions, plans, purposes are too much controlled by the example set us by the men whose creed is “ let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” And so we sow only that which we can reap now--or that which the children in our households can reap here on earth. Not entirely of course, but too much. I might appeal on the ground of self-interest--only in well-doing can we develop our own natures into the fulness of their powers. To enkindle the mind, to enlarge the heart, to awake the imagination, these will be spiritual results to ourselves, worth while surely. Even here on earth, says Lord Jeffrey, “ he will always see the most beauty in things whose affections are warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.” How are we to get that competence to feel the invisible in the visible which a Wordsworth possessed so royally, which makes Ruskin the high-priest of the beautiful to the age in which he lives? Only by well-doing, not spasmodically and occasionally, but of set intent and purpose. We may, like the caterpillar, spin a very beautiful cocoon and call it our home, but even the caterpillar will teach us, if we will listen, that if he were to remain satisfied in that silken ball which he has woven, it would become not his home, but his tomb. Forcing a way through it, and not resting in it, he finds sunshine and air and life more abundantly. Man says--here will I rest. I will make my home in these pleasant surroundings. I will shut out the sob of sorrow, the wail of the woe-worn, the sigh of the suffering, the baying and babblement of the crowd; here, spending my sympathies on myself, I will enjoy all that is enjoyable. Ah! that silken cocoon!--fastened in it you are dead while you live. No, says God, that is not what I mean for you. And He calls to His aid His angels, clothes them in funeral robes, and they call themselves Pain, Disease, Death; and they stir up the intellect, the heart, the imagination, compel men to think and to feel about eternity, and then, when it is all over, these disguised angels throw aside the masks they have worn and strip off the sable garb, and lo! underneath is the pure white of immortality. We are sowers of seed here. Let us not forget that “ he that soweth to the flesh,” etc. And, “ let us not be weary,” etc. (Reuen Thomas.)The reward of unwearied diligence in the work of the Lord 1. The first principle of stedfast and abounding righteousness is a constant sense of the obligation of the Divine law. Thus, the Christian, in all his conduct, acts agreeably to the dictates of religion. 2. The second principle of standing fast and growing in righteousness, so as not to weary in well-doing, is that of love. Love is the sovereign attribute of God in relation to man. Was it not love, to fill the universe with animated beings, and to pour the riches of beauty and happiness over creation? Was it not love, to form man after the image of God, and to breathe into him a thinking, reasonable, immortal spirit? And is it not love, that at this moment we think, and feel, and hear, and see, amidst the enjoyment of the light of the sun, all the means of temporal being, and everything that sweetens life? Now, from the sense of all this goodness, will not the man, who is not dead to every generous feeling in human nature, love the Lord his Maker and Saviour with all his heart, and soul, and strength? Will not the love of Christ constrain him? 3. The third principle of unwearied stedfastness and increase in the work of the Lord, is a conviction of the evil of sin. In this respect a good man partakes of the Spirit of that holy and righteous Being who hateth the workers of iniquity, and with whom evil cannot dwell. He despises what is mean, and abhors what is impure, with every false and wicked way. The sentiment we describe is, moreover, quickened by fellow-feeling with the Saviour of man, who, laying aside the form of God, gave Himself up to sorrow, and suffering, and death, for sin. Now in all cases sympathy is a powerful spring of action; it interests the heart and raises every power of the soul. 4. Another principle of unwearied well-doing and increasing righteousness, is the conviction that holiness is necessary as a qualification of the Christian fellowship. The great law of communion with Christ is that of light, purity, and righteousness, in opposition to the spiritual darkness of corruption and sin. If, then, we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, that is sin, “ we deceive ourselves,” says the apostle. But if we walk in light, or righteousness, then we have communion with the Father and His Son; and, cherished by the rays of Divine light from the Sun of Righteousness, graces spring up, and virtues flourish in our lives, as the tender herb with the fostering warmth and dew of heaven. 5. The last principle of holding fast our integrity, so as not to weary in well-doing, is a firm confidence in the declaration that our labour shall not be in vain in the Lord; that if we faint not in well-doing, we shall reap through Jesus Christ the fruit of eternal life and peace. It is the prospect of this that purifies the heart, and exalts the affections beyond the earth to things above. How animating the motive to perseverance and progress in grace, that the fruit of these things shall be peace and joy unspeakable for evermore! (R. Macknight, D. D.)A caution against declension in the ways of practical piety I. Let us inquire, what is the nature of the evil against which we are guarded in the text. “ Be not weary in well-doing.” And for this purpose it is not improper we should briefly touch upon the nature of the well-doing here intended, that we may be enabled the more easily to understand what it is to be weary of it. By well-doing here we are to understand, in general, the duties we owe to God, our neighbour, and ourselves. These are of great extent; they are many in number, and important in their nature. There is not a single relation we sustain to God, or to each other, but what is fruitful of a variety of these duties. They include all that the sacred oracles mean by piety towards God; by justice, benevolence and humanity towards our neighbour, and by sobriety and temperance in our conduce towards ourselves. These duties are called well-doing, because in a conscientious observance of them we do well; we comply with the approving will of God. The weariness in well-doing, against which we are here guarded, ordinarily begins in the less of that relish for Divine things, and that pleasure in the ways of God, which the person may have had in days past. II. Why we should guard against being thus weary in well-doing, and pursue the contrary line of conduct.1. Because this evil, as described, is a fatal symtom of an unregenerate state. True grace is a living principle, and wherever it is found in the heart, it always tends towards perfection. 2. Those who grow weary in well-doing, so as to forsake the ways of practical godliness, lose all their former labour and pains in religion. It is not enough that we being in the ways of God, that we set out in the paths of piety, but we must persevere in them; we must endure to the end; for he alone “ that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.” 3. We ought not to grow weary in well-doing, for God is not weary in doing good to us. He not only gave us our being, but He holds our souls in life. By His visitation alone we are preserved. 4. We have many bright examples of patience and perseverence in well-doing, to encourage us not to be weary in it. 5. There is a glorious reward before us, if we do not grow weary in well-doing. This is the argument urged by the apostle in our text: “ for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Again: It will be a full reward. Never did the most plenteous harvest reward the labours of the husbandman more certainly or fully, than the joys and glories of the future world shall reward the faithful, persevering, and diligent disciples of Jesus. They shall enter into the joy of their Lord. Once more: This reward will bear some proportion to our faithfulness and diligence in our Lord’ s service here. Concluding admonitions:1. As ever you would desire not to be weary in well-doing, beware of sloth in the ways of God. This is a sin natural to us; but there are few greater enemies to vital godliness than it is. 2. Beware of venturing on known sin, especially the sin to which you are most inclined. (John Rodgers, D. D.)A dissuasive from weariness in well-doing I. Well-doing is an important feature of the Christian character. If it be a true and an approved maxim in common things--to be ever active in laudable pursuits is the distinguishing characteristic of a man of merit--in a high and peculiar sense may it be asserted of real Christians, that they “ cease from evil, and learn to do well.” II. The evil to which the Christian is exposed, and against which he is cautioned--weariness in well-doing. III. The powerful antidote to the threatening evil--“ for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” In conclusion:1. It may perhaps be thought necessary that some guard be put to the doctrine, lest grace be dishonoured, and the worthless idol of human merit be exalted. Be it then observed, as Scripture teacheth, that the work is of grace, and the reward of grace. In every duty done for God, grace calls to the work, aids in the discharge of it, makes meet for and finally bestows the promised inheritance. 2. It must be remembered, that celestial honours await only the faithful unto death. Death alone must terminate exertion and fidelity. 3. What encouragement does the service of God yield, to make us valiant for the truth and patient in well-doing? “ The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever.” Polycarp could say, when commanded to deny Christ, “ I have served Him these six and eighty years, and He has never hurt me, and shall I deny Him now?” Go and do likewise. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)Perseverence in well-doing-- I. Our duty. There are two things in connection with duty which it will be well for us to remember--well-doing, and constancy in well-doing. Action is at once the destiny and the lot of man. All the conditions of his existence are training for his activity. The text contains special exhortation to constancy in well-doing. He was thinking not only of the fickleness of the Galatian Church, but upon the general possibility of paralysis common to the whole family of man. The wants of the world and the wants of the Church demand action. The same motives enforce constancy. If we weary in well-doing, we shall be the only recreants from duty. Does the Spirit tire of striving? Is there any pause in the intercession of the Son? Are the ranks of evil weary? Does not death still stalk, sword in hand, over the great battle-field of life? II. The special encouragement which the apostle presents. There is a reward promised by Him who cannot lie, and preserved by Him who cannot be turned from His purpose. The moral harvest comes all to perfection; not a grain is lost. Surely you will not be weary, when your salvation is so much nearer than when you first believed? (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)Be not weary I. The causes of weariness in well-doing.1. The difficulty of the work. Well-doing from right motives is the most difficult of all works. It is purely a spiritual work; and no man can enter upon it, and do it aright, unless he be a spiritual man. When a Christian first enters upon this work, he thinks that all is easy; that to convert souls is no great difficulty: to draw other minds into the state in which he is, is but simply a pleasant exercise. And sometimes God favours those, who thus enter upon the work zealously and affectionately, in their first efforts, with remarkable success. But after a little while, difficulties begin to spring up, which they had never before seen; difficulties, which appear to them to be insurmountable. For see what the individual who has to instruct the human mind, has to contend with. First there are the strongholds of prejudice, which guard all the avenues to that mind; and these are found in the child often, as well as in the man. Then there are the gates of unbelief, thicker and stronger than the gates of Gaza; which only the spiritual Samson can carry away. Then there is the ancient wall of old educational prejudices and feelings, against submission to Christ and His gospel, which has to be thrown down, before you can go up and take the city. No doubt the work is hard; yet you should not despair. Every good work is difficult; never was there a good work very easily done. It is always associated with great difficulty. And difficulties always rouse a generous mind. The soldier--it is natural to him to be amongst bullets, and to mount up cliffs, in order to plant his standard upon castles and difficult places. The sailor thinks it a tame voyage if he never has a storm; it is the storm that rouses him to action; and the battle that brings out the soldier’ s energies. Besides, difficulties are just nothing to Omnipotence. It is nothing for Him to speak to that child that you cannot affect, and the work is done. You are but a channel; His is the power; and that power can be communicated through you. 2. Then, secondly, this weariness often arises from a sense of our own insufficiency. As, when God called Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt, he said--“ O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant, but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue;” just so does a Sunday School teacher often speak. “ Send any one to this work,” says Moses, “ only send not me.” And the teacher, when he sees, as he carries on this work, his own knowledge so imperfect, his own faith so weak, his own love so cold, his own zeal so dying, exclaims--“ What can I do?” And then Satan rushes in, while the mind is thus exercised; and he says--“ What can such a wretch as you effect? how can you expect to be blessed? Go, learn yourself, before you teach others; how can you place yourself in such a position, to teach others the way to heaven?” Sometimes, to humble the individual, and to show that individual that the work is wholly of God, He lets us see how helpless and how weak we are. But this, instead of discouraging us, should only make us cling closer to Him. 3. Then, thirdly, this weariness springs from the trials, to which “ well-doing” frequently exposes individuals. 4. Another cause of this weariness is the want of success. 5. The want of love to Christ. 6. The want of spirituality of mind. 7. The want of faith. II. The necessity of perseverance in well-doing. Should it not excite us to perseverance, when we think that Christ our Master has entrusted His cause in our hands? Who are we, that the Lord of all should let us labour for Him? Then the brevity of our time is another reason for perseverance. “ Brethren, the time is short.” Opportunities are few; and if we would do good, they must be seized. The waterman seizes the tide, the moment it turns; the sailor seizes the breeze, the moment it springs up; Christ, the day in which the Father sent Him to execute His will. “ I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work/’ So said He, who could do more work in a minute, than we can do in a whole life. Then there is another reason which ought to excite us to perseverance: the account we must render. “ Give an account of thy stewardship: for thou mayest be no longer steward.” III. The certainty of success in well-doing. “ We shall reap.” About that there is no doubt. God has by this promise connected our diligence in well-doing with a harvest of blessedness and of honour. Do you ask me, then, what kind of reaping you shall have? Think of these three things. First, you shall reap spiritual advantage. “ He that watereth shall be watered also himself.” And it is no small mercy, to reap a lively heart, and a generous soul, and an affectionate spirit, and a willingness to labour in Christ’ s cause, as a reward for any little acts we perform for Him. Relative usefulness shall be another portion of your reaping: “ we shall reap, if we faint not.” “ Everything is beautiful in its season.” Good harvest time, then, has not yet arrived. Some are later, too, than others; but the promise is sure, stable as the everlasting hills; sowing the seed, which “ is the Word,” will naturally produce all its legitimate effects. Then I add, you shall reap Divine approbation. And surely that is not a small thing. Oh I to hear my Master “ say in that day, “ Well done, good and faithful servant!” And to address it to me, who felt so often tired, and yet by His grace was enabled to persevere! To see Him rise from His seat, and stretch out His hand, and say, “ Come, thou blessed child of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (James Sherman.)The weary well-doers In such a complicated social state as ours, those who do not know how to do good probably outnumber those who do not care. The weary and hopeless outnumber the careless, if one may judge by the eager throng which presses into the field when some direct, immediate good is set before them as capable of being done. The difficulty of the problem depresses and disheartens us. I. Well-doing is is the broad evidence of the Christian calling. The word here employed does not bear on beneficence exclusively. Love of truth, honour, goodness, are contained in it, as well as (v. 10) help to humanity around. I do not say that this help is the one evidence of a Christian calling, but it is essential, and never more so than in these days. In a broad view of the Christian profession, it is a volunteer service for the help of Christ in lifting the burden of the sin and misery of mankind. The Church is His body; His eye to see, His voice to cheer, His hand to lift and to heal the weakness and the misery of mankind. It is not only for Christ’ s sake that it toils, but in Christ’ s spirit. It has learnt from Christ the lesson, caught the habit. To the perfect Christian, Christ is not so much the motive as the spring: a fountain springing up to all beautiful, joyful, and blessed work for mankind. II. Be not weary in well-doing.1. The causes of weariness. (1) The weight of the flesh. “ The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The great battle of life is with this heavy, weard, languid flesh, that ties us to the dust. Weariness in well-doing is part of the universal weariness; the slow movement of the flesh under high compulsions; the deadness of the soul itself to truth, and Christ, and the eternal world. (2) The largeness of the problem. I can hardly wonder that the best stand appalled before the mass of the misery and sin of society. Could we get it all in a small compass, as Job had it (Job 29:11-17), we could put our hands to it with some hope of success. It is like pumping a sinking ship. We may wear our hearts out, and in the end all will go down. (3) The immense difficulty and intricacy of the work, and the evil it brings in its train. Many say, if I were but sure of doing good, God knows I would try. But who can be sure? Does not every effort to help on the one hand, depress and deprave on the other? (4) The measure in which the sorrow is mixed with sin. (5) It is thankless work. 2. The reasons which should move us to endure. (1) Because such words as these are written in the Bible (Matthew 18:21-35). I pray you read them. (2) Because these words are sustained and enforced by the infinite patience and mercy of God. If God does this, despite our sin, it is our honour, and shall be our life, to stir ourselves to do likewise; for it is the human dignity and bliss to think, feel, and live like God. (3) This endurance is life’ s grand lesson. Spasmodic virtue and charity are easy enough and cheap enough. It is a poor life that never treads a mountain summit, and flings an eagle glance over a promised land. But to stay on the level, to live in the clear upper air, to soar untiring as an angel, to work unresting as Christ, this is the strain of life. It is learned only by intense effort, by sorrowful failures, by many steps on the brink of despair. But work at it and work on. Renew the fight, endure the strain. The lesson of constant, patient, Christlike effort, learnt once, is learnt for eternity. (4) Because there is an end which will fulfil all our hope for humanity in sight. Not in your sight nor in mine, but in Christ’ s. He sees the triumph of all that you struggle for, the defeat of all that you hate. Work on, work ever. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)Soul culture I. Is well-doing.1. It is something more than attention to our personal condition. 2. The man who labours most for the good of others is most effectively employed in training his own soul. 3. Well-doing is not the doing of the superstitious, the formalist, the exclusive, the recluse, nor the training of any peculiar faculty of the soul, but the training of the entire man under the master impulse of love. This work is well-doing, because-- (1) It is in accordance with the will of God.(2) It is indispensable to the well-being of mankind. II. Has its difficulties.1. These should not dishearten.2. Everything worth having requires a struggle. III. Will meet with its reward.1. The conditions.2. The certainty.3. The seasonableness of the reward. (D. Thomas, D. D.)I. There is well-doing or goodness that is incumbent on us, viz., sowing to the Spirit. In order to do this--1. I must deny myself.2. Bow to a higher will.3. Live in unseen communings. II. Well-doing implies fixedness of will and character. This is needed--1. To form new habits. 2. To restrain natural passions and propensities.3. To resist the evil world. III. Well-doing is possible through aids offered in the gospel. Christ has become the power of God to us.1. By his conquest of temptation.2. By receiving the residue of the Spirit. 3. By bearing the Cross. IV. True well-doing brings with it appropriate results.1. In growth of character.2. In usefulness to others. 3. In acceptance with God. V. The result of well-doing will come in the proper time.1. Not ours, but2. God’ s. (J. F. Stevenson.)I. Well-doing. In order to do good it is necessary--1. To have generous minds.2. To fully realize our obligation to do good. II. Unweariness in well-doing.1. There is much need of untiring effort to do good.2. There are abundant opportunities for everybody.3. The necessary power Will be given to all who attempt it. III. A motive to well-doing. Good accomplished-- 1. Increases our power for well-doing.2. Strengthens our faith in the power of well-doing.3. Is a source of genuine joy. (D. Rhys Jenkins.)Weariness I. Its nature.1. Simple fatigue.2. Discouragement.3. Disgust. II. Its spheres.1. Such necessary business in life as does not minister pleasure.2. The struggle after a better Christian life.3. Social duties and relationships.4. The promotion of the public good in Sunday Schools, mission work, etc.5. Early pastoral experiences. III. Its occasions.1. In judicious labour.2. Attempts to do too much.3. Unreasonable expectations of an immediate harvest.4. Diverse dispositions in those with and for whom we work.5. Working from wrong impulses. (1) Praise.(2) Pride.(3) Mere duty. These will engender disappointment and therefore weariness. IV. Its cure.1. Take the most disagreeable task first: don’ t leave it until it becomes more burdensome than it is. 2. Cultivate the grace of forbearance. 3. Remember the evil one never gets discouraged or weary. 4. Recollect that the time is short, and that you cannot afford to be weary. 5. Recollect that you are working together with a God who is unweariable. 6. Reflect that the work and weariness will soon be over in that land of rest where we shall be burdened no more. (H. W. Beecher.)The cause and cure of weariness in Sabbath School teacher s:-- I. Your work is well described in the text. 1. Sunday School teaching is well-doing, because-- 1. It is an act of obedience.2. It brings glory to God.3. It is well-doing towards man. (a) Highest form of charity is to teach the gospel. (b) Particularly to children, for prevention is better than cure. (c) You strike at the root of sin in seeking the regeneration of a child. 2. Sunday School teaching is sowing. (1) The seed you sow is the truth.(2) If you don’ t sow the devil will.(3) Reaping is your reward, but sowing is your work. II. You will meet with evils in your service, and be liable to weariness and faintness.1. You will be tempted to grow weary. (1) Some by constitution are inapt.(2) The work lasts on year after year. 2. But don’ t be “ disheartened” (see Greek). (1) Some think their work less important than at first.(2) Others fear that it will prove a failure.(3) Want of order and discipline in the school. 3. The text speaks of “ fainting.” The original means “ loosened.” Some teachers get unstrung, and thus get into a slip-shod way. (1) The flesh cries out for ease.(2) Grace perhaps is at a low ebb.(3) Fellow Christians are cold and indifferent.(4) The want of appreciation.(5) The difficulty of the work. III. We have abundant encouragement in the prospect of reward.1. The reaping time will come.2. We, not our successors, will reap.3. The harvest will come in due season.4. When it comes it will abundantly repay us. The present reward is--(1) The conversion of the children.(2) The rearing of a generation of worship-loving people.(3) The training of real home missionaries.(4) Saturating the whole population with religious truth. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The difficulty of well-doing When I dug my well, I knew that there were rocks below, and when I had thrust down the pick and spade through the easily yielding earth until they struck the rock I found no water. It was necessary to drill and blast a foot, two feet, six, ten, eighteen, twenty feet, and then I struck a spring. While I was doing it it was not pleasant, but after I had got through it was permanent refreshment. It is hard to deal with hard cases; but when we have struck the water of life in any one, after that we have overflowing remuneration even here. (H. W. Beecher.)Christian endurance In the earlier days of Christianity, when it had to contend against the prejudices and intolerance of ages; when the bigotry of the Jew fiercely opposed it, and the philosophy of the Greek and Roman despised it, and when the bitterness of persecution grew up into greater fierceness, it was then that the earlier and devoted Christians, exposed to all manner of trial and death on all sides, had need of encouragement. I. The charge of the apostle,.1. The apostle means by this charge that we are not to allow any kind of weariness in right doing to arrest us in the discharge of duty, or to force us away from its path. Weariness of mind and of body is common to most men. The traveller gets weary on his journey, whether by sea or land; the student bending over his studies through a long period, cannot escape that fatigue which attends a close and intense application of thought; the labourer, when his day’ s work is done, often turns to his home with a tired look and a faltering step; the sick man upon his couch feels the passing hours to be weary as they creep through the darkness of the night or the light of day, bringing no ease to his pains nor strength to his weakness; the watcher by the bedside grows faint with watching, and the overtasked eyes grapple with the slumber that steals upon them in vain. No; weariness in some form or other is the result of our infirmities, and as long as human nature remains what it is, the mind and the body will sink under its pressure. What, however, we have to do is to be faithful, to endure patiently our burdens, and to press onward in the strength of faith and hope. 2. Now, the duty of “ well-doing” embraces much of inner thought and of outward action; it embraces every Christian virtue that can be mentioned--every good work that is worthy of the name; and among the many good things it includes, it most assuredly numbers among them the duty of supporting, of advancing the interests of “ the house of God,” as a means to an end, as an agency which the Almighty is pleased to adopt for the accomplishment of His own Divine ends, whether in the way of His Spirit or of His providence. His house is not confined to any one particular spot; it may be found on the broad ocean, in the midst of the desert waters, where the ship is turned into a sanctuary, and the incense of prayer and praise be made to ascend from her cabin or her decks. It may be found in the wide waste of sands, in the vast wilderness, where the tent of the pilgrims is erected, and from beneath the spread of its canvas may be heard the earnest breathings of a humble and contrite spirit. It may be found upon the mountain’ s top, amid the sweep of winds and the wrapt curtain of clouds; where two or three are met together in the name of Christ to worship God, and to believe in the work of His redemption. It may be found in the depths of the valley, amid streams and rocks, or in the city, amid lofty towers, temples, and palaces, where the “ Te Deums” of thankful hearts may meet and swell into one of earth’ s loudest anthems before the throne of heaven. 3. One of the great objects of religious buildings is, that we should gather together within their walls for public worship; that on the Sabbath, as a day of rest from the toils of labour, the mind should seek for strength and solace in the ministrations of united devotion and of Christian fellowship. II. The encouraging prospect annexed to the charge--“ For in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” True, the prospect may appear to us far off, though to some it may be nearer than they think. (W. D. Horwood.)Against weariness in well-doing It is the part of religion to teach man to do well. Do--he must and will. He does not always, alas, do right; but it is the object of religion--of revelation--to induce him to do so. Weariness. How much is there to induce this spirit, and to render the exhortation against it appropriate. How soon does a spirit of weariness creep over us in our spiritual career. Does any one ask, “ Why is this--what are its causes?” I reply--something is to be attributed in this tendency to the love which the human mind has for novelty. We all desire change, Monotony is irksome. The absence of variety is painful, and transforms the period over which it extends into a desert--a sandy plain; while, were there to be the entire negation of variety, life would be insupportable, and, like solitary confinement would soon become the harbinger of death. God knows this tendency of man’ s mind, and has provided for it--for what is there that does not change? The seasons revolve, and each appears clad in a different garb. Man’ s life progresses, and each age has its character. Not only is a desire for novelty sometimes the occasion of weariness in well-doing--something is to be attributed to the influence of sloth. An active creature as man is, there is still in him a love of ease, of repose, of luxurious rest. Nor is this all--there is the spirit of self-complacency. I have done so much that at least I may be satisfied. One more occasion of inconstancy in well.doing may be adverted to, and that is the most powerful of all--the natural disinclination of the mind to doing well at any time.1. “ Be not weary,” for the motives to continuance in the right course are as powerful as the motives to commencement. I say there is no change in the motives to diligence and duty, which abide as at first; and if, after having gone a little way, or a long way, in the course of well-doing, whatever its peculiar form, you have become weary, it is you who have altered, and not the course. The path is as much the king’ s highway as ever; its banks as green, its turns as beautiful, its trees as picturesque: but you have become weary, and your footsteps have flagged. What you want is, to get fresh impulse by a reconsideration of the motives by which at first you were impelled. 2. Let me say to you, “ Be not weary in well-doing,” because you have the most noble examples to constancy and diligence. Study the history of Jesus of Nazareth. Place yourself amid its events. Observe the spirit by which those events were vitalized. Seek to understand the hidden laws of that outward and inward life. Was there any symptom of yielding, of inconstancy there? 3. “ Be not weary in well-doing,” because an unfinished enterprise, or a work incomplete through inconstancy is both a distress and a disgrace. There may be, of course, work left unfinished through necessity. The sculptor may die, and his bust half finished be his most significant monument. The painter may be paralyzed, and his unfinished canvas be the best expositor of his malady. In these cases there is distress, indeed, but no disgrace; pity, but not scorn: but let a work be begun, and left through vacillation of purpose--a great work be undertaken, and be unfulfilled through childish waywardness, and no wonder if they that go by “ begin to mock,” while the artificer is ashamed and distressed. And surely there is disgrace. Do the men of the world even respect a backslider? Then I might urge the exhortation by a reference to the self-discipline which is secured by perseverence--especially perseverence in a course of self-denial. 4. Direct you to the motive adverted to by the apostle. The prospect of reward. “ In due season ye shall reap if ye faint not.” The bestowment of rewards is a feature of God’ s government, as the doctrine which teaches it is a doctrine both of Scripture and of providence. (J. Viney, D. D.)The danger signal I. Some places where we are liable to grow weary.1. We grow weary when the work seems too large and we try to take it all in at once. One morning a man found the snow all piled up before his door. He began to shovel it away, but there seemed to be such a mountain of it he threw down his shovel in despair saying: “ I can never clear away all that snow.” Then he picked up his shovel, and marked off a square, and began to see how long it would take him to cast that aside; then another and another, until the whole was cleared away. So the girl looks at that great pile of music, as she begins her first lessons, and says: “ Oh, I can never learn all that music.” And the boy looks from the beginning of his arithmetic through to the last page, and says: “ I shall never get through that.” 2. We become discouraged and weary when we do not see immediate fruits of our labour. My little nephew was out in the garden one evening with his father sowing peas; next morning he took a basket and was going out to gather the crop, and was greatly disappointed when told the peas were not yet grown. Sunday-school teachers may appropriate this. 3. Ye grow weary and give up sometimes on the eve of reaping, and lose the harvest. Two men were digging for gold in California once. They toiled a good while and got nothing. At last one threw down his tools and said: “ I will leave here before we starve,” and he did leave. The next day his comrade that remained found a nugget of gold that supported him until he made a fortune. One of my Sunday-school teachers came to me to resign her class, because she said she was doing them no good. They were less thoughtful than when she took charge of them. I encouraged her to “ labour and to wait.” Only a few weeks elapsed when ten of the twelve young ladies openly professed faith in Christ. 4. We grow languid sometimes in prosperity. Christian slept in the arbour after ascending the hill Difficulty. II. How to prevent weariness in well-doing.1. Keep near to the Master. It was when Peter followed from afar that he denied Him. Keep Christ in full view. It was when Peter looked on the waves that he began to sink. 2. Have strong faith in the promises: “ My word shall not return unto Me void--it shall prosper” (Isaiah 55:11). “ We shall reap,” and reap in the best time, God’ s time, “ in due season.” Perseverence will bring success, success will inspire courage, courage will bring victory, and victory will be followed by glory. 3. Often pray to God. “ Even the youths shall faint and be weary--but they that wait on God shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31). 4. Help others. This is the health-lift of the soul. Two travellers crossing the Alps were freezing to death. One lay down to die; the ether, seeing his awful condition, began to rub, chafe, and rouse him. He suc-ceeded, and the exertion of helping to save his friend, kindled a glow of warmth in himself. They started off arm in arm, and were saved. (George H. Smyth.)Perseverance in well-doing I. I will call your attention, in the first place, to the speaker, or rather the writer. The language was written, as we find, under inspiration, by Paul to the Church at Galatia. It is very important when we hear an exhortation to consider the character of the person who gives it. And here we see the importance, if we first consider what was the issue of the apostle’ s labours. What was the issue of his labours amongst the Gentiles and Jews? Yet he was not weary in well-doing. II. As to the “well-doings” of the apostle, scarcely any doubt can be left on the mind with reference to these, if we attentively peruse the records of his commission. His well-doings were not to make himself a name or a praise in the earth; he was no mountebank, who for a season sought to attract the gaze and admiration of men, in order that upon the pinnacle they should raise for him he might stand and enjoy his transient life of honour and worldly reputation. No; his desire was to do that which Christ did; he desired so to follow Christ as he himself exhorts others to follow Christ. III. What the apostle means by his expression, “ due season.” It is evident the apostle referred not first to his labours. The apostle doubtless understood that while the end is the first in God’ s purpose, it is the last in manifestation. He could see that his own season might not be God’ s season. And therefore he was content to say, “ And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” The expression “ due season,” then, I conceive refers to a time which is known only to the Father, who hath put the times and seasons in His own power. The expression “ due,” is a word which is elsewhere translated “ own.” It is a pronominal adjective, which signifies possession; which signifies a peculiar appropriateness when it is joined with any particular substantive. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 6:10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.Opportunity, man’ s treasure If time be as “ the grass,” fading and fleeting, opportunity is as “ the flower of the grass,” more fading, as it is more beautiful and valuable. In the ordinary transactions and affairs of life, as well as in natural things, of how much importance is that juncture of concurrent circumstances which we style opportunity. Opportunity, even in natural things, when once lost, can never be recalled. The spark, that one single drop would have quenched in the outset, may, if neglected, spread fire around till it wraps a whole city in one wasting conflagration. The garment, spotted with the plague, that might have been destroyed with the least possible effort, may, if it lie unheeded and neglected, communicate the fearful infection, and the pestilence may spread its frightful ravages far and wide through a desolated nation. In the course of nature, God has been pleased to “ furnish opportunity” to every man, to awake the diligence and keep alive the watchfulness of His dependent creatures. If the husbandman passes by the season of spring, that precious season returns not again to him; and if he delay but a little space, watching the wind and waiting for the clouds, he shall not reap. And in the ordinary transactions of mankind one with another, how much depends upon seizing the passing and present opportunity! Many a man, by missing the “ tide in the affairs of life,” has missed the highroad to fame and fortune, and whatever this world could give to make him illustrious and distinguished. How many gray-headed and aged men look back upon the squandered opportunities of early life with bitter regret and unavailing sighs? They can now see where they turned down the wrong pathway, and where they missed the golden and precious season, which, had they employed it well, would have brought them to far different results. (Hugh Stowell, M. A.)Universal beneficence the duty of Christians The law of Jesus Christ lays Christians under obligations to the whole human race. This is at once its triumph and its difficulty: its triumph as it stands contrasted with moral codes of narrower scope, whether national or religious; its difficulty, when we look upon it as having to be put in practice. “ While we have time, let us do good unto all men.” The race which our Lord and Redeemer has honoured by taking its nature upon Him appeals to the thought and energies of all the redeemed. Whether civilized or barbarous, whether European or African, whether Christian or pagan, man, as man, has claims upon the servants of Christ; it is their business and their privilege to do him any good they can: the highest good, before all else--the communication of the True Faith, the bringing him into living contact with the Divine Redeemer, His Person, His Cross, His Spirit, His Word, His Sacraments; and then lesser forms of good, all that we commonly mean by civilization and useful knowledge--alms, advice, medicine, service, means of education, helps to material happiness and progress, as opportunities for doing so may present themselves. (Canon Liddon.)Benevolence never kills Said a speaker at a missionary meeting: I have often heard of congregations starving through niggardliness, but never of one laid on its deathbed through benevolence. If I could find one that had thus suffered by overgiving, I would make a pilgrimage to that church, and pronounce over it this requiem, “ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” The beauty of beneficence An Eastern legend tells us how Abraham wore round his neck a jewel whose light healed the sick and raised up those who were bowed down, and that when he died it was placed amongst the stars. You may see it now among the stars in all holy lives; but, more than that, if such be your desire, your Saviour will grant it to you also, to wear it. No diamond can shine so gloriously on the white neck of beauty, no order blaze so worthily on the breast of noble manhood. It becomes even the sceptred monarch better than his crown. It is the diamond of pure sympathy with your fellow-men. In one word, it is charity. Usually she is painted as nursing young children, and giving dolls to paupers, but with a far greater insight Giotto represents her as a fair matron with her eyes uplifted, trampling on bags of gold, while coming out of heaven an angel from the Lord Christ gives her human heart. Yes, it is the human heart by which we live--the heart at leisure with itself to soothe and sympathize; the heart which can be as hard as adamant against vice and corruption, but as tender as a mother towards all that suffers and can be healed. (Archdeacon Farrar.)Opportunity A sculptor once showed a visitor his studio. It was full of gods. One was very curious. The face was concealed by being covered with hair, and there were wings to each foot. “ What is its name?” asked the spectator. “ Opportunity,” was the reply. “ Why is his face hidden?” “ Because men seldom know him when he comes to them.” “ Why has he wings upon his feet?” “ Because he is soon gone, and once gone he cannot be overtaken.” Transient nature of opportunity Opportunity is like a favouring breeze springing up around a sailing-vessel. If the sails be all set, the ship is wafted onwards to its port; if the sailors are asleep or ashore, the breeze may die again, and when they would go on they cannot: their vessel stands as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. (Union Magazine.)Opportunity is like a strip of sand which stretches around a seaside cove. The greedy tide is lapping up the sand. The narrow strip will quickly become impassable; and then how sad the fate of the thoughtless children who are now playing and gathering shells and seaweed inside the cove! (Union Magazine.)Seizing opportunities Coming once down the Ohio River when the water was low, we saw just before us several small boats aground on a sandbar. We knew the channel was where they were not, and, shaping our course accordingly, we went safely by. They saw our intention; and, taking advantage of the light swell we created in passing them, the nearest ones crowded on all steam, and were lifted off the bar. Now, when in life’ s stream you are stranded on some bar of temptation, no matter what it is that makes a swell, if it is only an inch under your keel, put on all steam, and swing off into the current. (H. W. Beecher.)Prepare for opportunities Once upon a time, a wild boar of a jungle was whetting his tusks against the trunk of a tree. A fox passing by, asked him why he did this, seeing that neither hunter nor hound was near. “ True,” said the boar, “ but when danger does arise, I shall have something else to do than to sharpen my weapons!” The more limited sphere of beneficence Humanitarian aspirations, as they are termed, are exhilarating, especially to noble matures: but we cannot all of us do everything. And there is some danger in dreaming of doing it; the danger of ending by doing nothing, on the ground that to do everything is plainly impossible. Schemes which embrace the human race are apt to fade away into vague unattainable outlines, instead of leading to practical and specific results. And, therefore, while our duties towards humanity at large are to be kept in view, as the real measure of our obligation, and as a valuable incentive to generous efforts, our actual enterprises are necessarily restricted to this or that portion of the great human family, Which, for us, and for the time being, represents the whole. Hence it is that St. Paul adds to his general exhortation to do good unto all men a specific limitation, “ especially unto them that are of the household of faith.” The household of faith! There is no doubt as to the sense of the expression. As the whole human race is one vast family banded together by the indestructable tie of blood, so within this family the possession of a common faith creates another and a selected household, whose members are bound to each other by a yet closer and more sacred bond. Of the natural human family Adam is the departed head and father: the family of faith is grouped around the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, as its ever-living and present Parent. To all members of this family He has given a new and common nature; He has clothed each and all in that sacred Manhood which, after God, “ is created in righteousness and true holiness,” whether that precious gift have been forfeited or not. By faith each member of the family understands his relationship, first to the common life-giving Parent, and next to those who are his brethren in virtue of this new and sacred tie. (Calvin Liddon.)Doing good in trifles There is a story of a man living on the borders of an African desert, who carried daily a pitcher of cold water to the dusty thoroughfare, and left it for any thirsty traveller who might pass that way. Doing good by a child “ Children, I want each of you to bring a new scholar to the school with you next Sunday,” said the superintendent of a Sunday-school to his scholars one day. “ I can’ t get any new scholars,” said several of the children to themselves. “ I’ ll try what I can do,” was the whispered response of a few others. One of the latter class went home to his father, and said, “ Father, will you go to the Sunday-school with me?” “ I can’ t read, my son,” replied the father, with a look of shame. “ Our teacher will teach you,” answered the boy, with respect and feeling in his tones. “ Well, I’ ll go,” said the father. He went, learned to read, sought and found the Saviour, and at length became a colporteur. Years passed on, and that man had established four hundred Sunday-schools, into which thirty-five thousand children were gathered! Thus you see what trying did. That boy’ s effort was like a tiny rill, which soon swells into a brook, and at length becomes a river. His efforts, by God’ s grace, saved his father, and his father, being saved, led thirty-five thousand children to the Sunday-school. Doing good by little means See that well on the mountain-side--a small, rude, rocky cup full of crystal water, and that tiny rill flowing through a breach in its brim. The vessel is so diminutive that it could not contain a supply of water for a single family in a single day. But, ever getting through secret channels, and ever giving by an open overflow, day and night, summer and winter, from year to year, it discharges in the aggregate a volume to which its own capacity bears no appreciable proportion. The flow from that diminutive cup might, in a drought or war, become life to all the inhabitants of a city. It is thus that a Christian, if he is full of mercy and good fruits, is a greater blessing to the world than either himself or his neighbours deem. Let no disciple of Christ either think himself excused, or permit himself to be discouraged from doing good, because his talents and opportunities are few. Your capacity is small, it is true, but if you are in Christ it is the capacity of a well. Although it does not contain much at any moment, so as to attract attention to you for your gifts, it will give forth a great deal in a lifetime, and many will be refreshed. (W. Arnot, M. A.)The Christian’ s duty Now let us consider--1. The solemn exhortation or advice given here by the apostle, that is, “ Let us do good.” Notwithstanding all the sin and misery that are to be found in the world, yet the world would not be so bad after all, were it not for our own selves. That is, it is we, through our conceit, pride, and unfriendly behaviour to one another, that really constitute and render this world so unpleasant as it is! And if you admit the truth of this statement, then it is obvious that it is the duty of all of us, as true Christians, to endeavour to reform ourselves in the first place, and then try to spread this reformation amongst others by our own good examples. There are some people to be found who will only do good at times, and upon some extraordinary occasions, and then only when they are really ashamed to withhold their hands. 2. The extent of this duty, “ Unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith!” You may recollect that when Joseph made himself known unto his brethren in Egypt, and entertained them at a sumptuous dinner, that “ Benjamin’ s mess was five times as much as any of the others;” and do you recollect the reason of that strange proceeding of his? I will tell you, Joseph and Benjamin were the only sons of Rachel by Jacob, their father, and so they were two brothers by the same father and the same mother, and therefore were more nearly allied to one another than all the rest. And we read that when Joseph first saw his brother Benjamin, “ his bowels did yearn upon him, and he sought where to weep.” And so I would have you, my brethren, to follow Joseph’ s good example, if ever you shall meet with any member of “ the household of faith,” “ who in this transitory life is in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity” ; then give him more readily and more abundantly than to any one else, for he is more nearly related to you by the Spirit, if not by the flesh, for he is a member of the same Catholic Church as yourself. 3. The time that we are to attend to this most important duty--“ As we have an opportunity,” or, “ whilst we have the opportunity of this life and as occasions present themselves.” No one offers a word of advice, nor an alms, nor a dose of physic, nor anything else to a dead man. Oh, no! for the time for these things and the like is gone by for ever with regard to him. And so I would have you to bear in mind that it is not after a poor fellow-creature has been left to starve to death with cold and hunger; that it is not after a long “ hope deferred” had broken his tender heart in twain, and caused it to cease to beat for ever, that you are to take pity and compassion upon him. Oh, no! but you should do so now while you have him with you, while you can relieve him, and while he can appreciate your good attention, your sympathy and kindness. Some are in the habit of putting poor people off indefinitely when they ask assistance, though perhaps the favour they ask for will be hardly worth receiving, and so the time is lost when it can be of any value to the recipient. For my own part, if I do not get a favour when I beg for it and when I want it, I would not care for it, if the opportunity, or “ the time of need” is gone. (H. H. Davies, M. A.)The Church household an especial scene of kind deeds Every one entering a Church has a right to feel that he is going into a higher atmosphere than that in which he has been accustomed to move. Every one has a right to feel that when he goes into the Church of Christ he goes into an association, a brotherhood, where the principle of gentleness and kindness is carried on to a higher degree than it is outside the Church. I know that it is not so. I know that the Church is keyed, often, very low in the matter of sympathy. I know that too frequently persons who go into the Church are like those who go at night to a hotel. Each lodger has his own room, and calls for what he himself needs, and does not feel bound to take care of any of the other lodgers. And a Church, frequently, is nothing but a spiritual boarding-house, where the members are not acquainted with each other, and where there is but very little sympathy. Now, every Church should be under the inspiration of such large sympathy and benevolence as to make every one of its members the object of kindly thought and feeling. There should be a public sentiment and an atmosphere of brotherhood in every Church. (H. W. Beecher.)Kind deeds to go beyond the Church And here I may say, in carrying out this work, beware, while you do not neglect home, that you do not confine the disclosure of yourself to your own household. It is right for a bird to make herself a nest, and put the finest moss and softest feathers in that nest, and it is right that she should sit upon it. It is right that she should have but one chamber--for birds never build for more than themselves and their own. But they are only bird, and do not know any better. It is for us to build a broad nest. To build it so that nobody can get into it but ourselves, to line it with our own prosperity, and so selfishly fill it with everything that is sweet and soft--that is not right. I think that a man’ s house ought to be a magazine of kindness. Its windows ought to send out light. I like, when I go by a house at night, to see the window-shutters open, so that the light shines forth from inside. A person says, “ I will put this clump of flowers under the parlour window.” No, no; put them by the gate. A thousand will see them there, where one would see them in that other place. A person says, “ I will put this plant where nobody can reach it.” Well, do; but put two close to the fence, where they can be reached. I like to see little hands go through the pickets and pluck off flowers. And if you say, “ That is stealing,” then let it be understood through all the neighbourhood that it is not stealing. There are some who seem to have such a sense of property that if they had a hundred magnolia trees in full blossom on their premises, they would want the wind to blow from the north, and south, and east, and west, so that all the fragrance would come into their own house; whereas the true spirit would be a desire that a thousand others should be blessed by these bounties as well as themselves. Make your dwelling beautiful; but not for your own eyes alone. Fill it sumptuously, if you have the grace to rightly use that sumptuosity. Let the feet of the poor step on your plushy carpet. Let their eyes behold the rich furniture of your apartments. Would it make their home less to them? Not necessarily. If you take a child by the hand--you, whose name is great in the town; you, who tower up in power above all your neighbours; if you lay your hand on his head, and call him “ Sonny;” if you bring him into your house; if you go to the cupboard and take out the unfamiliar cake, or what not, that children so much like (for the senses must be appealed to in childhood before the spirit can be reached; and by feeding the mouth of a child you come to his affections and feelings); if you show him your rooms, and give him something in his pocket to carry home and show his aunt or sister, do you suppose that child ever thinks you are stuck up, or looks on you with an unkindly eye? When he comes into the neighbourhood again, and your house dawns upon him, he remembers, the moment he sees it, how happy you made him there. And that house of yours can be made to bless generation after generation. (H. W. Beecher.)Doing good according to opportunity I. There is good which Christians can do. This is a common thing to notice, and you may think it is not likely to be overlooked. Perhaps not, as far as the eyes are concerned, but certainly liable to be overlooked so far as the heart and the hand are concerned. To do good (as we all should say if we were asked to define it), is to secure by our own efforts the welfare of others. The doing good to human nature, as it is made up of body and spirit, is required of us by our God, but beside this we are all required to do good to others in all the variety of condition in which they are found. Hence we have such particular directions as, to doing good to them that hate us, giving meat and drink and raiment to the poor, visiting the sick and the prisoner, the widow and the fatherless, holding forth the word of life, and distributing to the necessity of saints. What a wide and life-long service do these two words cover, “ As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good.” II. To do good there must be both intention and exertion, aim and effort. Benefits sometimes accrue to men from their fellow-men without any intention or effort on the part of those who are the channels of good; but being the channel of good or the occasion of doing good, and the willing and active agent, are widely different things. It is one thing to lose a piece of money, which is picked up by a beggar, and by which he supplies his wants, and another thing to give that beggar money for the purchase of food. The man is fed in both eases, but the ministering is only in the one case. It is one thing to utter words at random by which bystanders are instructed, and another thing to endeavour, as in the case of our devoted Sabbath school and ragged school teachers, steadily and perseveringly to impart instruction to the ignorant. The difference here is as broad and as clear and as palpable as that between the stone head of a fountain through which the water flows, and from which you drink, and the loving hand which brings you a cup of water that has been intentionally, thoughtfully, and sympathetically filled for you at that fountain. Doing good partially, if self-originated and self-willed, is easy; but to do good fully we must overcome much within ourselves. Then we must do it as servants--not when and as we like, but when and as the great Master bids us.. Moreover, real good is not done except by labour of some sort. In the sweat of the brow we not only eat bread, but we cast bread on the waters. III. The kind of good done and the amount must both be governed by what Paul here calls “ opportunity.” Circumstances being suitable for a particular ministration, we must minister; and circumstances fix the time and place, and the means, and the powers of the individual. They say to him, Thou art the man to do this thing here, and to do this thing now. “ Opportunity” is that season in which we can minister to the benefit of others. Our opportunities test us. You will always see that a man is just what he is to his opportunities. You will find this in every walk of life. Opportunities test us Christians. Some opportunities are rare, ethers are common; some are fleeting, others abide. “ The poor,” said Jesus, “ are always with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good;” here is the permanent, abiding opportunity. “ But Me ye have not always;” here is the fleeting, passing opportunity. Doing good, dear brethren, if men be faithful to their trust, never can be monotonous. (S. Martin.)On doing good I. Illustrate the duty in the text,1. The duty inculcated is goodness. Now this necessarily supposes that we are renewed in our mind. In our natural state, we cannot do good. We must first be made partakers of Divine goodness before we can diffuse it abroad. The Christian may do good-- (1) By the exhibition of a pious example. Thus to be monitors to those around.(2) By imparting spiritual instruction.(3) By our prayers and supplications (See 1 Timothy 2:1).(4) By imparting of our substance to the poor and necessitous. 2. The extent of the goodness we are to exercise--“ To all men.” 3. The seasonableness and constancy of our goodness--“ As we have opportunity.” 4. The preference appointed--“ Especially to those who are of the household of faith.” II. Enforce the duty is the text.1. The commands of God require it. “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” etc., (Psalms 37:3; 1 Timothy 6:18). 2. Our resemblance to God requires it. If we are His spiritual offspring, then we must be followers of God as dear children. 3. The example of Christ requires it. “ He went about doing good.” 4. The Spirit of God within us requires it. “ The fruit of the Spirit is … goodness.” 5. Our own happiness requires it. It enlarges the mind, expands the heart, elevates to the most heavenly dignities and enjoyments. 6. Our acquittal at the last day requires it (Matthew 25:34, etc.). Application:1. Does not the subject condemn most of the professed disciples of Christ? How few have their hearts set upon doing good! How few do all the good they can! 2. Let it lead us to a closer acquaintance with the Lord’ s will, and provoke us to love and good works. 3. A religion without goodness is not of God, and shall not receive a reward at the last day. (J. Burns, D. D.)The witness to the ennobling principle Life is a work. The best efforts of the human spirit spring from the energy of an artist toiling at himself. And just as Van Eyck, or Metaling, or Durer, each possessed “ the sacred science of colour,” each noted faithfully the teachings of experience, each rose into some vision of a better country, drew down the results of that vision to the practical purposes of daily life; and neither neglected the claims of the present nor forgot the solemn certainties of another world; so the human spirit, alive to its responsibility, and therefore to the need of sorrowful toil here, without the reminding of the preacher, hears voices like passing bells, now loud, now dying; sounds tossed up in sorrowing cadence, surging and solemn, mystical and threatening, like the roll of the Atlantic in the caves of Cornwall; or tender and saddening, like the water of the spreading surf on the sands of the Adrian Sea; and the voices, whether loud or soft, whether threatening or tender, are chanting an unchanging story: “ Death is coming, diligence and fortitude; life is passing, use it while you may.” Listening to these the human spirit works in the vision, with the sense of eternity; unites the ideal and the practical, strives to make idealism into realised result, does not merely travel a destitute journey, nor work a work fruitless to others as well as self, but exercises in the highest of a!l subjects, with the possibility of the most lasting results, exercises an artist’ s powers. I. Let us note swiftly some of the characteristic features of the self-sacrificing temper, the productive principle of a noble life.1. First we may note what is negative. In a really self-sacrificing temper there is the absence of that miserable taint and bane of rich and gifted natures which the Greeks would describe as a withering ὕβρις--an insolent scorn. The self sacrificing spirit, believe me, will not lose faith in human nature; will learn for itself simple-hearted sincerity; will not demand too much from others; will “ possess” itself “ in patience,” and thus lay a stern arrest upon the too natural encroachments of ὕβρις--of insolent scorn. 2. Another mark of a self-sacrificing temper is a sincere, a supernatural, a gentle yet chastened sorrow. “ Sorrow!” you say; “ why, that is nothing so strikingly exceptional.” A short experience of the most shallow observer says “ there is plenty of sorrow! It requires no special gaze on eternity, it demands no yearning desire for a higher life, to find one’ s self plunged in the mystery of sorrow.” Quite so; but stay. There are violets and violets. The violet of the bleak hedge-side on the edge of the windy common, cramped with the crisping frost and shrivelled by the withering storm, is generically the same, but in individual fact how different from those rich masses of unfathomable colour which carpet the ruined pavement of Hadrian’ s Villa. So there is sorrow and sorrow. There is the sorrow of a broken life, the sorrow of a greedy, unsatisfied desire, the sorrow of a degraded moral purpose, and the sorrow of a brave and tender soul, which sees the beauty of the ideal and the sadness of partial failure, and yet, though sorrowing, does not faint or grow weary; which realizes the possibility of human progress, and is heartstricken at the spectacle of men with gifts of noble nature living for the changeful and passing, when they might live for what can never die. This sorrow is an outcome of the self-sacrificing temper. Is it yours? Are you sorry when wrong is done? sorry at the record of wretchedness and the chronicle of crime; sorry at lives with possibilities of glory falling into the depths, missing the standard, the example of Christ? Is yours such sorrow as stimulates you to read and obey the secret of this unearthly loveliness? Is your soul’ s life touched into activity by the tragedy of human misery and the tragedy of the cross? Blessed are ye if it be so. Then it is the principal anxiety of your life to enrich the lives of others. This is the witness of self-sacrifice. 3. And a third feature of such a temper is.a sunny earnestness. What is earnestness? It is not gloom, it is not grim determination, it is not dogged persistence, it is not revolting narrowness, or wearying one-sidedness, or stupid and tormenting fanaticism. What is earnestness? Earnestness is that temper of mind, that habit of thought which comes of taking, of habitually taking, the truths of eternity as realities, as in fact they are. II. Let us ask, then, what ground can be shown for cultivating a spirit of self-sacrifice?1. My brothers, first, unquestionably first, a loving gratitude. Christ died for you. If you have a grain of gratitude in you for the highest blessings, act by grace towards Him in the spirit in which He has acted towards you. 2. And another ground is a wise and gracious estimate of the dignity of man. Man is an animal; yes, but man is also a spirit; mysterious instincts within him--despite the passing crotchets of sciolists and dreamers--witness to him his immortality. III. And now for the result. Self-sacrifice is the ennobling principle. It ennobles the world; it fertilizes the soul. How? For all man it leaves behind rich memories and great examples; it shows thus what man can, and therefore what man ought, to do, and encourages to use the strength God gives to do it. And again, it enriches the individual soul. It is strange, yet it is true, that to give in love increases the store of love within us; strange, but true, that self-love weakens the moral fibre and impoverishes life; strange, but true, that self-sacrifice stores moral treasures, and produces moral power. IV. “ While we have time let us do good.” What is life then but a severe probation to test the metal of our souls, and prove their value? “ While we have time let us do good.” Nay, what is life then but a careful education, wherein stern circumstances and trials--the calls of duty, and the sharp assaults of sorrow combine, or may combine with inward principle, to train the soul, to “ try us and turn us forth sufficiently impressed.” “ While we have time.” Nay, what is life but a great opportunity, though an opportunity not perhaps to leave behind the rich results of patient and daring investigation, or the astounding stores of accumulated knowledge, yet something better? While you have time! The days are travelling on, the night is coming, let us bestir ourselves to assist in the triumph of goodness, let us act in self-sacrifice, and so let us advance--oh! blessed opportunity--advance the kingdom of Christ. (Canon Knox-Little.)Christian beneficence I. The principle of Christian beneficence. The excellence of any action in the sight of a heart-searching and holy God, depends entirely on the motive from whence it proceeds, and on the spirit with which it is performed. Christian beneficence is founded in the noblest of principles--love to our God and Redeemer. II. The objects of Christian beneficence. True believers are united to each other by the most sacred and indissoluble bonds. III. The qualities of Christian beneficence.1. Active in its nature.2. Constant and unwearied in its operations. IV. The value of Christian beneficence. (John Hunter, D. D.)Doing good I. The nature.1. Preserving goodness.2. Uniting goodness.3. Communicating goodness. II. The rules. We must do good--1. With that which is our own (1 Chronicles 21:24).2. With cheerfulness and alacrity (2 Corinthians 9:1-15.).3. So that we do not disable ourselves from doing good (Psalms 90:14; Psalms 112:5; 2 Corinthians 3:1-18; 2 Corinthians 8:13). III. The reasons.1. From the grounds of love and beneficence, which are in all men.2. From the example of God Himself (Matthew 5:44-45).3. The testimony of Christ (Acts 20:35). (R. Cudworth.)I. God made all things to do good. II. Christ saves men in order that they may do good. III. Do good because--1. God commands it.2. It will overcome evil.3. It will make you happy.4. It will make others happy.5. Others will then do good to us. (W. Newton.)The occasion for the injunction The admonition is thrown into a general form, but it has evidently a special application in the apostle’ s own mind (see 1 Corinthians 16:1). He had solicited their alms for the suffering brethren of Judaea. The messenger who had brought him word of the spread of Judaism among the Galatians had also, I suppose, reported unfavourably of their liberality. They had not responded heartily to the appeal. He reproves them in consequence for their backwardness; but he wishes to give them more time, and therefore refrains from prejudging the case. (Bp. Lightfoot.)Beneficence Give what you have. To some it may be better than you dare to think. (Longfellow.)There may be a furlough from our customary work; there can be none from doing good. There may be change of scene and place and fellowship; there must be none in the spirit of self-sacrificing beneficence. (A. L. Stone.)The danger of selfishness Let us proportion our alms to our ability, lest we provoke God to proportion His blessings to our alms. (Bp. Beveridge.)Seizing opportunities A lady once writing to a young man in the navy, who was almost a stranger, thought, “ Shall I close this as anybody would, or shall I say a word for my Master?” and lifting up her heart for a moment, she wrote, telling him that his constant change of scene and place was an apt illustration of the word, “ Here we have no continuing city,” and asked if he could say, “ I seek one to come.” Trembling she folded it, and sent it off. Back came the answer: “ Thank you so much for those kind words. I am an orphan, and no one has spoken to me like that since my mother died, long years ago.” The arrow, shot at a venture, hit home, and the young man shortly afterward rejoiced in the fulness of the gospel of peace. How often do we, as Christians, close a letter to those we know have no hope “ as anybody would,” when we might say a word for Jesus! Shall we not embrace each opportunity in the future? Do good to all men Some years ago a society was formed in London which called itself the “ Titus Society.” It took its name from Titus, the Roman Emperor, who counted a day lost in which he had not done some act for the good of others. The members of this society bound themselves to act on this benevolent principle. In this they did well; but their obligation lay back of their pledge, inasmuch as the voice of God in Scripture and in the love He pours into every regenerate heart is constantly saying, “ Do good! Do good!” There is no need of looking far to find the opportunity, since sorrow, suffering, ignorance, poverty, and sin are everywhere. No one who walks the streets with his eyes open can fail to find some one to whom a kind word, a pleasant smile, a small gift, a few words of instruction or of exhortation, or even a cordial grasp of the hand, would be a benediction. To encourage such effort the God of love has ordained that the satisfaction of doing good is greater than that of receiving a favour. In the laws of the kingdom of Christ, is it not written that “ it is more blessed to give than to receive?” American. Lost opportunities A poor fellow in connection with a Liverpool mission lay dying the other day, and, as his mother stood by his side, he said, “ Mother, I shall soon be with Christ, but it makes me miserable to think that I have never done aught for Him.” Yes, it will make you miserable when you come to die, if you have done nothing for Christ. I charge you to go away and consecrate yourselves to this work. Listen to the cries of the heathen world--“ What must we do to be saved?” Galatians 6:11 Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.The personal element in Christian power It has been supposed that some disorder of the eyes made it painful for the apostle to write. Earlier in this Epistle, where he tries to gain these childish Galatians by a recital of his own sorrows for them, he praises their affection by saying, “ I bear you record that if it had been possible ye would have plucked out your own eyes and have given them to me.” In the adjoining sentence he speaks of the “ temptation in his flesh,” for which they neither despised nor rejected him, but entertained him “ as an angel of God.” Doubtless the use of the pen or style was costly to his comfort. All the better if it only helps in the least degree to draw them, through his Christlike sacrifice in their behalf, nearer to Christ Himself. Suppose he had not been so thoughtful; suppose he had just followed the custom and had dictated his letter to an amanuensis--every truth recorded, every appeal for fidelity, every part of the intellectual demonstration of the doctrine would have stood there just as it stands now. Nothing of the literal contents of the message he was bidden to deliver would have been lost. And yet one thing would not have been there. The Galatian reader, and we here, would have missed the sign-manual of personal interest and personal sympathy so vividly and yet so delicately stamped on the whole face of the manuscript in the painstaking writing of his “ own hand.” There is the additional power of personal feeling and personal character. The secret value is not what we say in words; it is not in our specific actions, much less in our professions. Terms are not competent to define it. Science has never analyzed it. Yet there it is--the personal quality, a power that is perpetually and mightily at work wherever men are, for or against the Love and Truth of God. It is the thing, too, which more than all else makes people love one another, unites them in companionships, and colours society. Mere abstract truth is not sufficient to change men’ s motives, to rouse their hearts or to save their souls. The gospel is not delivered to us as a mere string of propositions, however striking, however true, however inspired--and we may be thankful it is not. For no such treatise, law-book, moral philosophy, “ Aids to Reflection,” or “ Whole Duty of Man,” call it a gospel or by any other name--would ever have led the race from darkness to light, or lifted it up from death to life. As a matter of history, that never happened. True enough, we have our gospel, our Christianity through a book. It is a “ Word of Life,” but it is more. The Word is “ made flesh” in the Person Christ. He is the gospel. It was not Christianity that regenerated mankind and changed the face of the earth; it was Christ. We have much more than a Book. We have even that through living men; it brings before us living characters--men whose personality was taken up by the Holy Ghost and made part of the vehicle of Revelation. I take it that what was personal to each one of the twelve men that were grouped about our Lord was put there in order to give the glad tidings of His life to mankind in a twelvefold shape, so that it would be “ twelve manner of fruits” for the healing of many nations. Peter’ s impulsiveness, John’ s ardour, Philip’ s curiosity, Matthew the publican’ s sagacity, the square-dealing of James, every peculiarity amongst them all was just as much a part of the apparatus of Revelation as the words of the Beatitudes, or the stone tables of the law. The Bible, all through it, is quick and brilliant with these personal tokens. There were occasions, too, in Christ’ s intercourse with His followers when, beyond anything that could be described in words, His personal soul went into His manner, motions, glances, yielding marvellous effects. His “ Follow Me,” His “ Daughter, be of good cheer,” His look at Peter, His woes upon the Pharisees, His aspect before the trained soldiers of the imperial army, sent out to arrest Him, are instances. Since His ascension, in every land and period, Christian piety has been vigorous in preportion to the attachment and devotion to the Saviour’ s person. It is the vital aroma of the best hymns of the ages. It sheds the holiest unction into the most memorable sermons. If there is a personal power like this in the faith of Christ at all, we are not Christ’ s true followers till we have it and use it. Which of us has come in and goes out in a personal communion, face to face, with God, holding the promises, doing the service, with his own hand? Which of us will return this week, to business, to study, to housework, to society, with new personal purposes, more truly Christ’ s follower, more thoroughly in earnest in keeping this world under foot, and so using it for God as to mount up by it to heavenly places? (Bishop F. D. Huntington.) Galatians 6:12 As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.The history and odium of Christ’ s Cross The Cross of Christ demands notice, calls for Christian feeling, sets before us a glorious object of contemplation. I. the Cross of Christ in the history connected with it. A very affecting and astonishing history; the very angels bestow on it their attention and admiration.1. A history of suffering; (1) on the part of the Master;(2) on the part of every true disciple. 2. A history of sin. II. The odium connected with the Cross. If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, leading a holy life, manifesting and setting forth Christian principle instead of depending on morality, avowing his conviction that there is no salvation but in the Cross of Christ--then shalt reproach, if not persecution fall upon him--hatred, ill-will, sarcasm, wit, ridicule, obloquy. (T. Mortimer, B. D.)The impossibility of a divided service The difficulties of the Church and the Christian life are much the same in all ages. Clothed in different forms, they embody the same spirit. The text speaks of those who seek to please God and the world at the same time; to secure for themselves the safety which Christ offers, without losing the ease and social comfort which they imagine to to be found in the world.1. This is a temptation from which none are wholly free. When in the society of careless persons, how hard to maintain a high standard of life and conversation! How difficult to see where the line between what is and what is not consistent with a Christian’ s position is to be drawn! How easy to let slip the opportunity of speaking for the right. How impossible to recover it when let slip! How easy to assent to the low tone around us; how hard to have to appear disagreeable if we feel compelled to protest against it! 2. To yield to this temptation is the symptom of a half-conversion. If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature. Where is the new creature in us, if we so easily forget Him, and fail to confess Him? 3. Consider how cowardly and cruel it is to allow Him to be insulted without a word spoken in His defence. Could we sit still and hear a friend abused, his dearest wishes ridiculed? Is not the least sin a direct insult to Jesus? Has He not entrusted His honour to our keeping? Are we not members of a thorn-crowned head? Shall we, then, leave Him to suffer alone? 4. Consider the harm which such an apparent acquiescence in evil may do to others. 5. The attempt to serve God and mammon will fail. Sooner or later the choice between the two must be made. The longer we delay choosing for God the more difficult we shall find it to do so even when we would. 6. How to meet the temptation. In the power of Christ all temptation maybe vanquished. In Him you are a new creature. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)Shams What multitudes of mahogany-handled drawers there are to be met with in daily life, labelled in black on a gold ground, with swelling and mysterious names of precious healing drugs; but alas! they are handles which do not pull out, or drawers that are full of nothing. What myriads of empty bottles make up yonder “ enormous stock” in the universal emporium so largely advertised! What a noble army of canisters filled with air stand marshalled in shining ranks, as if they were fresh from China, and brimming with the fragrant leaf! Now in mere business such things may answer well enough; but bring them into your moral dealings, and you shall soon become contemptible. One smiles at the busy tradesman arranging the shams in his window, but we are indignant with men who exhibit unreal virtues and excellences; he thinks that he makes a fair show in the flesh, but when we have found him out once, even what may be genuine in him is subjected to suspicion, and the man’ s honour is hopelessly gone. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Persecution a benefit to the Church The cold water of persecution is often thrown on the Church’ s face to fetch her to herself when she is in a swoon of indolence or pride. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Persecution not to be feared Do not fear the frown of the world. When a blind man comes against you in the street you are not angry at him; you say, “ He is blind, poor man, or he would not have hurt me.” So you may say of the poor worldlings when they speak evil of Christians--they are blind. (McCheyne.)The exposure of the tactics of the Judaizers I. Their dogmatic attitude. II. Their urgent zeal. III. The true motive of their conduct.1. Their conduct was cowardly.2. Hypocritical.3. Self-interested. IV. It was just and necessary that the apostle should expose a policy so mean, so mercenary, so insincere. (Prof. Crosskery.) Galatians 6:14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.The glory of the Cross The Cross of Christ is the key to St. Paul’ s life; and that life is itself the best human exponent of the Cross of Christ. He saw no ground for boasting, or rejoicing, or living, save in that. By “ the Cross” is to be understood the atoning death of which it was the instrumental cause. It stands for “ Christ crucified.” I. The Cross of Christ the highest exhibition of the glory of God.1. It exhibits in a special manner the justice of God.2. It exhibits in a special manner the love of God.3. It reveals in perfect harmony the justice and the love of God. The pardon which God has provided for sinners is a propitiated pardon--a pardon for which a price has been paid, even the blood of the Son of God. Justice is thus upheld in its integrity: mercy is shielded from the charge of conniving at unrighteousness (Romans 3:21-26). II. The Cross of Christ the best security for the happiness of man.1. It secures pardon and reconciliation for the sinner. Nothing to be done, but to believe the overture of mercy, and become reconciled to God. Man has nothing to bring of his own, and nothing is asked for. The Cross provides a present salvation for all who believe in the crucified Son of God. 2. It supplies the believer with a two-fold power; (1) the power of a new motive, viz., love;(2) the power of a new life--the life of the spirit. Henceforth the love of Christ constrains him; the law of the Spirit of life has made him free from the law of sin and death, and the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in him who walks not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. III. Concluding inferences. The Cross of Christ may further be viewed--1. As supplying the only safe rule for faith and practice.2. As demanding courage in confession.3. As securing grace for action. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)The Cross of Christ the Christian’ s glory I. What is it to glory in any object, and what are the objects in which the apostle would not glory?1. To glory in an object implies-- (1) That we have a sincere regard, a high esteem, and a real affection for it.(2) That we are deeply interested in it.(3) That the object affords us joy and consolation. 2. The objects in which the apostle would not glory. (1) Worldly wisdom.(2) Worldly riches. (3) Worldly honours.(4) Self righteousness.(5) Eminency of gifts.(6) His privileges as a Jew.(7) His usefulness as a minister of the gospel. II. The object in which he determined to glory. The Cross. III. His reasons for thus glorying.1. Because it gives a full and copious description of the Redeemer’ s person. 2. Because it gives an ample relation of the blessings procured for man, by the life and death of Jesus Christ. Reconciliation with God; pardon, holiness, joy, victory over the world, eternal life. 3. Because it gives a glorious display of the Divine perfections. Divine love; infinite mercy; resistless power; incomprehensible wisdom; inflexible justice; spotless purity. 4. Because it gives a grand manifestation of the Divine Persons in the Godhead. 5. Because it gives a brilliant exhibition of the Redeemer’ s conquest. 6. Because it procured the glories of heaven. (Robert Bond.)The Cross our only boast Strong language--the result of strong emotion. Used by St. Paul on hearing that the Galatians, among whom he had planted the standard of the Cross, were now trying to conceal its odium if not to abandon it altogether. I. The meaning of the terms he employs.1. The sacrificial, meritorious, victorious “ Cross.” 2. “ Glorying.” Not mere acquaintance, approbation, or cordial attachment; something higher than all this--exultation, boasting, rejoicing. “ Call me madman,” he says, “ despise me, mock me, because I make my boast in the Crucified! seize me by the hand of violence, drag me to your dungeons, load me with chains, lead me to the stake: still I will rejoice. Among friends or foes, in liberty and in bonds, in life and in death, I will glory still in the Cross of Christ.” 3. “ Only” in the Cross will he glory. Not in his lineal descent, or his affinity to the Jewish Church; not in his literary attainments or learning: these are insufficient for the hope and salvation of guilty man. (1) In nothing inconsistent with the Cross.(2) All glorying consistent with the Cross must be made subservient to it. When he glories in infirmities, tribulations, etc., it is because Christ is glorified in and by them. So also he would glory in the Advent of Christ, when He came to destroy the works of the devil; in the life of Christ, so immaculate, benevolent, useful; in the teaching of Christ, so wise, important, Divine; in the splendour of the miracles of Christ; in the triumphant resurrection of Christ; in the ascension of Christ, when He took human nature with Him into heaven; but only in so far as these looked forward or back to the sacrificial death of Christ, without which they would all have been in vain. II. Reasons for this resolution.1. The Cross is the grand consummation of all the preceding dispensations of God to man. 2. The splendid scene of a decisive victory over the Lord’ s enemies and ours. 3. The meritorious, procuring cause of every blessing to Adam’ s fallen race. 4. The most powerful and only effectual incentive to all moral goodness. (1) The pattern of moral excellence there exhibited.(2) We must have grace to imitate. (R. Newton.)The Cross a glorious spectacle Behold our Divine High Priest, offering up the great sacrifice required for the redemption of the souls of men; the very Son of God pouring forth His own blood upon the altar, an atonement for the sins of the whole world. Behold this, and you will acknowledge that though there was never any spectacle so sad, yet never was there any so glorious, so worthy of contemplation by men and angels. And consider to what mighty results that dark hour of His humiliation and anguish is giving birth; and despise the vain pomp of the world in comparison of the splendour of His sufferings. For there, as He hangs on the accursed tree, is the great Captain of our salvation fighting our battles and vanquishing our enemies; there is He, for us, bruising the head of Satan, taking the sting from death, robbing the grave of victory, disarming hell of its terrors. Surely the vain glories of earth, when in contrast with those real triumphs of the Saviour’ s Cross, must lose their attraction in the view of every Christian; can we look on Him whom we have pierced and see Him stretched on His Cross, for us enduring the pain, despising the shame of it, and yet regard with satisfaction that scene of vanity and sin which occasioned Him thus to suffer? Can we love the world and the things that are in the world, while our view is fixed on Him who gave Himself expressly that He might deliver us from this present evil world; that He might see us free from the enchantment, the enslavement, of its false allurements and hollow delights? (Bishop Atterbury.)The Cross reveals God’ s heart The real glory of the Cross, for a deep soul like that of Paul, consists in this--that it is the best revelation of the heart of God. It often seems much easier to get at the mind of God than at His heart. His mind is “ writ large” for most of us in the nightly majesty and order of the starry heavens; but for His heart we search vainly in the bewildering labyrinths of external nature. As the intellect spells out each single word that tells it of the thoughts of God, the heart remains too often unsatisfied, and cries aloud with bewildered Job, “ Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” Like some fainting and forlorn wanderer in a parched and arid desert, the heart still yearns for “ the fountain of living waters,” still cries aloud, “ I thirst, I thirst.” Unable to recognize its true God, its real Father, in those hard, unpitying laws which science reveals, the heart of man cries despairingly, like its great Lord on Calvary, “ My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Now the teaching of Christ’ s life and death is that God has a heart as well as a mind; that, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, love is the source and root of all things--stronger than hate, mightier than sin, more enduring than hell. Christianity dares to go down into the lowest hell of degradation, and preach the everlasting gospel to souls fast bound in the misery and iron of inveterate evil. In order to meet our very sorest needs, our religion reveals a Being who, needing nothing Himself, finds His deepest happiness in perpetually giving. Christianity boldly declares the naturalness of self-sacrifice in God; for this, surely, is the meaning of the declaration that “ God is love.” And thus entrenched for ever in the very heart of God, the Christian spirit is not dismayed either at the stony-hearted apathy of nature or the manifold activity of the powers of evil. Even as the Christian pilgrim sinks down fainting in some cheerless wilderness, he is for ever heard exclaiming with one of old, “ If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Alex. H. Craufurd, M. A.)Self-renouncement through the Cross I. The nature of his glorying. And the word itself is for most of us, at first thought, of evil odour and association. For where men and women have been given to boast and glory, it has ordinarily been assumed to be the outworking of personal pride or the dictate of personal vanity, a pretension to greatness or an aping of superiority that most men and moralists have resented as offensive and loved to discipline with contempt and humiliation. Now, I do not deny that there is a kind (I will not say a degree) of that self-appreciation, right and proper, not to be repressed in ourselves or censured in our neighbours; but in practice about one of the best safeguards in young or old, for nobility and purity of character. A man should always have so high an opinion of his own honour that he would not stoop to dishonour; and so good an estimate of his own worth that he will scorn to degrade himself by a mean or vulgar or discreditable action. But that opinion we all have a right to form of ourselves, simply as men, apart from any circumstances peculiar to us personally. Now, that is what we call the self-conscious type of glorying, which you know is very common, and is not by any means an insignificant force and factor in society, and among the ordinary working motives of men. And there are at least two natural checks to it which we must mention, though only incidentally and on our path to higher truths. First, consider the inconceivable littleness of the very best that you or I can be or do, compared with the immensities around us, in which we are less than a speck upon the mountain. “ What impression do I make in Europe?” inquired a petty chief in the centre of Africa, from a daring traveller who visited his hut. Surrounded by barbaric honours, he little thought that two hundred miles away they had never heard his name. But, again, remember that what distinguishing qualities may be yours admit of two interpretations. Either you may regard them as lifting you up to superior honour, in which case of course you glory; or you may think of them as burdening you with unusual responsibility, which aspect of the matter can surely only work humility. For if God Almighty has given you peculiar endowments of mind or property, or appointed you a place where in some measure you will be the light and leader of men, ah! my friend, let others think it a glorious thing to be the pilot of a vessel amid the cruel rocks and breakers, where the safety of five hundred lives may depend upon your skill; or the captain of an army, where the destruction of tens of thousands may result from one trivial blunder. But for you, if in society you are in any sense a pilot or a captain, to strut in conscious self-appreciation, is to show yourself unworthy of the trust, incapable of realizing the responsibility, and self-condemned of moral inferiority before the eye of men. God forbid that in aught pertaining to myself I should glory. However, I find there is a saving clause in our text--“ Save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” --which redeems the matter of glorying from unqualified condemnation. Glorying, when selfish or in the least tainted with selfishness, is contemptible; when it is unselfish, it may simply be sublime. To take a simple example. Have you never known some leal-hearted old nurse, for instance, who in the days of her infancy attended some little boy for pay, and gave him besides a true affection that could not be rewarded by the gold she got then or ever for her services. He grew up in her hands, and passed out to a brilliant career at school, in college, and in the world. Those old affectionate eyes followed his bright course day by day. He was no child of hers. He was never likely to lift her from her lowly station. She had no claim or hope to share his renown. But every hour his name was on her lips; every paper was searched with eager hope to find some mention of his praise; and when it comes on to the hour of her sickness and pain and death (I am not imagining a story), the message from the far-away place of his fame will strengthen her heart for the last struggle, and the thought that he will come to follow her hearse forecasts a brightness on her grave. The old creature unselfishly glories in him who was her charge, and that boasting is not despicable, but humanly beautiful and even grand. So, who does not know that “ the poor swearing soldier” may come so to glory in his country’ s flag, and his regiment’ s honour, and his captain’ s renown, that he will step forward to be shot down into the ditch, that unpraised and unnoticed there his body may support the feet of gallant comrades on their way to victory. His glorying is unselfish, and for that reason not despicable, but sublime. And I am deeply convinced, brethren, that no life of yours or mine can ever be so fine and potent as it is capable of becoming, so long as it contents itself by merely restraining this Galatian vanity, and does not go on to replace it by apostolic enthusiasm. In other words, to make the best of our lives, they must be utterly consecrated to some cause outside themselves. II. We pass on to consider the basis or subject of the apostle’ s glorying. “ I glory in nothing but a cross.” But this paradox, though at the time a” stumbling-block” and “ foolishness,” is by no means a permanent difficulty of the gospel. For often and often throughout the course of history you find things that visibly were weak and contemptible transfigured by splendid principles behind them into a glory that has burned their image on the minds of men for ever. A simple example will serve. One of the notable traditions of the world is that of the gallant burgher of Flensburg, who, on his way to have his battle-wounds dressed, paused, with Sidney’ s very exclamation, “ Thy need is greater than mine,” to empty the contents of his own flask into the lips of a dying enemy. But perhaps you have heard how, when his noble offer of help was replied to only by a desperate wound from the hand of him whom he was denying himself to befriend, he still persisted in his mercy; and just muttering, “ Rascal, I would have given you the whole bottle, but now you shall only have the half,” drained off a part himself, and with the rest still eased the thirst of his unworthy foe. The wooden bottle, pierced with an arrow, which his king, on making him a noble, gave him as his armorial bearings, was itself of no great concern. But behind that trifle, you see, there lay a deed and a principle which have lifted it among the noblest emblems of chivalry, and made it a thing in which the hero’ s sons might “ glory,” while a whisper of his deed lingered in tradition or a tinge of his blood was in the veins of men. But what are those transfiguring principles behind the symbol? Of these two principles, love and sacrifice, the Cross is the external token, and from them, for the apostle and all men, it derived its meaning and its glory.1. Love.2. Sacrifice. III. But now, in what sense was the world crucified to the apostle, and he to the world, by devotion to the Cross of the Saviour? What is the meaning of this language? Well, I fancy we have all seen, in common life, something very like it; and borrowing an illustration, it may be possible to paint the truth in other colours than its own. Perhaps you have known some young neighbour of yours very fond of singing, very fond of reading, very fond of drawing and sketching, and passionately fond of society. She is now only a few years older, nothing more. But how comes it that the only songs she cares for now are simple lullabies; and all the pictures she makes are little rapid ones, to be crushed the next hour by baby fingers; and tales of half a page are her only literature? Besides, she does does not now much care for society. There is a transformation, and by that infant life given in charge to her the world that once was hers is become dead to her and she dead to the world. Is not this something akin to the great apostle’ s transformation? I repeat that the problem of the Christian life for you and me is likely somewhat different to what it was for this first great missionary. Him the Cross of Christ severed off entirely from the world’ s pleasures and business. You and me it sends back with purified motives to the world’ s pleasures and business. The question is, In what way should I be dead to the world, and the world dead to me? One often wonders why it is that men and women, capable of such high and varied enjoyments and with things so beautiful and good around them, are yet able on the whole to enjoy life so little, and in grasping natural good, find it become ashes in their hands; and the glory of what they coveted, when they have got it, becomes darkness to their eyes. I do not believe there are half the men of your acquaintance who have tried hard to make the most of the world, and have succeeded splendidly, who, if asked in private conference seriously, will not answer that substantial happiness rarely advanced with upward movement; and that their outward triumphs have very largely been inner disappointment. What is the meaning of that old lament on the folly of the sons of men? Is it God’ s way of commentary on what apparently is the sentiment of our text, namely, that every man’ s good consists in dying to the ordinary affairs of time? I was just thinking over these commonplace matters last night, brethren, when, looking out of my own window, I saw a dark crescent creeping over the surface of our lovely full moon; on and on it spread, till it blotted out her whole mild light, leaving her a big ashy ball hanging out from the sky, and the earth in comparative darkness. The fault of last night’ s eclipse is not altogether to be charged upon the beautiful moon. It was our own earth that swung itself in between her and the sun, preventing the solar rays from getting at our attendant, and then, of course, she had a natural revenge upon us, in not being able to reflect them back upon ourselves again. But the darkness of the moon was just our own shadow falling upon her surface, and blotting out her beauty. Brethren, I could not help feeling it was a symbol of what often happens in my own life and that of thousands about me. This belief of my heart never wavers, that God Almighty has made all things of which the world is composed to bless and please and gladden the lives of His dear children. His love is reflected from every one of them. But we fling upon them the shadow of our own selfishness and vices, and then, in return, they throw back upon our hearts the dark eclipse-shade of sorrow and disappointment. For instance, we win wealth: and if we got it righteously, and used it nobly and usefully, let us not talk the common cant about its powerlessness to yield a pleasure that will not cloy, and afford a true and solid satisfaction. But we get it by “ shady dealing,” or we use it selfishly, to the hardening of our own hearts, or cruelly, to the injury instead of the blessing of others; and is it wonderful that God’ s love is not reflected in the glitter of our gold, and that the light of our prosperity is darkness? How much of the eclipse of our lawful joy is the shadow of our own guilt and selfishness? But I repeat again, it is not necessary, or even probable, that your call, like that of Saul of Tarsus, is to become, as if crucified by Christ’ s Cross, dead to secular aims, common pleasures, and domestic comforts and attachments. Your vocation may be to live in and enjoy these for your own good and the benefit of men. And I know of no lawful business, the lowliest, that cannot be so administered as to do essential service to that gospel cause which is wide enough (if we were wide enough to understand it) to embrace all tendencies of good to the souls or the bodies of men; whose Author not merely taught the consciences, but fed the hunger of His followers, and to which every part of man is redeemed and precious. (John Irwin, M. A.)False grounds of boasting Putting out of sight their special reference, it will be a legitimate use of these words to regard them, in a general view, as condemnatory of all vainglory, as conveying to all persons who would boast themselves in things unworthy to be made ground of exultation. It is natural to man, in entire accordance with the law of his corrupt nature, thus to glory. He will pride himself on something that he has, or does, or is, too often unduly valuing himself on the score of it. Each human excellence, each worldly advantage, will, in turn, serve to elate the mind of its possessor. One man will esteem himself on account of his personal qualities, moral or intellectual; another will regard with complacency his rank and influence, his wealth, or other favourable outward circumstance. All which various things, unsuitable wherein to glory, are briefly summed up in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, and at the same time contrasted with that which is the one good and lawful ground of all human boasting: “ Thus saith the Lord: let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth” (9:23, 24). Thus, no human worth or greatness, no earthly satisfaction or comforts, nothing in the shape of good, that our present mortal life can yield, may be acquiesced in as an end, and rejoiced in for its own sake; on the contrary, man’ s real satisfaction and rejoicing must be in his God. As a sinner, more especially, his joy will consist herein, that he has “ seen the salvation of God” as revealed in the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ; and the language of exultation most becoming to him will be that uttered of old by the blessed Virgin: “ My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” But, although the talents, of whatever kind, which God has given to each of us, do not afford ground or excuse for self-complacency, still, rightly used, there is a lawful satisfaction in their possession. Recognized as from the hand of God, enjoyed in His fear and love, and diligently improved to His honour and glory, they may well be rejoiced in as the instruments of our happiness. It is only when they are thanklessly received, or used without reference to the purpose of Him who bestowed them, that they lose their value to us, or become worse than valueless. And the guilt of such ingratitude is only equalled by the folly of men’ s priding and vaunting themselves in the possession of that of which they have no certain tenure, and which, at any moment, may, in just judgment, be withdrawn from them. (John Bulmer, B. D. , Mus. Bac.)No Christianity without the Cross That celebrated divine, Jonathan Edwards, in giving his interesting diary of the life of Brainerd, the great American apostle, who was the means of converting thousands of the wild Indians, records that for some time poor Brainerd, in simplicity and not in guile, thought that the best way to make men sober was by preaching to them the attributes of God, laying hold of the functions of conscience, and keeping the Cross in the background. It is a remarkable fact that he found the whole system a failure; he could not produce one sober man. “ Then,” he says, “ I bethought me that I would go and preach Jesus Christ; and many a hard face relaxed, many an eye shed tears that had never wept before, and I found that the best way to make men sober was to make them spiritual;” and from henceforth he gloried in and held forth nothing but the Cross. Mistaken concealment of the Cross It is recorded of some of the Romish missionaries, that in their endeavours to bring over the heathen to Christianity, they scrupulously kept the crucifixion out of sight, considering.that such a topic would create prejudices with those whom they wished to convince; and it is well known that the Moravian missionaries--men of extraordinary piety and zeal--laboured for a long time in Greenland without at least giving prominence to the doctrine of the Atonement, believing it necessary to clear the way, and prepare men’ s minds, before they advanced the truth of Christ’ s death--a truth so likely, as they thought, to give fatal offence, even to the most degraded and barbarous. In each case the same feeling was at work--the feeling that there is something very humiliating in the Cross, and that human reason, and yet more, human pride must recoil from the thought of being saved by One who died as a malefactor; and you must all be aware that this doctrine is not one which commends itself at once to those whom it promises to rescue; on the contrary, it almost invariably excites opposition, because instead of flattering any one passion it demands the subjugation of all. Yet Christianity is valuable and glorious on those very accounts on which, in common estimation, it must move the antipathies of its hearers. He who keeps back the doctrine of the Cross, is all the while withholding that which gives its majesty to the Christian religion, and is striving to apologise for its noblest distinction. Instead of admitting what may be styled “ the shame of the Cross,” we should boldly affirm and exhibit its glory. The doctrine has only to be fairly exhibited and fully expanded, in order to its attracting the warmest admiration. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Meanness of self-boasting If I were a pupil of Titian, and he should design my picture, and sketch it for me, and look over my work every day, and make suggestions, and then, when I had exhausted my skill, he should take the brush and give the finishing touches, bringing out a part here and there, and making the whole glow with beauty, and then I should hang it upon the wall, and call it mine, what a meanness it would be! When life is the picture, and Christ is the Designer and Master, what unutterable meanness it is to allow all the excellences to be attributed to ourselves! (H. W. Beecher.)Christ crucified the preacher’ s theme The pulpit is intended to be a pedestal for the cross, though, alas! even the cross itself, it is to be feared, is sometimes used as a mere pedestal for the preacher’ s fame. We may roll the thunders of eloquence, we may dart the coruscations of genius, we may scatter the flowers of poetry, we may diffuse the light of science, we may enforce the precepts of morality, from the pulpit; but if we do not make Christ the great subject of our preaching, we have forgotten our errand, and shall do no good. Satan trembles at nothing but the Cross: at this he does tremble; and if we would destroy his power, and extend that holy and benevolent kingdom, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, it must be by means of the Cross. (J. A. James.)Glorying in the Cross The doctrine of the text is, that the death of Christ, as an expiatory sacrifice, is the glory of the true Christian. This is that great truth which there have been so many strenuous efforts in all ages to subvert. At first it was opposed by Jewish zealots, and by Gentile philosophers; and at present it is equally opposed by pharisaic speculatists in religion, who have no adequate views of the evil of sin, and the rights and honour of the Divine government. It is, however, the key-stone of the Christian arch; and it therefore becomes us to hold it in its place. I. Reasons for glorying in the Cross.1. We glory in the doctrine of the Cross--the justification of guilty men through a propitiatory sacrifice--because of its antiquity. Antiquity is no excuse for error. Its hoariness, like that of age, cannot of itself claim reverence. The oldness of an opinion is no proof of its truth. No opinion which affects the foundations of a religion, or stands connected with a sinner’ s acceptance with God, can be true, if it be new; if it be not as old as the human race itself, considered as fallen creatures. We glory in the antiquity of this doctrine. It was taught by patriarchs and prophets; the law of ceremonies was its grand hieroglyphical record; the first sacrifices were its types; the first awakened sinner, with his load of guilt, fell upon this rock, and was supported; and by the sacrifice of Christ shall the last saved sinner be raised to glory. 2. We glory in the doctrine of the Cross, because it forms an important part of the revelation of the New Testament. This is indeed our principal reason for boasting in it; for that which is revealed by God must be truth and goodness. 3. We glory in the Cross of Christ as affording the only sure ground of confidence to a penitent sinner. When preached to the broken in spirit it strikes hope into the deepest darkness of despair. It is life to the dead. 4. We glory in the Cross because of its moral effects. II. Let us attempt to derive some improvement from the whole.1. Is there any person here, who, allured by the infidelity or semi-infidelity of the age, has denied or derided this doctrine? You are ashamed of the faith of your forefathers; and what do you glory in now? In your new rational discoveries? 2. But I address more who hold and respect this doctrine. But do you still cherish the love of sin, and live under its power? O the intolerable hell of the reflection, that you have slighted a Redeemer! 3. I grant that practically the doctrine of the Cross is too often made to encourage indifference to religion. 4. Lastly, I recommend you to consider, that the grand practical effect we are to expect from the death of Christ, after we have received remission of sins through His blood, is to become crucified to the world; and that the world should be crucified to us. Happy state of those who yield to the full influence of the Cross! (Richard Watson.)The Cross a reality in our faith Outwardly we make much of the cross; we place it, and we rightly place it (for we are not ashamed of the symbol of our salvation), over the sacred table of our Lord, remembering the sacrifice of His death. We carve it, in polished marble or beautiful stone, for the gables of our churches or the graves which contain the blessed dead. We emboss it in wood or ivory on our prayer-books. We wear it, in gold, or silver, or jet, or bronze, on our breast. The Victoria Cross is our most prized decoration. The Geneva Cross protects our ambulances. The Church of England Temperance Society adopts the cross as its badge. A combination of three crosses makes up the Union Jack, our national standard, our prints are set in cross frames. All sorts of notices have the cross for their border. Very many, following the early Christians, use the sign of the cross, in the midst of the congregation. Lovely flowers and ripened corn are put together into this shape for the harvest ornamentation of the sanctuary; and pictures of our dying Lord, as He hung for us upon the tree of shame, are common things in our homes. Yet, after all, do we, as a nation, do we, as a Church, do we, as individual Christians, really glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? I. Is faith in an unseen Saviour influencing thoroughly, or at least more and more, your daily life and conversation? The fact that Christ died for us--for you, for me--is just as true and certain for us as it was for St. Paul. But do we, as he did, make Christ the great reality of the spiritual world, and determine thankfully to live and die for Him? II. Does the Cross become the true measure for our self-congratulation? How could we plume ourselves on our cleverness, or our quick progress, or our skill in music, or our power of language, or the influence which we have gained by money, or by eloquence, or by social talents, if we did but recollect that the triumph of the Son of God was won by His emptying Himself of His glory and bending to the lowest place--the death of the slave and the malefactor, apparently smitten of God and afflicted by the hiding away of His face? Truly, the higher we are, the more we are to humble ourselves, in order to grow like unto Him. III. Is the Cross abasing us, specially in the place where God’ s honour dwelleth, and wherein the presence of our once crucified, now glorious Lord, does chiefly manifest itself? IV. Is the Cross my secret joy? Does it really represent the attitude of my soul towards God? How deeply many of us must feel, that we want less of the Cross on the heart, and more of it in the heart! We want, not so much the display of the form, as the proof that we are not ashamed of the thing, when we are with the men and women of the world. V. Is the Cross our chief help in trouble--that whereon we can stay ourselves when all our earthly friends are taken away--because it invites us in our sorrow to “ the fellowship of His sufferings” ? (Canon G. E. Jelf.)Three crucifixions I. Christ crucified. In this Paul gloried so as to glory in nothing else, for he viewed it--1. As a display of the Divine character (2 Corinthians 5:19).2. As the manifestation of the Saviour’ s love (John 15:13).3. As the putting away of sin by atonement (Hebrews 9:26).4. As the breathing of hope, peace, and joy to the desponding soul.5. As the great means of touching hearts and changing lives.6. As depriving death of terror, seeing Jesus died.7. As ensuring heaven to all believers. In any one of these points of view, the Cross is a pillar of light, flaming with unutterable glory. II. The world crucified. As the result of seeing all things in the light of the Cross, he saw the world to be like a felon executed upon a cross.1. Its character condemned (John 12:31).2. Its judgment, contemned. Who cares for the opinion of a gibbeted felon?3. Its teachings despised. What authority can it have?4. Its pleasures, honours, treasures rejected.5. Its pursuits, maxims, and spirit east out.6. Its threatenings and blandishments made nothing of.7. Itself soon to pass away, its glory and its fashion fading. III. The believer crucified. To the world, Paul was no better than a man crucified. If faithful, a Christian may expect to be treated as only fit to be put to a shameful death. He will probably find--1. Himself at first bullied, threatened, and ridiculed.2. His name and honour held in small repute because of his association with the godly poor.3. His actions and motives misrepresented.4. Himself despised as a sort of madman, or of doubtful intellect.5. His teaching described as exploded, dying out, etc.6. His way and habits reckoned to be puritanic and hypocritical.7. Himself given up as irreclaimable, and therefore dead to society. Conclusion:1. Let us glory in the Cross, because it gibbets the world’ s glory, and honour, and power. 2. Let us glory in the Cross, when men take from us all other glory. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Reasons for glorying in the Cross It is a subject of rejoicing and glorying that we have such a Saviour. The world looked upon Him with contempt; and the Cross was a stumbling-block to the Jew, and folly to the Greek. But to the Christian this Cross is the subject of glorying. It is so because--(1) of the love of Him who suffered there; (2) of the purity and holiness of His character, for the innocent died there for the guilty; (3) of the honour there put on the law of God by His dying to maintain it unsullied; (4) of the reconciliation there made for sin, accomplishing what could be done by no other oblation, and by no power of man; (5) of the pardon there procured for the guilty; (6) of the fact that through it we become dead to the world, and are made alive unto God; (7) of the support and consolation which go from that Cross to sustain us in trial; and (8) of the fact that it procured for us admission into heaven, a title to the world of glory. All is glory around the Cross. It was a glorious Saviour who died; it was glorious love that led Him to die; it was a glorious object to redeem a world; and it is unspeakable glory to which He will raise lost and ruined sinners by His death. Oh, who would not glory in such a Saviour! (Albert Barnes.)The Cross the foundation of the Bible If you have not yet found out that Christ crucified is the foundation of the whole volume, you have hitherto read your Bible to very little profit. Your religion is a heaven without a sun, an arch without a keystone, a compass without a needle, a clock without spring or weights, a lamp without oil. It will not comfort you; it will not deliver your soul from hell. (Bishop Ryle.)The glory of the Cross Do not be satisfied with so many others only to know the Cross in its power to atone. The glory of the Cross is, that it was not only to Jesus the path to life, but that each moment it can become to us the power that destroys sin and death, and keeps us in the power of the eternal life. Learn from your Saviour the holy art of using it for this. Faith in the power of the Cross and its victory will day by day make dead the deeds of the body, the lusts of the flesh. This faith will teach you to count the Cross, with its continual death to self, all your glory. Because you regard the Cross not as one who is still on the way to crucifixion, with the prospect of a painful death, but as one to whom the crucifixion is past, who already lives in Christ, and now only bears the Cross as the blessed instrument through which the body of sin is done away (Romans 6:6, R.V.). The banner under which complete victory over sin and the world is to be won is the Cross. (Andrew Murray.)The Cross of Christ And we reckon it of importance, that we should occasionally shift the ground of debate: and that thus, in the place of admitting what may be styled, “ the shame of the Cross,” we should boldly affirm and exhibit its glory. With all our admissions, that at the first hearing there would be something repulsive in the doctrine of Christ crucified; we believe that this doctrine has only to be fairly exhibited and fully expanded, in order to its attracting the warmest admiration. I. The reasons why we should glory in the Cross of Christ. II. The strength of the particular reason by which St. Paul justifies his boasting. Now we need hardly observe to you, that so far as Christ Jesus Himself was concerned, it is not possible to compute what may be called the humiliation, or the shame of the Cross. It is altogether beyond our power to form any adequate conception of the degree in which the Mediator humbled Himself when born of a woman, and taking part of flesh and blood. We read nothing of shame in His becoming a man; but we do read of His shame as dying as a malefactor. Indeed, we are not so to exult as to lose those feelings of godly contrition which a sight of the cross should always produce. But, nevertheless, though of all men perhaps St. Paul was the least likely to forget or underrate the cause of sorrow presented by the Cross, this great apostle could speak of glorying in the Cross--yea, could shun as a great sin, the glorying in anything beside. Why think ye was this? We would first observe, that the greater the humiliation to which the Son of God submitted, the greater is the demonstration of the Divine love towards man. We show you, then, the Cross! Aye, the blazing of the sun, or the milder shinings of the moon, or the processes of vegetation, or the seatings of mind, are not a thousandth part so demonstrative of the love in which sinners are beheld as this emblem of shame, this memento of ignominy. We proceed to observe to you, that although to the eyes of sense there be nothing but shame about the Cross, yet spiritual discernment proves it to be hung with the very richest triumphs. It is necessary to be admitted, that in one point of view there was shame, degradation, and ignominy in Christ dying on the cross; but it is equally certain that in another there was honour, victory, and triumph. We are told that “ through death Jesus Christ destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” and that “ He made peace by the blood of the Cross.” We know that in dying the Redeemer broke off the yoke from the neck of the human population, wrenched from Satan the sceptre which he had long wielded as the god of this world, and scattered the seeds of immortality amid the dust of the sepulchres. Indeed, I know you may tell me, that the result may be glorious, and yet the means through which it is effected degraded and ignoble; and we can well- believe, that had the Redeemer appeared at the head of the heavenly hosts; had He come the first time as He shall the second, with a thousand times ten thousand of ministering spirits; and had He met Satan and his angels with all the retinue of evil, and overthrown them in some such battle as that of Armageddon in the last day; we can well believe that those who now see little but shame in the Cross would have exulted in the victory of the Cross. Yet what is called shame is one great element of glory. It would have been comparatively nothing, that as the leader of the celestial army Christ should have overthrown the enemies of God and man. The splendid thing is, that He trod the wine-press alone, and that of the people there was with Him none. To have destroyed death by living would have been wonderful; but to have destroyed it by dying--oh, this is the prodigy of prodigies, the glory of glories! But hitherto we have spoken only comparatively: we have rather shown that we can have no such great cause for glorying as the Cross, than that we should glory in nothing but the Cross. It is to the latter extent that the apostle carries his determination. It is a truth which we have frequently laboured to set plainly before you, that we are indebted to the mediation of Jesus for all we have in the present life, as well as for all we hope for in the next. Yes, man of science, thine intellect was saved for thee through the Cross! Yes, father of a family, the endearments of home were rescued by the Cross! Yes, admirer of nature, the glorious things in the mighty panorama retain their place through the erection of the Cross! Yes, ruler of an empire, the subordination of the different classes, the links of society, the energies of government, are all owing to the Cross! And when the mind passes on to the consideration of spiritual benefits, where can you find one not connected with the Cross? If we can affirm all this of the Cross (and there is no exaggeration, for every blessing we have, and every hope we possess, is derived to us through the sacrifice of the Mediator), then to glory in the Cross is to glory that God giveth us all things richly to enjoy; that He heareth our prayers; and that to understand, to know Him aright, is to love Him. It is to glory that there is yet fertility in the soil, yet strength in the intellect, that grace is bestowed on us here, and that a kingdom is ready for us hereafter. I observe in the last place, that there is a special reason given by the apostle for his glorying in the Cross; and which, though perhaps included in those which have been advanced, yet demands from its importance, a brief and separate consideration. St. Paul gloried in the Cross, because by it “ the world was crucified unto him, and he unto the world.” What are we to understand by this two-fold crucifixion? The world was to St. Paul as a crucified thing, and St. Paul was to the world as a crucified thing. They were dead one to the other. The apostle regarded the world, with its pomps, its shows, its pleasures, its riches, its honours, with no other feelings than those with which he would have regarded a malefactor fastened to a cross, and whose condition could present no desire for participation; or the world appeared no more glorious, no more attractive to Paul than it would to a man in the agony of dissolution, who, suspended on the cross, would look down with a kind of insensibility on objects which before were precious in his sight. Thus the world was to the apostle as a crucified thing; or, to express the same idea somewhat differently, the apostle was to the world as a crucified man: so that if we put away the metaphor, the thing affirmed is, that St. Paul was completely a new creature, with affections detached from things below, and fixed on things above; and he ascribes to the virtues of the Cross this change in himself, and then considers the change as a sufficient vindication of his resolution, that he would glory in nothing but the Cross. For a moment let us examine these points; they are full of interesting instruction. It is one of the great fruits of Christ’ s passion and death, that the life-giving influences of the Holy Ghost are shed on us abundantly. It is, therefore, through the Cross that we become new creatures, crucified to the world, and the world crucified unto us; and it is through the sacrifice presented on the cross that those influences are derived to us, without which they could do nothing for our moral renovation. There is more to be said than this. Would you learn to despise the pomps and vanities of earth, to hate sin and to withstand evil lusts? Then must you be much on the mount of crucifixion; much with Jesus in His last struggle with evil. Who would yield to a corrupt passion, who would indulge himself in unlawful gratification, who would hearken to base temptations if his eye were on Christ, “ wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” ? The sight of Jesus pierced by and for our sins is the great preservative against our yielding to the pleadings of corrupt nature. So true is it, that by the Cross of Christ the world is crucified to us, and we unto the world. Can a stronger reason be assigned why we should glory in the Cross of the Redeemer? By nature we are prisoners--we would glory in being free; we are powerless--we would glory in being mighty; we are doomed to eternal misery--we would glory in being heirs of happiness. Liberty, strength, immortality, all flow out of the crucifixion of the world to man, and of man to the world. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The Cross of Jesus Christ ;--To glory is one of the most characteristic propensities of our nature. It is seen in every class of society, and in every portion of the human race. From the highest dignitary to the lowest beggar, from the enlightened and refined citizen to the savage in whose mind scarcely a spark of reason appears, all discover something in which they think they can glory. And in what do they glory? In foolish toys, of which they should rather be ashamed than proud. God designed to give man something in which he could reasonably glory: He gave him “ the Cross of Jesus Christ.” This meditation will be devoted to the examination of the new right of glorying which has been granted to man. On this subject there are two opinions: one is the apostle’ s opinion, which we shall sustain. The other is the opinion of the world, which we shall refute. I. The apostle’ s opinion.1. The first reason which led him to glory in the Cross was because he saw the character and glory of God fully displayed in it. 2. But if St. Paul gloried in the Cross of Christ because it revealed to him all the glory of God, he gloried in it quite as much because it taught him his own wretchedness. Let the proudest of men draw near; let him stand at the foot of that cross erected for his salvation, and what will become of his pride? The Cross destroys that deceiving glass which magnifies us in our own eyes. 3. He glories in it especially because it raises him to the level of true greatness. 4. But notice the motive which the apostle himself assigns. “ God forbid,” he says, “ that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” This, my brethren, is indeed a glorious advantage of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Yes, my brethren, the death of the Redeemer is the only thing that can make you hate your own evil nature. It is the true remedy for your disease. But the Cross of Christ will also crucify the world to you; that is, it will destroy in you all the attractions of the vanities of this world. You cannot love both the Cross and the world. But the last motive which induced St. Paul to exclaim, as he was advancing into Asia, Greece, or Italy, or crossing the sea, that he desired no other glory, was his conception of the power of that Cross, and of the triumphs which await it. The great apostle knew that it was all-sufficient to give immortality to those who had fallen into the deepest misery. He knew that it had redeemed a great people, both in the cities of Galatia, to which he wrote, and in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. He knew its future destiny, that kings and nations would come and prostrate themselves before it, that “ the people would bring their sons and their arms;” and that it had received the ends of the earth for an inheritance. II. The opinion of the world. Is this your language? If such was St. Paul’ s opinion, what is yours? There is perhaps no truth which encounters so much opposition from the world as this. How many there are who say, on the contrary, I will glory in anything rather than the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! And why is it thus? Perhaps you ask, “ Is it necessary to think so much of the Cross, when there are so many other subjects in religion of more importance than this?” Of more importance than the Cross! We might here remind you of what we have just said, but we prefer to refute you by your own words. You wish to set aside the Cross as a thing of little importance; and yet you exclaim, “ We cannot conceive of such a thing as that Cross, that expiatory death of God’ s only Son; it is too much for our reason.” How can such decisions be made to agree? How can the Cross be at once so contemptible and so astonishing? If it so greatly surpasses your comprehension, why do you esteem it so lightly? “ But,” you will say, “ it is this that perplexes us. If the Cross be true, then it is certain that the foundation of all our pretensions must give way, and that we must glory in it alone. But is it true?” But, without seeking a witness in heaven, is not earth itself sufficient? Think of the most striking events of antiquity; not a vestige of them remains, and it is only through the ancient chronicles which have been handed down to us that we are acquainted with their existence. But it is not so with the expiatory death of Christ; this fact is living in the world. The present state of the world bears testimony concerning it. It is from the blood which flowed from that cross that all those nations have sprung which have unfurled the sacred banner over the globe which they rule. Among them everything speaks of it. Shall we tell you why you will not know it? Because you do not feel the need of it. This is the point to which the whole case refers. We seize with eagerness the aid which we think to be necessary, but we despise it if we think it superfluous. The Cross of Jesus Christ is designed to purchase eternal happiness for you; but you would fain purchase it for yourselves. The Cross of Jesus Christ is designed to procure sanctification; but you would fain procure it yourselves. But perhaps you say--as some may say with truth--“ I do not deny the Cross of Christ.” That is true; you believe it, but partially. You do not deny the fact, but you evade it. You dare not believe, fully and openly, that the Son of God was nailed to the cross for your sake; and therefore, so far as its influence on your heart is concerned, it is a fact of no importance. Forsake this ruinous semi-Christianity. Any form of Christianity of which Christ crucified is not the centre to which everything tends and from which everything proceeds is a false Christianity. Why should you not believe what St. Paul believed? (J. H. M. D’ Aubigne, D. D.)The methods of glorying in the Cross of Christ I. First, I am to show that whatever excellencies, outward advantages, or privileges it may be our lot to enjoy, yet it misbecomes us, as we are Christians, to glory in them. I do not say that we are to be insensible of such advantages, to have no relish of them, no complacence in them; for neither reason nor religion require such a conduct from us. They are the good things of life, given us by the Author of all good, on purpose that we should, in due measure and season, enjoy them. They may be used, if they are not over-valued; if we do not suffer our affections to cleave too closely to them, and our minds to be in any degree elated and swelled by a reflection upon them. The Christian religion, by the tendency of all its doctrines (particularly that of Christ crucified), by the manner of its progress, and the mean characters of those who first promulgated and embraced it, seems to have been so throughout contrived as effectually to mortify and beat down any undue complacence we may have in ourselves on such occasions. II. Secondly, it highly becomes us to glory in the Cross of Christ, as I proposed in the second place to show; for since by the alone merits of His Cross we gain all the advantages of the Christian dispensation, are reconciled to God, and made capable of heaven and happiness, we cannot but glory in that Cross, if indeed we value ourselves upon our being Christians. III. Thirdly, by what methods, and in opposition to what enemies of the Cross of Christ, we are obliged to glory in it.1. Now, the first step requisite towards our complying with this obligation is, frequently to meditate on the sufferings and death of Christ. We glory in nothing but what we esteem and value; and what we value much we shall be apt often and attentively to consider (1 Timothy 3:16). We should turn it on all sides, and consider it as the proper subject of our awe and wonder, our joy and pleasure, our gratitude and love, till we have warmed our hearts with a lively sense of the inestimable benefits conferred on us by the means of it. 2. A second step towards fulfilling our obligation to glory in the Cross of Christ is, if we endeavour to imitate the perfect example He hath set us, and to form in our minds some faint resemblances of those meek graces and virtues which adorn the character of our suffering Saviour. And this step is a natural consequence of the former; for imitation will in some degree spring from attention. 3. A third instance and proof of our glorying as becomes us in the Cross of Christ is, if we frequently and worthily celebrate the memorial of His death, the blessed sacrament of His body and blood. 4. In the fourth place, we may be said, very properly said, to glory in the Cross of Christ, when we zealously assert and vindicate the true doctrine of His satisfaction against all the enemies and opposers of it; against the false notions of the Jews, and the false religion of the Mahometans; against the mischievous opinions of some deceived or deceiving Christians; against the vain pretences of reason and philosophy; and against the proud insults and blasphemies of atheists and infidels. (Bishop Atterbury.)The Surety’ s Cross The death of the cross has always been, above every other, reckoned the death of shame. The fire, the sword, the axe, the stone, the hemlock, have in their turns been used by law as its executioners; but these have, in so many cases, been associated with honour, that death by means of them has not been reckoned either cursed or shameful. Not so the cross. Not till more than four thousand years had gone by did it begin to be rumoured that the cross was not what men thought it, the place of the curse and shame, but of strength and honour and life and blessing. Then it was that there burst upon the astonished world the bold announcement, “ God forbid,” etc. From that day the Cross became “ a power” in the earth; a power which went forth, like the light, noiselessly yet irresistibly, smiting down all religions alike, all shrines alike, all altars alike; sparing no superstition nor philosophy; neither flattering priesthood nor succumbing to statesmanship; tolerating no error, yet refusing to draw the sword for truth; a power superhuman, yet wielded by human, not angelic, hands; “ the power of God unto salvation.” Let us look at the Cross as the Divine proclamation and interpretation of the things of God; the key to His character, His word, His ways, His purposes; the clue to the intricacies of the world’ s and the Church’ s history. I. It is the interpreter of man. By means of it God has brought out to view what is in man. In the Cross man has spoken out. He has exhibited himself, and made unconscious confession of his feelings, especially in reference to God--to His Being, His authority, His character, His law, His love. The Cross was the public declaration of man’ s hatred of God, man’ s rejection of His Son, and man’ s avowal of his belief that he needs no Saviour. If any one, then, denies the ungodliness of humanity, and pleads for the native goodness of the race, I ask, What means yon Cross? II. It is the interpreter of God. It is as the God of grace that the Cross reveals Him. It is love, free love, that shines out in its fulness there (1 John 3:16). Nor could any demonstration of the sincerity of the Divine love equal this. It is love stronger than shame, and suffering, and death; love immeasurable, love unquenchable. Truly, “ God is love.” But righteousness as well as grace is here. We learn God’ s righteous character in many ways. We learn it from its dealings with righteousness, as in the case of all unfallen ones; we learn it still more fully from its dealings with sin, as in our fallen world; but we learn it, most of all, from its dealings with both of these at once, and in the same person, on the Cross of Christ; for here is the righteous Son of God bearing the unrighteousness of men. III. It is the interpreter of law. It tells us that the law is holy, and just, and good; that not one jot or tittle of it can pass away. The perfection of the law is the message from Calvary, even more awfully than from Sinai. The power of law, the vengeance of law, the inexorable tenacity of law, the grandeur of law, the unchangeable and infrangible sternness of law--these are the announcements of the Cross. IV. It interprets sin. The Cross took up the ten commandments, and on each of their “ Thou shalts” and “ Thou shalt nots,” flung such a new and Divine light, that sin, in all its hideousness of nature and minuteness of detail, stood out to view, as it never did before, “ the abominable thing” which Jehovah hates. It showed that sin was no trifle which God would overlook; that the curse was no mere threat which God could depart from when it suited Him. It showed that the standard of sin was no sliding scale, to be raised or lowered at pleasure; that the punishment of sin was no arbitrary infliction; and that its pardon was not the expression of Divine indifference to its evil. V. It interprets the gospel That good news were on their way to us was evident from the moment that Mary brought forth her first-born, and, by Divine premonition, called His name “ Jesus.” Goodwill to men was then proclaimed. But not till the Cross is erected, and the blood is shed, and the life is taken, do we fully learn how it is that His work is so precious, and that the tidings concerning it furnish so glorious a gospel. VI. It interprets service. We are redeemed that we may obey. We are set free that we may serve--even as God spoke to Pharaoh, “ Let My people go, that they may serve Me.” But the Cross defines the service, and shows us its nature. It is the service of love and liberty; yet it is also the service of reproach, and shame, and tribulation. We are crucified with Christ. It is not His cross we bear. None but He could bear it. It is a cross of our own; calling us to self-denial, flesh-denial, and world-denial; pointing out to us a path of humiliation, trial, toil, weakness, reproach, such as our Master trod. (H. Bonar, D. D.)Glorying in the Cross Let us look for a very little to the expression, “ the Cross of Christ.” This, my brethren, has different meanings in Scripture. Sometimes it signifies simply the wooden cross to which our Saviour was nailed--the accursed tree on which He hung; sometimes, again, it is used in a figurative sense, to signify those sufferings which our Saviour endured on the cross--the death which He died on it. In a wider sense still, it is employed to designate the whole of His sufferings both of His life and death, of which sufferings His death was the consummation. Lastly, the expression is not unfrequently used to denote the doctrine of Christ’ s Cross; in other words, the way of salvation through a crucified Saviour; and it is in this sense chiefly that we are to understand it in the verse before us. I. Let us consider the nature and description of Paul’ s feelings towards the Cress of Christ. “ God forbid,” he says, “ that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” You all know, my brethren, what it is to glory in any object. It is just to have a very high esteem for it. For example, if we speak of a man glorying in his good name, his riches, or his friends, we just mean that he esteems these things very highly, that he sets a great value upon them. The consequence is that he thinks and talks continually about them, and nothing sooner excites his indignation than to hear them undervalued or dispraised. When Paul says, then, that he gloried in the Cross of Christ, you are simply to understand him as meaning that he placed a high value upon it, that he prized it greatly. The consequence was, that that Cross was the all-engrossing theme of his meditation, his conversation, and his preaching. Observe, however, more closely the nature of the apostle’ s glorying, as described in the text: “ God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. This shows his glorying in the Cross to have been an exclusive glorying. The Cross not only appeared to him as an object worthy of esteem, but it appeared to him as the only such object. We often see men taken up with several objects at once. No doubt there cannot well be more than one object on which the mind is supremely set, but there may be others on which a considerable share of attention is at the same time bestowed, and for which a strong attachment is also conceived. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Galatians 6:15 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.A new creature I. What the apostle here means by the new creature. It is not a mere reformation, but a creation--not a partial, but a complete, entire, and radical change. This new creation is of God. It is--1. Divine in its origin. Its commencement, its progress, its consummation, belong to God. 2. God has various methods in effecting this change. Here we might mention the afflictive dispensations of Providence; the admonitions and expostulations of friends. 3. It is a total and universal change. It is complete in its purpose. II. In what ways this important change is discovered and manifested. It is the new world of grace, springing into existence with all its rich furniture, and increasing in beauty. The subject of this glorious change is led to the adoption--1. Of new views. No new faculties are bestowed. There is what is called the eye of the mind, which is the faculty by which the mind views the objects presented to its notice. 2. In the new creation there is a change in the affections. These, it is true, existed before, but now they flow in a new channel, and are directed to other objects. 3. In the new creation new principles are implanted. The new creature is governed by the principles of the Christian religion. Love and gratitude to God, and benevolence to mankind at large. The principles of the new creature are gathered from his relation to eternity. 4. In the new creation there will be a new and holy life. There the change will be visible. “ By their fruits ye shall know them” (see Ezekiel 36:25-27; 1 John 3:9-10). (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)The recreation of the soul This world was created beautiful, and holy, and good. To understand, therefore, in any degree what this moral creation of holiness and God-life is, we must study the characteristics of the first material creation of this world. And that must be in a great degree its type and model. Now the first thing which we may notice in the creation of our system, as recorded in Genesis, is that the Three Persons in the Holy Trinity were all separately and collectively engaged. As then the first creation was the work of each Person in the blessed Trinity, so we are led to believe and feel sure that the moral and spiritual creation of any one soul must be by the whole Trinity. If we may say it reverentially, and venture into those deep mysteries, the Father wills, and plans, and ordains; the Son executes; the Holy Ghost applies and appropriates the restoration, the re-formation of the body and soul. Therefore in Trinity you receive it. Another feature which we may observe in primeval creation is that it was gradual and progressive. Six days it took, which some understand to be six years of time. First the inanimate, then the animate, then the rational, then the spiritual and immortal. Just so we must expect it to be in that new creation for which we look. We must, therefore, have patience. It is a gradual, a slow process. But, remember, it is a sure one. The selfish man will be full of sympathy and energy in good work with all around him. He who thought himself the first will be content always to be the last. The miser will be the generous man. He who seldom had God in his thoughts, and perhaps really never said a prayer, will be in constant communion with God, either silent or expressed. Where the world was once, holy things will be. Heaven and earth will change their places,--heaven being the substance, and earth the shadow. A new creature will testify to “ a new creation,” and the Creator will be glorified. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The new creature The particle “ but,” in the front of my text, is exclusive and restrictive; it excludes everything in the world from pretending to avail anything, from being believed to do us any good. The substance of all the apostle’ s discourse, and the groundwork of mine, shall be this one aphorism--Nothing is efficaciously available to salvation but a renewed, regenerated heart. I. It is observable, that our state of nature and sin is in Scripture expressed ordinarily by old age, the natural sinful man; that is, all our natural affections that are born and grow up with us, are called “ the old man,” as if, since Adam’ s fall, we were decrepit and feeble, and aged as soon as born; as a child begotten by a man in a consumption never comes to the strength of a man, is always weak, and crazy, and puling, hath all the imperfections and corporal infirmities of age before he is out of his infancy. Now, the new principle, by which not the man, but the new man, the Christian lives, is, in a word, the Spirit of God; which unites itself to the regenerate heart, so that now he is said to be a godly man, a spiritual man, from the God, from the Spirit; as before a living reasonable man, from the soul, from the reason that informed and ruled in him; which is noted by that distinction in Scripture betwixt the regenerate and unregenerate, expressed by a natural, or animal, and a spiritual man.1. Whence comes the new creature? From above. Since Christ’ s ascension, the Holy Ghost, of all the Persons in the Trinity, is most frequently employed in the work of descending from heaven; and that by way of mission from the Father and the Son, according to the promise of Christ, “ The Comforter whom I will send from the Father.” 2. Where does the new creature lodge? In the heart of man, in the whole soul, ruling and guiding it in all its actions, enabling it to understand and will spiritually. As the soul of man sees in the eye, hears in the ear, understands in the brain, chooses and desires in the heart; and, being but one soul, yet works in every room, every shop of the body, in a several trade, as it were, and is accordingly called a seeing, a hearing, a willing, or understanding soul; thus doth the habit of grace, seated in the whole, express and evidence itself peculiarly in every act of it, and is called by as several names as the reasonable soul hath distinct acts or objects. In the understanding it is, first, spiritual wisdom, and discretion in holy things; opposite to which is νοῦςἀδόκιμος, an unapproving, as well as unapproved or reprobate mind, and frequently in Scripture spiritual blindness. Then, as a branch of this, it is belief or assent to the truth of the promises, and the like. In the practical judgment it is spiritual prudence in ordering all our holy knowledge to holy practice; in the will it is a regular choice of whatsoever may prove available to salvation, a holy love of the end, and embracing of the means with courage and zeal. Lastly, in the outward man, it is an ordering of all our actions to a blessed conformity with a sanctified soul. In brief, it is one principle within us doth everything that is holy--believes, repents, hopes, loves, obeys. And, consequently, is effectually in every part of body and soul, sanctifying it to work spiritually, as a holy instrument of a Divine invisible cause; that is, the Holy Ghost that is in us and throughout us. 3. When does this new principle enter? It comes into the heart in a threefold condition. (1) As a harbinger, it comes to fit and prepare us for itself; trims up, and sweeps, and sweetens the soul, that it may be readier to entertain Him when He comes to reside; and this He does by skirmishing with our corruptions before He comes to give them a pitched battle; He brandishes a flaming sword about our ears, and, as by a flash of lightning, gives us a sense of a dismal, hideous state, and so somewhat restrains us from excess and fury--first, by a momentary remorse, then by a more lasting, yet not purifiying flame, the spirit of bondage. (2) When the Spirit comes a guest to lodge with us, then He is said to enter; but, till by actions and frequent obliging works He makes Himself known to His neighbours, as long as He keeps His chamber, till He declare Himself to be there, so long He remains a private, secret guest. And that is called the introduction of the form, that makes a man to be truly regenerate, when the seed is sown in his heart, when the habit is infused; and that is done sometimes discernibly, sometimes not discernibly, but seldom, as when Saul was called in the midst of his madness, he was certainly able to tell a man the very minute of his change, of his being made a new creature. (3) The third condition in which this Spirit comes into our hearts is as an inhabitant, or housekeeper. The Spirit, saith Austin, “ first is in us, then dwells in us: before it dwells it helps us to believe; when it dwells it helps, and perfects, and improves our faith, and accomplishes it with all other concomitant graces.” II. And for the necessity of renewedness of heart; to demonstrate that, I will only crave of you to grant me that the performance of any one duty towards God is necessary, and then it will prove itself; for it is certain no duty to God can be performed without it. For it is not a fair outside, a slight performance, a bare work done, that is accepted by God: if it were, Cain would deserve as much thanks for his sacrifice as his brother Abel; for in the outside of them there was no difference, unless perhaps on Cain’ s side, that he was forwardest in the duty, and offered first. But it is the inside of the action, the marrow and bowels of it, that God judges by. Be the bulk and skin of the work never so large and beautiful to the eye, if it come not from a sanctified, renewed, gracious heart, it will find no acceptance, but that in the prophet, “ Who hath required it at your hands?” In brief, the fairest part of a natural man, that which is least counterfeit, his desire and good affections to spiritual things (which we call favourably, natural desires of spiritual obedience), these, I say, are but false desires, false affections.1. They have no solidity or permanency in the will, are only fluid and transitory; some slight sudden wishes, tempests and storms of a troubled mind, soon blown over; the least temptation will be sure to do it. They are like those wavering prayers without any stay of faith; “ like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.” 2. That being which they have is counterfeit; they are not that which they are taken for. We are wont to say that acts are distinguished by their objects: he sees truly which judges the thing to be that that it is. It is true, indeed, that another man sees that he takes blue for green, but he does not see truly; so also he only willeth a good thing that wills that in it which is truly good. Now the natural man, when he is said to choose spiritual things, as heaven, happiness, and the like, desires not a spiritual but a carnal thing: in desiring heaven, he desires somewhat that would free him from misery in happiness, a natural or moral good, that would be acceptable to any creature under heaven: and so a Turk will desire paradise, and that very impatiently, in hope that he shall have his fill of lust there. (Dr. Hammond.)The new creature I. Let us examine what is implied in “ a new creature.” Four explanatory questions may, be asked upon this subject.1. In what sense is a Christian a new creature? Is it a physical or a moral one? It is only a moral one. New faculties are not given him; but his faculties have new qualities and applications. Compare Paul after his conversion with Paul before his conversion: his body and soul, his learning and abilities, and the ardour of his disposition, continued the same; and yet, was there ever a being so different? 2. How far does this change extend? A new creed, or a new denomination, does not make a man a new creature. The new creation is not a change from vicious to virtuous only; but from natural to spiritual, from earthly to heavenly, from walking by sight to walking by faith. 3. Is this work produced instantaneously, or is it gradually advanced to perfection? Scripture describes Christians as going “ from strength to strength:” as “ renewed day by day:” as “ changed into the same image, from glory to glory.” 4. Who is the Author of this new creation? Creation is a work of omnipotence, and belongs exclusively to God. II. Observe what is to be inferred from its unrivalled importance. And, “ if in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature,” this should regulate your inquiries--your prayers--your praise--your esteem, and your zeal. (W. Jay.)The family title The great difference between the bulk of professors and real Christians is this, the former are patched, and mended, and decorated, and ornamented, and transformed; nay, not transformed, but rather changed, or metamorphosed into the appearance of something that they are not. Will you bear with a familiar simile before I enter immediately on my text? Suppose that in some of our Sunday Schools the children had a doll that they had nursed and dressed very prettily, after their own fashion, and some one had beaten it, and bruised it, and torn its dress, and then painted it again, and put it on a new dress, they could not say it was a new doll, it would only be a mended one. This is just the character of religion in our day--it has no new life. What, then, does avail? “ A new creature.” I. The title of a real Christian. A new creature--a new creation--the workmanship of God. The prominent characteristic of this new creature is spirituality. It is the reigning principle, and it will manifest itself wherever he goes, whatever he does. II. The household which all such new creatures constitute. The living Church of the living God. The Temple of Jehovah. The Body of Christ. III. Their employments and their destiny. Now if God has made you a new creature, the first end and employment He has in view, is the glory of His own name. Ye are not your own, says the apostle, but ye are bought with a price--wherefore, glorify God in your bodies, and in your spirits, which are God’ s.” Again, “ Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God, giving thanks to His name.” Look again, for a moment, at the very salvation of the soul itself. More ought to be said and taught about the perfections of Deity being glorified when I get home, than the mere fact of my escaping hell and getting into rest. The latter is glorious to me, but the former is glorious to Him. Moreover, among the employments, and the end of God’ s new creation, is the obtaining of spiritual blessings. Are you, a new creature, employed thus in God’ s vineyard? Then do you ask how every day is employed for such a purpose? One thing more, and I close--the destiny. I dwell upon that with especial delight, and it fires my soul with sacred joy. What is it? Why just to dwell with my God. I do not want any other explanation. I know I must enter heaven to understand it. (Joseph Irons, D. D.)New creation alters the whole man “ A new creature” does not mean that one clothes himself differently, and puts on a different air from before; but it means the renewal of the mind which is brought about by the Holy Ghost. From that there follows an alteration of the outer life. For where the heart through the gospel obtains a new light, there it never fails that the outward senses also are altered. The ears have there no longer pleasure in hearing human dreams and fools’ tidings, but God’ s Word alone. The mouth no longer boasts of a man’ s own works and righteousness, but of God’ s compassion in Christ Jesus. This, then, is an alteration, which consists not in words, but in work and in power. (Luther.)Source and result of new creation This spiritual renewal springs out of living union to Christ, and it is everything. For it re-enstamps the image of God on the soul, and restores it to its pristine felicity and fellowship. It is not external--neither a change of opinion, party, or outer life. Nor is it a change in the essence or organization of the soul, but in its inner being--in its springs of thought and feeling, in its powers and motives--by the Spirit of God and the influence of the truth (2 Corinthians 5:17). This creation is “ new” --new in its themes of thought, in its susceptibilities of enjoyment, and in its spheres of energy; it finds itself in a new world, into which it is ushered by a new birth. (John Eadie, D. D.)A new creature. Re-creation not merely reformation There is such a thing as what we call reformation. This necessarily presupposes the indulgence in some bad habit, or the following in some wicked course of life. When it is said a man has reformed, it is well understood that he has abandoned his previous evil habits, and become a different man. And you may suppose this reformation to be so complete and radical, that the man may be regarded as being a new creature as touching all his relations to human society. He will, if he is thoroughly reformed, be a different husband, a different father, a different friend, a different member of society; and his influence, in all these relationships of life, will be for good. In this sense we understand what reformation is. He may be all this without becoming a religious man. He may be all this, and yet remain an absolute stranger to the renewing power of that Divine grace which alone constitutes him a Christian, and places him in a condition of safety before God. If we were to trace the origin of this reformation, we should see that it sprang from some prudential policy; we should see that the man had been influenced by the power of external relationships, or that such influences were brought to bear upon him, that he was enabled to realize the terrible end to which the course of life he was pursuing must inevitably lead. Or he may have felt the growing effects of these vicious habits, and that they were taking away even the power of self-indulgence, and the capacity for relishing forbidden pleasures. And so he changes his course of life. But that does not constitute him a religious man. Many mistake reformation for reformation, a new creation; but there is a great difference between the two. The change of which we have spoken does not constitute a man a new creature. It merely affects his relations with his fellow-men; it does not produce the slightest change in his relationship to God. He is no safer in his virtue than he was in his viciousness. If he is to be saved, he must be made a partaker of God’ s renewing grace. (Wm. Y. Rooker, M. A.)The non-essential and the necessary in genuine Christianity I. The non-essential.1. No ritualism is of any avail. (1) Not even the most ancient.(2) Not even the most Divine.(3) Not even the most significant. 2. Not that ritualism is to be wholly condemned; but that it is of minor importance. 3. The same applies to the isms of men. Neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, Conformity nor Nonconformity, availeth anything. Christianity is (1) independent;(2) older;(3) greater; (4) sublimer than all denominations. II. The necessary.1. Unless a man is a new creation it matters not (1) what theology he accepts.(2) What ceremonial he observes.(3) What church he attends. 2. Every man who is in Christ Jesus is a new creation. (1) He has a new life, new loves, aims, hopes, fears.(2) He has a new sphere. (a) He is no longer materialistic but spiritual. (b) Even the material in him is full of spiritual significance. (c) He walks after the Spirit. (d) His citizenship is in heaven. (D. Thomas, D. D.)The new creation is-- I. God’ s work and therefore--1. Complete as being by the activity of the undivided Trinity, (1) The Father (2 Corinthians 4:6).(2) The Son (Ephesians 2:6).(3) The Holy Ghost (2 Corinthians 3:18). 2. Present (John 11:25-26).3. Glorious. II. Effected by union with christ.1. This is not-- (1) Membership in any ecclesiastical society.(2) The mystic sprinkling of water.(3) To be attained or tested by ritualistic performances or theological beliefs. 2. But by faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26). III. Not perfect, but is the beginning of a new life which is to grow to perfection. (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)I. Negatively.1. It is not a common work, but a creation.2. No innovating humour.3. Not the restraint of the old man, but something new.4. Not moral virtue, and what we call good nature.5. Not outward conformity to the law of God, but something inward.6. Not a partial change of the inward man. II. Positively.1. A new mind-- (1) New apprehensions.(2) New judgments and assents.(3) New valuations.(4) New designs.(5) New inventions.(6) New reasonings and thoughts.(7) New consultations. 2. A new will. (1) New inclinations.(2) New intentions.(3) New elections.(4) New determinations. 3. A new heart, affections, etc. (D. Clarkson, B.D.)I. The efficient cause of it--God (Ephesians 2:10). II. The act--creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). III. The effect.1. New qualities (2 Corinthians 4:17; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:23-24). 2. Gracious qualities. (1) Not the natural endowments or moral qualifications, but(2) Divine, and hence holy (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). IV. The subject--the whole soul, not one part or faculty (1 Thessalonians 5:23). (D. Clarkson, B. D.)New creations I. Christ himself, a new Person: His Being and character were unique. II. The world, by Christ’ s advent: a new era: new thoughts, hopes, aspirations, possibilities, institutions, for the race. III. The christian: the new man through Christ’ s crucifixion: a new heart, view, purpose, interest, and attainment in life. (Dean Stanley.)The Christian a new creature There is a churchyard where the passenger who reads the inscriptions on the tombs, that stand up amid the long rank grass beneath the shadow of waving elms and an old gray steeple, will find one to surprise him; which, though quaint in form, I doubt not is true in substance. Here no angel flying through the heavens sounds a trumpet; no figure of old Time, with bald head, shoulders a scythe or shakes an hour-glass; no crossbones rudely carved, nor sexton’ s spade, nor grinning skull, give point to the trite “ Memento Mori.” Stranger still, the monument which is raised to the memory and virtues of one person bears the date of more than one birth: with long years between, it says, speaking in name of the dead, I was born the first time on such a day, and born the second time on such another day of another year. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Conversion more than restraint A vicious horse is none the better tempered because the kicking straps prevent his dashing the carriage to atoms; and so a man is none the better really because the restraints of custom and providence may prevent his following that course of life which he would prefer. Poor fallen human nature behind the bars of laws, and in the cage of fear of punishment, is none the less a sad creature; should its Master unlock the door we should soon see what it would be and do. A young leopard which had been domesticated, and treated as a pet, licked its master’ s hand while he slept, and it so happened that it drew blood from a recent wound; the first taste of blood transformed the gentle creature into a raging wild beast; yet it wrought no real change, it only awakened the natural ferocity which had always been there. A change of nature is required for our salvation--mere restraints are of small value. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Galatians 6:16 And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.The Christian’ s walk and rule 1. Christianity is a walk; a free and voluntary motion, an uniform and even motion, a progressive motion, a constant motion. 2. This walk is a walk by rule. A Christian is not a lawless person to range up and down as fancy leads him. 3. The rule is the law of the new creature. The new creature, in the principles and workings of it, is made the ground, the pattern and direction of our obedience, and we frame and square all the actions of our lives according thereunto. 4. The blessed privileges belonging to those who thus walk--peace and mercy. 5. Such are the true Israel: a thousand times greater privilege than to be the children of Abraham’ s flesh. (W. Burkitt.)The true canon of Christianity This “ rule” -- I. Does not consist in party watchwords. II. Does consist in a spiritual change of the inner man (2 Corinthians 5:17). III. Practically followed brings blessing. “ Peace and mercy.’’ (Canon Vernon Hutton.)Canonical obedience I. The rule.1. Glorying in the Cross. 2. The new life. 3. Called a rule of faith and practice because by it all doctrines and acts are to be examined. 4. We are to walk by it warily, circumspectly, in order and measure, without swerving, but making straight steps to our feet. II. The blessedness of walking by this rule.1. Peace. (1) With God (Romans 5:1).(2) With ourselves.(3) With the world. 2. Mercy--all spiritual blessings flowing from the love and favour of God in Christ. (R. Cudworth.)Peace and righteousness Peace may be sought two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it when he built his altar in Ophrah, naming it “ God send peace,” yet sought this peace that he loved as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent, in God’ s way: “ The country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon.” And the other way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it when he gave the king of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that “ his hand might be with him.” That is, you may either win your peace or buy it--win it by resistance to evil; buy it by compromise with evil. You may buy your peace with silenced consciences; you may buy it with broken vows; buy it with lying words; buy it with base connivances; buy it with the blood of the slain, and the cry of the captive, and the silence of lost souls. (Ruskin.)Christianity a rule of life I. That Christianity is a rule of life. “ And as many as walk according to this rule.”1. Christianity is a Divine rule. Christianity is of God. 2. Christianity is a perfect rule. “ The law of the Lord is perfect.” 3. Christianity is an unchangeable rule. “ The word of the Lord standeth for ever.” 4. Christianity is a precious rule. “ The law of Thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.” 5. Christianity is an influential rule. “ Converting the soul.” II. That conformity to Christianity as a rule of life imparts great blessings.1. Harmony of soul. “ Peace be on them.”2. The favour of God. “ And mercy” 3. Relation to the children of God. “ And upon the Israel of God.” (J. O. Griffiths.) Galatians 6:17 From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.Freedom from human criticism A man who is growing old claims for himself in these words the freedom and responsibility of his own life. He asks that he may work out his own career uninterfered with by the criticism of his brethren. He bids them stand aside and leave him to the Master whom he serves, and by whom he must be judged. How natural that demand is I How we all long at times to make it! How every man, even if he dare not claim it now, looks forward to some time when it must be made. He knows the time will come when, educated perhaps for that moment by what his brethren’ s criticism has done for him, he will be ready, and it will be his duty to turn aside and leave that criticism unlistened to and say: “ From henceforth let no man trouble me. Now I must live my own life. I understand it best. You must stand aside and let me go the way where God is leading me.” When a man is heard saying that, his fellow-men look at him and they can see how he is saying it. They know the difference between a wilful and selfish independence, and a sober, earnest sense of responsibility. They can tell when the man really has a right to claim his life; and if he has, they will give it to him. They will stand aside and not dare to interfere while he works it out with God. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)The cry of absolute self-devotion Magnificent outburst of a heart filled to the overflow with the spirit of impassioned consecration. The man who utters it has made up his mind so firmly that he is conscious there is not the faintest possible chance of his ever changing his determination. He has come to so certain and final a conclusion that he tells those around: “ You may as well save yourselves the trouble of ever arguing with me or seeking to alter me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. And these marks are only so many seals upon a resolution deliberately taken, and so awfully intense in its nature, that you may as well argue with a rock, and expect to move it by force of your logic, as anticipate effecting the slightest alteration in my determined purpose.” It is the language of a wholly consecrated man. He has now given himself up to his Master without reserve. All in Paul belongs to Christ. There is not an atom of his manhood now which he feels he can claim as his own. It is lost time, lost trouble, and lost energy, for any to attempt to change his decision, or make him swerve to the right hand or to the left. “ Let no man trouble me. I am given, up to Christ, and I bear His brand upon me.” The word he uses is “ stigmata.” “ I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus.” This was the brand the slave used to wear, to show he was the property of his master. If you look at the context, you will see how magnificent a climax this verse forms. Throughout the Epistle St. Paul had been arguing with a Church that had yielded him but little joy. He seems now virtually to say, “ I have taught you the gospel, I have preached Christ to you. Yea, I have so preached Him that He has been evidently set forth crucified before your eyes. I have denounced the folly of circumcision in the flesh. I have used every possible means to lead you wholly, solely, to Christ. Now you must take your own way. I cannot do more. I cannot say more. But be it known unto you, O Galatians, whichever way you may go, I cannot follow you if you go adrift from the gospel; for God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The text is the language of a man who has not only hoisted his colours, but also deliberately nailed them to the mast. He has driven the nails right through. Pulled down those colours never can be. Displayed on any other masthead, never. “ Christ is my Master, and Christ alone. For Him I live; for Him, if necessary, I will die. Let none attempt to make me swerve. I am past hope of change.” (A. G. Brown.)The marks of the Lord Jesus. Explanation of the figure It was the custom, in those days of darkness and cruelty, to prick or brand upon the body of a slave some distinctive letter or other mark of ownership, by which he might be deterred from attempting flight, or quickly traced and reclaimed in the event of his escape. More especially was this brand used in eases of theft or crime; as a mark of disgrace, a perpetual badge of degradation and contempt. In either case it stamped a poor, fallen, outcast creature as what he was; a slave at least--a man who through the misfortune of his birth or his country had never possessed, or had forfeited, the right of free will and free agency; perhaps one who through his own fault had sunk lower still, and had added to the involuntary misery of servitude the culpable appendage of crime and ignominy. To “ bear in his body the marks” of any one, was to carry about with him everywhere one or both of the two reproaches. This man is a slave, and, This man is a convict. And was St. Paul then not ashamed to apply to himself such a figure? Was St. Paul some poor degraded being, who cared not whether he was a slave or a freeman, an innocent man or a criminal? We must draw a distinction here. The essence of slavery is to have no free will; to be the possession, the property, of another; to enjoy nothing, to have nothing, to do nothing, and to be nothing, save at the beck, command, will, of another. A dreadful state, if that other be a man like myself. But suppose my master be my Creator, Redeemer, Lord, and God. Suppose me His by a right antecedent to my being, a right only to be set aside by my self-abandonment and self-ruin. Will it then be any disgrace to bear His mark in my body, or to be incapable of severing myself from His all-watchful and all-beneficent ownership? St. Paul thought not. (Dean Vaughan.)I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.--The stigmata He was growing an old man. Anybody who looked at him saw his body covered with the signs of pain and care. The haggard, wrinkled face, the bent figure, the trembling hands; the scars which he had worn since the day when they beat him at Philippi, since the day when they stoned him at Lystra, since the day when he was shipwrecked at Melita; all these had robbed him for ever of the fresh, bright beauty which he had had once when he sat, a boy, at the feet of old Gamaliel. He was stamped and marked by life. The wounds of his conflicts, the furrows of his years, were on him. And all these wounds and furrows had come to him since the great change of his life. They were closely bound up with the service of his Master, to whom he had given himself at Damascus. Every scar must have still quivered with the earnestness of the words of Christian loyalty which brought the blow that made it. See what he calls these scars, then. “ The marks of the Lord Jesus.” He had a figure in his mind. He was thinking of the way in which a master branded his slaves. Burnt into their very flesh they carried the initial of their master’ s name, or some other sign that they belonged to him, that they were not their own. That mark on the slave’ s body forbade any other but his own master to touch him or compel his labour. It was the sign at once of his servitude to one master, and of his freedom from all others. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)The marks of the Lord Jesus I. The text is an expression of that rest in love which those alone can have whose “ life is hid with Christ in God.” The immediate motive of its utterance here is a certain sense of powerlessness in swaying the minds of others. What is argument to him? What is the judgment of man? What is any outward evidence? Has he not within the surest of all proof, the experience of the highest faith? “ From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ.” II. What are the “ marks” here signified? Whatever they are, no doubt they are proofs that he is Christ’ s, and Christ is his. But what are they? Elsewhere, he speaks of his labours and sufferings in the cause of Christ; and that too on an occasion like the present, when some were disparaging him, and making invidious comparisons between himself and the earlier apostles. He is obliged to say in his own cause, “ I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.” Then he speaks of his severe sufferings as signs of his apostleship. Are these uppermost in his mind now? I think not. Again, he speaks to the Corinthians of the vision vouch-safed to him--“ How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” And he concludes, “ In nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing. Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.” Is it to the same that he is referring now? Or, once more, does he allude to the many converts whom he had made, signs, if there be any, that Christ is with him? Well might his heart rest in thoughts like this, as when he wrote to the Church at Corinth--“ Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel;” “ And the seal of my apostleship are ye in the Lord.” Or when he calls the Philippians “ my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown.” Is this the mark of the Lord Jesus which he looks at, and takes comfort at the sight? No. I think not. It is something closer to him than this. Sufferings may find a man and leave a man separate from Christ: “ Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it is nothing.” Of visions he says, “ It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory;” and lest he should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given unto him a thorn in the flesh. Of miracles and mighty works, One greater than Paul said--“ Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” And as to making converts, here is his own solemn caution, “ Lest when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” “ I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” What are these marks? They are the stigmata, the marks (as the Greeks would say, whose word it was), burnt into a slave, the brand set on a runaway slave: a sign graven upon the very body, as inseparable as a birth-mark; one that has indeed been imposed in after years, and by another hand, but now become part and parcel of the man himself, as his own flesh and bone. They are the stigmata, the marks (as Christians would say, in memory of Him who bore them on Himself), of Christ their Master: His marks on their body, as signs that they are members of His Body, in all purity and chastity and holiness, as being “ temples of the Holy Ghost;” His marks on their temper, as those who have taken up their cross and borne it after Him in self-denial and mortification, in patience, in forgiveness, in humility, in cheerfulness; His marks on their soul, as being set free from condemnation by the atoning mercy of the Saviour, as being made partakers of the precious fruits of His sacrifice upon the cross--the mark of justification, and the mark of sanctification--the imputed righteousness of Christ, the imparted and inherent righteousness wrought in them by the Holy Ghost: His marks on their spirit, being full of all spiritual affections--love, joy, peace, patience, amid the trials of earth, longing for the security of heaven, the present enjoyment of an almost perfect rest in the arms of God; in short, “ a life hid with Christ in God.” III. In the next place observe, that this is not an unusual thought with St. Paul, and will not admit of being explained away as a momentary instance of highly-wrought enthusiasm. It was his life! Did it seem to any a mischievous intrusion of imagination into holy things, to speak of love imagining the Saviour’ s wounds to be traced in the Christian’ s heart? Then how do you read St. Paul’ s words to the Colossians--“ I, Paul, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh;” or these to the Philippians--“ That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death;” and again to the Galatians--“ I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me” ? These are the marks branded by the fire of God’ s love upon his heart. “ What marks have I of the Lord Jesus?” and again, “ Without these marks will Christ know me for His own?” They are brands burnt into the very body, so no outward thing will satisfy; nothing that your hands have done, nothing that the world can measure, for it is beneath all the dress and apparel of a so-called religious life, of which the world takes cognizance. They are part and parcel of yourself, so they can be nothing which can be taken up and laid down at will. Think how great is the risk of self-deceit; because that mark is not genuine unless it be found in the very inmost circle of your life. (G. W. Furse, M. A.)A branded body What a testimony does the outward man give to the inner life--the body becomes the tell-tale of the soul! We bear in our body the brand of the master whom we serve. The horny hand of the labourer tells that he is the slave of unceasing, unpitying toil. The dinted brow of the merchant declares what master it is that sits over him in the counting-house as he pores over his ledger, and anxiously balances his gains and losses. The thoughtful features of the student reveal his servitude to a higher master--the love of knowledge and truth. The sailor’ s weather-beaten brow, the soldier’ s scars or dismembered frame, tell of a more arduous service; and a grateful country can confer on them no decoration more honourable than those which they have already themselves acquired. On many a once robust and comely frame sickness and pain, or grief or anxiety, have wrought their work, have set their seal, too deeply as we are apt to think. In others the wrinkled countenance, the trembling hands, the whitening hair, the dim eye, the dull ear, are signs of the submission that we must all make to the universal law of God, the law of Nature--not to be repined at, not to be evaded, however heavily it may weigh upon us. But there are disfigurements of the poor body which betoken no such honourable or natural servitude. There are marks to be seen deeply stamped on cheek and lip and eye, signs of sottishness and sensuality, signs that the body, which was formed to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, is given over to be the slave of selfish indulgence, of appetites and passions that are meant to serve, not to rule. If the life has been given to God’ s service, and the soul has been filled with the love of Christ, our will subjected to His will, our spirit pervaded by His Spirit, intent on the fulfilment of His gracious purposes towards ourselves and all mankind, there will scarcely fail to be some outward signs, in the meek and chastened deportment, in the melting voice and kindling eye--the doors and windows of the soul--through which even the careless observer may become aware of the purity of the spirit that dwells within, of the Master who rules it, and who in return for the service which He asks gives peace and joy, and the sense of perfect freedom. And we may be sure, however they may be overlooked or looked down upon by us, these ornaments of the outer man are in the sight of God of great price. They are in part a fulfilment of the command which the apostle gives us, that we should endeavour to glorify God in our body as well as our spirit, for both are God’ s, created by Him for His glory, owned by Him now in their low estate, to be hereafter blessed and purified by Him, so as to partake of His glory. And they whose spirits are now increasing in grace and holiness, which shine through their earthly tabernacle, they make the poor body, be it ever so much a wreck from age, from sickness, or from pain--they make it more beautiful before God than the most perfect youthful form, marred as yet by no suffering, chastened by no trials, not convinced of sin, of righteousness, or of the judgment to come. (Prebendary Humphrey.)Marks of the Lord Jesus I. The word-picture here presented.1. The figure, “ slave brands.”2. The facts (1 Corinthians 4:9; 1 Corinthians 4:15; 2 Corinthians 11:23; 2 Corinthians 11:30).3. The challenge. II. The suggestion the picture makes.1. He who follows the Lord Jesus must expect that some will try to “ trouble” him.2. He whose “ marks” are most conspicuous will be troubled the least.3. He who has “ marks” may take comfort in knowing how much his Master paid for him.4. He who is owned may remember that his Master owns and recognizes the “ marks” also.5. He that has no “ marks” is either a better or a poorer Christian than St. Paul.6. Satan outwits himself when he gives a believer more “ marks.”7. A sure day is coming when the “ marks” will be honourable. (American Homiletic Review.)Signs of struggle in life Here is a man whose body shows the signs of toil and care. I will not read the long, familiar catalogue. The whitened hair, the cautious step, the dulness in the eye, the forehead seamed with thought; you know them all, you watch their coming in your friend, you feel their coming in yourself. What do they mean? In the first and largest way they mean life. The difference between this man and the baby, in whose soft flesh there are no branded marks like these, is that this man has lived. But then they mean also all that life has meant; and life, below its special circumstances, always means the mastery in obedience to which all the actions have been done and all the character has taken shape. For instance, here among the white careworn features there are certain lines which tell, beyond all misunderstanding, that this man has struggled and has had to yield. Somewhere or other, sometime or other, he has tried to do something which he very much wanted to do, and failed. As clear as the scratches on the rock which make us sure that the glacier has ground its way along its face, so clearly this man lets us know that he has been pressed and crushed and broken by a weight which was too strong for him. What was that weight? If it were only disappointment, then these marks are the marks of simple failure. If the weight were laid on him as punishment, then these marks are marks of sin. If it were a weight of culture, then the marks are marks of education. If the weight was the personal hand of the Lord Jesus Christ teaching the man that his own will must be surrendered to the will of a Lord to whom he belonged; if the Lord Jesus Christ has been drawing him away from every other obedience to His obedience; then these marks which he bears in his body are the marks of the Lord Jesus. It is as if a master, seeking for his sheep, found him all snarled and tangled in a thicket, clinging to and clung to by the thorns and cruel branches. He unsnarls him with all tenderness, but the poor captive cannot escape without wounds. He even clings himself to the thorns that hold him, and so is wounded all the more. When the rescue is complete and the master stands with his sheep in safety, he looks down on him and says, “ I need not brand you more. These wounds which have come in your rescue will be for ever signs that you belong to me. No other sheep will carry scars just like them, for every sheep’ s wanderings, and so every sheep’ s wounds, are different from every other’ s. Their pain will pass away, but the tokens of the trials through which I brought you to my service will remain. They shall declare that you are mine. You shall bear in your body my marks for ever.” (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)Marks of ownership These “ brands” were used--1. In the case of domestic slaves. With these, however, branding was not usual, at least among the Greeks and Romans, except to mark such as had attempted to escape, or had otherwise misconducted themselves, and such brands were held a badge of disgrace. 2. Slaves attached to some temple, or persons devoted to the service of some deity were so branded. 3. Captives were so treated in very rare eases. 4. Soldiers sometimes branded the name of their commander on some part of their body. The metaphor here is most appropriate, if referred to the second of these classes. Such a practice at all events cannot have been unknown in a country which was the home of the worship of Cybele. (Bishop Lightfoot.)The language of a true-hearted veteran Although the first and the chief meaning of “ stigmata” is the brand the slave bore to show that he was the property of another, yet the word also meant any scar, and I am inclined to think that the apostle had this also in his mind when he said, “ Don’ t you trouble me. I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus.” There were the weals--the red lines-through the scourgings. There were the bruises through the stonings. I think Paul says to all, “ It is no use your trying to turn me back. You are not talking to any young recruit. I have fought in the battle. I have been wounded in the conflict. I have tried and tested my Captain in actual war. Look at the scars I have on me.” And methinks his eyes would flash as he would say, “ Yes, I have scars already, and I am willing to have a great many more. Why, look at what I have suffered for Him. Do you think I am going to give Him up now? Look at what I have endured for Him. Do you think that, after bearing all the scourgings and buffetings and loneliness that I have, I am likely to be turned on one side now?” He was proud of his scars. Do you see what a beautiful expression it is--“ the marks of the Lord Jesus” ? We may say, “ Paul, it is a most disgraceful thing to be whipped. Why, you have on your back the brand of infamy.” He only smiles and says, “ No, I have on my back the marks of the Lord Jesus.” “ Why, Paul, look at your wrist; there is a deep, blue line round it where the manacle has been. You have the mark of the fetter on you.” Says the apostle: “ You mistake it; I have the mark of the Lord Jesus.” He looked upon these scars as so many badges of honour. Go, walk through Greenwich Hospital tomorrow, or go down to Chelsea and talk to some of the old pensioners. Are they ashamed of their scars? Why, I remember how a few months back we had, at one of our meetings, a brother who had served in the Crimean war, and he showed me how a bayonet had gone in here and come out there; how there was a mark in his arm where a ball had gone right through, and a scar in his face where the sword had cut. I think he told me that he had about twenty scars on him, and his eyes flashed fire as he told the story. And have not you, brethren, some marks of the Lord Jesus of this sort? Have not you been wounded in conflicts willingly endured for the Master’ s sake? Have not you known what it is to be jeered at for Christ’ s sake? Have you not had to stand a rattling artillery of scoffs in your workshop? Have not some of you deep scars now through being cruelly misrepresented, and you knew it was for Christ’ s sake? I will say to you as Paul said to the Church at Galatia, “ Have you suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain?” Oh, by the scars of the past, I pray you be heroes in the present. I demand of you a complete consecration. Will you yield to the demand which He here makes by me? If some of us have had to say, “ Lord, I am afraid that the mark is not as clear as it used to be,” then I will tell you what we had better do. We had better go and kneel down at His feet, and say, “ Lord Jesus, brand us anew. Put Thy mark on us again. Thine we are, and on Thy side. Brand us. Put the iron upon us, though it burn us. Oh, do not listen to our cries, but put a deep indelible mark, so that in business life, in home life, in church life, men and women shall say, ‘ Lo, there are men who carry the stigmata of their Lord upon them.’“ May God fill us with this holy impassioned earnestness--this sense of having taken an irretrievable step, which shall lead us to say to all about us, “ From henceforth let no man trouble me. From henceforth clear the road, for I bear in my body the brand of the Lord Jesus.” The Lord put His brand on us afresh for His name’ s sake. Amen. (A. G. Brown.)Marks of servitude A slave once carried a message written in punctures on the skin of his head, which had been previously shaved bare to receive the writing. When his hair was grown so as to hide the letter, he went unsuspected; and the person to whom the message was sent, having shaved the letter-carrier’ s head, read the message. The slave in old times often carried in his body (as the poor slave does still where slavery is rampant) the marks of his master, just as the sailor in our own time loves to have printed on his arm the initials of his own name and ship, the figure of his crucified Redeemer, or the anchor and cable. St. Paul carried in his body the marks of the master to whom he belonged. The weals made by the Roman lictor’ s rods, with which he was thrice beaten; the red lines of those two hundred stripes which had been laid on him in the Jewish synagogues; the scars left by the stones which had bruised and beaten him down, so that he was left for dead,--these “ marks of the Lord Jesus he carried with him, the proofs as to whose he was and whom he served.” Legend of St. Francis The biographer of St. Francis of Assisi says, that after having fasted for forty days in his solitary cell, and passed the time in a fervour of prayer and ecstatic contemplation, transported almost to heaven by the ardour of his desires--then he beheld, as it were, a seraph with six shining wings, bearing down upon him from above, and between his wings was the form of a man crucified. By this he understood to be figured a heavenly and immortal intelligence, subject to death and humiliation. And it was manifested to him that he was to be transformed into a resemblance to Christ, not by the martyrdom of the flesh, but by the might and fire of Divine love. When the vision had disappeared, and he had recovered a little from its effects, it was seen that in his hands, feet, and side, he carried the wounds of the Saviour. Service the road to honour When the Spartan king advanced against the enemy, he had always with him some one that had been crowned in the public games of Greece. And they tell us that a Lacedaemonian, when large sums were offered him on condition that he would not enter the Olympic lists, refused them. Having with much difficulty thrown his antagonists in wrestling, one put this question to him, “ Spartan, what will you get by this victory?” He answered with a smile, “ I shall have the honour to fight foremost in the ranks of my prince.” The honour which appertains to office in the Church of God lies mainly in this--that the man who is set apart for such service has the privilege of being first in holiness of example, abundance of liberality, patience of long-suffering, zeal in effort, and self-sacrifice in service. ( C. H. Spurgeon.)The marks of the Lord Jesus I. The marks--slave brands.1. The body of the Christian is itself a badge of servitude to Christ.2. Baptism is another.3. So is bodily persecution and mental. II. The inference to be drawn.1. No man can legitimately doubt our Christianity and therefore need not be told about it.2. We need not trouble ourselves, we ever bear the incontestible evidences of being Christ’ s. In conclusion:1. Let no man infer that singularity makes a Christian.2. The reward of bearing the marks. (1) Hope.(2) Happiness. (Dean Vaughan.)Every believing Christian hath these 1. The crown of thorns pierces his head when his sinful conceits are mortified. 2. His lips are drenched with vinegar and gall, when sharp and severe restraints are given to his tongue. 3. His hands and feet are nailed when he is, by the power of God’ s Spirit, disabled to the wonted courses of sin. 4. His body is stripped when all colour and pretences are taken away from him. 5. His heart is pierced when the life-blood of his formerly reigning corruptions is let out. (Bishop Hall.)The broad-arrow of service When North America was merely an English colony the very timber of the country was sorted out, and wherever a valiant pine or noble oak, fit for the masts or for the ribs of ships was found, the arrow--the Broad Arrow as it was called--was stamped upon it. The tree was in no respect different, dendrologically speaking, after the arrow was put on from what it was before; but when people saw the Broad Arrow on the tree they said, “ That is the king’ s” ; or, “ It does not belong to us: it belongs to the king” ; and it had attached to it a sense of royalty, a sense of appropriation; and it took to itself something of the dignity which belongs to real royalty. Now it is not an arrow; it is a cross that is stamped on us--the sign and symbol of the purchase of suffering, by which we are Christ’ s and manifest it to the world. (H. W. Beecher.)The glory of the marks of the Lord Jesus As it is a glory to a soldier to have received many wounds and to have many scars in his prince’ s quarrel, and for the defence of his country; so it is a glory for the Christian soldier to have the marks of the Lord Jesus in his body, as of wounds, scourges, and imprisonments for the truth. But if these be the glory of Christ’ s servants, what shall we say of those who not only have their consciences seared as with a hot iron, but have the marks of Bacchus and Venus in their bodies. (R. Cudworth.)Entire consecration best The well-defined spiritual life is not only the highest life, but it is also the most easily lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than the half. It is the man who tries to make the best of both worlds who makes nothing of either. And he who seeks to serve two masters misses the benediction of both. But he who takes his stand, who has drawn a boundary line, sharp and deep, about his religious life, who has marked off all beyond as for ever forbidden ground to him, finds the yoke easy and the burden light. So even here to die is gain. (H. Drummond, M. A.)Honourable marks John Clark, of Meldon, in France, being for Christ’ s sake whipped three several days, and afterwards having a mark set in his forehead, as a note of infamy, his mother beholding it, encouraged her son, crying with a loud voice, Vivet Christus ajusque insignia,” “ Blessed be Christ, and welcome be these prints and marks of Christ.” I conclude this discourse with that saying of Pericles, “ It is not gold, precious stones, statues, that adorn a soldier, but a torn buckler, a cracked helmet, a blunt sword, a scarred face.” Sceva is renowned for this, that at the siege of Dyrrachium he so long alone resisted Pompey’ s army that he had two hundred and twenty darts sticking in his shield, and lost one of his eyes, and yet gave not over till Caesar came to his rescue. (Trapp.) Galatians 6:18 Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.Amen. The apostolic benediction By this last word he seals all that precedes it. He says not merely “ with you” as elsewhere; but, “ with your spirit,” thus withdrawing them from carnal things, and displaying throughout the beneficence of God, and reminding them of the grace which they enjoyed, whereby he was able to recall them from all their Judaizing errors. For to have received the Spirit came not of the law’ s penury, but of the righteousness which is by faith, and to preserve it when obtained came not from circumcision but from grace. Farther, he concludes his exhortation with a prayer, and makes mention of grace and the Spirit on this account, namely, both as addressing himself to the brethren, and as supplicating God that they might continue to enjoy these blessings, thus providing for them a twofold security. For this very thing, namely, both prayer and complete teaching, became to them as a double wall. For teaching, reminding them of what benefits they enjoyed, they rather kept them in the doctrine of the Church, and prayer, invoking grace, and exhorting to an enduring constancy, permitted not the Spirit to depart from them. And He abiding in them, all the error of such doctrines as they held was shaken off like dust, in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Chrysostom.)The blessing of Christ’ s grace Dwell as we will on the brighter side of things, life is very hard, and men and women are hard on one another, and we ourselves are growing hard, and that is the worst of all. We need something to soften, in no enfeebling way, the hardness of life, and of men, and of our own heart. And most of the blessings we seek of our own will, weaken our souls; and in the weakening, make us harder in the future. But the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, if we could win it and take it, softens all things by making us stronger towards goodness and truth and righteousness and love. What is it? What is His grace? I. Whatever this grace is, it does not come from one who is ignorant of all we need.1. He has known to the full the weight of human suffering, and the blessing of His grace that is with us is brought home to us by that knowledge. He can comfort because He knows. He has known what temptation is, and can feel with the agony of our resistance, and through that with our weakness. He has not known remorse or the loss of good, but, through His infinite pain in contact with sin, and His infinite pity for those enthralled by it, He can understand our unhappiness in guilt. By knowledge of sorrow He can bring blessing to sorrow. 2. Nor has He known joy less. In early life, as boy and youth, He knew all our simple and pure joys. In manhood, when He first went out to the world, we have often traced the joy of enthusiasm in His work. In later days these only lived in memory, but another joy took their place--the mighty joy of universal love, the joy of giving up all things for all men--that wonderful and mystic joy which we faintly realize whenever out of the depths of personal suffering we rise into the glorious life of self-surrender because we love. II. Christ’ s fitness to give comes not only of knowledge of our need, but also of His victory over all that is evil and weak in our need. It is the Victor who can give grace and strength to those whom the same foes attack. In order to conquer, win His grace who has conquered, and who will give it to you.1. Kindness, the goodwill of love. The first meaning of the invocation in the text is: “ The loving kindness which belonged to Christ, which formed part of His character, be with you, and form part of yours.” Filial tenderness. Penetrating love and insight. Nay, more than this: to be perfect, it ought to reach, through frank forgiveness, those who injure us; through interest in the interests, ideas, and movements of human progress, those who are beyond our own circle, in our nation, nay, even in the world; and finally all men, those even who are our bitterest foes, through desire that they should have good and be good. 2. The kind of beauty we express by the word charm. “ The beautiful charm of Christ be with you all” --the charm of harmony of character, the musical subordination and accord of all the qualities and powers of His nature, so that the whole impression made was one of exquisite and various order in lovely and living movement. Sensitiveness to the feelings of others, and to all that is beautiful. An eye to see traces of the Divine loveliness everywhere; faith to believe in it; power to draw it forth. Conclusion: Pray for this grace. It will make you at one with all that is tender, pitiful, dear, and sweet in human lovingkindness, and with all that is sensitive and delicate and graceful in manner and speech, and will create in you an harmonious soul. It will make you at one with moral good, just and true and pure. It will take all that is living in humanity, all that is fair, all that is moral, and link them to and complete them by uniting them to the love of God, and to God’ s love for all men; so that to human love and moral love and imaginative love will be added the spiritual love which gathers them all into perfection. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.)The apostle’ s farewell wish The apostle concludes the Epistle with his ordinary farewell wish; wherein, having designated them by the name of “ brethren,” he wishes that God’ s grace and favour, with all spiritual benefits flowing from it, and purchased and conveyed to them through Jesus Christ, might reside, both in the effects and sense of it, in their spirits and whole soul; and he affixes his “ Amen,” as an evidence of fervency, and confidence in his wish, and as a confirmation of the whole doctrine delivered by him in this Epistle.1. The more of prejudice a minister apprehends to exist in a people or person against himself and his doctrine, the more ought he to endeavour by affectionate insinuations, and by frequent and seasonable reiterations of loving force, to root out those prejudices. 2. The main thing in people for which ministers ought to care, is the spirit and inward man, as that for which God mainly calls (Proverbs 23:26), and being kept right, will command the outward man and keep it right also (Proverbs 4:23). (James Fergusson.)Parting words This is his last farewell. He ends the Epistle with the same words wherewith he began. As if he said: “ I have taught you Christ purely, I have entreated you, I have chidden you, and I have let pass nothing which I thought profitable for you. I can say no more, but that I heartily pray that our Lord Jesus Christ would bless and increase my labour, and govern you with His Holy Spirit for ever.” (Luther.)Grace I. Grace is the sum of all other blessings. II. Grace is obtained through Christ. III. Grace is the greatest happiness we can desire for others. (J. Lyth. , D. D.)Grace for all I. Grace is needed by all. II. Grace is provided for all. III. Grace is offered to all. IV. Grace is supplicated for all. V. Grace may be enjoyed by all. (J. Lyth, D. D.)The grace of Christ It is of little moment whether by this “ grace” we understand that free love and favour which He always bears in His heart to all that believe in His name, or all that kindness--all those heavenly and spiritual blessings--in the communication of which He manifests this love, this free favour. In any case, to possess His grace is an inconceivable blessing. To be the objects of the kind regards of one so excellent, so amiable, so kind, so wise, so faithful, who can estimate the value of this? It was the apostle’ s wish that the Galatian Christians might every day enjoy new proofs of this unaltered, unalterable lore. He does not pray simply that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with them, but that it may be with their spirit. The leading object of the whole Epistle is to withdraw them more from external things, and fix them on things spiritual; and such a prayer is a most appropriate conclusion. (John Brown, D. D.)Grace through Christ alone Here is the concluding wish of Paul for the Galatians, and it is quite in harmony with the teaching of the Epistle. In opposition to all that the false teachers would have the teachers believe respecting righteousness through the sacrifices of the law and obedience to its precepts, Paul had set before them Christ crucified as the sole foundation of all their hopes for eternity, and proved to them that by faith, and by faith alone, all the benefits of Christ’ s death are to be obtained and appropriated. And now he concludes with the affectionate wish that they might constantly and richly experience in their own souls the truth of the gospel, through “ the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” dwelling in their hearts. May every true believer, both with respect to himself and to the whole Church of Christ, say with the apostle, “ Amen!” (John Venn, M. A.)It is much to be observed that in the original the word “ Brethren” stands at the end of the sentence in a very unusual and emphatic position. After all the severity and strength of the Epistle, he concludes with this word of tenderness and affection. (Bishop Moberly.)After all his sorrow, amazement, censure, and despondency, he parts with them in kindness; after all the pain they had cost him, yet were they dear to him; and ere he lifts his hand from the parchment, it writes as a parting love-token--Brethren. (John Eadie, D. D.)The benediction As the apostle began with grace (chap. 1:3), so he ends with grace, to teach us-- I. That our salvation is placed in it alone for the beginning, progress, and accomplishment thereof. For--1. Election is of grace (Romans 11:5).2. Vocation (2 Timothy 1:9).3. Justification (Romans 4:24).4. Glorification (Romans 6:23). II. That Christ is to have all the glory of this grace. III. That all our salutations and greetings, adieus and farewells, ought to be founded in the grace of Christ. The conclusion: It is an epitome of the Epistle. I. Christ “the Lord” of the house is opposed to Moses who was but a servant. II. The “grace” of Christ is opposed to the merit of works. III. The “spirit,” the true seat of grace, is opposed to the flesh in which the false apostles gloried so much. IV. “brethren” denotes the affection which is opposed to the lordly carriage of the false apostles and to the strife which they endeavoured to foment. (R. Cudworth.)