Ephesians 1:1-2 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus.Introductory greeting In these words we have-- I. Paul’ s description of himself. “ An apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” He attributed nothing to the vigour of his faith, to the passion of his gratitude for the Divine goodness, to the completeness of his self-consecration to Christ’ s service; he was living and acting under the control of forces which had their origin above and beyond himself; his apostolic work was the effect and expression of a Divine volition. He believed that the Divine will is the root and origin of all Christian righteousness and blessedness. And this is the secret of a strong and effective Christian life. Our spiritual activity reaches its greatest intensity when we are so filled with the glory of the Divine righteousness, the Divine love, and the Divine power, that we are conscious only of God, and all thought of ourselves is lost in Him. II. Paul’ s description of those to whom he is writing. They are “ the saints which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus.”1. Saints. The title of all Christians--not attributing any personal merit to them, but simply recalling their prerogatives and obligations. It reminded them that God had made them His own; that they were “ holy” because they belonged to Him. The temple had once been “ holy,” not because of its magnitude, its stateliness, and the costly materials of which it was built, but because it was the house of God; and the tabernacle, which was erected in the wilderness, though a much meaner structure, was just as “ holy” as the temple of Solomon, with its marble courts and its profusion of cedar and brass and silver and gold. The altars were “ holy,” because they were erected for the service of God. The sacrifices were “ holy,” because they were offered to Him. The priests were “ holy” because they were divinely chosen to discharge the functions of the temple service. The Sabbath was “ holy,” because God had placed His hand upon it, and separated its hours from common use. The whole Jewish people were “ holy,” because they were organized into a nation, not for the common purposes which have been the ends of the national existence of other races, but to receive in trust for all mankind exceptional revelations of the character and will of God. And now, according to Paul’ s conception, every Christian man was a temple, a sacrifice, a priest; his whole life was a sabbath; he belonged to an elect race; he was the subject of an invisible and Divine kingdom; he was a “ saint,” i.e., one whom God has set apart for Himself. The act of consecration is God’ s act, not ours. Our part, is subordinate and secondary. We have only to submit to the authority of the Divine claim, and to receive the dignity conferred by the Divine love. 2. Faithful. Those who have faith have also fidelity; faith guarantees fidelity. 3. In Christ Jesus. One of Paul’ s characteristic phrases--the keynote of this Epistle. III. Paul’ s salvation or benediction. “ Grace to you,” etc. A gospel, a message from God, bringing home to Christian hearts a fresh assurance of the “ grace” of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, a fuller realization and a richer consciousness of the “ peace,” the infinite and eternal blessings, which that grace conferred. If the true ideal of the Christian life were fulfilled, men would be conscious that whenever we came near to them Christ came near, bringing with Him the rest of heart, the courage, and the hope which His presence always inspires. When He was on earth those who touched the border of His garment were healed of physical sickness. Now that He is in heaven there streams from Him a mightier and more gracious power; and if our union with Christ and Christ’ s union with us were more complete, that power, working through us, would be a perpetual source of blessing to mankind. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Prefatory inscription 1. Ministers must inculcate to themselves, and to those with whom they have to deal, that their calling is from God. Even as civil magistrates give out their writs in the king’ s name, with mention of the office they bear under him, to ensure due respect from the subjects, so this great Church officer mentions the position held by him under Christ, the King of the Church, that the things delivered by him may be accordingly received. (1) This is good for both minister and people. How can he speak the words of God as the mouth of God with reverence and all authority, if he consider not that God has commanded him to do this work? (2) The ministry is a work so weighty, that no man of himself is sufficient for it. Now, what can more assure me that I shall be made able, than to look at God, who has called me to this office? Princes call not their subjects to any service but that they see them furnished with all necessaries. (3) Whereas the difficulties and enmities which faithful ministers encounter are many, how could they expect to be shielded but by fixing their eyes on Him who has called them? 2. The quality of him who brings this Epistle to us is that he is an ambassador of Christ. (1) The apostles were immediately--no person coming between--designed by Christ. (2) They were infallibly assisted, so that in their office of teaching, whether by word of mouth or writing, they could not err. (3) Their mission was universal. (4) They could give, by imposition of hands, the gifts of the Holy Ghost. (5) Eyewitnesses of Christ. From these considerations we see the firmness of all things delivered in this Epistle; for it was not so much the apostle as God in him who wrote: as, when a lesson is sounded forth upon an instrument, it is not so much the instrument as his who plays on it. 3. We must account it our greatest dignity that we belong to Christ. 4. It is the will of God that assigns to us our several callings. (1) The providence. (2) The free grace of God. 5. All the members of the visible Church are to be saints. (1) They were all saints by outward profession. How dreadful the state of those who, like as they tell of Halifax nuts, which are all shells, no kernels, profess themselves saints, but by their lives deny it. (2) There were many true saints, and the better part, not the larger, gives the designation. Wine and water is called wine; gold and silver ore united is called gold and silver, though there is much dross mixed with it. 6. In the most wicked places God gathers and maintains His people. Where God has His Church, we say, the devil has his chapel; so, on the other hand, where the devil has his cathedral, God has His people. As in nature we see a pleasant rose grow from amidst the thorns, and a most beautiful lily spring out of slimy, brackish places, and as God in the darkness of the night makes beautiful lights arise, so here, in the darkest place, He will have some men who shall shine as lights in the midst of a perverse generation. (1) Let us not be discouraged; however uncongenial our surroundings may be, God can and will watch over His own, wherever they be. (2) Let us be thankful if we are placed amid Christian surroundings. 7. It is faith in Christ alone which makes men saints. Faith produces (1) purity of heart; (2) the outward profession of holiness; (3) holy conversation; which three things together go to make up saintliness or sanctification. Though we still have sins, yet the better part gives the name. Corn fields, we see, have many weeds, yet we call them corn fields, not fields of weeds; so grace, though it seems little in comparison with sin, yet will in time overcome the evil within us; for the Spirit that is in us from Christ is stronger than the spirit of the world. (Paul Bayne.)The inscription 1. The wisdom of God hath judged it most convenient to teach His people, not immediately by Himself or by the ministry of angels, but of men like unto ourselves; hereby to try His people’ s obedience (Matthew 10:40), and because their infirmity could not well endure the ministry of others (Exodus 20:19). 2. It doth not follow hence that every man who thinketh himself sufficiently gifted may take upon him the office of the ministry, except he be called unto it of God. 3. Even those who are saints and believers do stand in need of God’ s grace and favour both to pardon and subdue sin, seeing the best of them are but sanctified in part (1 Corinthians 13:12), having the dregs of corruption always remaining and frequently stirring in them (Romans 7:23). (J. Fergusson.)Grace be to you and peace. The apostolic salutation 1. It is the duty of a minister of Christ to bless the faithful children of the Church in the name of God (Numbers 6:23). (1) What this blessing is. A ministerial act, applying God’ s blessing to the well-deserving children of the Church, and placing them in assured possession through faith of God’ s blessing towards them. (2) On what it is grounded. (a) The spirit of discerning (Matthew 7:20). (b) The authority which God has bestowed. 2. Even the holiest justified persons have need of grace. 3. The best thing we can seek is the grace of God. This grace is our life; it is better than life. As the marigold opens when the sun shines over it, and shuts when it is withdrawn, so our life follows this favour; we are enlarged if we feel it, and troubled if it is hidden. 4. True peace is a most singular blessing (Philippians 4:7; John 14:22). (1) What it is. Peace is a tranquility or rest in the mind, springing out of Christ’ s death, wrought in us by the Spirit, through the Word of God; opposed to fear, grief, or any kind of perturbation which breaks the sweet consent and harmony of the mind. (2) In what kinds it may be considered. 5. All true peace is bred in us from the knowledge of God’ s love toward us. 6. God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are the authors of true peace. Let us, then, learn whither to fly, that our souls may be settled in true peace, such as the world cannot take from us; let us seek it of Him who, if He quiet, nothing can disturb. Many, when disquieted in mind and body, fly to such means as may still those pains which they feel smart upon them; and when they have, with music, company, etc., quieted their troubled spirit, then they think their peace is well restored. If a creditor should set a sergeant upon our backs, were it wisdom in the debtor to compound with him, and corrupt him, and to think all safe while the sergeant winks at him? Everybody would account this folly; for he is never a whit the more out of danger till the creditor be agreed with. Thus it is likewise in seeking our peace by stilling our evils, and not by quieting the anger of God, which is justly kindled against us. (Paul Bayne.)Grace and peace from God 1. Believers then, as now, required grace continually to keep them, and enable them to stand before their God. As our bodily frames require fresh food for their daily sustenance, and without it would grow weak, languish, and die, so do we in a spiritual sense require continual supplies of heavenly refreshment. 2. But it is not only grace, but peace too, for which the apostle prays for them. True peace cannot exist without grace--and peace is the consequence of grace. The believer stands, through grace, accepted, justified by the precious blood of Jesus; the sweet apprehension of Christ by faith brings pardon and peace to his soul. 3. And as then, so now, it is our consolation to remember the source from whence alone grace and peace can flow. Not from Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, but “ from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jehovah, the Father, is the fountain, and Jehovah, the Son, the channel, of all blessings. The fountain of living waters as redundant as at the creation--the Sun of righteousness with undiminished effulgence--the Ocean unfathomable in the depths of love and mercy,--“ an ocean without bottom or shore.” Oh, how lamentably we live below our privileges! How little we bathe in that Fountain! how little we bask in that Sun! how little we ride buoyant on that Ocean with our anchor cast within the veil! (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)Grace and peace Grace is in the Holy Scripture in every way connected with God. The Father is the God of all grace (1 Peter 5:10); Jesus is the author, giver, and dispenser of grace (Acts 15:11; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Romans 16:20; 1 Thessalonians 5:28); and the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29), who dispenses to the Church His gifts and graces as He pleases (1 Corinthians 12:1-14). The seat of the Divine Majesty is the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16); the gospel is called the Word of His grace; and believers are the children of His grace. The first word the young believer utters is grace, and the oldest dies with the same word on his lips. It is this free grace which makes God the sovereign giver, and man the humble receiver; it is this which lends to the gospel its chief glory, and renders speechless in the presence of God those who reject it. It is this which roots out the principles of pride and human merit, and surrounds the mercy of God with unparalleled splendour. Incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and mediation are but steps in the manifestation of His grace. His acts are in keeping with His character; and neither in creation nor in providence does the Divine Majesty shine forth more gloriously than it does from the throne of grace. The apostle connects grace with peace: “ Grace be to you, and peace,” etc. Peace is a lovely characteristic of the gospel. Everything breathes peace and pardon to the believer. But what does the word mean? It includes peace with God, peace of conscience, and peace with our fellow men; it declares that the veil between you and God is rent, and that you have free access to the Holiest of all; it is the assurance to your trembling conscience that the enmity is taken away, and that God is love. This is what we receive in believing, which Jesus promised, and which the world can neither give nor take away. It is strong and perfect in proportion as the eye rests on Christ; it becomes weak and broken in proportion as you love earthly things. In the assurance of this peace we brave the storms of life, and in the same tranquillizing conviction we fall asleep in Jesus. Sin alone can disturb this calm and blissful repose. It bids defiance to the rage of the persecutor, and is never more radiant than when in pain and torture it looks upward to the martyr’ s crown (Acts 7:60). (W. Graham, D. D.)St. Paul’ s salutation effective The new man is a “ habitation for God.” He breathes out his desires, not from his own life alone, but from “ God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” The salutation of such an one is not in word only. He is not a mere messenger of Christ, but a medium. We must assuredly believe that whenever Paul wrote, “ Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” there was an actual outgoing of grace and peace from God through him. No one can live in God without being a channel for God. The vessel that receives its supply from an exhaustless source must overflow. Our Lord, who spake no vain words, declared of His true disciple that “ rivers of living water” should flow out from him. These living streams of grace and peace can never be lost. They may be rejected by those whom you desire to bless; but in that case, our Lord says, they return to you again. What you give you have. The river of life which flows, and flows evermore, from God, having completed its circuit, returns to God again. “ We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish.” (John Pulsford.)Salvation is all of grace Grace, grace, free grace, the merits of Christ for nothing; white and fair, and large Saviour mercy, which is another sort of thing than creature mercy or law mercy; yea, a thousand degrees above angel mercy, hath been and must be the Rock that we drowned souls must swim to. (Rutherford.)Value of grace Henry Welch (one of the Puritans) was, I suppose, a preacher of no extraordinary ability, but it is said of him that, “ though he did not excel in gifts, it was made up to him in grace.” (Dr. Halley.)Grace and peace secretly given Dew falls insensibly and invisibly. You may be in the field all night, and not perceive the dew falling, and yet find great dew upon the grass. So the operations and blessings of God’ s Word, and graces thereof, are invisible; we feel the work, but the manner of the working is unknown to us. No man can see the conversion of another, nor can well discern his own. The Word works by little and little, like as the dew falls. (B. Keach.)Peace from Christ I have spilled the ink over a bill, and so have blotted it till it can hardly be read; but this is quite another thing from having the debt blotted out, for that cannot be till payment is made. So a man may blot his sins from his memory and quiet his mind with false hopes, but the peace which this will bring him is widely different from that which arises from God’ s forgiveness of sin through the satisfaction which Jesus made in His atonement. Our blotting is one thing; God’ s blotting out is something far higher. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 1:3 Blessed he the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.Blessed be God Observe well, that the same word is used in reference to our wish towards God and God’ s act towards us: “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us.” It is a very striking thing that our poor pebble stones of wishes should be valued so much that the same word should be used in reference to them as in reference to the priceless diamonds of grace which the Lord hath bestowed upon us. We bless God because He blesses us. “ Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” Now, it is easy to understand how the Father of mercies, from whom every good and perfect gift proceeds, really blesses us; but how can we be said to bless Him?--and what is the distinction between that and praising Him? For there is such a distinction, since we read, “ All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy saints shall bless Thee.” Praise rises even from lifeless objects, as they display the power and wisdom of their Creator; but intelligence, will, and intent are needful for blessing God. Praise is the manifestation of our inward reverence and esteem: it adores and magnifies; but in blessing God we think well of Him, and wish well to Him, and desire that others may do the same. In blessing God there is the desire to do good to God even as He doth to us, if it were possible for us to do so. We fail in the power wherewith to accomplish such a desire, but it is well that it is in our hearts. When we wish other men to love and serve the Lord, and do Him homage, we are blessing Him. When we desire to love Him more ourselves, and feel our hearts burn with aspirations after fellowship with Him, we are blessing Him. When we are zealous to make known the truth of the gospel which glorifies God, and to make known His Son in whom especially He is revealed, we are blessing God. I. Here we have, first of all, God the Father viewed aright. “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”1. When the Divine Father is viewed aright He becomes the object of our gratitude, not of our dread. Instead of trembling before Him as before an austere judge, we rejoice in Him as a tender Father. 2. Next, if we would view the Father aright we must regard Him as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a wonderful title. It is blessed to view God as the God of Abraham, but how much more as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus, after His resurrection, called Him “ My Father, and your Father: My God, and your God.” 3. The text title is “ the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” which may respect the double filiation of Christ. First, as to His Godhead: there is that mysterious sonship which we cannot understand, but which is nevertheless clearly revealed. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as Jesus is God. And then there is that second sonship which belongs to Christ as man, in which again He is said to be the Son of God. “ God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.” The Father thrice said, “ This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Even as Jacob blessed Ephraim and Manasseh because of his love to Joseph even so the great Father lays His mighty hand in benediction upon all His chosen, and blesses the very least believer as He blesses His Son Jesus. II. We come, secondly, to notice the blessing which comes from the Father as viewed by faith. “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”1. The blessing of God even the Father has fallen from all eternity upon all who are in Christ, and that in the most copious manner, for the one blessing includes “ all spiritual blessings.” This is a very pleasant thing to me, because there can be no blessing like that of God. “ I wet,” said one of old, “ whom He blesseth is blessed.” Satan may curse you; you may already be suffering the curse of the Fall; but, if God blesses you, what of all this? The blessing of God maketh rich, safe, happy. 2. I would call your attention very particularly to the fact that it is here stated that God has already given the blessing. Strictly speaking, I suppose it should be read, “ God blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus” ; and He continues still to do the same. Like as when the Lord blessed Abraham He gave him the land of Canaan, so has He given to you all covenant blessings. 3. These blessings are ours personally, for He hath blessed us. It is not upon the clouds that the blessing falls, but upon individuals. “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” The Lord hath said to His people, “ Ye are the blessed of the Lord and your offspring with you.” Personal appropriation is the main thing that we need; all else lies ready to our hand. 4. Furthermore, note well that our heavenly Father has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Spiritual blessings are heavenly things; they come from heaven, they lead to heaven, they are of a heavenly nature, and are such as are enjoyed in heaven itself. It is a wonderful thing that, even here on earth, the saints enjoy and experience heavenly blessings; for a new nature is a heavenly thing, and love, and joy in God, and rest, and safety, and acceptance in the Beloved are all heavenly things. When God made the covenant with Abraham which gave to him the land of Canaan, Abraham had not yet a foot of land that he could call his own, and when he died he only possessed a cave for burial; but yet, in truth, according to the decrees of heaven, the land of Canaan belonged to Abraham and his seed; forbad not the Lord said, “ Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” ? They had the title deeds of it, though for a while the Canaanites held it as tenants upon lease. Now, all the spiritual blessings which belong to the heavenly estate at this moment are the property of the heirs of heaven, and God hath said to each one el them, “ Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)All blessings derived from and ascribed to God 1. A good heart must be ready, on consideration of God’ s benefits, to break forth into praise. St. Paul cannot speak or think of them, but his heart and mouth glorify God. 2. Every Christian heart is to magnify God, in that He has been the God of Christ our Lord. 3. The sense and knowledge of God blessing us is that which makes Him bless us again. 4. God blesses all His children, and bestows on them many gifts. 5. The faithful ones and sanctified are they who are blessed of the Father. 6. Spiritual blessings make the regenerate man thankful. 7. All our blessings are given us in the heavens. (1) There they are first framed.(2) From thence they come to us.(3) There the consummation of them is reserved.(4) How secure, then, they are.(5) This should stir up our hearts heavenward.(6) A great ground of patience. 8. God deals liberally with His children, giving them all kinds of spiritual blessings. (1) Good things conferred;(2) evil things warded off;(3) election, predestination, etc. 9. We come to be blessed in and through Christ our Lord. (1) To Christ, then, we must give praise for all we have received.(2) We must strive to attain closer communion with Christ. (Paul Bayne.)Spiritual blessings from the Father I. The apostle begins with blessing; three times in the one verse does he use the same word: God is the blessed one who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Our condition as fallen creatures is cursed; the vengeance of a violated law is suspended over us; and the original malady, spreading like a poison through all the members of our race, and through all the fountains of our being, hath laid us under the law of the curse; so that death must feed upon us, and sin and Satan have triumphed over us, because we are cursed. He that created alone can deliver. The blessing of the Creator was pronounced over us at the beginning (Genesis 1:28), and the stability of the new creation stands only in the blessing of God (1 Peter 1:5). How beautiful and natural is this word of the apostle: “ Blessed be the God who has blessed us” ! He is the ocean source from which all blessings flow, and the ocean home to which all holy and blessed creatures must return with their songs of gratitude and praise. He is the Blessed God, because He is the universal Blesser. II. The name of God is here contrasted with the Old Testament name, which is “ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” ; but in this name there is no paternity. He is their God, and they are His people; their Creator, King, and Preserver, whom they are bound to worship and obey. But His name in relation to the Gentile Church is “ the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” III. But what are those spiritual blessings with which He has blessed us? These are the gifts and graces, and manifold operations of the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:11; Romans 15:29; 2 Corinthians 9:5; Galatians 3:8-9; Acts 3:16); they are in Christ as their centre, and descend to us from the heavenly regions or abodes. All our glories are concentrated there. (W. Graham, D. D.)Spiritual blessings You will observe that the word “ places” is printed in italics. It has no existence in the original, and, as the margin suggests, we may read either “ heavenly places” or “ heavenly things” ; and “ heavenly things” seems to be, upon the whole, the better rendering here. And the word “ heavenly” probably has reference more to character than to locality. He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things; that it to say, spiritual heavenly blessings, as contrasted with the earthly and temporal blessings. He hath blessed us with all these spiritual heavenly blessings--with all of them. Now, friends, there are some earthly temporal blessings with which God does not bless. Do not let us grumble, or be unthankful at all; but I suppose that every man feels that there is something in his temporal lot that gives him dissatisfaction. He knows that God has some good gift in this world that He has not bestowed upon him. He would like a little more bodily health and strength; he would like a little more money--everybody would, or nearly everybody I have met with, when he is honest; and this and that we should like to have this and that that we do not possess, and more of this and that that we do possess. But no; God will not give us all the temporal and earthly blessings, and undoubtedly for very good reasons, for He knows, and every man of common sense also knows, that it would be the easiest thing in the world to spoil him utterly by giving him a very large amount of this world’ s good. So He does not bless us with all temporal blessings; but when it comes to the spiritual blessings there is no need of His dealing scantily and carefully here--no need of His withholding any one of them; and He does not withhold any one of them, but He has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings. There is not one of these that can do us any harm; there is not one of these but must do us good. And so God gives them all, and with a right royally liberal hand. (H. S. Brown.)Counting the blessings There is a story of an American scholar of high character and strong mind who finally became eminent, that in early life he went with his bride to a remote and unattractive part of the country to enter on his profession, both of them leaving behind great social advantages, a brilliant group of friends, charming homes, beautiful scenery, and fine libraries. Both of them were homesick. One calamity after another fell upon them--ill-health, loss of eyesight, the death of a child, poverty. Some months of discouragement and depression had passed, and the courage, patience, and cheerfulness of the delicately bred and desolate young mother were nearly gone. One evening, after a peculiarly hard day, the husband called his wife into his darkened room, where he was lying with his eyes bandaged, and said to her, as she sat down by him dejected and complaining, “ My dear, suppose we try together to make out a complete list of our mercies.” They went about it; it lengthened a good deal beyond their expectations; and the result was what everybody sees it must have been. In that family, and in a somewhat wider circle, it has become a maxim repeated in trying times, “ Let’ s count our blessings.” Through Jesus Christ The disciple--the true believer--stands to Christ in the relation of at once a faithful subject and a younger brother. But God above is the God and Father of Jesus Christ. This relation is also indissoluble. He is God’ s Christ. He is the Father’ s Eternal Son. We are not called on to deal with God, in the first instance, as the absolute Jehovah, or to approach to Him in any case in our own right or name. But coming to Christ, as sinners yet in faith, and then through Him to God--our prayers, our praises, our whole service ascends to His Father and to ours, to His God and to ours. That this is not a mere idea, or one that has no practical significance, might be shown from the most familiar experiences in life. Do you not consider that the relatives of those who are related to you are from this very circumstance rendered accessible at all times, and more particularly when any emergency arises, and you need their help? Nay, suppose you could claim with the sovereign a connection of only a very distant sort, through some one intermediate between you width whom you are more nearly connected, and that you desired for some purpose to engage the sovereign’ s interest in your behalf, would not the fact of such a connection at once embolden you in your errand, and form a prevailing motive on the part of the sovereign to admit you into his presence, and grant your request? In like manner (to illustrate things Divine by things human), when you are animated with the spirit of praise or the spirit of prayer--when you either come with your offering to God or would secure from God the desire of your hearts--then the fact that He is the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ must both encourage you, and must move towards you the Divine regards, and render you acceptable. Your prayers, your praises, are accepted in the Beloved. (W. Alves, M. A.)Spiritual blessing The expression “ with all spiritual blessings” would be better translated “ with all spiritual blessing” --this word being in the singular in the original. The idea is a comprehensive one; it being evidently intended not merely to indicate a diversity or multiplicity of blessings which, as believers, we receive from God, but also to denote the totality of such blessings in a single word. It is “ the blessing” of the covenant of grace in all its parts--salvation from its origin to its consummation, for which Paul here blesses God, in the name of each true believer. The various privileges, honours, and possessions, of a spiritual nature which God confers on us in Christ, all hang together--one is not without the rest--and all together make up one blessing. He who has received a part may be sure of the whole. There are two senses in which the term “ spiritual” may be understood, as descriptive of the nature of the blessing. It may either be taken as referring to that department of our being which is undoubtedly chiefly affected by the blessings of salvation, namely, our spirit or soul; or it may be taken as referring to the source or origin of these blessings, namely, that Holy Spirit of God, who takes of the things that are Christ’ s, and bestows them on us. In the former of these senses the blessings of salvation would be extolled on the ground that they do not principally or mainly refer to the body and its necessities and wants, which are of a lower and more earthly character, but to the soul or spirit, which is the nobler pair of us, and whose wants and necessities are of a vastly higher order. This is indeed true. But the word spiritual generally describes that which is produced by the Spirit of God. “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” It leads our minds to that blessed Divine agent as the author of a gracious work in the soul of each redeemed sinner, when He comes and takes up His abode there, and produces all the peaceable fruits of righteousness to the praise and glory of God. In this view, which is the true meaning of the passage, we are not called on to make any distinction between our souls and bodies, as if the blessings of salvation affected the former only, and not at all the latter. The “ blessing” is spiritual because it comes from, and is applied by, the Holy Spirit of God; and we are blessed just as we are, and in whatever may we live and move and have our being. We are brought body as well as soul under the blessing. We are justified, sanctified, glorified, soul, body, and spirit. The body participates in the redemption of Christ. It also will at last become a spiritual body--adapted to, and fitted for, the exercises of a perfected soul. Even now it is the temple of the Holy Ghost; and, as affected directly or indirectly by His indwelling presence, it is less or more a spiritual body. Everything is here included, whether it relate to that nobler and higher part--the soul, or to that gross and earthly tabernacle, that body--provided only it come from the Spirit of God, whose nature is holy, and whose work must also be holy. (W. Alves, M. A.)Seven blessings of being “ in Christ” I. The first blessing is deliverance from the deadly curse which sin entails. “ There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” The sentence of eternal death is removed from every one who accepts Christ, in faith, as an atoning Saviour. Such an one is no longer under the law to be eternally punished, but under grace he is a forgiven man. II. Of this life Christ is the single source. Paul addresses the Church at Rome as “ alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” The Master said, “ Because I live ye shall live also.” At the very acme of his assurance the great apostle could say no more than “ It is not I, but Christ that liveth in me.” If the nurseryman inserts the graft of a golden pippin into an apple tree, that graft might say truly, It is not I that live, but the whole tree liveth in me; the trunk itself is pledged to send me sustaining sap. The reason why so many of our Church members are such poor, stunted, sapless creatures is that they are trying to keep alive out of Christ. III. So Divine a thing is this life of holiness in its origin, that it is described as a new creation. Man can construct out of materials at his hand; God alone can create out of nothing. “ If any man be in Christ he is a new creature.” And this word “ new” signifies also what is fresh, and unimpaired, and unworn, like a bright garment from its maker’ s hands. IV. A fourth blessing is “ acceptance in the beloved.” If we are received into favour, it is solely for Christ’ s sake. V. Peace is the fifth blessing in this casket of jewels. The peace of God which passeth comprehension shall guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus. Happiness beyond the reach of outside disturbance is assured to the believer, and harmony with God. VI. The next blessing is fulness of spiritual supply. Paul writes to his Colossian brethren, “ Ye are complete in Him.” Dean Alford’ s reading is a happy one--“ Ye are filled full in Christ.” This is the pleroma, the inexhaustible reservoir which no giving doth impoverish. Why need I hunger when in my Father’ s house and in my Saviour’ s heart are such wealth beyond a whole universe to drain? VII. After reviewing all these priceless blessings, the exultant believer shouts--“ Thanks be unto God who always causeth us to triumph in Christ!” This is the believer’ s battle cry and paean of victory. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)Spiritual blessings in Christ There is a blessing from God in the health of our bodies and in the comforts of our homes, in the bounty of the seasons and the variety of our pleasures; but believers in Christ tenderly and adoringly acknowledge far other blessings than these. Our earthly blessings are but the shadows of blessings. Corruption and vanity attach to them all. They cannot abide with us. They comfort us, much as the gourd did Jonah: but there is a worm at the root of them all. They win upon our hearts, we are held by them, as in a delicious snare; but while we dream of delights and delights, the withering season has already commenced, and the hour hastens which will see us stript and broken hearted. Our Heavenly Father’ s blessings in Christ Jesus will never wither, nor leave us. Has Christ a “ glorious body” ? has He an incorruptible kingdom? will He reign in life and glory forever? His blessedness and ours are the same. “ The glory which Thou hast given Me, I have given them” The kingdom of the Incarnation is a universality. It includes “ all things.” (John Pulsford.)In the heavenlies The key word of this Epistle. Found nowhere else in Scripture. It stands in four different connections; and in all the four it denotes a place; an ideal locality; a sphere of action, experience, and discovery; a stage, a platform, or arena, on which different movements are going on, and different scenes of interest are enacted. I. In the heavenlies you have a blessed home; a home in which you are greatly blessed, and bless Him who blesses you. The blessings are the Spirit’ s. And they are in Christ.1. He has chosen you to be the objects of His eternal, sovereign, pure, and holy love. 2. He has predestinated or appointed you unto the adoption of children to Himself. 3. You are accepted in the Beloved. 4. You have redemption. 5. You become members of the great family of all the faithful in heaven and on earth. 6. You obtain an inheritance in Christ. 7. You have a present seal and earnest of the inheritance; a foretaste of future glory. II. A seat of lofty eminence (See Ephesians 1:20; Ephesians 2:6).1. God quickens you together with Christ. 2. He raises you up together. 3. As the result of His thus quickening you together with Christ, and raising you up together, God makes you sit together at His own right hand. III. A theatre, or place of exhibition (See Ephesians 3:10). The holy inmates of heaven see, as it were, a dramatic movement, illustrating the manifold wisdom of God. What can this movement mean, but the history of the Church? Not its outer history of events merely, but its inmost history of spiritual experiences. IV. A field of battle (See Ephesians 6:12). Paradise was once “ the heavenlies.” The eyes of the pure angels were riveted on that spot. With interest wound up to the highest pitch, they watched the experiment of the garden. But alas! the eyes of fallen angels also were attracted thither. Satan sought and found an entrance into the heavenlies; disguised probably as an angel of light. He came; and paradise was gone. The heavenlies, however, were again set up on the earth. This world was still to have in it what might furnish a platform, on which a refuge might be provided for the weary, needing to be blessed; on which a tower might be reared, rising and raising them to the very throne of God. Holy angels look on and sympathise, and rejoice to see the manifold wisdom of God. But the heavenlies now are not, any more than the heavenlies before the Fall, secure from the invasion of the spoiler and the foe. Application:1. Consider what is your position in the heavenlies in respect of privilege and duty. A very high and a very holy life. Alongside of the risen Christ--seeing things from His point of view, judging by His standard, your heart as His heart. Your home with Him in God. 2. Consider your position with reference to the other spiritual intelligences who take an interest in you and in your experience. On the one hand, is it not an animating and spirit stirring thought that you live your spiritual life as forming part of that great Divine drama by means of which, through the Church, the holy principalities and powers have male known to them in the heavenlies the manifold wisdom of God? Nor is the effect of this high thought diminished by the fact that over against these benevolent and sympathising onlookers from above, coming up from below, frown the pit, a dark host is mustered by the prince of darkness; crowding all earthly scenes and circles, and invading even the heavenly places themselves. Be not unduly afraid of them. But be not ignorant of their devices. Especially remember always their double character. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)Spiritual blessings unrecognized If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but, let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and it would at once draw to itself the most invisible particles by the mere power of attraction. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no underlying blessings; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day; and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find in every hour some spiritual blessings hitherto unrecognized; only the iron in God’ s sand is gold. (Holmes.)All spiritual blessings in Christ How little of the sea can a child carry in his hand! As little do I take away of my great sea, the boundless love of Christ. I am pained with wondering at new opened treasures in Christ. Our best things have a worm in them; our joys, besides God, in the inner half are but woes and sorrows. Christ, Christ is that which our love and desires can sleep sweetly and rest safely upon. Christ hath made me content with a borrowed fireside, and it casteth as much heat as my own. How sweet is the wind that bloweth out of the airth where Christ is. Every day we may see some new thing in Christ: His love hath neither brim nor bottom. Oh that I had help to praise Him. (Rutherford.)We must appropriate spiritual blessings Going to church is like going shopping: you generally get what you go for: no more, no less. A woman will go into a store with a hundred thousand dollars worth of goods all around her, buy a paper of pins, and walk out; that is all she came for. I have seen the storehouse of God’ s grace packed from cellar to ceiling, and I have seen men go in and gather up an expression of the preacher and go home. Let us take a broader view of these things. (S. Jones.)Origin and nature of redemption I. The origin of the great system, and all the blessings of the economy of redemption.1. It is the office of the Father to devise the plan. 2. It is His prerogative to provide the means. 3. It is His province to select the objects of deliverance. 4. It belongs to Him to determine the benefits to be conferred, their nature and extent, and the degree in which every one, who is a saved object of the Redeemer’ s work; shall enjoy the blessing of that work. 5. It is the part of the Father to receive the highest and ultimate glory of the plan. II. The design of this part of the heavenly economy.1. To impress on us the entirely heavenly origin of the whole system of Christianity. 2. He impress on us the fact, that the blessings of this great redemption cannot be enjoyed as the reward of human merit. 3. To show us that this scheme cannot be frustrated by human opposition or indifference. (W. Orme.)In Christ The union of believers and Christ is-- I. Ideal. The Divine mind in eternity made the destiny one. II. Legal. Their debts and merits are common property. III. Vital. The connection with Christ supplies the power of a holy life. IV. Moral. In mind and heart, character and conduct, Christians are like Christ. (James Stalker, M. A.)Every spiritual blessing comes through Christ When Paul wrote this Epistle, five and twenty or thirty years had passed by since Christ appeared to him near Damascus. They had been very wonderful years. None of them had been wasted. It is evident from his Epistles that his religious thought was constantly extending its control from one region of truth to another, as well as constantly securing a firmer hold of the truth which he had already mastered; and with the growth of his religious knowledge there was a corresponding growth of his religious life.1. He attributes to Christ the whole development of his spiritual life. The larger knowledge of God and of the ways of God, which came to him from year to year, had come from Christ; and he felt sure that whatever fresh discoveries of God might come to him would also come from Christ. Faith, hope, joy, peace, patience, courage, zeal, love for God, love for men--he had found them all in Christ. 2. He defines the blessings with which God has blessed us in Christ as “ spiritual” blessings. He does not intend simply to distinguish them from material, physical, or intellectual blessings; he means to attribute them to the Spirit of God. Those who are “ in Christ” receive the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Whatever perfection of righteousness, whatever depth of peace, whatever intensity of joy, whatever fulness of Divine knowledge reveal the power of the Spirit of God in the spiritual life of man, “ every spiritual blessing” has been made ours in Christ. 3. These blessings have been conferred upon us “ in heavenly places” in Christ. To the apostle the visible order of human life was merely temporary, and was soon to pass away. Cities, empires, the solid earth itself, sun and stars, had for him no enduring reality. But the blessings which God has conferred upon us in Christ have their place among unseen and eternal things. 4. These blessings were ordained for the elect before the creation of the universe. The elect are those who are “ in Christ” ; being in Him they enter into the possession of those eternal blessings which before the foundation of the world it was God’ s purpose to confer upon all Christians. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Blessing through Christ Blessings given in, and obtained by Christ, for all true believers. “ Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,” etc. (Ephesians 1:1; Ephesians 1:12-13; Ephesians 1:15). I. The Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14; John 16:7-11). II. Remission of their sins (Ephesians 1:7). III. Reconciliation with God (Romans 5:10). IV. Access to God (Ephesians 2:18; 1 Peter 3:18). V. Adoption of sons (Ephesians 1:5; John 1:12). VI. The ministers and ordinances of the gospel (Ephesians 4:7-12; 1 Corinthians 3:1). VII. Supplies of grace (Philippians 4:19). VIII. The conversion of curses into blessings (Romans 5:3; 1 Peter 1:6-7; 2 Corinthians 4:1). IX. Victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:1). X. Heaven (Romans 6:1-23). (H. Foster, M. A.) Ephesians 1:4 According as He hath chosen us before the foundation of the world.Election I. Let us consider the cause, fountain, origin of the blessings of salvation--“ according as He hath chosen as.” The blessings which we enjoy, the apostle affirms, are in consequence of God’ s having chosen us, that we might become partakers of them in all their extent and fulness. To this source alone are they to be traced. How comes it that the Church of God’ s “ saints and faithful” thus stands distinguished from the ungodly world, in the blessings it enjoys, the favours reserved for it, and the eternal glory it shall inherit?1. It is a matter of fact concerning which this question is raised. Whatever may be the solution of the question, or difficulties connected with it, there is no denying or concealing the fact itself, that there has been, is, and will be, a distinction among men--a difference--a separation--as respects their state and character before God, and their ultimate destiny. 2. This fact cannot be accounted for by any reference to individual or personal distinctions of character or worthiness. 3. We reach the only reasonable account of the matter when we adopt the Scriptural explanation, and ascribe “ all spiritual blessing in the heavenlies” as enjoyed by God’ s people to His free electing love, “ according as He hath chosen us.” If you wished to explore the true source of some majestic liver, which in its course beautifies and blesses the earth, as it flows through thousands of miles to the great ocean, you would not pause at some expanding lake which it fills and empties, nor ascend the route of some acceding tributary which helps to swell its volume; but, keeping by the main channel, and leaving behind you the verdant plain and the smiling hamlet and the sleeping lake, you ascend high up the mountain steep, and there hidden in the cleft of the rock you discover the little bubbling spring that marks the origin and fountain and true rising place of that noble stream. So, taught and guided by God’ s Word, when you would trace to its true fountain the stream of spiritual blessing which blesses you “ in the heavenlies,” you pause not at any works or deeds of yours, you point not to any superiority natural or acquired over others, you fix not even on “ faith” and “ repentance” (as if these all did not need to be accounted for!), but, in all humility, yet with all thankfulness, you rest in the elective love of God, as the original and actual cause of all. You hear Paul saying, and you must echo the acknowledgment, “ according as He hath chosen us,” whilst with John you gaze on that “ pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” II. We come now to consider the second thing in our text, viz.: how this electing love of God--the cause or fountain of salvation--comes into being and operation--“ hath chosen us in Him,” i.e., in Christ. A virtual or representative union was formed by God, between sinners of mankind and Christ, when He purposed their salvation. A covenant was entered into between God, of the one part, and Christ constituted the head of the Church and its representative, of the other part. In terms of this covenant Christ was to do the will of God; i.e., fulfil the requirements of law, suffer its penalty and perform its duties, in room and stead of His people; and God, on His part, was to confer on them His Spirit, work holiness in their natures, and at last receive them into eternal mansions. III. In the third place we are here taught when the election took place, viz., “ before the foundation of the world.” This surely must be allowed to carry us far back, beyond the operation of human merit or agency.1. There is no room, then, for chance, uncertainty, or hazard. God’ s plans are complete, and His purposes definite. Doubtless He has chosen, on the whole, the greatest good of the universe as His object; and, in “ the election unto grace,” only displays a part of His glorious and all-comprehending plan. 2. Again, we are taught in this not only God’ s wisdom, but also His sovereignty. This, at least, is a precious truth--that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. What comfort, otherwise, would there be in contemplating a scene where sin abounds and agents of darkness are abroad on the earth? IV. This suggests to us the fourth topic in our text, viz., why, or for what end God hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world--“ that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” It is an old saying: “ God does not find, but makes men holy.” It is evident, indeed, that none are chosen because they are holy or blameless, but some are chosen in order that they may become so. (W. Alves, M. A.)The doctrine of election I. The spiritual blessing.1. The term election is sometimes used for that election which is made in temporary execution of God’ s purpose; (1) whether it be a separating of men to the state of grace, which makes them as the chosen first fruits of the creation (John 15:19; 1 Peter 1:2); or (2) a separating of them to any office and dignity. Saul, Judas. 2. But here it means that choice which God made with Himself from all eternity. From this flow all the blessings we receive, even as the body and boughs and branches of the tree issue from the root. What a cause for thankfulness is here! II. The persons. Those who have true faith and holiness. As we may know faith, so we may know election. If we see in any a faith unfeigned and true endeavour after holiness, we may charitably judge that such are elected. III. The order of election.1. Christ, the Head.2. From Christ it descends to us His members. IV. The time. Before all worlds (2 Timothy 1:9; John 17:24). V. The end.1. God has of grace chosen us to the supernatural life.2. He has not only chosen us to this supernatural life, but to the perfection of it.3. He has called us to this life, that we may live forever in His presence. (Paul Bayne.)God’ s elective grace It would be a narrow and superficial view of these words to suppose them to refer only to the enjoyment of external privilege, or to imagine that they are meant to level Jewish pride, and that they describe simply the choice of the Gentiles to religious blessings. The purpose of the election is, that its objects should be holy, an end that cannot fail, for they are in Christ, and “ in Him they are complete.” Yet the sovereign love of God is strikingly manifested even in the bestowment of external advantage. Ephesus enjoyed what many a city in Asia Minor wanted. The motive that took Paul to Ephesus, and the wind that sped the bark which carried him, were alike of God’ s creation. It was not because God chanced to look down from His high throne, and saw the Ephesians bowing at the shrine of Diana, and worshipping “ the image that fell from Jupiter,” that His heart was moved, and He resolved to give them the gospel. Nor was it because its citizens had a deeper relish for virtue and peace than masses of the population around them, that He sent among them the grace of His Spirit. “ He is of one mind, and who can turn Him?” Every purpose is eternal, and awaits an evolution in the fulness of the time, which is neither antedated nor postponed. The same difficulties are involved in this choice to the external blessing, as are found in the election of men to personal salvation. The whole procedure lies in the domain of pure sovereignty, and there can therefore be no partiality where none have any claim. The choice of Abraham is the great fact which explains and gives name to the doctrine. Why then should the race of Shem be selected to the exclusion of Ham and Japheth? Why of all the families in Shem should that of Terah be chosen? and why of all the members of Terah’ s house should the individual Abraham be marked out, and set apart by God to be the father of a new race? As well impugn the fact as attempt to upset the doctrine. Providence presents similar views of the Divine procedure. One is born in Europe with a fair face, and becomes enlightened and happy; another is born in Africa with a sable countenance, and is doomed to slavery and wretchedness. One has his birth from Christian parents, and is trained in virtue from his earlier years; another has but a heritage of shame from his father, and the shadow of the gallows looms over his cradle. One is an heir of genius; another, with some malformation of brain, is an idiot. Some, under the enjoyment of Christian privilege, live and die unimpressed; others, with but scanty opportunities, believe, and grow eminent in piety. Does not more seem really to be done by God externally for the conversion of others who live and die in impenitence, than for many who believe and are saved? And yet the Divine prescience and predestination are not incompatible with human responsibility. Man is free, perfectly free, for his moral nature is never strained or violated. Foreknowledge, which is only another phase of electing love, no more changes the nature of a future incident, than after knowledge can affect an historical fact. God’ s grace fits men for heaven, but men by unbelief prepare themselves for hell. It is not man’ s non-election, but his continued sin, that leads to his eternal ruin. Action is not impeded by the certainty of the Divine foreknowledge, he who believes that God has appointed the hour of his death is not fettered by such a faith in the earnest use of every means to prolong his life. And God does not act arbitrarily or capriciously. He has the best of reasons for His procedure, though He does not choose to disclose them to us. (John Eadie, D. D.)God the author of the plan of salvation Christians have no grounds for self-felicitation in their possession of holiness and hope, as if with their own hand they had inscribed their names in the Book of Life. Their possession of “ all spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” is not self-originated. Its one author is God, and he has conferred it in harmony with His eternal purpose regarding them. His is all the work, and His is all the glory. And therefore the apostle glories in this eternal election. It is cause of deep and prolonged thankfulness, not of gloom, distrust, or perplexity. The very eternity of design clothes the plan of salvation with a peculiar nobleness. It has its origin in an eternity behind us, and its consummation in an eternity before us. Kindness, the result of momentary impulse, has not and cannot have such claim to gratitude, as a beneficence which is the fruit of a matured and predetermined arrangement. The grace which springs from eternal choice must command the deepest homage of our nature. (John Eadie, D. D.)Salvation an eternal provision for human need The eternity of the plan suggests another thought. It is this--salvation is an original thought and resolution it is no novel expedient struck out in the fertility of Divine ingenuity, after God’ s first purpose in regard to man had failed through man’ s apostasy. It is no afterthought, but the embodiment of a design which, foreseeing our ruin, had made preparation for it. (John Eadie, D. D.)The object of the Divine election In the words “ That we should be holy and without blame before Him,” we have the object of the Divine election declared, and the cooperation of the elect implied, by the inseparable connection of holiness with election. There is an instructive parallel in Colossians 1:22, “ He hath reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable, and unreprovable in His sight.” The word “ without blame,” or “ unblamable,” is properly without blemish; and the word “ unreprovable” more nearly corresponds to our idea of one unblamable--i.e., one against whom no charge can be brought. Here God is said to have “ chosen” us, in the other passage to have “ presented” us (comp. the sacrificial use of the word in Romans 12:1), in Christ, to be “ holy and without blemish.” It seems clear that the words refer not to justification in Christ, but to sanctification in Him. They express the positive and negative aspects of holiness; the positive in the spirit of purity, the negative in the absence of spot or blemish. The key to their interpretation is to be found in the idea of Rom 8:29, “ whom He did foreknow, He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” The word “ without blame” is applied to our Lord (in Hebrews 9:14; 1 Peter 1:19) as a lamb “ without blemish.” To Him alone it applies perfectly; to us, in proportion to that conformity to His image. The words “ before Him” refer us to God’ s unerring judgment as contrasted with the judgment of men, and even our own judgment on ourselves (comp. 1 Corinthians 4:3-4; 1 John 3:20-21) (A. Barry, D. D.)The antiquity of our final humanity The word foundation. (καταβολή) suggests a descent, or letting down. But since we were chosen m Christ “ before the foundation of the world,” let us joy with reverence over the priority of our original nature, and not confound ourselves with any of the products of time. We are clothed upon with temporal nature, but we are not children of time. We are fallen into time, but we are from eternity. From of old, God loved us with an everlasting love. There is nothing in the world that represents to us either what we were, or what we shall be. Long before the geological eras began, long before the great chaotic age, and long before that first of all the sad changes, namely, the angel fall, God beheld His final human race, perfect in His Son. Whatever we have become through the two great falls, in heaven, and in earth, in Christ Jesus we are the holy children of eternity. Our right home is in our Father’ s house, amid the first-born eternal glories. It is not strange, therefore, that there should be a spirit in us which refuses to rest in anything under the sun, as our final condition. That which was “ elect and precious,” before the foundation of the world, lingers in us. (John Pulsford.)Election and holiness God elected us as well to the means as to the end. Note this. For as they (in Acts 27:31) could not come safe to land if any left the ship, so neither can men come to heaven but by holiness. (John Trapp.)Predestination to holiness It would be a poor proof that I were on my voyage to India, that with glowing eloquence and thrilling poetry, I could discourse on the palm groves and spice isles of the East. Am I on the waters? Is the sail hoisted to the wind? and does the land of my birth look blue and faint in the distance? The doctrine of election may have done harm to many, but only because they have fancied themselves elected to the end, and have forgotten that those whom Scripture calls elected are elected to the means. The Bible never speaks of men as elected to be saved from the shipwreck, but only as elected to tighten the ropes and hoist the sails and stand at the rudder. Let a man search faithfully: let him see that when Scripture describes Christians as elected, it is as elected to faith, as elected to sanctification, as elected to, obedience; and the doctrine of election will be nothing but a stimulus to effort. It will not act as a soporific. I shall cut away the boat, and let drive all human devices, and gird myself, amid the fierceness of the tempest, to steer the shattered vessel into port. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Of election to everlasting life I. Our first business is, to show what election is. It is that decree of God whereby some men are chosen out from among the rest of mankind, and appointed to obtain eternal life by Jesus Christ, flowing from the mere good pleasure of God; as appears from the text. So the elect are they whom God has chosen to everlasting life (Acts 13:48). II. I proceed to show who are elected. Who they are in particular, God only knows; but in general we say, that it is not all men, but some only. For where all are taken, there is no choice made. III. The next head is to shew what they are chosen to.1. They are chosen to be partakers of everlasting life. Hence the scripture speaks of some being “ ordained to eternal life” (Acts 13:48), and of “ appointing them to obtain salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:9), God appoints some to be rich, great, and honourable, some to be low and mean in the world: but electing love appoints those on whom it falls to be saved from sin, and all the ruins of the fall; its great view is to eternal glory in heaven. 2. They are chosen also to grace as the mean, as well as to glory as the end. God’ s predestinating them to eternal blessedness includes both, as in the text; and it further appears from 2 Thessalonians 2:13. Hence faith is held out as a certain consequent of election (Acts 13:48). “ As many as were ordained unto eternal life, believed.” The man who intends to dwell in a house yet unbuilt, intends also the means by which it may be made a fit habitation. And therefore there is no ground from the decree of election to slight the means of salvation. IV. Let us consider the properties of election.1. It is altogether free, without any moving cause, but God’ s mere good pleasure. No reason can be found for this but only in the bosom of God. 2. Election is eternal. They are elected from all eternity (Ephesians 1:4), “ chosen before the foundation of the world;” (2 Timothy 1:9). All God’ s decrees are eternal (Ephesians 1:11). Because God is eternal, His purposes must be of equal duration with His existence. 3. It is particular and definite. 4. It is secret, and cannot be known till God is pleased to discover it. V. The next thing is to show, that all the elect, and they only, are in time brought out of a state of sin and misery into a state of salvation.1. All the elect are redeemed by Christ (John 10:15). None other but the elect are brought into a state of salvation; none but they are redeemed, sanctified, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 17:9). VI. I come to show by whom the elect are saved. It is by Christ the Redeemer. Hence the apostle says (Titus 3:4-6).1. Before the elect could be delivered from that state of sin and misery into which they had brought themselves, a valuable satisfaction behoved to be given to the justice of God for the injury done by sin. It is evident from Scripture that God stood upon full satisfaction, and would not remit one sin without it. Several things plead strongly for this: As, (1) The infinite purity and holiness of God.(2) The justice of God.(3) The wisdom of God.(4) The truth and veracity of God. He must be true to His threatenings as well as to His promises. 2. As satisfaction to justice was necessary, and that which God insisted upon, so the elect could not give it themselves, neither was there any creature in heaven or earth that could do it for them (Isaiah 63:5). This is the desperate and forlorn condition of the elect by nature as well as others. God pitched upon Christ in His infinite grace and wisdom as the fittest person for managing this grand design. 4. Christ accepted the office of a Redeemer, and engaged to make His soul an offering for sin. He cheerfully undertook this work in that eternal transaction that was between the Father and Him. 5. Christ satisfied offended justice in the room of the elect, and purchased eternal redemption for them. “ He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Thus the elect are saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. I shall conclude all with a few inferences.1. Behold here the freedom and glory of sovereign grace, which is the sole cause why God did not leave all mankind to perish in the state of sin and misery, as He did the fallen angels. 2. This doctrine should stop men’ s murmurings, and silence all their pleadings with or against God. 3. This is ground of humility and admiration to the elect of God, and shows them to what they owe the difference that is between them and others, even to free grace. (T. Boston, D. D.)On election I. State the doctrine itself. The word rendered “ predestinated” denotes simply predetermined, or foreordained (See Acts 4:27-28),1. It proceeds on the assumption of the fact that man is in a state of guilt, condemnation, and ruin: that, in himself considered, he is without any claim on the Divine favour, without help and without hope. 2. In maintaining the doctrine under consideration, it is assumed that a sufficient, complete, and glorious redemption has been accomplished and revealed. 3. This salvation is proclaimed to all men, without restriction; and all are freely invited to receive its blessings. Is not the blessed God sincere, in all the proffers of His mercy? Can there be any secret counsels at variance, in reality, with the overtures of His grace? 4. All men, if left to themselves, disregard the overtures of mercy, and neglect the great salvation. 5. That grace which God now communicates to the hearts of men, He has resolved and decreed, from all eternity, to communicate. II. Remove misconceptions. Let it be observed--1. That the leading object of our present inquiry regards not an abstract truth, involved in metaphysical obscurity, but a matter of fact, to be determined by scriptural testimony. 2. That the proof of the fact and of the doctrine of election, does not rest on a few insulated texts of Scripture. A minister of the gospel, lately deceased, who was distinguished by no common share of mental energy, discovered, on one occasion, that he had armed against himself the strongest prejudices of a very intelligent hearer, by preaching the doctrine of election. In his private writings he thus records the conversation which ensued:--“ I told her that I had no choice; the doctrine was not mine; nor did the evidence rest on the words ‘ elect and election.’ I advised her to read the fifth and sixth chapters of the Gospel of John, in which the word election does not once occur, but which are full of the doctrine itself. She followed my advice, and in a few days she was confirmed in the belief of this truth. I then advised her to read the seventeenth chapter of John; and she acknowledged, that it was full of the same truth. I asked her, to what conclusion her experience led her on the subject;--whether she had chosen Christ as the Saviour of her soul? ‘ Yes,’ she exclaimed. ‘ And do you think He has chosen you?’ ‘ Yes, I do,’ she replied. ‘ If you chose Him first,’ I rejoined, ‘ you made yourself to differ, and salvation is of works: if the Divine choice was first, your choice of Christ was the effect of it, and salvation is of grace.’ ‘ This,’ she added, ‘ is the fact.’ ‘ Then,’ I concluded, ‘ fact, matter of fact, establishes the doctrine of election.’ Her ‘ peace now flowed like a river, bearing all abjections before it, and her blessedness was as the waves of the sea.’” 3. The doctrine does not in the least restrict the free invitation of the gospel. God has given these invitations in full sincerity. He has given them on the finished and accepted redemption of His Beloved Son. The only barrier between the sinner and salvation is his cherished unbelief. 4. This doctrine does not in the slightest degree affect man’ s obligation to repent and to believe the gospel. Man’ s responsibility arises out of his rational and moral nature, and his relation to the God that made him. He does net cease to be accountable, because he has made himself sinful; for were this the case, a man would only have to become a depraved and abandoned transgressor, in order to exonerate himself from all further obligation to obey the Author of his existence. 5. This fact--that there is a Divine election--does not create an obstacle to the salvation of any human being. From the remarks already made, it is apparent, that if any man perish, he must perish in consequence of his own unbelief. In the investigation of the Word of God, I discover no traces of any decree involving an appointment to wrath irrespective of guilt. Throughout the Bible, the perdition of the soul is ascribed, not to God’ s decree, but to man’ s transgression. No human being will be condemned at the last day, on the ground of not being included in the election of grace. 6. This doctrine, rightly understood, has no tendency unfavourable to the interests of practical religion. III. The effects which a correct view and a cordial reception of this doctrine are calculated to produce on the mind and heart of the believer.1. The belief of this doctrine is calculated to extend and to elevate our views of the character of God. 2. This doctrine presents the most vivid exhibition of the certainty of the final salvation of all who truly believe in the Divine Redeemer. 3. This doctrine is adapted to produce the deepest humility. Every truth associated with this doctrine is a humbling truth. We are reminded, at every step of our researches, of some trait in our own character, or in the character of the blessed God, which is calculated to humble the heart. We are reminded, that we are, by nature, children of wrath--that by unmerited grace alone we can be saved. “ Where is boasting then? It is excluded; that no flesh should glory in His presence; that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” 4. Finally, The subject under consideration is designed and adapted to call forth the most grateful and adoring praise. (H. F. Burder, D. D.)Good men the subjects of Divine thoughts from all eternity Every true Christian, then, as a member of Christ’ s body, is thus an elect and predestinated person, and as such has been, along with Christ Himself--the Head of that body--an object of thought to the Almighty Lord of Life during the eternity bygone. But now what an awful dignity is thus seen at once to gather around the existence of a predestinated soul, around one whose appearance and character are both the subject and result of the never commenced meditations and resolves of the Omniscient and Eternal Mind. We look, if at all given to such reflections, with a feeling of profound interest upon a stone, which has been agitated far ages on the sunken floor of the ocean, and which is at length cast up by the sounding sea, rounded by the attrition of the sea bottom, and by the currents of unnumbered centuries--an agate or carnelian, that was being rolled and polished by the billows before the old empires of antiquity were founded, or before the deluge, or before the creation of man. We gaze awestruck upon these everlasting hills, whose summits were standing above the universal waters before some of the other continents were made, and whose stratified contents, rich with the fossils of successive worlds, and the deep-lying beds of molten and crystallized porphyry and granite below them, indicate an era of upheaval that is lost in the mists and twilights of remotest eld. But what are such feelings of awe and wonder at such immeasurable antiquity, compared with those which fill the soul when we look upon a Person older than all geological chronology, older than the stars, whose “ goings forth have been from everlasting.” On Christ, whose countenance, whose aspect, “ marred more than any man’ s,” whose history, instinct with miracles, whose words, full of grace and truth, were the manifestations of a Divine purpose as ancient in the darkness, that all the works of the visible universe--rock systems and the deepest foundations of the mountains, and constellations that have already shone through cycles which would defy even archangelic arithmetic to measure, are comparatively of yesterday. “ Before Abraham was, I am.” Before the universe was, I was in the bosom of the Infinite. And all good men were chosen in Him. The names of all who believe in God were written “ before the foundation of the world,” in the Lamb’ s Book of Life. They have from eternity been there recorded by Divine love as members of Christ--of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones. Every Christian has thus been, in ideal vision, a subject of blissful Divine thought from before all worlds. (E. White.)The saving purpose of God in earthly realization I. Its spiritual character (verses 3, 4).1. Bestowing spiritual gifts. 2. Contemplating a moral change in its objects. It is not because they are already better than other men that believers are chosen, but in order that they may become so. II. Its predetermining influence. (verses 4, 5, 9-11).1. It works from afar. Through eternity and time--“ from before the foundation of the world.” 2. Bestowing provisional advantage. It does not appear that by the “ adoption” here spoken of, final salvation is implied, but rather that the Gentiles being “ brought nigh” through the blood of Christ, are put in the way of being saved. It is well for us to consider the limits as well as the vastness of spiritual privilege. 3. Ordaining the means of salvation. “ In Christ.” III. Its cyclic completeness (verses 4-14).1. Engaging successively the several Persons of the Blessed Trinity. In the progress of revelation and the history of the Church there seem to be discernible an age of the Father, an age of the Son, and an age of the Holy Ghost. 2. Perfecting human salvation. There are indicated three stages of the process of salvation, viz., election, justification through the blood of Christ, and, finally, sanctification by the Spirit. The cycle of redemption, as evolved in this passage, recalls that of Rom 8:28-30. 3. Consummating the order of the universe. In Christ all things are “ summed up,” i.e., He is the Head and Representative of time, creation, humanity, etc. They gather about Him as their true Centre and Lord. IV. Its resultant glory (verses 6, 12, 14). (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The electing love of God I. As expressive of the Divine character. Paul labours by variety and accumulation of phrases to show that in its entire manifestation it is of God and not of man. He calls attention to--1. Its absoluteness. It is “ according to the good pleasure of His will,” i.e., an absolutely free impulse and act. No cause external to the Divine Being can be discovered to account for it. 2. Its sublime consistency and harmony. II. As affecting human destiny.1. It reveals itself in a gracious act, viz., the choice or adoption of men as its objects. 2. It sets before itself a grand moral aim. 3. It exerts a transforming power. III. As evoking grateful adoration (verse 6). The objects of saving grace realizing the benefits it confers,1. Bless God with their lips. 2. Glorify Him in their lives. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)God’ s purpose in election What was God driving at in His electing some out of the lump of mankind? Was it only their impunity He desired, that while others were left to swim in torment and misery, they should only be exempted from that infelicity? No, sure; the apostle will tell us more. “ He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy.” Mark, not because He foresaw that they would be of themselves holy, but that they should be holy; this was that God resolved He would make them to be. As if some curious workman, seeing a forest growing upon his own ground of trees (all alike, not one better than another), should mark some above all the rest, and set them apart in his thoughts, as resolving to make some rare pieces of workmanship of them. Thus God chose some out of the lump of mankind, whom He set apart for this purpose, to carve His own image upon them, which consists in righteousness and true holiness; a piece of such rare workmanship which, when God hath intended, and shall show it to men and angels, will appear to exceed the fabric of heaven and earth itself. (W. Gurnall.)Election 1. The elector is the Father, to whom it belongs to originate all things. The purpose of eternal love flows directly from the Divine mind, as its heavenly source (Romans 8:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:13)2. The person in whom the election is made is the Son. We are chosen in Him as the Divine Mediator, and predestinated Election-Head, in whom, by means of our union with Him, we find a supply for all our wants, strength for our weakness, joy for our sorrow, light for our darkness, and eternal life for our all-sufficient portion at last. 3. As to the date of this election; it is before the foundation of the world (comp. Matthew 13:35, John 17:4, Luke 11:50, Matthew 14:34, 1 Peter 1:20). This is the same as the expression, “ Before the ages or worlds” (1 Corinthians 2:7; comp. Ephesians 3:9, Colossians 1:26, 2 Timothy 1:9, and Romans 16:25). This is the ancient love of God to His people of which the Scriptures are so full, and on which the believing soul delights to dwell. His love is no impulsive feeling, varying with the changes of the creature, but the steady, irreversible purpose of His grace, based on the life and death, the doing and dying of the Mediator. 4. The purpose of this election is very clearly stated in one passage--“ That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Holy means separated, consecrated, devoted to Gad. He would have a loving, devoted, holy, people, and for this end He elects them. (W. Graham, D. D.)God’ s choice and desire I. Let us observe the first outflow of these heavenly blessings. The fountain of eternal love burst forth in our election--“ According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.” Consider these words one by one.1. The first is, “ He hath chosen:” God has a will and a choice in the matter of salvation. Is man’ s will to be deified? Is the whole result of the scheme of salvation to depend upon the creature’ s choice? God forbid. 2. Carefully note that election shapes everything: the Father has blessed us with all spiritual blessings, “ According as He hath chosen us in Christ.” All the grace of earth and the glory of heaven come to us in accordance with the eternal choice. There is not a single boon that comes from the blessed hand of the Divine Redeemer but is stamped with the mark of God’ s electing love. We were chosen to each mercy, and each mercy was appointed for us. 3. The next word is, “ He hath chosen us.” Herein is grace indeed. What could there be in us that the Lord should choose us? Some of us feel ourselves the most unworthy of the unworthy, and we can see no trace of a reason for our being chosen. So far from being choice men in our own esteem, we feel ourselves by nature to be the very reverse. But if God has chosen us, then let our hearts love Him, our lips extol Him, our hands serve Him, our whole lives adore Him. 4. Then we are told, he has chosen us in Christ Jesus. He first chose Christ as the head, and then looked through Christ upon us, and chose us to be members of Christ’ s mystical body. 5. The time when this choice was made--“ Before the foundation of the world,” the earliest conceivable period. The choice is no sudden act. II. The designed result of all this blessing.1. It is God’ s eternal design that His people should be holy. When you grow in grace, and faith, and hope, and joy, all that growth is towards holiness. There is something practical in every boon that comes from the Father’ s hand, and you should pray to Him that you may by each one conquer sin, advance in virtue and perfect holiness in His fear. The ultimate end of election is the praise of the glory of Divine grace, but the immediate and intermediate end is the personal sanctification of the chosen. 2. The Father chose us to Himself that we might be without blame before Him in love. He would have us blameless, so that no man can justly find fault with us; and harmless, so that our lives may injure none, but bless all. 3. But notice where and what kind of holiness this is: holy and blameless before Him. It would be something to be perfect before the eyes of men who are so ready to criticize us; but to be blameless before Him who reads our thoughts and sees our every failure in a moment--this is an attainment of a far higher order. To conclude, we are to be holy and blameless before Him in love. Love is the anointing oil which is to be poured on all the Lord’ s priests; when he has robed them in their spotless garments, they shall partake of the unction of love. (C. H. Spurgeon.)God’ s election of men in Jesus Christ I. That God, before He made the world, chose some persons of His own free grace to become His children, or to be made holy and happy.1. There is a manifest difference between the children of men in this world. 2. This difference between men, or this distinction of the righteous from the wicked, is not ascribed in Scripture, originally and supremely, to the will and power of man, as the cause of it, but to the will and power of God, and to His Spirit working in them. 3. The distinction that is made by this work of God in the heart of men, is attributed in Scripture, not to any merit in man, which God foresaw, but to the free grace of God toward His people, and His special choice or election of them, to be partakers of these blessings. 4. This choice of persons to sanctification and salvation by the grace on God is represented in Scripture, as before the foundation of the world, or from eternity. II. That God from the beginning appointed His Son Jesus Christ to be the medium of exercising all this grace, and gave His chosen people to the care of His Son, to make them partakers of these blessings.1. Let us consider what it was that Christ undertook, as the chosen Saviour of His people (John 1:18; John 17:5; John 16:28; Philippians 2:7; Hebrews 2:14; Galatians 4:4; Romans 8:3; Ephesians 5:30). 2. Let us take a brief survey of the articles of this covenant on God the Father’ s side. Whatsoever powers, or honours, or employments He bestowed on His Son, we have reason to suppose it was in pursuance of this original covenant of grace and salvation. First then, we may justly conclude, that God engaged to employ Him in the work of creation, as a foundation of His future kingdom among men; by Him God made angels, and they shall be His ministering Spirits, for the men who shall be heirs of his salvation; by Him God created mankind, and He shall be Lord of them all; by Him the Blessed God made His own people, and He shall save them. Again, We may suppose it was agreed by the Father, that He should be the King of Israel, which was the visible Church of God, as a type of His kingdom, and the government of His invisible Church; that He should fix His dwelling in a cloud of glory, in His holy hill of Sion (Psalms 2:6-7), and should govern the Jewish nation by judges, or priests, or kings, as His deputies, till He Himself should appear in the flesh. God the Father undertook also to furnish Him with everything necessary for His appearance and His ministry here upon earth, to prepare a body for Him (Hebrews 10:5), to give Him the Spirit without measure (John 3:34; Isaiah 11:2), to bear Him up through all His sufferings, to accept His sacrifice and atonement for sin, to raise Him up from the dead, to exalt Him not only to the former glory which He had with Him before the world was, which He asks for as a matter of agreement (John 17:4-5), but to honour Him at His right hand with superior powers. 1. Since we are chosen to be holy, as well as happy, we may search and find out our election by our sanctification, and make it sure and evident. 2. Let those who by a sincere search have found the blessed marks and evidences of their election in Christ Jesus take the comfort of it, rejoice in it, and walk worthy of so Divine a privilege. See that you keep your evidences of grace ever clear and bright by holy watchfulness, that ye may have a strong defence in every hour of temptation. In conclusion:1. I infer that there are some doctrines wherein the reason of man finds many difficulties, and which the folly of man would abuse to unhappy purposes, which yet are plain and express truths asserted in the Word of God. Among these, we place the great doctrine of the election of sinners in Christ to be made holy and happy. 2. However this doctrine may be opposed by the reasonings of men, and even ridiculed by a bold jest, yet, if it then appear to be a Divine truth, as the Scriptures now seem to teach us, the blessed God will not be ashamed of it in the last great day; then shall He unfold all the scheme of His original counsels, and spread abroad His transactions towards mankind, before the face of all His intelligent creatures. I cannot think, that any of the cavils of wit against this doctrine will stand before the light of the great tribunal. 3. The whole chain and current of our salvation, from the beginning to the end, arises and proceeds all the way from the free grace of God, through the mediation of His Son Jesus Christ. God and His Son must have the glory, and pride must be hid from man forever. (Dr. Watts.) Ephesians 1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.The predestination of believers I. The benefit itself. “ Having predestinated.”1. God first loves us to life before the means bringing us to life are decreed. 2. God has not only chosen some, but ordained effectual means to bring them to the end to which they are chosen. II. The persons who are predestinated. Those who have believed and are sanctified--of them we may say that they have been predestinated, and shall be glorified. A chain of four links, two of which are kept with God in heaven, and two let down to earth; this chain is so coupled, that whoever are within these mid]inks are within the two others also. How precious then is this faith which purifies the heart, and enables us even to read our names in God’ s register of life. III. The thing to which God has predestinated us. “ Unto the adoption of children.”1. The dignity of being sons of God.2. The inheritance of light, or a Divine nature.3. All the glory we look for in heaven is included. IV. The cause. “ Through Jesus Christ.” V. The manner. “ To Himself,” i.e., “ according to the good pleasure of His will.”1. Sending His Word.2. Working by it with His Spirit. VI. The end. “ To the praise of the glory of His grace.” (Paul Bayne.)Adoption If the thing itself be right, it must be right that God intended to do the thing; if you find no fault with facts, as you see them in providence, you have no ground to complain of decrees as you find them in predestination, for the decrees and the facts are just the counterparts one of the other. I cannot see, if the fact itself is agreeable, why the decree should be objectionable. I can see no reason why you should find fault with God’ s foreordination, if you do not find fault with what does actually happen as the effect of it. Let a man but agree to acknowledge an act of providence, and I want to know how he can, except he runs in the very teeth of providence, find any fault with the predestination or intention that God made concerning that providence. Will you blame me for preaching this morning? Suppose you answer, No. Then can you blame me that I formed a resolution last night that I would preach? Will you blame me for preaching on this particular subject? Do, if you please, then, and find me guilty for intending to do so; but if you say I am perfectly right in selecting such a subject, how can you say I was not perfectly right in intending to preach upon it? Assuredly you cannot find fault with God’ s predestination, if you do not find fault with the effects that immediately spring from it. Now, we are taught in Scripture, I affirm again, that all things that God choseth to do in time were most certainly intended by Him to be done in eternity, and He predestined such things should be done. If I am called, I believe God intended before all worlds that I should be called; if in His mercy He has regenerated me, I believe that from all eternity He intended to regenerate me; and if, in His loving kindness, He shall at last perfect me and carry me to heaven, I believe it always was His intention to do so. If you cannot find fault with the thing itself that God does, in the name of reason, common sense, and Scripture, how dare you find fault with God’ s intention to do it? I. Adoption--the grace of it. No man can ever have a right in himself to become adopted. If a king should adopt any into his family, it would likely be the son of one of his lords--at any rate, some child of respectable parentage; he would scarce take the son of some common felon, or some gipsy child, to adopt him into his family; but God, in this case, has taken the very worst to be His children. The saints of God all confess that they are the last persons they should ever have dreamed He would have chosen. Again, let us think not only of our original lineage, but of our personal character. He who knows himself will never think that he had much to recommend him to God. In other cases of adoption there usually is some recommendation. A man, when he adopts a child, sometimes is moved thereto by its extraordinary beauty, or at other times by its intelligent manners and winning disposition. But no; He found a rebellious child, a filthy, frightful, ugly child; He took it to His bosom. I was passing lately by the seat of a nobleman, and someone in the railway carriage observed that he had no children, and he would give any price in the world if he could find someone who would renounce all claim to any son he might have, and the child was never to speak to his parents any more, nor to be acknowledged, and this lord would adopt him as his son, and leave him the whole of his estates, but that he had found great difficulty in procuring any parents who would forswear their relationship, and entirely give up their child. Whether this was correct or not, I cannot tell; but certainly this was not the case with God. His only-begotten and well-beloved Son was quite enough for Him; and, if He had needed a family, there were the angels, and His own omnipotence was adequate enough to have created a race of beings far superior to us; He stood in no need whatever of any to be His darlings. It was then, an act of simple, pure, gratuitous grace, and of nothing else, because He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and because He delights to show the marvellous character of His condescension. II. The privileges which come to us through adoption.1. We are taken out of the family of Satan. The prince of this world has no more claim upon us. 2. We have God’ s name put upon us. 3. We have the spirit as well as the name of children. 4. Access to the throne. 5. We are pitied by God. He pities thee, and that pity of God is one of the comforts that flow into thine heart by thine adoption. 6. In the next place, He protects thee. No father will allow his son to die without making some attempt to resist the adversary who would slay him, and God will never allow His children to perish while His omnipotence is able to guard them. 7. Once again, there is provision as well as protection. Every father will take care to the utmost of his ability to provide for his children. 8. And then you shall likewise have education. God will educate all His children till He makes them perfect men in Christ Jesus. 9. There is one thing perhaps you sometimes forget, which you are sure to have in the course of discipline if you are God’ s sons, and that is, God’ s rod. 10. Lastly, so sure as we are the children of God by adoption, we must inherit the promise that pertains to it--“ If children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.” “ If we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified together.” III. There are some duties which are connected with adoption. When the believer is adopted into the Lord’ s family, there are many relationships which are broken off. The relationship with old Adam and the law ceases at once; but then he is under a new law, the law of grace--under new rules, and under a new covenant. And now I beg to admonish you of duties, children of God. It is this--if God be thy father, and thou art His son, thou art bound to trust Him. Oh! if He were only thy Master, and thou ever so poor a servant, thou wouldst be bound to trust Him. But, when thou knowest that He is thy Father, wilt thou ever doubt Him? (C. H. Spurgeon.)Adoption and its privileges After the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon immediately adopted all the children of the soldiers who had fallen. They were supported and educated by the State, and, as belonging to the family of the emperor, they were permitted to attach the name of Napoleon to their own. Adoption confers honour It was at Vienna, in the year 1805, that Haydn, then seventy-three years of age, first met Cherubini, who, though not a young man, still must have appeared so to the veteran composer, being thirty years his junior, and not having then composed many of those works which have since made his name so famous. Bat the very fact of his own seniority was made use of by the old man to utter one of the most graceful compliments which could have been spoken for the encouragement of a younger worker. Handing to Cherubini one of his latest compositions, Haydn said, “ Permit me to style myself your musical father, and to call you my son,” words which made such an impression on Cherubini that he could not keep back the tears when he parted with the aged Haydn. Election and adoption into God’ s family I. God chose and predestined these ephesian Christians before the foundation of the world.1. We must not so conceive of God’ s election, and the influence of His grace, as to set aside our free agency and final accountableness. 2. Nor must we so explain away God’ s sovereignty and grace as to exalt man to a state of independence. II. They were chosen to be holy and without blame, before Him, in love. Holiness consists in the conformity of the soul to the Divine nature and will, and is opposed to all moral evil. In fallen creatures it begins in the renovation of the mind after the image of God. Love is a main branch of holiness. III. The adoption to which believers are predestinated.1. Adoption implies a state of freedom, in opposition to bondage. 2. Adoption brings us under the peculiar care of God’ s providence. 3. Adoption includes a title to a glorious resurrection from the dead, and to an eternal inheritance in the heavens. IV. All spiritual blessings are derived to us through Jesus Christ. V. The season of God’ s choosing believers in Christ, and predestinating them to adoption, is the good pleasure of His will. The original plan of salvation is from Him, not from us. The gospel is a Divine gift, not a human discovery; and our being in circumstances to enjoy it is not the effect of our previous choice, but of God’ s sovereign goodness. VI. The great purpose for which God has chosen and called us is the praise of the glory of His grace. Goodness is the glory of the Divine character; grace is the glory of the Divine goodness; the plan of salvation for sinners by Jesus Christ is the glory of Divine grace. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Regeneration and sonship in Christ I. Christ is the unique son of God. From what we know of our Lord as He lived among men, nothing so perfectly represents the impression which His character, spirit, and history produce upon us as the title which describes Him as the Son of God. Other men had been God’ s servants; He, too, was “ born under the law;” but to speak of Him as a servant does not tell half the truth. He is a servant, and something more. There is an ease, a freedom, a grace about His doing of the will of God, which can belong only to a Son. About the Father’ s love for Him He has never any doubt; and there is no sign that His perfect faith is the result of discipline, or that it had ever been less secure and tranquil than it was in the maturity of His strength. When He speaks of the glory which is to come to Him after His death and resurrection, He is still a Son anticipating the honour to which the Father has always destined Him, and which indeed had always been His. II. Christians are the adopted sons of God. If we are “ in Christ” we, according to God’ s eternal purpose, have become God’ s sons. The eternal relationship between Christ and the Father cannot belong to us; but all who are one with Christ share the blessedness, the security, and the honour of that relationship; and the life of Christ, which has its eternal fountains in the life of God, is theirs. III. Christians are made Sons of God by a new and supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it were merely a change in a man’ s principles of conduct, character, taste, habits. If so, we should have to speak of a man as being more or less regenerate according to the extent of his moral reformation, which would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest. When a man is regenerated he receives a new life, and receives it from God. A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his human parents; he is “ begotten of God,” “ born of the Spirit.” IV. The incarnation of Christ effects our adoption and regeneration. The capacity for receiving the Divine life is native to us, but the actual realization of our sonship is possible only through Christ. Not until the Son of God became Man could men, either in this world or in worlds unseen, become the sons of God. The Incarnation raised human nature to a loftier level, lifted it nearer to God, fulfilled in a new and nobler manner the Divine idea of humanity. V. These blessings are to be ascribed solely to God’ s infinite love. We had no claim upon Him for gifts like these. Nor, in conferring them, did He act under the constraint of any law of His own nature which imposed upon Him either a necessity or an obligation to raise us to the dignity of Divine sonship. It is all the result of His free, unforced, spontaneous kindliness. What He has done for us is “ to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Adoption 1. Wherein does the predestination of the fifth verse differ from the election of the fourth? Election only, and always, refers to the Church; predestination refers to the Church, and the world, and the whole universe. It is a general, all-embracing principle. He elected us that we should be holy, and to accomplish this He predestined us to the adoption of sons. Election is a mere passive preference of some rather than others, while predestination is active, and includes the ideas of ordering, defining, and controlling all things according to a settled purpose and plan. Election is the foundation of a Church, and predestination is the basis of providence. 2. But what is this adoption to which we are predestinated? It is the very first of the privileges which Paul ascribes to the Jewish nation--“ To whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever” (Romans 9:4-5). In a wide sense, the Jews were nationally the children of God, and the principle of adoption was in their polity; for the Son of God, the Messiah, was the hope of the nation. They were His peculiar people (Deuteronomy 14:2). But the adoption is the peculiar privilege and glory of the New Testament Church, in which the incorruptible seed remains, because they are born of God. 3. This adoption into the family of God is by or through Jesus Christ. 4. The two words “ unto Himself” has occasioned the commentators some trouble, and their sentiments are very various. But surely, looked at simply, the most common understanding can see no difficulty in this idea--“ God has predestinated us unto the adoption of children to or for Himself.” Is it not a Scriptural idea that the Church is the peculiar treasure and property of God? (See Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 14:2; Psalms 135:4; Titus 2:14)5. Note here, also, that this predestination and adoption are according to the good pleasure of His will. This is the mode and the measure of His working. 6. We see here the purpose in which all His working, before time and in time, ends--“ That we might be to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). The phrase “ glory of His grace” is a Hebraism which our translators have rendered literally, but which means “ His glorious grace.” (For similar forms see Colossians 1:27; 2 Thessalonians 1:9) The purpose of electing and redeeming love is to form from among the sinners of mankind a people to the praise and glory of God. The glorious grace of God shines forth in the struggling, wrestling Church more than anywhere else in the creation; for it is there put to the severest tests, and, like the rainbow in clouds and storms, it is enhanced by the contrast. As sure, and so far as God is the Ruler and Governor of the world, the great end of every creature must be His glory; and as grace is the form in which His glory has shone forth most brightly on this earth, the highest aim of the redeemed creature--in all states and conditions of being--should ever be “ to the praise of His glorious grace.” (W. Graham, D. D.)Adoption I. The adoption of children to himself, unto which we are said to be predestinated. The adoption of children necessarily implies that those admitted or chosen to this honour are not naturally or legally children, but become so only by the will and act of Him who adopts them.1. The “ adoption of children” is the permanent restitution of sinners unto the favour, love, and enjoyment of God. 2. There is implied or included in this a participation in the Divine Glory, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The third person in the Trinity receives the peculiar name of the “ Spirit of Adoption.” 3. In “ the adoption of children,” all is included whatsoever is embraced in the “ inheritance of the saints in light.” “ It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” “ The half hath not yet been told us” concerning the dignity and blessedness of heaven. II. God hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children. Now this predestination stands connected with the election spoken of in the previous verse. In respect of the purpose or design of God, it is not to be distinguished from that election--as if the one preceded the other in the order of time. When He elected or chose us in His love, He also predestinated us in His wisdom and power, and when He predestinated us He also in love chose us. But the term election has respect more to the affection of the Divine Heart, so to speak; whereas the term predestination has respect more to the plan and purpose of the Divine Mind. It leads us to consider a certain definite end, purposed, determined, and secured--which in the present case is the adoption of children to Himself. Infinite wisdom, and infinite power, can infallibly carry out the designs of infinite sovereignty; and He who hath chosen us out of love can easily, in His sovereign wisdom and power, bring us into the possession of all that infinite love would have us to enjoy. III. The ground of this predestination, viz., “ According to the good pleasure of His will.” The expression is to be understood of that sovereign will of God which acknowledges no superior beyond itself, and no cause whatsoever moving it from without. IV. That God’ s predestination and the good pleasure of His will are carried out by Jesus Christ--the Beloved--in whom we are accepted. The mystery of salvation is not perceived at all until we bring into account the necessity of such an atonement as could be effected only by the Son of God Himself. V. The final end which God hath proposed in the salvation of the Church is “ the praise of the glory of His grace.” “ He hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children … to the praise of the glory of His grace.” God can accomplish no higher or better end than the manifestation of His own glory. Since, in and of Himself, He is infinitely and eternally blessed, therefore it was an act of pure goodness on the part of God to create a race of intelligent beings, who being endowed with freedom of will, might, in the right exercise of their powers and faculties, find their happiness in contemplating His glory and sharing His favour. This freedom having been abused by all, in departing from the true object of delight and satisfaction, it becomes an act of grace on the part of God to renew to any the favours of His love and friendship. Contemplating sinners lying in their guilt and pollution and misery, God found the highest motive for extending to them His goodness entirely in Himself. “ I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own name’ s sake.” (W. Alves, M. A.)God wills our salvation When the Crusaders heard the voice of Peter the Hermit, as he bade them go to Jerusalem to take it from the hands of the invaders, they cried out at once, “Deus vult; God wills it; God wills it” ; and every man plucked his sword from its scabbard, and set out to reach the holy sepulchre, for God willed it. So come and drink, sinner; God wills it. Trust Jesus; God wills it. “ Father, Thy will be done on earth even as it is in heaven.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)Adoption defined and illustrated Adoption is that act of God whereby men who were by nature the children of wrath even as others, are, entirely of the pure grace of God, translated out of the evil and black family of Satan, and brought actually and virtually into the family of God, so that they take His Name, share the privileges of sons, and are to all intents and purposes the actual offspring and children of God. Did you ever think what a high honour it is to be called a son of God? Suppose a judge of the land should have before him some traitor who was about to be condemned to die. Suppose that equity and law demanded this, but suppose it were possible for the judge to step from his throne and to say, “ Rebel as thou air, I have found out a way whereby I can forgive thy rebellions. Man, thou art pardoned!” There is a flush of joy upon his cheek. “ Man, thou art made rich; see, there is wealth!” Another smile passes over the countenance. “ Man, thou art made so strong that; thou shalt be able to resist all thine enemies!” He rejoices again. “ Man,” saith the judge at last, “ thou art adopted into the Royal Family, and thou shalt one day wear a crown! Thou art now as much the Son of God as thou art the son of thine own father.” You can conceive the poor creature fainting with joy at such a thought. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 1:6 To the praise of the glory of His grace.God’ s glory in man’ s salvation 1. All that God did from eternity intend about man has no end but His own glory. The reason is plain. God, who is wisdom itself, cannot work without an end. A wise man will do nothing but to some purpose. God’ s object in making all things must be better than all those things which are done to attain that object, for the end is better than that which serves for it, as the body is better than food, raiment, etc. But, except God Himself, there is nothing better than the works of God; nothing better than every creature, save the Creator Himself. If, then, He must needs have an end why He makes things, and this end must needs be better than the things made for it, and nothing is better than all the creatures save only their Creator, it follows that God must needs have Himself as His end in everything he does. Since this is so, let us in all things labour to yield Him glory; whatever we are, let us be that in Him, and through Him, and for Him. 2. God generally intends the praise of His grace in all who are predestinated by Him. Let this stir us up to glorify Him in regard of His grace to us. Even as waters come from the sea, and return again to it, so from this Divine Ocean comes every blessing, and every benefit should, by praising this grace, be duly acknowledged with thankfulness. 3. The attributes of God are His essential glory. This should make us endeavour to know the properties of God, and view as far as we may the reflection which we have in His word and works of such infinite glory. 4. The grace which now works all good things for us, is the same which before all time purposed them to us. 5. The grace of God brings us to receive favour and grace in and through His Beloved. Christ has satisfied justice, so that grace may be freely bestowed upon us. (Paul Bayne.)The grace of God I. In salvation as a whole we see the glory of God’ s grace. “ The praise of the glory of His grace” in rescuing man from the deep ruin into which he had fallen, in leading our captivity captive, in uplifting us into heaven, and giving us to be partakers of His glory through the merit of Jesus Christ our Lord--in all this grace is as glorious as was power at the Red Sea. No stinted thing then, no small matter, but something great and grand and glorious will that salvation be, which is to the praise of the glory of so great and favourite an attribute as the grace of God. I have tried if I could to think of what grace at its utmost must be; but who by searching can find out God? It is not possible for the human mind to conceive of power at its utmost. Pharaoh’ s overthrow gives you but a guess at what the omnipotence of the Lord can accomplish, it can shake all worlds to dust, dissolve the universe, and annihilate creation. Power at its utmost, who shall compass it? And grace, my brethren, grace at its utmost! When all the chosen ones shall be gathered together, and the Church of God in heaven shall be perfect, not one living stone lacking of the entire fabric, then across that edifice shall this inscription be written in letters of light, “ To the praise of the glory of His grace.” The work of salvation from first to last, as a whole, was devised and carried out, and shall be perfected to the praise of the glory of the grace of God. II. This is true of each detail of salvation. I gather that from the position of my text. The fifth verse speaks of predestination and adoption, and the sixth verse speaks of acceptance in the Beloved, and the position of my text puts all three of these under the same mark, they are all “ to the praise of the glory of His grace.” Brethren, the sea is salt as a whole, and every drop of it is salt in its degree: if the whole work of salvation be of grace, every detail of that work is equally of grace. The rays of the sun as a whole possess certain properties, analyse one single sunbeam and you shall find all those properties there. I have just now said that the whole of salvation might be resembled to a great temple, and that across its front would be written, “ To the praise of the glory of His grace” ; now, some of the ancient Eastern buildings were erected by certain monarchs, and were dedicated to them, and not only was the whole pile set up to their honour, but each separate brick was stamped with the royal cartouche or coat of arms; not only the whole structure but each separate brick bore the impress of the builder; so is it in the matter of salvation: the whole is of grace, and each particular portion of it equally manifests in its measure the free favour of God.1. Election.2. Redemption.3. Effectual calling.4. Pardon and justification.5. Mark you well that the next series of steps, which we call sanctification, or perseverance, or, better still, gracious conservation, all of these must be of grace too. No man has any claim upon God to keep him from going into sin. Thus, from foundation to pinnacle, the temple of our salvation is all of grace. III. The peculiar glories of this grace ought to be pointed out.1. It is sovereign. Given to man according to the absolute will of the Almighty. 2. Free. Man is not expected to do anything to earn or obtain the grace of God; he would not, if he were expected; he could not, if he were required. 3. Full. Grace to cover all the man’ s sins, whatever they may be. 4. Unfailing in continuance. The gifts of God are without repentance. Grace is no intermittent brook flowing today and dried up tomorrow, no fleeting meteor dazzling all beholders and then vanishing in thick darkness. 5. Unalloyed and unmingled. God’ s grace in saving souls rules alone. Human merit does not intrude here and there to make a patchwork of the whole. Grace is Alpha, grace is Omega. It is grace’ s glory that no mortal finger touches her work, and no human hammer is lifted up thereon. 6. Need I say that it is one glory of this grace that while it thus reveals itself so fully, it never interferes with any other attribute of God? On the contrary, it only tends to illustrate all the other glories of the Divine character. IV. This grace ought to be the subject of praise.1. Praise God while your mind surveys the whole plan of salvation.2. Let all men see the result of grace in you.3. Add to your holy living your own personal testimony. V. The great ground of hope for sinners. My last word shall briefly indicate what is the privilege of each sinner who would rejoice in the sovereign grace of God. Often as we explain faith, yet still we need to explain it again. I met with an illustration taken from the American war. One had been trying to instruct a dying officer in what faith was. At last he caught the idea, and he said, “ I could not understand it before, but I see it now. It is just this--I surrender, I surrender to Jesus.” That is it. You have been fighting against God, standing out against Him, trying to make terms more or less favourable to yourself; now here you stand in the presence of God, and you drop the sword of your rebellion and say, “ Lord, I surrender, I am Thy prisoner. I trust to Thy mercy to save me. I have done with self, I fall into Thy arms.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)The glory of Jehovah’ s grace I. The glory of grace is its freeness: it fixes upon objects that are most unworthy; bestows upon them the richest blessings; raises them to the highest honour; promises them the greatest happiness; and all for its own glory. Nothing can be freer than grace. II. The glory of grace is its power: it conquers the stubbornest sinners; subdues the hardest hearts; tames the wildest wills; enlightens the darkest understandings; breaks off the strongest fetters; and invariably conquers its objects. Grace is omnipotent. III. The glory of grace is its benevolence: it never injured one; it has delivered, supplied, conducted, supported, and glorified thousands; it brings the inexhaustible fulness of God to supply the creature’ s wants. Grace gives away all it has, reserving nothing for itself but the praise and glory of its acts. Jesus is grace personified; in Him it may be seen in all its beauty, excellence, and loveliness; by Him it is displayed in all its native dignity. O Jesus! glorify Thy free, powerful, and benevolent grace in me! (Essex Remembrancer.)Grace is all Payson, when dying, expressed himself with great earnestness respecting the grace of God as exercised in saving lost men, and seemed particularly affected that it should be bestowed on one so ill-deserving as himself. “ Oh, how sovereign! Oh, how sovereign! Grace is the only thing that can make us like God. I might be dragged through heaven, earth, and hell, and I should be still the same sinful, polluted wretch, unless God Himself should renew and cleanse me.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)We muse glorify God’ s grace Had I all the faith of the patriarchs, all the zeal of the prophets, all the good works of the apostles, the constancy of the martyrs, and all the flaming devotion of seraphs, I would disclaim them all in point of dependence, and rely only on free grace. I would count all but dung and dross when put in competition with the infinitely precious death and meritorious righteousness of my dear Saviour Jesus Christ; and, if ever a true and lasting reformation of manners is produced amongst us, it must (under the influence of the Eternal Spirit) be produced by the doctrines of free grace. Till these doctrines are generally inculcated, the most elegant harangues from the pulpit, or the most correct dissertations from the press, will be no better than a pointless arrow or a broken bow. (Hervey.)Glorifying God’ s grace Dr. Kane, finding a flower under the Humboldt glacier, was more affected by it because it grew beneath the lip and cold bosom of the ice than he would have been by the most gorgeous garden bloom. So the most single, struggling grace in the heart of one far removed from Divine influence may be dearer to God than a whole catalogue of virtues in the life of one more favoured of heaven. (H. W. Beecher.)Accepted in the Beloved. Accepted of the great Father God’ s love of His dear Son covers all believers, as a canopy covers all who come beneath it. As a hen covereth her chickens with her wings, so God’ s love to Christ covers all the children of promise. As the sun shining forth from the gates of the morning gilds all the earth with golden splendour, so this great love of God to the Well-beloved, streaming forth to Him, enlightens all who are in Him. God is so boundlessly pleased with Jesus that in Him He is altogether well pleased with us. I. I will begin by treating the text by way of contrast. Brethren and sisters, the grace of God hath made us to be this day “ accepted in the Beloved” ; but it was not always so.1. What a contrast is our present condition of acceptance to our position under the law through Adam’ s fall. By actual sin we made ourselves to be the very reverse of accepted, for we were utterly refused. It might have been said of us, “ Reprobate silver shall men call them, because God hath rejected them.” Mark, it is not said that we are “ acceptable,” though that were a very great thing, but we are actually accepted; it has become not a thing possible that God might accept us, but He has accepted us in Christ. Lay this to your soul, and may it fill you with delight. 2. Think, again, of the contrast between what you are now, and what you would have been had not grace stepped in. Left out of Christ, we might at this time have been going on from sin to sin. 3. One more point I cannot quite pass over, and that is, the contrast between what we now are and all we ever could have been in the most favourable circumstances apart from the Beloved. If it had been possible for us out of Christ to have had desires after righteousness, yet those desires would all have run in a wrong direction; we should have had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, and so, going about to establish our own righteousness, we should not have submitted ourselves to the righteousness of God. At this moment the prayers we offered would never have been received at the throne; the praises we presented would have been an ill savour unto God; all that we could have aimed to accomplish in the matter of good works, had we striven to our utmost, would have been done in wilfulness and pride, and so must necessarily have fallen short of acceptance. We should have heard the voice of the Eternal saying, “ Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me” ; for out of Christ our righteousness is as unacceptable as our unrighteousness, and all our attempts to merit acceptance increase our unworthiness. II. Secondly, we will say a little by way of explanation, that the text may sink yet deeper into your hearts, and afford you richer enjoyment. “ He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” Much went before this, but, oh, what a morning without clouds rose upon us when we knew our acceptance and were assured thereof. Acceptance was the watchword, and had troops of angels met us we should have rejoiced that we were as blest as they. Understand that this acceptance comes to us entirely as a work of God--“ He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” We never made ourselves acceptable, nor could we have done so, but He that hath made us first in creation, hath now new made us by His grace, and so hath made us accepted in the Beloved. That this was an act of pure grace there can be no doubt, for the verse runs thus, “ Wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved,” that is, in His grace. There was no reason in ourselves why we should have been put into Christ, and so accepted; the reason lay in the heart of the Eternal Father Himself. III. Can we get a step farther? Will the Holy Spirit help us while I say a few words by way of enlargement?1. If we are “ accepted in the Beloved,” then, first, our persons are accepted: we ourselves are well pleasing to Him. God looks upon us now with pleasure. 2. Being ourselves accepted, the right of access to Him is given us. When a person is accepted with God he may come to God when he chooses. He is one of these courtiers who may come even to the royal throne and meet with no rebuff. No chamber of our great Father’ s house is closed against us; no blessing of the covenant is withheld from us; no sweet smile of the Father’ s face is refused us. 3. And, being accepted ourselves, our prayers are also accepted. Children of God, can you sincerely believe this? When God delights in men He gives them the desires of their hearts. 4. It follows, as a pleasant sequence, that our gifts are accepted, for those who are accepted with God find a great delight in giving of their substance to the glory of His name. Then let us try what we can do for Him. Here is a great lump of quartz, but if the Lord can see a grain of gold, He will save the quartz for the sake of it. He says, “ Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it.” I do not mean that the Lord deals thus with all men. It is only for accepted men that He has this kind way of accepting their gifts. Had you seen me, when a young man, and an usher, walking through the streets with rolls of drawings from a boys’ school, you would have guessed that I considered them of no value and fit only to be consigned to the fire; but I always took a great interest in the drawings of my own boy, and I still think them rather remarkable. You smile, I dare say, but I do so think, and my judgment is as good as yours. I value them because they are his, and I think I see budding genius in every touch, but you do not see it because you are so blind. I see it since love has opened my eyes. God can see in His people’ s gifts to Him and their works for Him a beauty which no eyes but His can perceive. Oh, if He so treats our poor service, what ought we not to do for Him? What zeal, what alacrity should stimulate us! If we are ourselves accepted our sacrifices shall be acceptable. IV. We have thus pursued our train of thought in a contrast, an explanation, and an enlargement; let us now indulge in a few reflections. “ Accepted in the Beloved.” May not each believer talk thus with himself--I have my sorrows and griefs, I have my aches and pains, and weaknesses, but I must not repine, for God accepts me. Ah me! How one can laugh at griefs when this sweet word comes in, “ accepted in the Beloved.” I may be blind, but I am “ accepted in the Beloved:” I may be lame, I may be poor, I may be despised, I may be persecuted, I may have much to put up with in many ways, but really these troubles of the flesh count for little or nothing to me since I am “ accepted in the Beloved.” Is not this a word to die with? We will meet death and face his open jaws with this word, “ Accepted in the Beloved.” Will not this be a word to rise with amidst the blaze of the great judgment day? V. And now I wish to finish with this one practical use. If it be so that we are “ accepted in the Beloved,” then let us go forth and tell poor sinners how they can be accepted too. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Accepted in the Beloved There is implied here a twofold ground of acceptance--1. On account of our relation to His person. 2. On account of His atonement for our sins. This word “ accepted” only occurs twice in the New Testament. The Spirit of God applies it here to believers in Christ. The same expression is applied to the Virgin Mary, when He proclaims her “ highly favoured” (Luke 1:28). He hath made us His Hephzibahs--made us dear to Him in the Beloved--made us His delights, a joy to Himself in the Beloved. Not “ the Righteous One,” though that is true. Not “ the Holy One,” though that is true; nor through His blood and merits, although He has so done. But there is a deeper truth still: “ accepted in His person” before He became man. Accepted in Him who is “ the brightness of the Father’ s glory, and the express image of His person.” “ Accepted in the Beloved.” It is not the whole truth that we are accepted for His merits and His atonement, though that is true. But here the record calls us back to a past eternity, and tells us of our being made “ accepted in the Beloved.” And yet there are multitudes of professing Christians who do not trust, or know, or believe that they are accepted in Him, and who do not enjoy the blessedness and rest of looking up into their Father’ s face and recognizing the love bestowed on them in the Father’ s Beloved, and the security that that love has surrounded them with! They think they are only accepted according to the measure of their prayers, their merits, their good works, and their faith, instead of according to the measure of the Father’ s everlasting love for His Son. Yes! we are here plainly taught that our acceptance in the first place was not even on account of Christ’ s own merits, or prayers, or blood, or sacrifice, much less ours, but solely and only on account of our relation to His person as God’ s Beloved One; and the subsequent interference of sin only brought out the resources of redemption, forgiveness, salvation, and adoption in Him “ in whom all fulness dwells.” (M. Rainsford, B. A.)Accepted in the Beloved I. Positive union.1. In the heart of Christ, and in His heart from all eternity. With prescient eye Christ beheld His people before they were yet formed. Hath He not said, “ I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with the bands of My kindness have I drawn thee.” “ As the Father hath loved me, even so have I loved you.” 2. We are also in Christ’ s book. Having loved us we were chosen in Him and elected by His Father. We were not chosen separately and distinctly, and as individuals alone and apart. We were chosen in Christ. Blessed fact! the same register which includes Christ as first born, includes all the brethren. 3. We are in Christ’ s hand. All those whom the Father gave to Christ were bestowed upon Christ as a surety; and in the last great day, at the Redeemer’ s hand will God require the souls of all that were given to Him. Just as the Apostle Paul argues concerning Levi, that Levi is inferior to Christ; for he says, Abraham was less than Melchisedec, for without doubt the less is blessed of the greater, so also Levi was less than Melchisedec, for he was in the loins of Abraham when Melchisedec met him. So, beloved, as Levi was in the loins of Abraham and paid tithes to Melchisedec, so we were in the loins of Christ and paid the debt due to Divine justice, gave to the law its fulfilment, and to wrath its satisfaction. In the loins of Christ we have passed through the tomb already, and have entered into that which is within the veil, and are made to sit down in heavenly places, even in Him. This day the chosen of God are one with Christ and in the loins of Christ. 5. As we are in the heart of Christ, in the book of Christ, in the hand of Christ, and in the loins of Christ, there is yet another thought dearer and sweeter still. We are in the person of Christ; for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. By the mysterious operations of the quickening Spirit the sinner begins to live a spiritual life. Now, in the moment when the spiritual life was first given, there commenced in that soul a vital and personal union with the person of Christ Jesus. There had always been in that soul a secret mystical union in the Divine purpose; but now there comes to be a union in effect, and the soul is in Christ from that hour, in a sense in which it never was before. II. Accepted in the Beloved. What does our acceptance include?1. Justification before God. We stand on our own trial. When we stand in Christ we are acquitted; while standing in ourselves the only verdict must be condemnation. 2. Divine complacency. 3. Divine delight. III. Divine operations; “ made accepted.” All of God, not of man. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Jesus Christ the Beloved One, and sinners accented of God freely in Him Jesus Christ is the Beloved, the eminently Beloved One. In discoursing from this doctrine, I shall-- I. Show in what respects Christ is the eminently Beloved One. II. Make some improvement. I. I am to show in what respects Christ is the eminently Beloved One.1. He is the Beloved of the excellent ones of the earth. Who these are, ye may see (Psalms 16:3). They are “ the saints.” Him all the saints love with a love above all persons and all things (Luke 14:26). And-- (1) They meet altogether in Him in love, however they are scattered through the world; hence is He called, “ the desire of all nations” (Haggai 2:7). So that lovers of Christ and saints are of equal latitude (Ephesians 6:24); “ Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.” (2) Each one of them loves Him with a superlative and transcendent love (Psalms 73:25). (3) They love other persons and things for His sake (Romans 15:2-3; Titus 3:3-5). (4) The liker anything is to Him, they love it the more. 2. Christ is the Beloved of the glorious ones in heaven. All eyes are upon Him there, for He is there the light of the pleasant land (Revelation 21:23), as the sun is in this world. And He is there-- (1) The Beloved of the glorified saints, who now love Him in perfection (Revelation 7:10). (2) The Beloved of the holy angels (Revelation 5:11-12). In the Temple the cherubims were posted, looking towards the ark or mercy seat, a type of Christ; which signified the angels looking to Jesus with love and admiration (1 Peter 1:12). They behold His glory, and cannot but love Him. (3) The Father’ s Beloved (Matthew 17:5). (a) In respect of His Person. (b) In respect of His office. I shall conclude this point with a word of application. I. Hereby ye may try whether ye be saints or not, partakers of the Divine nature. If so, Christ will be your eminently Beloved One. II. Of reproof to those who love Him not eminently, above all. It is an evidence, that--1. Ye know Him not (John 4:10). None can be let into a discovery of Christ in His glory, but must love Him (Matthew 13:44-46). It is to the blind world only there is no beauty in Him for which He is to be desired. 2. That ye are in love with your sins and a vain world. For who would loath the physician but he that loves his disease and cannot part with it? III. Let him be your Beloved then, and give Him your heart.1. He is best worth your love. None has done so much for sinners as Christ has, dying for them. 2. If ye love Him not, ye will be constructed haters of Him, and enemies to Him (1 Corinthians 16:22). Doctrine II. The way how a sinner comes to be accepted of God is freely in Christ.1. What is implied in this. I. A state of non-acceptance, or unacceptableness with God, that sinners are in while they are not in Christ. And we may take up this in these following things:1. They are offenders. (1) Sinners in Adam (Romans 5:12). The root was corrupted, and all the branches withered and rotted in him. (2) Sinners in their own persons, who are capable of actual sinning. 2. Unpardoned offenders. 3. God is not pleased with them; for His being pleased with any of mankind is in His Son Jesus Christ, and without Him He can be pleased with none of them (Matthew 3:1-17, ult.; Hebrews 11:5-6). 4. He is highly displeased with them. There is a cloud of Divine displeasure ever upon them (John 3:1-36, ult.). 5. He cannot endure to have any communion or intercourse with them, farther than in the way of common providence (Psalms 5:5). He and they are at enmity, He legally, they really; so there can be no communion (Amos 3:3). And they cannot have it till they come to Christ (John 14:6). 6. He loathes them, His soul abhors them, as abominable. They are abominable in their persons unto God, as wholly corrupt and defiled (Titus 1:15-16). 7. The wrath of God is upon them, and they lie under His curse. II. A way provided how sinners may be accepted.1. God is ready to accept of them now that will come to Him in His own way (2 Corinthians 5:19). 2. There is ready for sinners what may procure them acceptance with a holy God (Matthew 22:4). 3. There is open proclamation made in the gospel, that all may have the benefit of that sacrifice, and be accepted of God. III. The sinner’ s bestirring himself for acceptance with God. There is a way to acceptance, but the sinner must take that way, else he will not get acceptance. He cannot sit still careless, and be accepted. The sinner’ s bestirring himself in this matter, takes in these three things.1. A conviction of unacceptableness to God (John 16:8). Men must be convinced of their being unacceptable to God, ere they will come to Christ. It is their not seeing their own loathsomeness, that makes them slight the sacrifices of sweet savour; and think to be accepted of God, while yet they are not in Christ. 2. A weighty concern and uneasiness about it. 3. Anxiety of heart for it (Acts 2:37). There must be earnest longings to be accepted of Him, yea, the soul must be brought to esteem and so prize it, as to be content with it upon any terms (Acts 9:6). IV. The next general head is to consider the nature of a sinner’ s acceptance with God.1. I shall consider the nature of a sinner’ s acceptance with God in itself. And in itself it is a great and unspeakable benefit, and implies these following things:-- (1) In general, it implies an acceptance of the sinner with God, as a righteous person. The Lord reputes, accounts, and accepts him into favour as a righteous person (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 4:6; Romans 5:19). (2) More particularly it implies-- 1. The ceasing of wrath against the soul (Hosea 14:4).2. The curse is removed (Galatians 3:13).3. He is fully pardoned (Isaiah 43:25).4. He is reconciled to God (Romans 5:1).5. God is pleased with him (Hebrews 11:5).6. He is admitted to communion with God.7. God has a delight and complacency in him. He looks on him in His own Son, and takes pleasure in him, as covered with His righteousness. V. Let us consider this acceptance in its effects and consequents. It is in these an unspeakable privilege. By means of it--1. The springs of mercy are opened to the sinner, that rivers of compassion may flow towards him (Romans 5:1, etc.). 2. He is adjudged to eternal life (2 Thessalonians 1:6-7; Acts 26:18). Life was promised in the first covenant, upon the fulfilling of the law; now the believer being accepted of God as a righteous person, for whom the law is fulfilled, is accordingly adjudged to live forever. 3. The channel of sanctification is cleared for him, and the dominion of sin is broken in him (Romans 6:14). 4. He is privileged with peace of conscience. 5. Access to God with confidence. 6. His works accepted. 7. The sting removed from afflictions and death. 8. All things working for good (Romans 8:28). VI. I proceed to show the way of a sinner’ s acceptance with God. First, It is “ freely.” There is nothing in the sinner himself to procure it, or move God to it (Romans 3:24). It is done freely, in that--1. It is without respect to any work done by the sinner (Titus 3:5). Grace and works are inconsistent in this matter. 2. It is without respect to any good qualification or disposition wrought in the sinner (Romans 4:5). For-- (1) The way of a sinner’ s acceptance with God excludes all boasting (Romans 3:27). (2) What good qualities can there be in the sinner before he be accepted in Christ? (Hebrews 11:6). (3) When the man comes to be endued with gracious qualities, as he is by that time already accepted, so if his acceptance depended on them, he would come short; for still they are imperfect, having a great mixture of the contrary ill qualities, that need to be covered another way. And how can one expect acceptance on that, for which he needs a pardon? Secondly, It is in Christ the sinner is accepted. It implies--1. The cause of a sinner’ s acceptance with God. It is for Christ’ s sake (Romans 3:24-25). 2. The state of acceptableness of a sinner, wherein he may, and will be, and cannot but be accepted of God; it is being in Christ, united to Him by faith. One must not think to be accepted for Christ’ s sake while out of Christ; no more than the branch of one tree can partake of the sap of another, while not ingrafted into it; or the slayer could be safe, while he was not yet got within the gates of the city of refuge. But in Christ the sinner is in a state of acceptableness to God. We take up this in these five things following:--1. In Christ the sinner may be accepted of God (2 Corinthians 5:19). 2. In Christ the sinner will be accepted. Any, even the worst of sinners shall certainly be accepted in Christ (Acts 16:31). Whosoever shall make their escape into this city of refuge shall be safe. Christ will refuse none that come to Him; and God will reject none that are in Christ. 3. In Christ the sinner cannot but be accepted. It is impossible it should fail or miscarry (Hebrews 6:18). 4. That moment a sinner is in Christ, he is accepted (Romans 8:1, “ There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” )I come now to the improvement of this subject.1. Then the door of acceptance with God is open to all; none are excluded (Isaiah 55:1-2). 2. Seek then acceptance with God, that ye may find favour with Him. This should be your main aim (2 Corinthians 5:9). Here your happiness lies in time and eternity. 3. Seek it freely, without pretending to anything in yourselves to recommend you to His acceptance or favour. 4. Seek it through Jesus Christ only, that is, by faith in Him, laying the whole stress of your acceptance on His righteousness. 5. Therefore as ever ye would have acceptance or favour with God, seek to be in Christ; to be united to Him. For as there is no acceptance with God, but for His sake; so there is no acceptance for His sake, but to those that are in Him (Colossians 1:27). There is salvation in Christ, but none partake of it that are not in Him; a righteousness in Him, but it covers none but the members of His body. (T. Boston, D. D.)The central doctrine--accepted in the Beloved The doctrine of justification by faith, the central doctrine of Protestantism as it is sometimes called, is, as it is often presented, a hard, dry, formal statement of a most precious and inspiring truth. The truth is in its very nature so full of tenderness, of affection, of the most sacred and intimate experience, that it is quite impossible to put it into a formula. Let us imagine some doctor of the law going to the home of the prodigal after the feast was over, taking the father and the son aside, and questioning them, notebook in hand: “ A very remarkable and beautiful reconciliation has taken place here,” he says: “ the rebel against parental authority is pardoned: the wanderer has returned to his home; favour and plenty and peace have been restored to one who has long been deprived of them; will you not have the goodness now to condense into a statement not more than five or six lines in length the real nature of this transaction?” The crude and stupid absurdity of such a proposition would be evident enough to all who have read the touching story. As if all the regret, the gratitude, the hopes, the fears, the doubts, the confidences, the anguish, the dread, the thankfulness, the peace of that deep human experience could be reduced to a logical definition! And yet men undertake to put into concise theological propositions the whole truth concerning the return of the sinner to the favour of God. “ What is justification?” asks the Shorter Catechism. “ Justification,” answers the Shorter Catechism, “ is an act of God’ s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.” That is the scientific definition of justification by faith, perhaps as good a definition as ever was framed. And it may help us a little toward a right understanding of what justification is, just as Weisbach’ s great books on hydraulics might help us a little toward understanding the ministry of water; just as Bishop’ s two big volumes on marriage and divorce may throw some light on the nature of the family relation; but he who depends on such a formulary as this for his knowledge of the way in which the sinner is restored by faith in Christ to the favour of God, must remain in profound ignorance of the whole matter. In some way, it is clear, the New Testament represents God as accepting men through Christ. In some way Christ is regarded by the believer as his substitute. He is the Mediator between God and men. By faith in Him we are justified. These words meant something to the men who used them, and they ought to mean something to us. What is their meaning? They cannot, of course, describe any legal transfer of moral qualities. Moral qualities cannot be legally transferred from one person to another. My demerits cannot be lawfully transferred to another, nor can the merits of another be lawfully transferred to me. My guilt is my own, and can by no possibility be imputed to another being. Can anyone else in the universe be blamed for a sin of mine in which he had no part? On the other hand it is equally impossible that I should be regarded as entitled to praise for a good act performed by another person, of which I had no knowledge, and in which I had no part. “ Every one of you shall give an account for himself unto God.” The entire and absolute personality of moral qualities, of guilt or innocence, of praise or blame, is the fundamental truth of morality. Any legal interference with this fundamental principle would be subversive of all righteousness. But it is said that though moral quality cannot be transferred, legal liability can be; that though Christ cannot be morally guilty on account of our sins, God regards Him as legally responsible for them; that though His merits cannot be legally transferred to us, God does consider us as blameless before the law on His account. We are justified because we claim Him as our substitute. Now there is under all these phrases a great truth. Take the following story as an illustration of it. John Goodman is a citizen of noble character and of large philanthropy. He has a son, whom he loved as the apple of his eye, and who is justifying his father’ s affection by growing up into blameless manliness One night a young desperado, the offspring of criminals, whose life has been spent among the worst classes of our cities, breaks into John Goodman’ s house, with the intent of robbery, and nearly kills his son. The father comes to the rescue, captures the young burglar, binds him fast, and waits for the morning to deliver him up to justice. In the meantime the son revives, and, seeing the youth of the criminal, is touched with pity for him, a sentiment that has already begun to kindle the father’ s heart. Before morning father and son have resolved to make a great venture to save this wretched boy from his life of crime and shame. They tell him that if he will turn from his evil ways, he may have a home with them, sharing their comfort and their plenty; that they will protect him, so far as they can, from the consequences of his past misdeeds; that they will guard him from bad influences, and open to him paths of integrity and honour; that he shall be recognized as an equal in the family, and shall be joint heir to the estate. All this is offered him by the father, and urged upon him, even with tears, by the son whose life he had attempted. Of course it is very difficult for the wretch to believe that these assurances are sincere. He thinks at first that they are mocking and taunting him, and his lips curl with scorn and resentment as he listens. But by and by he perceives that they are in earnest, and he is overwhelmed by their marvellous goodness. He casts himself down before them; he kisses their feet; he tells them in broken words the story of his gratitude. And he does honestly try to live the better life toward which they seek to lead him. It is the deepest purpose of his life to be upright and faithful and pure. But, as anyone might easily foretell, this is a purpose hard for such a boy to shape in act. He is indolent, and profane, and reckless by habit; his mind is full of gross and foul thoughts: his temper is untamed; his whole nature has been warped and corrupted by his early training. This ingrained evil finds expression in many ways. After a time the good man begins to despair of ever making anything of this unfortunate youth; he begins to regret that, instead of trying to reclaim him, he had not handed him over to the police. But while he is thus wavering in his purpose, he chances to enter the room of his protege, and there he finds upon the table a picture of his own son, soiled with much handling, evidently left in sight by accident--and on the back of it, in the rude handwriting and doubtful orthography of the waif, these words written: “ I want to be like him. I pray God to help me to be nearer like him. I’ m far enough from it now, God knows; but I watch him all the while, and try to live as good a life as he lives. God bless him for all his goodness to me!” The father’ s eyes fill with tears as he reads these simple words. He discerns in them the deep purpose of the poor boy whose faulty performance has so tried him. His heart cannot but be touched by the lad’ s choice of a hero. He knows that the choice is a worthy one, and he knows that the lad’ s love for his own son will have in it a regenerating power. He has no more misgivings concerning the wisdom of his attempt to save this lost one; and always after this he couples the lad in his thoughts with his own son; and feels toward him something of the tenderness with which he regards his own son. Since the poor lad cherishes for the other this passionate friendship, since he takes the father’ s pride as his own ideal and pattern, how else can the father regard him? He is accepted in the belayed. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)Provision for eternity Accepted in the Beloved. The phrase is simple, but not, at a mere glance, immediately obvious. To feel its force, we must enter in and survey its interior, and see as far as our short-sighted faculties can reach, what it takes within its range. It is a summary and simple form for gathering up everything we need to have, in a provision for the world to come. I. Where is the provision laid up? It is laid up in a living Person. It is with a living Person that we have to do from first to last. And the fulness and suitableness of that Person comes forth here in a vivid and peculiar manner--for you observe how He is named. By a name of holy endearment and of Divine tenderness He is called here, “ the Beloved.” “ Lovely” and “ Beloved” He is in Himself, because from Him emanate whatever qualities of good are possible in a creature--because in Him, as the God-man mediator, all excellencies, both created and uncreated, are centred and combined. In the prospect, moreover, of what He was to fulfil on earth, as the Redeemer of mankind, beheld and set apart from all eternity as the object of the Father’ s infinite complacency and delight--the name in the text belongs to Him in a peculiar manner. But further observe, He is “ the Beloved,” because through Him alone could a holy God find the fitting channel for His love to man. He is “ the Beloved,” moreover, specially because of the perfect fulfilment in Him of the relations in which He stands, at once to God and to man; for whatever is due to God, and everything requisite for the deliverance and happiness of man, are found in infinite fulness in Him. His person communicates to everything He did and still does, in our stead, a value, a worth, which never can be measured, and to which no limits can be set. II. What provision has been laid up for us “ in the Beloved.” The text proclaims it in terms so simple, that some may be apt to pass them by without much consideration. It is acceptance “ in the Beloved.” To be “ accepted” --to have our acceptance before God--what is this? It is first of all--1. To be cleared and acquitted in the eye of the law--to be, in the judgment of a holy God, discharged and set free. It has its foundation broad and deep in the precious fact, which is immediately connected with it in the words following the text, at verse seven--it rests upon “ Redemption” --“ Redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” You see how deep down it goes--as deep as the humiliation of the Son of God from heaven to earth, even to the utmost extremity of His abasement beneath the curse! 2. But there is something more in the acceptance wherewith we are accepted in Christ. It is also to be fitted for service. It is to be put into the position of those whose worship, whose free-will offerings of grateful obedience are well pleasing to God. It is to have liberty to serve Him all our days “ without fear,” and from the blessed motives of love and thankfulness. 3. The holiness of character which has its beginning in the acceptance of our persons. To be “ accepted in the Beloved” is to begin to be holy. To have your feet planted on the “ foundation of God,” which “ standeth sure,” is to depart from iniquity. (J. S. Muir.)The acceptation of free grace A ship was sailing in the southern waters of the Atlantic, when another was sighted which was making signals of distress. They bore towards the distressed ship, and hailed them. “ What is the matter?” “ We are dying for want of water,” was the response. “ Dip it up then,” was the answer, “ you are in the mouth of the Amazon River.” Those sailors were thirsting, and suffering, and fearing death, and longing intensly for water, and all the while they were supposing that there was nothing but the ocean’ s brine around them; when, in fact, they had sailed unconsciously into the broad mouth of the mightest river on the globe, and did not know it: and though to them it seemed that they must perish with thirst, yet there was at least a hundred miles of fresh water all around them; and they had nothing to do but as they were bidden to “ dip it up.” The freeness of grace If you say, “ I do not know why He should save me; I am not worthy to be saved,” that is a fact; you are not. If you say, “ I do not think I have a right to look to Him for salvation; I have not done anything that should give me a claim on Him for so great a blessing,” that is true; you have not. It is not because you deserve Divine mercies that you have a right to expect them. I take a dozen beggar boys out of the street, and they say, “ I do not know why you should like me; I am unlovely, and there is nothing attractive about me.” That is so. And I take you that you may become lovely. “ But I am filthy and ragged.” Yes, you are; and I take you that you may be washed and clothed. “ But I am stupid and ignorant.” So you are; and I take you to educate you. “ But I am full of all manner of wickedness.” I know that; and it is because you are so wicked that I am determined, with God’ s help, to rescue you. Now, Christ does not take us because we are so pure and sweet, and virtuous and lovely. He takes us because He cannot bear to see a soul that is destined to immortality less than high and noble; and because He means to make us what He would have us to be, He sends us to school. “ They that are well,” He tells us, “ need not a physician; but they that are sick.” If you are sick, and will accept Him for your physician, He will cure you. (H. W. Beecher.)Christ a propitiation Plutarch tells us that when Themistocles in the hour of his exile wished to be reconciled with Admetus, King of the Molossians, whom he had previously offended, he took the king’ s son in his arms, and kneeled down before the household gods. The plea was successful, in fact it was the only one the Molossians looked upon as not to be refused, and so the philosopher found a refuge among them. And do not we come in this way when we approach the Majesty on High? We take hold of the King’ s Son, and hope to find acceptance through Him alone--we hope to be “ accepted in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:7 In whom we have redemption through His blood.Redemption in Christ God has made Christ an Adam, head, root, receptacle and storehouse, in whom are treasured all those good things which from Him are communicated to us.1. By nature we are no better than in a spiritual bondage. (1) Under a stern taskmaster the law.(2) Unable to do anything spiritually good.(3) Forced to endure many things most grievous (Hebrews 2:15). 2. We have deliverance from our spiritual thraldom by Christ. (1) Reason for thanksgiving. For such redemption we should sing with Mary our Magnificat.(2) Reason for joy (Isaiah 44:23). 3. That by which we are ransomed and redeemed is the blood of Christ. (1) From the guilt of sin.(2) From the power of the devil.(3) From the captivity of lusts, etc., through the Spirit dwelling in us.(4) From evil of every kind. All tears, in God’ s time, shall be wiped from our eyes; and meanwhile all our sufferings are so changed, that we know them to be not the result of God’ s vengeance, but of His fatherly love and care, His design being that we may partake further, by means of them, in the quiet fruit of righteousness. (Paul Bayne.)Our redemption I. Who are the subjects of this redemption? “ We” who were chosen in Christ to be holy; “ we” who have believed and trusted in Christ. Redemption, though offered to all, is actually bestowed only on those who repent and believe. II. What is the nature of this redemption? It is the redemption of the soul from the guilt of sin by pardon. III. The way and manner, in which believers become partakers of this privilege. “ Through the blood of Christ.” IV. The fountain from which our redemption flows. “ The riches of His grace.” (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Redemption I. The meaning of redemption. Suppose any article, pledged for a certain sum, and that it was redeemed, would it not revert to its owner again, and be his own, and be free? Suppose a man a prisoner, and ransomed, or redeemed by having a ransom paid for him. If the ransom were sufficient and accepted, would he not be free? Suppose an estate mortgaged and redeemed from its mortgage, would it not be free? Does not redemption in all these cases mean a complete and perfect deliverance, so that if there be not deliverance, then the term redemption cannot be applied; for the person or the thing is really not redeemed. II. the means of its accomplishment. The price--“ through His blood.” If any other means had been sufficient, is it possible, think you, that Christ would have died? Would the precious blood of the Lamb of God have been poured out if any price less costly had been sufficient? If you could save your children from destruction by any other means than the peril of your life, would you risk that life unnecessarily? And surely the Father had not sent His beloved Son to die upon the cross if other ransom could have been found for guilty man. III. How different is the ground of our forgiveness from the natural expectation of the heart. How different from the miserable hope that men derive from the thought that they are not So bad as others. How different from the miserable hope they derive from the idea that they have amended their lives and reformed their habits, and are better than their former selves, and therefore trust that they are on this ground more acceptable to God. How different from any such miserable hope--if hope it can be called, which must ever be clouded by the consciousness of sin, by the feeling that, however imperfect and false, the standard of attainment be which we have raised, we must fall short of our own standard, and sink beneath its level, when measured even by our own conscience. True it is, indeed, that if a sinner believes the gospel his life will be totally changed; he will be different from those who believe it not, and different from what he was himself as an unbeliever; but this is the effect, not the cause, of his salvation; he is changed not to be saved, but because he is saved. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)Blessings resulting from the death of Christ I. We must notice the privileges themselves. These are twofold--“ we have redemption,” and we have “ the forgiveness of sins.” We shall speak of them in order:--and, First, with respect to redemption. It denotes a change of state from bondage to liberty; and thus may be considered as implying--1. Deliverance from the power of our adversary the devil. 2. Redemption respects our deliverance from sin. It no longer reigns in those who are Christ’ s, although it may not yet be thoroughly eradicated. 3. This redemption, again, respects our deliverance from the fears of death--death corporeal, and death eternal. We now pass on to notice the other privilege mentioned in the text, and that is, “ the forgiveness of sins.”1. This forgiveness is full. It reaches to all sins--past, present, and future. 2. This forgiveness is altogether free. The distinctive excellency of the gospel of Jesus Christ is freeness. All the blessings it brings are as free as the air we breathe. II. The procuring cause of these privileges. Says the apostle, “ In whom we have redemption.” But who is He? Why the same who is referred to in the preceding verse. He in whom we are “ blessed with all spiritual blessings. He in whom we were “ chosen before the foundation of the world.” He by whom we have received the adoption of children, and in whom we stand accepted in the sight of God. And who is He but the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom we read in another place, “ that God having in time past spoken unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son” ; and by Him alone, for “ there is no other name given among men whereby we can be saved.” Hence you will observe that it is seldom, perhaps never, that the sacred writers fail to direct us to Christ, when they unfold any distinguishing privilege, or fundamental doctrine of the gospel: so it is here, the apostle is tracing our salvation up to its source, the love of God, but he also refers to the channel through which it flows, and that is Christ. III. We must glance at the original source. It is according to the “ riches of His grace.” Everything that God has done for sinners, shows us that He is a God of grace; but more especially in the coming of Christ, and in His elevation upon the cross, do we see the “ riches of His grace.” This surely ought to encourage sinners to draw near to God; “ that “ they may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Essex Remembrancer.)Redemption by the blood of Jesus I. The certainty with which Christ has, in point of pact, redeemed His people.1. Show how we came to need redemption.2. Christ Jesus, as Mediator, at a certain period of this world’ s history, gave Himself a ransom for His people. II. I come now to mention some of the properties of that redemption with which Christ redeems His people.1. It is free or unmerited on the part of man.2. A full redemption.3. This redemption takes effect in time.4. This redemption is for eternity. 5. Redemption by Jesus implies that we could not redeem ourselves. It is a law in nature that like produces like; and if it be once settled that our progenitors were corrupted and depraved, and at the same time granted that we are descended from them, the contrary of which is self-contradictory; then as sure as the corrupted fountain sends forth a polluted stream, so sure are we backward to that which is good, and forward to that which is evil. And sooner may the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots--which would be nature inverting nature’ s course, for it is natural for them to be as they are--than can man who is born of a woman cease to do evil, and learn to do well. I shall now conclude this discourse with a few remarks, by way of improvement.1. From this subject learn the high privilege of the children of men to be redeemed by the blood of Christ (1 John 3:1). Redemption is doubly endeared to man by the love of God, and by the sufferings of Jesus. 2. From this subject learn the duty of Christian diligence (2 Peter 3:14). 3. Learn from what has been said, that the end of refusing this redemption is eternal death (Isaiah 30:33). 4. From this subject learn the blessedness of the redeemed h Corinthians 2:19). (R. Montgomery.)Redemption The expression “ redemption” as direct and immediate reference to our ruined and wretched condition in consequence of the fall; and it is used to signify our entire deliverance from all the evils involved or implied in our being sinners against God under His righteous and holy law. It is a term which comprehends our complete emancipation from sin and its consequences.1. In the first place, and most important of all, he is a guilty being, because he is a sinner. 2. Man through sin has become habituated to sin. He is incarcerated in a prison house of sinful vices and habits, and held fast by legal chains of spiritual wickedness. Now, from its actual slavery, we are redeemed by Christ, in consequence of His atonement, and by virtue of His gracious Spirit. “ Ye are not under the law, but under grace; sin, therefore, shall not have dominion over you.” 3. We must consider all the outward and physical evils which sin has brought into the world, of which death may be said to be the climax. From all these, however sad and melancholy, “ redemption” effects a substantial deliverance now, whilst we have to battle against them, and a complete and glorious riddance at last, in our recovery from the grave. The first thing to be effected in the case of sinners under a sovereign God and a righteous law, is to remove their guilt, that they may stand free from all blame worthiness, and become exempt from the curse. But, this effected, the rest may be expected certainly and surely to follow, from the same grace and mercy which have already been brought into exercise. “ The forgiveness of sins” is just a way of expressing the idea that all guilt whatsoever is removed; so that the sinner stands before God, in the eye of His law, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. In the completeness of this forgiveness, we recognize its highest excellence; for did but one sin remain against the sinner, that alone were sufficient to condemn him. As by one sin man originally fell, so, if but one were to abide unforgiven, he could not be raised up again. But, blessed be God! “ the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” It is not by a system of moral recovery; it is not merely by truth, that you are redeemed. A prior difficulty must be surmounted, and that could only be accomplished by the surrender of His well-beloved. But we are redeemed by blood--by the sufferings of Jesus Christ--by His atoning sacrifice.1. This wondrous plan is God’ s own device or method. It originated in Him--in His love and wisdom. 2. The sacrifice was offered up freely by Christ. He gave Himself. He had power to lay down His life and He had power to take it up again. But He said, “ Lo! I come. I delight to do Thy will, O My God.” “ Christ also hath loved us, and gave Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.” 3. The offering was accepted by God as a full satisfaction for the sins of His people. (W. Alves.)Redemption through Christ’ s blood, with royal forgiveness I. Redemption only through Christ’ s blood.1. What is redemption? Ransom or deliverance. It is love, mercy, grace, and glory--all in one. 2. Illustrate this great Christian doctrine by a few examples. (1) Suppose a Christian man, or benevolent rich man, went into the East, or some land of captives--a matter done often during the Crusades in former times. He sees there some lovely or noble slave, perhaps a countryman of his own, doomed to base servitude, to the galling chains, to labour at the oar, to dig in the mines, or toil beneath the lash in the fields for life. Pity fills his breast, and he buys the slave for the money demanded; he does more--he gives him freedom. Such is redemption. (2) A mighty warrior leads forth his army to battle against the foes of his country. Some of his brave soldiers are overwhelmed by numbers, or taken captive by stratagem. There is no way of obtaining their liberty, unless by exchange of prisoners, or by ransom money, as in ancient times; but this is readily done for their release; and this restoration is an emblem of redemption. (3) There is war between civilized and savage tribes. Some Christians are circumvented; the savages care not for money; they doom some poor captive to terrible death by torture or fire; the general hears of the fatal design; he starts at once with a brave band of soldiers to deliver the captive, who is bound to the fatal stake; conflict ensues, but he is just in time to rescue the prisoner from all the agonies of fire, although the deliverance was only achieved with great difficulty, and perhaps the death of the leader himself; but the rescue is accomplished with victory over the foe. This is redemption. 3. Now, can anyone tell me of the soul-thrilling delight of a person thus rescued from slavery, from galling bondage, from impending death. The sailor on London Bridge, of whom I once heard, may shadow its joys. He purchased a large cage full of birds, and went to the riverside; then he took from the cage one bird after another, and let it fly in the golden light of heaven, rejoicing in its sudden freedom with a sweet note or song of joy. When remonstrated with for spending his money so foolishly, he said, quietly: “ Wait a little. I have reason for this--to give happiness to these birds!” And when all the cage was empty, he turned round triumphantly, with a bright eye, and said: “ I was once a captive myself in bondage, in a strange land. I vowed, if I got freedom, to give liberty to the first captives I found at home. The birds have got it, and my heart rejoices in the deed!” But how burning must be the emotions of a man rescued from instant death by some unforeseen deliverance! Redemption commands our highest gratitude; more gratitude than rescue from death by water or fire by some powerful arm. Dr. Doddridge once obtained a pardon from the sovereign for a prisoner condemned to death. He went himself to the convict’ s cell, and presented it to the unhappy man. He fell at the feet of the Doctor, and said, with deep feeling; “ Sir, I am yours ever; every drop of my blood is yours; it thanks you for having mercy on me; all my life is yours!” Such, indeed, must be the deathless gratitude of a soul saved, to Christ the Lord for His great work of redemption, which infinitely transcends all deliverance here! 4. Remark how this great work was effected; it is redemption by His blood. He who is both God and man, shed His blood for sinners, obtaining for us redemption, pardon, sanctification, and salvation. II. Free forgiveness of all sin by Christ alone. III. The absolute fulness of Divine blessings. (J. G. Angley, M. A.)Errors with respect to the doctrine of the Atonement I. The Atonement has frequently been represented as if it was intended to pacify the wrath of an offended, an angry, and a displeased Creator. It is very true that the Scriptures do describe God as in the exercise of wrath banishing men from His presence; but it is equally true that the Scriptures must be taken in many instances as employing metaphorical and figurative language, which we are bound to interpret upon the principles of metaphorical and figurative interpretation. If we overlook these principles, and take every term literally and every phrase literally, we shall be found to misrepresent the whole wilt of God, and the whole system of our common Christianity. But if we take the wrath of God, as it is mentioned in the Scriptures, to indicate nothing more than the course of just punishment which it inflicts--if we understand that He is described to be wrathful when He does that which we do when we are wrathful, putting forth His power to punish, but doing it under principles very different from those under which we act--we may then have a right view of what is meant by the wrath of God. It means nothing more, in the Scripture, than His displeasure with sin--His disapprobation of all that is impure and all that is unholy--His sentence against all that is morally unclean, and His rejection of all that would pollute His government. II. The Redeemer is frequently represented as suffering precisely the degree of punishment due to the parties whom He came to redeem. We forget altogether the dignity of the Atonement of Christ, when we speak thus of the degree of suffering that He had to endure. It was because the Redeemer was God as well as Man, that His suffering was infinitely valuable; and not because He sustained exactly the measure of suffering which His people ought to have endured. Such a mercantile, such a commercial mode of viewing the Atonement of Christ is unknown to the Scriptures of truth. An exact payment for the required discharge is not known to the glorious economy of the gospel. A sacrifice of infinite value was given, no matter what the amount of the sufferings; and from its infinite value those sufferings, however light or however severe, must derive all their value and all their efficacy. We rejoice in resting upon the Atonement of the Son of God; not in resting on the blood of one who suffered as much as we had to suffer. III. Again, it is sometimes said that Christ came into the world for the purpose of dying for particular persons, to the exclusion of all others. This is another idea connected with the Atonement. Here, again, we find a variety of evil consequences resulting from error. Tell an assembled multitude that Christ came to die for particular persons, and that all others were to be excluded from the range of His Atonement; and would not any thinking assembly say: “ Then if we were of that number we must be redeemed, for He died for us; if we were not of that number it is useless for us to attempt to share the privilege.” What answer could we give to this? But when we come to the Word of God, we find no foundation for this. IV. But again, in the fourth place, another error connected with the doctrine of Atonement is, that it was intended to introduce a relaxed administration of government; that, in other words, it was intended to bring before the world a remedial system--a subdued, a modified demand on the obedience of mankind, and that it was intended to make the law of more easy aspect to persons that had fallen, and that if they could not come up to its requirements, the efficacy of the Atonement would make up for their deficiency, and that in that case they might themselves be saved by doing the best they could, the Atonement supplying their lack of service. Now the Word of God contains nothing of this description. “ Heaven and earth shall pass away,” says the Redeemer; “ but one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” The New Testament admits of no relaxation of the law of God. When the Redeemer demands the obedience of His people, He says: “ Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” V. Another error is this: “that the atonement of Christ was intended to abolish the obligation to obey the moral law. But what does such a doctrine as this really teach us? It teaches us that the moral law was broken, and it teaches us that God sent His own Son to be an Atonement, not to mend the breach, but to justify the breach I VI. The Atonement is very frequently so misrepresented, as if deity had suffered. Such a notion never belonged to Christianity, although it has very often been advanced with reference to the Atonement of Christ. Then, if the Deity could not suffer, what did suffer? The perfect humanity of Christ. What gave efficacy to the sufferings of that humanity? Its union with the Deity of Christ. The union of the humanity of Christ with His divinity, gave to all His acts and all His sufferings an infinite value; and from that union, and that union alone, must be derived all the efficacy and all the glory of the Atonement; and the efficacy and glory of the Atonement will be found to be abundant, when connected with the union of the perfect humanity of Christ and the infinite glory of His Divine nature. We are wrong, therefore, in speaking of the sufferings of God. We are misrepresenting the Atonement of Christ. VII. But without adding any more of the errors that may be current upon this subject (and I think I have embraced the principal part of them), it is due now to you that, in a few moments, I should state to you what i conceive to be the real character of the atonement. Let us look, first, at the nature of sin itself. What is it but the direct violation of the law of God? Here is the Majesty of heaven, the great Lawgiver; here is the perfect law that He reveals; He demands perfect obedience from the creature; we rebel against that demand; we are at variance with Him on the ground of that rebellion. What is to be done to heal the breach that has taken place between us? He is a God of love as well as a God of power and justice; He is willing to save, but He must do it in a way that will not encourage human rebellion. He seeks that His own hands shall be free to be gracious; He seeks that His own law shall permit Him to be merciful; He seeks that the perfection of His own purity shall permit Him to be kind, without for a moment sinking the character and the rectitude of His administration. How is He to be placed in a position in which He can honourably, and without disparagement to the public law of the universe, tell a man that he can be saved? He desires to tell him this; but He desires to find means to vindicate that act. He turns to His own Son; and the Son volunteers to accept the service assigned to Him. Volunteering to accept it, we find Him going forth, taking upon Him our nature, in that nature suffering and dying, and presenting Himself, not to man but to God. The priest presented the sacrifice on the altar to the Majesty of Israel; the sacrifice had direct reference to God--the mercy had reference to the people. In the same way the sacrifice presented in the Atonement of Christ has reference Go God; it is to Him that its incense, its perfume arises; the mercy has reference to us. The sacrifice, therefore, is presented to the King of kings that He may be able, consistently and worthily and holily, to proclaim mercy through the blood of the Lord Jesus. He looks to no specific individuals; He looks to no specific sins; He looks to the altar--the Cross where the Redeemer died. God looks to that sacrifice, and He sees in that sacrifice the means by which He can be vindicated in the proclamation of His kindness throughout the world, in the announcement of His love, in the extension of His mercy. Now His hands are free; His law is “ magnified and made honourable,” and yet He can condescend to be gracious. We can now “ have redemption through the blood of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” There is now ample scope made for free and sovereign grace to proclaim its readiness to be merciful. No one can point to the Cross and say, “ The offering there made was for me” ; no individual can point to the Cross and say, “ There the anger of the Father against me was appeased, and I may approach and find Him gracious” ; no, but the Father Himself looks down upon the Cross, and lifting the light of His countenance on the wondrous offering of His own Son in His own love, and the love of the Father concurring in accepting that offering, He looks round on the whole human race, and says: “ Behold the measure of My love, and behold at the same time the vindication of My justice, while I proclaim My mercy, and invite all to come.” This view of the Atonement makes it a great sacrifice to public justice; and when I speak of a sacrifice to public justice, I speak of justice as vindicated before the whole universe. Why do I call it public justice? Do not the angels of heaven look to it? Do not the angels of hell look to it? Do they not expect to see God consistent with what He has proclaimed? Does not the whole intelligent universe look to it? Will not the whole assembled creation at the day of judgment look to it? Is it not, then, public justice? And is it not necessary for God to have a vindication ready when He assembles the intelligent universe? He has it ready--He has it ready now--a satisfaction to public justice and public law; and now grace can invite all the sinners of mankind, and accept every returning transgressor. (John Burnet.)Gratitude for redemption A gentleman, visiting a slave mart, was deeply moved by the agony of a slave girl, who had been delicately reared, and fearing lest she should fall into the hands of a rough and unkind master, inquired her price, paid it to the slave dealer; then, placing the bill of sale in her own hands, announced to her that she was free, and could now go home. The poor slave girl could not realize the change at first; but, running after her redeemer, cried out: “ He has redeemed me! he has redeemed me! Will you let me be your servant?” How much more should we serve Him who has redeemed us from sin, and death, and hell? God’ s motives in redemption How should we extol and adore the wisdom which discovered a way to harmonize the glory of a holy God and the good of guilty men! In the salvation of the human family God was undoubtedly moved by a regard to both these ends, It is an imperfect vision that sees but one motive here. This subject may be compared to those binary stars which seem to the naked eye but one, yet, when brought into the range of the telescope, resolve themselves into two distinct and shining orbs, that roll in brightness and beauty around a common, but invisible, centre, Though He loved His own glory, yet He “ so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,” that by Him the world might be redeemed from perdition. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Effects of redemption A few years ago I was going away to preach one Sunday morning, when a young man drove up in front of us. He had an aged woman with him. “ Who is that young man?” I asked. “ Do you see that beautiful meadow,” said my friend, “ and that land there with the house upon it?” “ Yes.” “ His father drank that all up,” he said. Then he went on to tell me all about him. His father was a great drunkard, squandered his property, died, and left his wife in the poorhouse. “ And that young man,” he said, “ is one of the finest young men I ever knew. He has toiled hard and earned money, and bought back the land; he has taken his mother out of the poorhouse, and now he is taking her to church.” I thought, that is an illustration for me. The first Adam, in Eden, sold us for nought; but the Messiah, the Second Adam, came and bought us back again. The first Adam brought us to the poorhouse, as it were; the Second Adam makes us kings and priests unto God. (D. L. Moody.)Redemption through the blood of Christ I dare assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that the inspired writers attribute all the blessings of salvation to the precious blood of Jesus Christ. If we have redemption it is through His blood; if we are justified, it is by His blood; if washed from our moral stains, it is by His blood, which cleanseth us from all sin; if we have victory over the last enemy, we obtain it not only by the Word of the Divine testimony, bus through the blood of the Lamb; and if we gain admittance into heaven, it is because we “ have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, and therefore are we before the throne of God.” Everything depends on the blood of Christ, and “ without shedding of blood is no remission.” (R. Newton.)The forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness and redemption God’ s forgiveness is, so to speak, the preliminary grace, which enables the beginning of a new life, so that we become holy and loving children. Forgiveness is the prerogative of him who has been sinned against. “ Who can forgive sins save God only?” He forgives on grounds sufficient in the estimation of His own righteous love. He cannot be coerced or coaxed into forgiveness. He cannot forgive until He sees it right to forgive. He cannot connive at the sinner being let off, if righteousness demands that he should suffer penalty. Nothing can be weaker or more immoral than to represent God as moved merely by pity, by a merciful compassion. That He is infinitely pitiful and loving is the uniform representation of Scripture. But His love works in a far profounder and holier and greater way than by mere pitiful feeling. He Himself “ gave the only begotten Son” to redeem us, to die as a sacrifice for sins, that He might righteously forgive, that He might be “ a just God and yet a Saviour.” The entire representation is of God’ s love as the moving cause of Christ’ s mission and redeeming work. Christ is given by the leather to redeem us--that is, as the apostle here explains it, to obtain for us the forgiveness of sins. Sin is not a misfortune, a necessity of our nature--it is a guilty act. We need not sin; we wilfully sin: and before we can become loving children of God, our sin must be forgiven. This is the first step in our redemption; forgiveness is made possible for us, is obtained for us by Jesus Christ. The further phrase “ redemption through His blood,” shuts us up to the idea that the shedding of His blood by Christ, was that which made forgiveness a possible thing. It is only natural that men should ask, How, in what way, did the death of Christ constitute a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of men? Such questions have been asked from the beginning of Christianity, and have in a hundred ways been answered in creeds and in systems of theology. These are purely human conceptions of the great fact which the New Testament affirms, and they have continuously changed as the spiritual intelligence of the Church has grown. Perhaps no one could now be found capable of entertaining the gross notions of the earlier and middle ages of Christianity. Whatever theory we may form, it must be taken only as our fallible human idea. The fact of the great sacrifice for sin is authoritatively affirmed; very little is said in explanation of what we may call the philosophy of it. That it had an aspect Godward, that it is the ground or reason of God’ s forgiveness of sins, we are expressly told. And that it has an aspect manward, that it is a moral constraint upon human feeling, “ the power of God unto salvation” is equally affirmed. “ Lifted up from the earth, He draws all men unto Him.” One or two things may be said. Christ suffered, of course, as a man--a perfectly holy man, suffering for human sin as if He Himself had sinned. To enable this He became incarnate. He was “ made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death.” It is clear that He did not suffer to appease any implacable feeling in God--to incline God to save. Every representation of Scripture is of God’ s yearning pity and love. His love was the origin, the cause, of Christ’ s Incarnation--He “ spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all.” That God is angry with sin is only to say that He is a Holy Being. If God can delight in the holiness of His creatures, He must hate their sin. He is not a passionless Being, incapable of feeling. How could He be loved if He were? No expressions can be stronger than those which represent God’ s feeling towards sin. “ He is angry with the wicked every day” ; “ The wrath of God abideth upon him” ; “ The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness,” for those that “ obey unrighteousness there is indignation and wrath.” We are “ saved from wrath through Him.” We are by nature “ children of wrath” ; “ the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience.” That God was not angry with His well-beloved Son needs not be said, save that this, too, is a misrepresentation that the rejectors of the Atonement are not ashamed to persist in. “ Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life for the sheep.” That Jesus Christ ever thought the Father angry with Him it is impossible to think. When, in the extreme anguish of His spirit, He felt as if His Father had forsaken Him, He immediately added: “ Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” Was not His anguish simply the vivid realization by His human heart of what human sin was? If any of us had a brother or a sister, a father or a mother, who committed a murder, would not our anguish at the crime be greater than even that of the murderer himself, just in proportion as his heart was murderous and ours was humane? Many a father, many a mother, feels infinitely more anguish for the sin of a profligate son, of a fallen daughter, than the sinner himself. May not this suggestion help us to understand the agony of the garden and of the cross? (H. Allen, D. D.)The glories of forgiving grace The forgiveness of sins is an article in the creed, but I want it to be a substantive in your lives. Most men say that they believe it, but their belief is often nominal, and a nominal faith, like nominal wealth, only makes the absence of the reality the more deplorable. In two instances there is clearly no faith in forgiven sin.1. Those who have never felt that they are sinful. How can he who does not believe in the existence of sin believe in the forgiveness of it? His whole confession on that matter belongs to the region of fiction. If sin is not a terrible fact to you, pardon will never be more than a notion. 2. Those who know the guilt of sin, but are not yet able to believe in the Lord Jesus for the remission of their transgressions. They need to be admonished as Luther was by the godly old monk. When he was greatly distressed under conviction of his guilt, the aged man said, “ Didst thou not say this morning in the creed, ‘ I believe in the forgiveness of sins‘ ?” Oh, be not theoretical believers. You believe in sin, believe also in its pardon. Let the one be as much a truth as the other. I. From the text we learn the measure of forgiveness.1. Observe, then, that the measure of forgiveness is the riches of God’ s grace, and this statement leads us to observe that it is not the character or person of the offender which is the measure of mercy, but the character of the offended One. Is there not rich consolation in this undoubted fact? The pardon to be hoped for is not to be measured by you and what you are, but by God and what He is. One man will forgive a grievous wrong, while another will not overlook a wry word. Take an instance from English history: John had most villainously treated his brother Richard in his absence. Was it likely that when he of the lion’ s heart came home he would pass over his brother’ s grievous offence? If you look at John, villain that he was, it was most unlikely that he should be forgiven; but then, if you consider the brave, high-souled Richard, the very flower of chivalry, you expect a generous deed. Base as John was, he was likely to be forgiven, because Richard was so free of heart, and accordingly pardon was right royally given by the great-hearted monarch. Had John been only half as guilty, if his brother Richard had been like himself he would have made him lay his neck on the block. If John had been Richard and Richard had been John, no matter how small the offence, there would have been no likelihood of pardon at all. So is it in all matters of transgression and pardon. You must take the offence somewhat into account, it is true, but not one half so much as the character of the person who has been offended. Let us establish this fact, and then see what light it throws upon the probability of pardon to any of you who are seeking it. With whom are you dealing? You have offended--who is He whom you have offended? Is it one whose anger is quickly aroused? No, the Lord is long suffering, and exceedingly patient. Forty years long was He grieved with one generation; and many a time did He pity them and remove His wrath from them. 2. Since the forgiveness of sins is “ according to the riches of His grace,” then it is not according to our conceptions of God’ s mercy, but according to that mercy itself, and the riches of it. God’ s love is not to be measured by a mercer’ s yard, nor His mercy to be weighed in the balances of the merchant. 3. If, again, the measure of mercy is “ according to the riches of His grace,” then no limit to pardon can be set by the amount of human sin which can be forgiven. Sin is no trifle, and yet pardon is no impossibility. 4. Another comfortable conclusion follows from this, that no limit is set to the time in which a man has sinned, so as to bound the reach of grace by the lapse of years. Our text does not say that there is forgiveness of sins according to such and such a time of life, but “ according to the riches of His grace.” 5. Let me draw another inference. If pardon be “ according to the riches of His grace,” it is not according to the bitterness of the sorrow which has been felt by the sinner. There is a notion abroad that we must pass through a period of keen remorse before we can expect to be accepted with God. 6. And let me say that the measure of God’ s forgiveness is not even the strength of a man’ s faith. The measure of God’ s forgiveness is “ according to the riches of His grace.” You, dear soul, are to come and trust in what Jesus Christ did when He bled away His life for sinners, and then your pardon shall be measured out to you, not according to the greatness and strength of your confidence, but according to the immeasurable mercy of the heart of God. You may have faith but as a grain of mustard seed, your faith may only dare to touch the garment’ s hem of the great Saviour, you may get no further than to say, “ He hath said, ‘ Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out,’ and I do come to Him: if I perish, I will perish trusting Him,” and yet that faith will save you. Thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee if thou believest in Jesus; for the measure of thy forgiveness is not thy faith, nor thy tears of repentance, nor thy bitter regrets, nor thy sin, nor thy conception of God’ s goodness, nor thy character, either past or present or future; but the forgiveness which is granted from the Lord is “ according to the riches of His grace.” II. The manner of forgiveness.1. Absolute freeness. “ According to the riches of His free favour,” for that is the meaning of the word “ grace.” God forgives none because of payment made by them in any form. If we could bring Him mountains of gold and silver, they would be nothing worth to Him. Forgiveness, like love, is unpurchaseable by us. God’ s pardons are absolutely free. 2. Royal ease. When you and I give away money to the poor, we have to pause, and see how much is left in our purse; we have to calculate our incomes to see whether we may not be spending too much in charity; but those who have great riches can give and not calculate: even so God when He grants forgiveness gives it “ according to the riches of His grace.” He never has to think whether He will have grace enough left; He will be none the richer if He withholds it, none the poorer if He bestows it. There is a magnificent ease about the benefactions of God: He scatters the largesse of His mercy right and left with unstinted liberality. The Roman conquerors, traversing the Via Sacra in triumph, were accustomed to scatter gold and silver with both hands as they rode along, and the eager crowd gathered up the shower of gifts. Our Lord, when He ascended on high and led captivity captive, scattered gifts among men with royal splendour and munificence. 3. Unquestionable fulness. The blood of Jesus makes us whiter than snow, and absolute innocence cannot be more white than that. 4. Irreversible certainty. “ No condemnation.” 5. Unfailing renewal. Daily forgiveness for daily sin, a flesh spring rising for fresh thirst. III. The manifestation of this pardon.1. Forgiveness of sin comes to us entirely through Jesus Christ our Saviour; and if we go to Jesus Christ, fixing our eyes especially upon His atoning sacrifice, we have pardon by virtue of His blood. Pardon by any other means is impossible, but by Jesus Christ it is certain. Everything else fails, but faith in Christ never fails. 2. This pardon is a possession. “ We have” it. No longer is the weight and burden of sin lying on your conscience and heart: your load is lifted; you are forgiven. If your child has been offending you, and you are angry with him, he feels ill at ease in your presence. At last you say, “ My boy, it is all gone now; do not offend again. You are quite forgiven; come here, and let me kiss you.” Does he reply, “ Father, I am afraid” ? If so, it is evident that he does not understand that you have forgiven him: and even if he receives your kiss, but still remains unhappy in your presence, it is clear that he does not believe in you or in the sincerity of your forgiveness. As soon as the light dawns on his mind “ Father has quite put all my fault away,” then he is merry in his play and easy in his conversation with you. Now, be with God like a child at home. Do not act towards Him as if still He frowned upon you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The forgiveness of sins The earlier verses of this chapter contain Paul’ s conception of the Divine ideal of human nature. It was the Divine purpose “ before the foundation of the world” that men should share the life and sonship of the eternal Son of God. It was for this that human nature received its wonderful capacities. Its sanctity and righteousness were to be secured by union with Christ. The human race was to be a great spiritual organism, having Christ for the root of its life and blessedness. Abiding in Christ, the race was to abide in God; and only by abiding in Christ could the race achieve the perfection and glory for which it was created. But the Divine purpose did not suppress human freedom. It could be fulfilled only by the free concurrence of the race with the Divine righteousness and love; and the whole order of the development of the Divine thought has been disturbed by sin. In His infinite goodness God has delivered us from the immense catastrophe which came upon us through our revolt against His authority. In Christ we have redemption and forgiveness. I. What forgiveness is not.1. Forgiveness is not a change in our minds towards God, but a change in God’ s mind towards us. Take an illustration. A son has been guilty of flagrant misconduct towards his father; has insulted him, slandered his character, robbed him, and almost ruined him. The son discovers his guilt and is greatly distressed. He does all he can to atone for his wickedness. He has become a better man, and there is a great change in his mind and conduct towards his father. But it is possible for all the change to be on one side. He may be unable to remove or even to lessen his father’ s indignation against him. His father may continue for years bitter, relentless, unforgiving. I do not mean to suggest that God will be hard with us when we repent; but if we are to have any clear and true thoughts about this subject we must see distinctly that it is one thing for us to repent of sin and to become better, and quite another thing for God to forgive us. 2. Nor must the Divine forgiveness be confounded with peace of conscience. I have known many people who were restless and unhappy, dissatisfied with themselves, and unable to find any rest of heart in the Divine mercy. The reason was plain: they were not troubled by the Divine hostility to their sin, and therefore the assurance that God was willing to forgive them afforded them no relief. It was not God’ s thoughts about them that occasioned their distress, but their own thoughts about themselves. They did not want to obtain the Divine forgiveness, but to recover their own self-respect, which had been wounded by the discovery of their moral imperfections. But it is clearly one thing for God to be at peace with us, and quite a different thing for us to be at peace with ourselves. 3. We must not suppose that as soon as God forgives us we escape at once from the painful and just consequences of our sins. The sins may be forgiven, and yet many of the penalties which they have brought upon us may remain. There is a certain alliance between the laws of nature and the laws of righteousness, and there is a similar alliance between the natural laws of society and the laws of righteousness. No Divine act arrests the operation of the natural laws which punish the penitent for his former drunkenness. There are vices, such as flagrant lying, gross treachery, deliberate dishonesty, which involve a man in heavy social penalties. He does not escape these penalties when he repents of the vices and receives the Divine pardon. He is maimed for life. His chances are lost. He will recover with difficulty the confidence of even kindly and generous men. Positions of public trust and honour will be closed against him, He will be excluded from many kinds of usefulness. II. What it is for God to forgive sins.1. Forgiveness among ourselves implies that there has been just resentment against the person whom we forgive, resentment provoked by his wrongdoing. When we forgive him the resentment ceases. And so also does God regard, not with disapproval only, but with resentment, those who sin; and when He forgives men, His resentment ceases. 2. When God forgives, He actually remits our sin. Our responsibility for it ceases. The guilt of it is no longer ours. When His resentment against us ceases, the eternal law of righteousness ceases to be hostile to us. When He pardons our transgressions, the eternal law of righteousness no longer holds us responsible for them. The shadow which they had projected across our life, and which lengthened with our lengthening years, passes away. We look back upon the sins which God has forgiven and we condemn them still, but the condemnation does not fall upon ourselves; for God, who is the living law of righteousness, condemns us no longer. 3. The peace and blessedness of this release from guilt are wonderful. The soul is conscious of a Divine freedom. It can approach God with happy trust and with perfect courage, for the past is no longer a source of terror, and the future is bright with immortal hope. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Forgiveness defined Forgiveness may be defined--1. In personal terms--as a cessation of the anger or moral resentment of God against sin. 2. In ethical terms--as a release from the guilt of sin, which oppresses the conscience. 3. In legal terms--as a remission of the punishment of sin, which is eternal death. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The forgiveness of sin and the death of Christ That our Lord Jesus Christ declared that men were to receive redemption or the remission of sins through Himself, and especially through His death, appears from several passages in the Gospels; and the great place which His last sufferings occupied in His thoughts from the very commencement of His ministry, the frequency with which He spoke of them, the wonderful results which He said were to follow them, the agitation and dismay which He felt as they approached, and His anxiety to pass through them and beyond them, show that to Christ His death was not a mere martyrdom but an awful and glorious crisis in His own history and in the history of the human race. The apostles Peter, Paul, and John, though each had his own characteristic conception of the work of Christ and the Christian salvation, are agreed in declaring that the ground of our forgiveness is in Christ, and they are also agreed in attributing a mysterious importance and efficacy to His death (2 Corinthians 5:14; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 1:4; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10; 1 John 1:7; 1 Thessalonians 5:9; Romans 5:8; Romans 3:24-26). But no collection of isolated passages gives an adequate impression of the strength of the proof that both our Lord and His apostles taught that in Him “ we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of [God’ s] grace.” This truth is wrought into the very substance of the Christian gospel. I. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses “ in Christ.” It is in harmony with the fundamental law of human nature that the reason and ground of our forgiveness should be in Christ; for the reason and ground of our creation, of our righteousness, and of our blessedness as the sons of God, are in Him. II. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses in Christ “ through His blood.”1. The relations of Christ to the Father are the transcendent expression and original root of our relation to the Father. We are related to the Father through Him. And since the relation of moral submission on our part to the righteousness of God’ s resentment against sin was an indispensable condition of the forgiveness of sin, it became necessary that Christ Himself should assume this relation of moral submission to the righteousness of God’ s resentment against sin, that His submission might be the transcendent expression of ours. 2. There is no righteousness in us which is not first in Christ. And since our submission to the righteousness of God’ s resentment against sin was an indispensable condition of our forgiveness, Christ’ s submission became necessary to render ours possible. His submission carries ours with it. 3. His death is the death of sin in all who are one with Him. (1) Christ, the eternal Son of God and the root of our righteousness, having become Man, endured death in order to render possible our moral consent to the justice of the Divine resentment against sin, and to the justice of the penalties in which that resentment might have been revealed. Had God withdrawn from us His light and life, and destroyed us by revealing His moral resentment against our sin, this would have been an awful manifestation of the moral energy of His righteousness and of His abhorrence of moral evil. Its moral value would have been infinitely heightened by the intensity of His love for us. But God in the greatness of His love shrank from depriving us of that blessed and glorious destiny for which we were created; and in order to secure our moral submission to the righteousness of His resentment, a moral submission which was the necessary condition of our forgiveness, He surrendered His own eternal Son to spiritual desertion and to death. In this surrender, made for such a purpose, there was a sublimer moral manifestation of the Divine thought concerning sin than there would have been in condemning the race to eternal death. (2) The Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the Moral Ruler of the human race. The moral supremacy of God is manifested and exerted through Him. It was His function to punish sin, and so to reveal His judgment of it. But instead of inflicting suffering, He has elected to endure it, that those who repent of sin may receive forgiveness and may inherit eternal glory. It was greater to endure suffering than to inflict it. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The forgiveness of sins Forgiveness is much more than pardon. Pardon is not a New Testament word at all; it does not occur in the New Testament, only in the Old Testament. Pardon is only the remitting the punishment of sins; forgiveness goes deeper--it is the taking away the memory of sins; it is an act of the heart which cancels both the punishment and the sin itself. Both words, “ pardon” from the French, and “ forgiveness” from the English, or Saxon, both have in them the word “ gift.” It is a gift. Both the remitting the penalty, and the banishment of the thought of the wrong thing that has been done out of the heart, both are a gift. But forgiveness is the greater gift; it is pardon and forgiveness as well, for if you are forgiven, the sin itself is divided from the person forgiven, as though it had never been. All that is wanted is to go for your forgiveness in a right state of mind. That state of mind means four things. I. You must feel and confess that you have sinned--sinned against God. It is not enough to feel that you have sinned against man, or to your own injury: you must feel and own from the bottom of your heart that you have offended God. “ Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned.” II. You must have a sincere and holy resolve in you heart that you will not commit that sin any more; that you will lead a better and religious life. This resolve must be firm and earnest, with a deep sense of your own weakness and inability to keep the promise; but you are prepared to meet any sacrifice, and overcome all difficulties, God helping you. III. You must come with the faith that God can, and will, and does forgive you, for the sake of Him who has already paid all your debt, and satisfied His justice. IV. You must be in a state of forgiveness, forgiveness with all who have ever injured you. These four are the only prerequisites which God has laid down as necessary for the forgiveness of every sin. Besides these, not only you need not, you must not bring anything in your hand. No merit, no plea, but that you are a poor sinner, and that “ God is love,” and that Christ has died for you and instead of you, and suffered your punishment. Can those forgiven sins ever rise up again? Never, never! See what God says upon that subject: “ The scapegoat is borne away into a land not inhabited.” Who shall see them, or talk about them, where there is none to speak? “ A land not inhabited.” They shall not be mentioned. They are nailed to the cross. They are dead and buried, and there is no resurrection to a forgiven sin. God has put them behind His back, where He cannot see them! Do you say I make it too easy? Would it not be presumptuous to believe in such an instant and complete forgiveness? Would there not be encouragements for the careless to go on and sin again, because they can again be so easily forgiven? Let me tell you what will be the effect. The feeling of that forgiveness, the wonderful surprise that you are forgiven; that God’ s eye is on you; that you are His own dear child, and that you may, notwithstanding all the past, serve Him and please Him, and be happy in this world and go to heaven when you die; this will melt you to tears, it will melt your heart to tears. You will be so soft. Your penitence, after you feel forgiven, will be much deeper than before you were forgiven. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Value of forgiveness History relates the story of a many a sagacious and far-sighted man, whose example it is our safety, our salvation to follow. He had committed heinous crimes against his sovereign and the state. He knew his life to be forfeited; and that if, allowing events to take their course, he waited to be tried, he was certain to be condemned. The case is exactly ours. In these circumstances he repaired to the palace to fling himself at the feet of his sovereign, and making full confession of his crimes, to beg for mercy. Through the clemency of his king, and the intercession of a powerful friend at court, he found mercy; and, with a full pardon in his bosom, signed by the king’ s own band, left the royal presence a happy man. In course of time, the day of trim arrives, gathering a great concourse of people. He repairs to the place. Ignorant of his secret, anxious friends tremble for his fate; and the spectators wonder at his calm and placid bearing as he passes the scaffold where they think he is so soon to die, and enters the court, certain, as they fancy, to be condemned. He steps up to the bar as lightly as a bridegroom to the marriage altar; and, to all men s surprise, looks boldly around, on the court, his judges, and his accusers. At this, however, they cease to wonder, when, after listening unmoved to charges enough to hang twenty men in the place of one, he thrusts his hand into his bosom to draw forth the pardon, to cast it on the table, and find himself, amid a sudden outburst of joy, locked in the happy embraces of his wife and children. Let us go and do likewise. The bar of Divine judgment is a place not to sue for mercy, but to plead it. Appearing there robed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, justified, forgiven, in our hands a pardon signed and sealed with blood, we shall look around us undismayed on all the terrors of the scene -to ask with Paul, “ Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’ s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?” (T. Guthrie, D. D.)According to the riches of His grace.--The riches of God’ s grace I. The riches of God’ s grace are illustrated by the nature and cause of these evils from which God is willing to redeem us. It is not misfortune we are suffering from, but guilt; the anger of God has not come upon us by accident; hell is not a mere calamity, the pains of eternal death are not undeserved. All the evils of our condition, from which God is eager to save us, are the result of our own fault. We have sinned; and the sin is regarded by God with deep and intense abhorrence. If a man whom you have trusted lies to you again and again, you fling him off from you with contempt. If you have detected a man whom you have trusted in an attempt to commit deliberative fraud upon you, you close your doors against him and forbid him ever to enter your house. If he be drunken, profane, and profligate, you think of him with disgust. And whatever abhorrence and loathing we may feet for gross sin, God, who is infinitely purer than we are, feels for all sin, and it is sin which has brought all our woes upon us. We have sinned, not ignorantly, but knowingly. We have sinned for years, and perhaps some of us are only now beginning to think of amendment. And yet to us sinners, to the guiltiest and most flagrant sinner among us, God offers redemption, and shows “ the riches of His grace.” II. The riches of His grace are illustrated in what He has none to effect our redemption. “ Through the blood of Christ.” The Son of God, the Creator of our race, the moral Ruler of the universe, with whom it rested, when we had sinned, fully to express the Divine sense of the magnitude of our guilt, and to inflict the penalties which we deserved; laid His glory by, in order that He might endure the penalty instead of inflicting it, that He might express His sense of our sin by enduring death before He forgave it, instead of inflicting death on us because we had transgressed. III. The conditions on which God offers salvation illustrate the riches of His grace. A free gift--the only condition being that we be willing to receive it. “ Arise, and be free!” is Christ’ s message to all. IV. The very name by which the Christian revelation is known illustrates this. It is not called a system or doctrine, else it might be necessary to master the doctrine before you could secure redemption. It is not a moral but a spiritual discipline, else it might be necessary that you should subject yourself to its vivifying and invigorating power before redemption could be yours. It is not a law, else you would have to obey it before its promises could be fulfilled. It is not a promise of redemption, nor an assurance that God is willing to accomplish your redemption, else there might be conditions attached to the promise by which you might be perplexed and hindered. No; but it is a gospel--good news from heaven to earth, from God to man; good news of the Divine love which anger against sin has not quenched; good news of a great redemption wrought out in us; good news that God through Christ is nigh at hand and eager to forgive sins; good news that everything that is necessary to complete our salvation God has actually conferred upon us through Christ Jesus our Lord, and that we have only to receive it in order to rejoice in eternal blessedness. V. The concern God has shown about our salvation illustrates the riches of His grace. We sometimes speak of those who are seeking God. The New Testament speaks of God seeking us. The Good Shepherd goes out into the wilderness after the sheep that has gone astray, before there is any terror felt at its danger, or any desire on its part to return. This is God’ s conduct towards us. Is it not so? Why is it that any of you are at this moment restless because of your guilt, alarmed because of your danger, and longing to find your way into the peace of God? Is it the result of strenuous and laborious effort of your own to discover whether or not you had incurred guilt and exposure to danger? Has it not all come to you, you know not how? And yet, when you begin to consider, you conclude that it has been awakened in your heart by God. Can you be so ungrateful for His persistent love? (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The treasure of grace I. First, consider the riches of His grace. In attempting to search out that which is unsearchable, we must, I suppose, use some of those comparisons by which we are wont to estimate the wealth of the monarchs, and mighty ones of this world. It happened once that the Spanish ambassador, in the halcyon days of Spain, went on a visit to the French ambassador, and was invited by him to see the treasures of his master. With feelings of pride he showed the repositories, profusely stored with earth’ s most precious and most costly wealth. “ Could you show gems so rich,” said he, “ or aught the like of this for magnificence of possessions in all your sovereign’ s kingdom? Call your master rich?” replied the ambassador of Spain, “ why, my master’ s treasures have no bottom” --alluding, of course, to the mines of Peru and Petrosa. So truly in the riches of grace there are mines too deep for man’ s finite understanding ever to fathom. However profound your investigation, there is still a deep couching beneath that baffles all research. As by necessity of His Godhead He is omnipotent, and omnipresent, so by absolute necessity of His Divinity is He gracious. Recollect, however, that as the attributes of God are of the like extent, the gauge of one attribute must be the gauge of another. Or, further, if one attribute is without limit, so is another attribute.1. Now, you cannot conceive any boundary to the omnipotence of God. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 1:8 Wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.God’ s grace in redemption I. From the words before us, the first observation we would make is that the grace of God in redemption is abundant grace--“ Wherein He hath abounded toward us.” The term here used corresponds exactly with the idea expressed by the previous phrase, “ the riches of His grace.” God is “ rich in mercy” and “ great in love.” By the abundant grace of God, and by that alone, are sinners saved. Riches or wealth is a relative thing, having relation to the individual’ s actual wants and necessities, amid which he is placed. It is, in fact, that which is over and above, or which superabounds or overflows, after all actual wants have been supplied. From the greatness of the sacrifice which the grace of God made in order to our redemption, even the sacrifice of His own Son, we obtain a grand demonstration of the abundance of that grace, or its overflowing riches. In its original exercise--within the scope of those demands on its treasures which unsullied excellence makes--there is no need for any such sacrifice, but, on the contrary, it seems nothing but natural and every way easy and cheap, so to speak, for God to love and bless the lovely and the perfect. But, as it often happens that the prodigal son in a family costs his parents far more that all the rest in reclaiming him to the ways of decency and propriety, which they never forsook, and the strength of the parental love is tried and proved not so much by the ordinary exercise of it to the decent and well-ordered children of the household, as by its measures of an extraordinary kind in such an exceptional case as that referred to; so, in the redemption of lost sinners, we behold not merely grace, but riches of grace, in the amazing length to which it has gone, to reclaim the wanderers and bring them back to glory. In this, He hath surely given proof of an abundant grace, which is nowhere else to be met with in His vast dominions. II. In the second place our text speaks of the revelation or manifestation of this abundant grace in and through the Gospel--“ Abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will.” These words refer, in general, to the outward revelation of His grace which God hath made in the gospel, and also to the inward discovery or apprehension of that grace which God effects in the minds and hearts of believers.1. How true is it that without an external and positive revelation man could never have attained to any certain or reliable knowledge of God as the Redeemer and Saviour of guilty man! At best the idea of such a God could only have been conjectural, leaving the mind in doubt and fear, since it is met by the opposite idea of God as the avenger of wrong--the punisher of sin. 2. But how true is it, also, that without the illuminations of grace, the Bible itself is of no avail! “ The natural man receiveth not the things of God.” 3. Hence the line of our duty, as well as privilege, is clearly set before us. Study, then, that word with diligence and prayer; rely on the aids of God’ s Spirit. III. In the third place, we may briefly notice the last clause of the passage before us, as again bringing into view the sovereign good pleasure of God. Here it is yet more strikingly held forth, as the true and original cause of all our mercies. It is described as “ His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.”1. This purpose is one of supreme sovereignty. 2. It is one of infinite benevolence. 3. It is one of all-sufficient power. (W. Alves, M. A.)Grace from God I. The important truth stated. God has caused His grace to abound in all wisdom and prudence.1. In the formation of His plan (Ephesians 1:4-6). 2. In His conduct to us (1 John 4:10; Galatians 4:6; 2 Corinthians 4:7). 3. Suspending His justice in the acceptation of a Divine mediation (1 Timothy 2:5). 4. In the application of His grace (1 Corinthians 1:4). 5. In the instruments employed (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). II. The means of communicating this grace. “ Having made known unto us the mystery of His will.”1. It was eternally concealed in the mind of God, and but faintly promulgated by types (Hebrews 10:1). 2. It is still concealed from many, both heathens and professed Christians (Isaiah 55:2). 3. It has mysteries which the enlarged mind of a Christian has not conceived (Romans 11:33). 4. The Christian feels more than he can express (1 Peter 1:8). 5. All this is made known to the soul by means of preaching (1 Corinthians 1:21). III. The reason of this communication of grace. To show “ His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself.”1. In giving us all things necessary to salvation (Ephesians 1:3). 2. The adoption of our souls (Ephesians 1:2). 3. The knowledge of forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7). 4. That His glory should be promoted in us and by us through Christ (Ephesians 1:12). IV. The design of almighty God in the display of His grace by Christ. “ That He might gather together,” etc.1. It was to collect all God’ s people (John 11:52). 2. To advance Christ’ s honour. The one Head (Ephesians 5:23). He is the Head of confirmation to the angels, hence called “ elect angels” (1 Timothy 5:21; Ephesians 1:22; 1 Peter 3:22; Hebrews 1:6). 3. The Head of representation to the Church; for the Church died, rose, obeyed, and suffered in Christ, and must finally live with Him (John 14:19). 4. He is the Head of influence; for as all nerves are connected with the brain, there is no motion in the body without this. And without Christ there is no light, exertion, taste, or sensibility (John 1:16). 5. The Spirit acts upon the soul, and shows what Christ has done for His people (John 16:14). 6. The Head of union between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:16). V. The improvement.1. From this subject we learn that infinite wisdom contrived the plan, and infinite prudence accomplished it. 2. What a high value should believers put upon Christ! For in Him the law and the gospel, the promises and the blessings, God and man, heaven and earth, are united. 3. What a high estimation ought we to have of the blessed gospel of Christ! 4. It shows us that human merit has nothing to do in moving God’ s good pleasure to save our souls. 5. It further shows us how happy true Christians are privileged to be. (T. B. Baker.)Saved by grace I had long wished to be the bearer of life to some condemned cell. My wish was granted me. It was on a Tuesday that a poor sentenced criminal was to be hanged. He was within one day of the fatal drop. But on the Monday, all unexpectedly, I was summoned to take him his life! I had obtained a reprieve for that man--a paper signed by our gracious sovereign giving him back his forfeited life My first thought was, “ Where is the train that can bear me swift enough to the cell?” Delay appeared cruel; until, at the very threshold of the prison, I bethought me thus--“ How can I tell him? The man will die, so great will be the revulsion. He has died, so to speak. He is dead in law. And he is already in the bitterness of death.” So, with life in my hand, I stand before the victim in his cell. His face is wan, his knees feeble, his vacant eyes have no tears. “ My poor man, can you read?” “ Yes,” was the reply. Fearing to break the royal pardon to him too suddenly I added, “ Would you like your life?” “ Sir,” he responds, “ do not trifle with me.” “ But life is sweet--is it not?” “ Sir, I would rather you would not speak to me.” “ But would you not like me to procure your life?” “ It is of no use, sir; I’ m justly condemned. I’ m a dead man.” “ But the Queen could give you your life.” He looks inquiringly at me, but is silent. “ Can you read this?” And now those hot eyes are directed down upon the paper. As he intently reads, putting my arm around his shoulders, I say, “ There, my poor fellow, there is your life!” No sooner had I uttered the words than, as I expected, he dropped down at my feet. There he lay, as it were, dead! It was more than he could bear. (J. D. Smith.)In all wisdom and prudence. God’ s gifts of wisdom and understanding 1. God gives pardon of sins to none to whom He has not first given wisdom and understanding. We must be made to understand before we can come to Christ. We must look before we can be healed. 2. True wisdom and understanding are gifts of God’ s grace in Christ Jesus. (1) Freely bestowed on us.(2) No other benefit is of greater use. 3. God gives wisdom and understanding plentifully to those whose sins He forgives. (Paul Bayne.)Divine wisdom and prudence The only difficulty in the words is, What is this wisdom and prudence spoken of? Whether it imply the wisdom of God, or the wisdom wrought in us by the Spirit in conversion? Many interpreters go for the last. The former, I suppose, is here meant, which is eminently discovered in the mysteries of the gospel (Romans 11:33, “ Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” ). Surely it is not meant of wisdom in us; for how little a portion have we of true and heavenly wisdom. Now, the two words used: wisdom noteth the sublimity of the doctrine of the gospel, and prudence the usefulness of it. That in the dispensation of grace by Christ God hath showed great wisdom and prudence. When His grace overflowed to us, He showed therein not only His goodness, but His wisdom. Now, though we can easily yield to this assertion, yet to make it out needeth more skill. “ The manifold wisdom of God” is better seen to angels than to us (Ephesians 3:10). They have more orderly understandings, whereas we are confused and dark. Yet to discover it to you in a few particulars, the grace of the Redeemer may be considered three ways.1. As to the purchase and impetration of it by the Incarnation and death of the Son of God. 2. The publication of it in the gospel or covenant of grace. 3. The application of it to particular believers. In all these God hath shown great wisdom. I. As to the purchase and impetration of grace by the death and incarnation of the Son of God.1. There is wisdom in this, that in our fallen estate we should not come immediately to God without a mediator and reconciler. God is out of the reach of our commerce, being at such a distance from us and variance with us. The wise men of the world pitched on such a way (1 Corinthians 8:5-6). 2. That this Mediator is God in our nature. 3. That being m our nature, He would set us a pattern of obedience by His holy life; for He lived by the same laws that we are bound to live by. 4. That He should die the death of the cross to expiate our sins. 5. That after His death He should rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven to prove the reality of the life to come. II. The publication of it in the Gospel or covenant of grace. The wisdom of God is seen--1. In the privileges offered to us, which are pardon and life. 2. The terms He hath required of us. (1) Faith in Christ. The world thinks faith quits reason, and introduceth fond credulity. No; there is much of the wisdom of God to be seen in it. For faith hath a special aptitude and fitness for this work. (a) Partly in respect of God. For He having designed to glorify His mercy and free grace, and to make our salvation from first to last a mere gift, and the fruit of His love to us, hath appointed faith for the acceptance of this gift (Romans 4:16). (b) As it is fittest to own Christ the Redeemer, the Fountain of life and happiness, and our Head and Husband, whom we receive, and to whom we are united and married by faith. (c) With respect to the promises of the gospel, which offer to us a happiness and blessedness, spiritual, and for the most part future. Unseen things are properly objects of faith, “ Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). (d) It is fittest as to our future obedience, that it may be comfortable and willing. Now, we owning Christ in a way of subjection and dependence, and consenting to become His disciples and subjects, other duties come on the more easily (2 Corinthians 8:5). (2) For repentance. This is the most lively and powerful means of bringing men to new life and blessedness. (a) It is most for the honour of God that we should not be pardoned without submission, confession of past sin, and resolution of future obedience. (b) The duty of the creature is best secured, and the penitent person more bound to future obedience, by the vow itself, or the bond of the holy oath into which he is entered, and the circumstances accompanying it, which surely induce a hatred of sin and a love of holiness. (c) It is most for the comfort of the creature that a stated course of recovering ourselves into the peace and hope of the gospel should be appointed to us, which may leave the greatest sense upon our consciences. Then again, for continuance in the new covenant, and delightful obedience unto God. The remedy is not only suited to the disease, but the duty to the reward. Our duty is to know God and to love Him; and our reward is to see Him, and be like Him (1 John 3:2). There is a marvellous suitableness between the end and means, holiness and happiness, conformity to God, and our communion with Him; the holiness required of us now, and the happiness we expect hereafter; perfect conformity and uninterrupted communion; and they differ only but as the bud and the flower, the river and the ocean; here it is begun, hereafter perfected. III. In the application of His grace to particular believers He hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence.1. In the way God taketh to convert souls to Himself, there is a sweet contemperation and mixture of wisdom and power. There is a proposal of truth and good to the understanding and the will, and by the secret power of His grace it is made effectual. 2. In the persuasive and moral way the wisdom of God is seen as taking the most likely course to gain the heart of man, discovering Himself to us as a God of love, kindness, and mercy. 3. In the effect itself, the new creature, which is the wisest creature on this side heaven. To evidence this to you, I shall show you that all wisdom and prudence consisteth in three things-- (1) In fixing a right end.(2) In the choice of apt and proper means.(3) In a dexterous effectual prosecution of the end by those means. (T. Manton, D. D.)The harmony of Christianity in its personal influence Take the smallest, most insignificant, most unnoticed object in nature--the particle of sand, the blade of grass, the drop of water--the worm, the insect--whatever hides in the crevice of the rock or wheels imperceptible in the eddy of the air--add to these whatever is most vast and stupendous, the mountain, the ocean, the glorious handiwork of the firmament, moons, planets, suns, vibrating in boundless space through their range of sweep and with their precision of revolution, inlaid as in a texture, marshalled as a host; all, when presented to our eye and explained to our reason, exhibit such traces of design, such accuracies of contrivance, such wonders of adaptation. “ O Lord! how manifold are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all.” The text speaks of an abounding, a lavish munificence. It is of the exceeding riches of God’ s grace. With these He is thus infinitely profuse. But there is nothing of an ill-considered waste Wisdom and prudence are seen in the supply of adequate means, in providing for probable difficulties, in guarding against probable abuses. Glorious are the gifts; but their right application is jealously secured. This wisdom and prudence are manifested-- I. By showing with equal distinctness the Divine justice and mercy. These are not rival attributes, nor can they have needed reconciliation. Justice does not arrest the hand of mercy; mercy does not restrain the hand of Justice. Neither is the more prompt or slow; neither is the more earnest or jealous. An infinite placability is anterior to the exercises of both. God is not merciful because Christ has died, but Christ has died because God is merciful. Is justice the first care of His government? Mercy is earlier in its purpose than any government. In Redemption they are mutually administrative. “ To declare His righteousness in the remission of sin.” They act with no partiality; they come into no collision. The impression on the believing sinner’ s mind must correspond. It might be that in another proportion of these attributes our mental balance would have been endangered. This Wisdom and Prudence promote the state of mind we describe. II. By exhibiting the incarnate Son of God as alike the object of love and adoration. That Christ should be made flesh was necessary to His becoming an atonement, scarcely less that He might be the way by which we understand and approach the Divinity. He was thus made like unto us. Blessed admixture of emotions! It is tenderness, it is gratitude, it is complacency, without a lowering thought; it is humiliation, it is subjection, it is homage, without a disconcerting fear! The gospel in its wisdom and prudence produces this moral adjustment of our principles and feelings. III. By insisting most uniformly on Divine grace and human responsibility. In its treatment of man the doctrine it preaches is most abasing to him, but only because it represents the true facts of his case. It does not lay him low, but shows how low he lies. This state of mind is secured-- IV. By the proposal of the freest terms of acceptance, and the enforcement of the most universal practice of obedience. The reign of grace, though its very name supposes that it acts in consistency with moral government, necessarily must be brought to the simplest idea of gift and its acceptance. It is “ the gift by grace.” This medium, so true to the wisdom and prudence of the Christian system, is maintained-- V. By inspiring the most elevated joy in connection with the deepest self-abhorrence. There is the joy of faith. Do we not sit with Christ in heavenly places? Have we not come to the heavenly Jerusalem? These are gratulations and hopes which fall little short of ecstasy. But lest we should be exalted above measure, there is ever present to us our fallen nature, our long unconversion, our indwelling corruption, our strange perverseness, our slow proficiency; our ungrateful, deceitful, unbelieving heart. God has forgiven, but we cannot forgive ourselves. We will go softly all our years in the bitterness of our soul. We remember our ways and are ashamed. We are confounded, sad will not open our mouth when He is pacified toward us. It is not fear. It is not abject sorrow. It is the struggle of alternate dispositions. That mean of feeling, which is equidistant from extremes, is preserved-- VI. By displaying the different conduct pursued by the Deity towards sin and the sinner. This congruity of conflicting sentiments is upheld-- VII. By combining the genuine humility of the Gospel with our dignity as creatures and our conscientiousness as saints. This mellowed habit of mind is supported-- VIII. By causing all supernatural influence to operate through our rational powers and by intelligent means. The principle of life is subtle and unscanned. But after its kind, it is always developed in the same succession of fixed, classified, manifestations. The intellectual, the highest, life follows the same law. It is known by its respective conditions. It is always and in every place, without forgetting the degrees of its expansion, the same. Having found one such creature, you have a general knowledge of all. But it is a very primary doctrine of revelation, that the work of a sinner’ s salvation involves the necessity that he be enlightened and influenced by a power from on high. The wisdom and prudence of the gospel discover themselves in this respect. IX. By resting our evidence of safety and spiritual welfare upon personal virtues. Moreover, to save the mind from those violent alternations to which it tends, the religion of Christ asserts its wisdom and prudence. X. By supplying the absence of enslaving fear with salutary caution. XI. The actual existence of our depraved nature, and the work of sanctification in us pressing forward to its maturity, tend to that regulated temperament of mind which we urge. XII. And certain views of personal conduct are so coupled in the Gospel with the noblest views of grace, that any improper warping of our minds is counteracted. The works of believers are rewardable. God accepteth them and is pleased with them. He is glorified in themselves. Promise of a return or recompense is made to their acts, partly growing out of the quality of those acts, but chiefly as actual additions of happiness. He is not unrighteous to forget the work of faith and the labour of love. He covenants with us. We, knowing His word and trusting His assurance, may always have respect unto this recompense of reward. But do we boast? Is it not a constitution of grace which alone could render our deeds praiseworthy and remunerable? which can speak to us, Well done? Is it not a new, independent, and most merciful consideration and treatment of our moral agency? It is the work of God by which we exclusively can work the works of God. XIII. While the distinctive blessings and honours of the Christian might tend to elate Him, He is affected by the most opposite motives. The people of God! The sons of God! Kings and priests unto God! This can only awaken the more ardent gratitude and more profound humility. The cause of choice is not in themselves. If intimation is ever given of the cause, it is the greater sinfulness of the object. It is some design to illustrate the freeness and power of grace in restoring the most wretched outcast. And who is this restored one, that he should glory in himself? He is the undeserving subject of all. He is a brand plucked out of the fire. He is the chief of sinners. This is his utmost praise and claim, “ Howbeit I obtained mercy.” He owes, he must still owe, he must owe forever! God abounds in this wisdom and prudence towards us, and thus unites our hearts. XIV. By most strongly abstracting us from the things of earth, and yet giving us the deepest interest in its relations and engagements. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.) Ephesians 1:9 Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.The mystery of the gospel I. The sovereign grace of God in making known to us the mystery of His will.1. The gospel is called the mystery of God’ s will. We must not expect to be able to grasp with our reason all that is contained in it. 2. God has made known to us His will, according to the good pleasure which He purposed in Himself. II. The purpose of God in this dispensation--“ That He might gather together in one,” etc.1. The gospel is called the dispensation of the fulness of times. 2. The apostle teaches us that one end of this dispensation was, that God might gather together in one all things in Christ. 3. The apostle farther teaches us that the gospel is intended to unite in Christ all things, both which are in heaven and which are in earth. (1) An argument for Christian love. In heaven charity never fails.(2) An argument for Christian candour. III. The obligation which lies on such as enjoy this privilege: to live to the praise and glory of God’ s grace. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)God’ s revelation of mysteries 1. God works saving wisdom to none, to whom He opens not the doctrine of wisdom, the gospel of salvation. (1) God opens this saving wisdom to us outwardly, by the preaching of His ministers. As in great schools there are inferior ushers as well as the principal master, so it is here: it pleases God by man’ s outward ministry to open the eyes of the mind, and bring from darkness to light. (2) Man can but speak to the outward ears; God himself applies the doctrine to the heart. 2. The doctrine of our salvation through Christ is a hidden secrecy. (1) It is a mystery absolutely, because it is a thing of itself within the will of God, which no creature by itself is able to know. If a thing within my mind be such that no creature can know it further than I make it known--none doth know the things of man but the spirit of man--how great and deep a secret is that which is within God Himself? (2) Although now partly revealed, yet still a mystery because-- (a) Only partly revealed. (b) Only revealed to a limited number. If the king acquaint some two or three of his nearest favourites with a secret, it remains a secret still in comparison with things commonly known. (3) The wisdom of the gospel is still a mystery, when it is now divulged, in regard of those whose eyes are not opened to see it, and their ears bored to attend to it. As news so common everywhere that they are no news are still secret to those who, being deaf, have never heard them, so the gospel is to this day a hidden riddle to many Christians by outward profession. 3. The reason why God reveals the gospel to any is simply His good pleasure. Human merit absolutely excluded, so there is no ground for anyone to boast. (Paul Bayne.) Ephesians 1:10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ.Heaven and earth united in Christ Heaven and earth are to be restored to each other as well as to Him. The knowledge of God and the sanctity which have come to us in this world of conflict and sin are to flow into the great stream of pure angelic life; and the joy, the strength, the wisdom, and the security, alike of angels and of men, will be indefinitely augmented. As yet, we and they are like countries so remote or so estranged from each other that there has been no exchange of material or intellectual treasures. What the poverty of England would be if we had been always isolated from the rest of the human race we can hardly tell. It is by the free intercourse of trade, and the still freer intercourse of literature, that nations become rich and wise. Sunnier skies and more luxuriant soils give us more than half our material wealth, and we send in exchange the products of our mines and the works of our industry and skill. From sages who speculated on the universe and human life in the very morning of civilization, from poets whose genius was developed in the ancient commonwealths of Greece, our intellectual energy has received its most vigorous inspiration; and our religious faith is refreshed by streams which had their springs in the life of ancient Jewish saints and prophets, and of Christian apostles who lived eighteen centuries ago. What we hope for in the endless future is a still more complete participation in whatever knowledge and love of God, whatever righteousness, whatever joy, may exist in any province of the created universe. Race is no longer to be isolated from race, or world from world. A power, a wisdom, a holiness, a rapture, of which a solitary, soul, a solitary world, would be incapable, are to be ours through the gathering together of all things in Christ. We, for our part, shall contribute to the fulness of the universal life. To the principalities of heaven we shall be able to speak of God’ s infinite mercy to a race which had revolted against His throne; of the kinship between the eternal Son of God and ourselves; of the mystery of His death and the power of His resurrection; of the consolation which came to us in sorrows which the happy angels never knew; of the tenderness of the Divine pity which was shown to us in pain and weariness and disappointment; of the strength of the Divine support which made inconstancy resolute in well doing, and changed weakness and fear into victorious heroism. And they will tell us of the ancient days when no sin had cast its shadow on the universe, and of all that they have learnt in the millenniums of blessedness and purity during which they have seen the face of God. The sanctity which is the fruit of penitence will have its own pathetic loveliness for righteous races that have never sinned; and we shall be thrilled with a new rapture by the vision of a perfect glory which has never suffered even temporary eclipse. Their joy in their own security will be heightened by their generous delight in our rescue from sin and eternal death, and our gratitude for our deliverance will deepen in intensity as we discover that our honour and blessedness are not inferior to theirs who have never broken the eternal law of righteousness. Our final glory will consist, not in the restoration of the solitary soul to solitary communion with God, but in the fellowship of all the blessed with the blessedness of the universe as well as with the blessedness of God. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Timely gathering of all in Christ I. God has set seasons in which He will accomplish all His will (Ecclesiastes 3:1; Ecclesiastes 3:17). As He brings things natural, spring, summer, autumn, winter, everything in season, so all the works He will do about His children, whether it be the punishing of wickedness for their sake, the delivering of His children from evil, the giving them benefits, He will bring them all forth in the fit appointed seasons.1. To design times is His prerogative: as a master of a fatally has the right to fix the particular time at which this or that shall be done. 2. He only knows the fittest seasons for the accomplishment of His plans. (1) Let this reprove our weakness in thinking God sometimes delays too long. (2) Let us learn to wait on God. We would not in winter have midsummer weather, for it would not be seasonable; so in the winter of any trial with which we are visited we should not wish the sunshine of this or that blessing before God sees it may be seasonably bestowed, remembering that the man who believes does not make undue haste. II. God, by opening the Gospel, brings us His Christ.1. By nature we are severed (1) from God: prodigal sons; (2) from Christ, like sheep in the valleys of death, running after the wolf, and leaving the Shepherd of our souls; (3) from one another, a man being by nature a wolf to his brother-man, his feet swift to shed blood. 2. The order in which we are gathered. (1) The opening of the gospel gathers us into one faith. (2) By faith, as a spiritual sinew or nerve, it unites us to Christ, making us one person with Him, as in law man and wife are one. (3) It unites us with God, inasmuch as we are one with His Son. (4) By being gathered to Christ, we are gathered to the whole Body of Christ, to all who exist under Him. What a wonderful power of union is there in the gospel! III. All who shall be gathered to Christ are brought to Him by the Gospel. Only one gospel, and that gospel is for all. II. Observe--who it is in whom we are gathered. In Christ, who--1. Has abolished the enmity between God and us, and so removed that which divided us; and-- 2. He calls us, and effectually draws us home in His time. (1) Let us then, to preserve our union, walk with Christ, and keep by Him. Even as it is in drawing a circle with compass and lines from the circumference to the centre, so it is with us: the nearer they come to the centre, the more they unite, till they come to the same point; the further they go from the centre in which they are united, the more they run out one from the other. So when we keep to Christ, the nearer we come to Him, the more we unite; but when we run forth into our own lusts and private faction, then we are disjoined from the other. (2) Since in Christ, our Head, we are joined as members of one and the same body, we mug act as members. The members of one and the same body have no mutual jealousies; they communicate with each other; the mouth takes meat, the stomach digests, the liver makes blood, the eye sees, the hand handles; they wilt not revenge themselves one against another, but mutually bear each others’ burdens, so that their affection each to other is not diminished. God, who is love itself, teaches us these things. (Paul Bayne.)All things in Christ Jesus Christ is the fulness of(1) knowledge;(2) time;(3) law;(4) nature;(5) grace;(6) man;(7) God. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The plan of redemption This is a disclosure of the magnificent and sublime design contemplated by God through means of the gospel. It is the “ mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.” Our own individual salvation constitutes but a fragment of a vast and glorious scheme, which in due course shall be fully achieved. The influence of that atonement to which we owe our redemption is here seen extending itself far and wide in the universe of God, and forming the grand harmonizing and uniting bond among all the objects, however various, of His goodness, mercy, and love. Nay, we are perhaps here taught that its power is to be exerted and displayed in the final subjugation of all things without exception, including the reduction of sin and evil to their own place, as well as the ingathering of all that is good--under the universal sovereignty of God. I. There is a general plan or scheme, promoted by the Gospel, and here called “ the dispensation” or economy “ of the fulness of times.” It is, with reference to a plan, or dispensation, or economy, which God has in view, that He has made known to us the mystery of redemption. Every intelligent householder has some plan, according to which he directs all his energies and Jays out all his arrangements. His house, his farm, his estate, are managed and controlled for some definite object, and all his operations are conformed to some view or idea which he has formed for his own guidance. Different seasons of the year and various times come round upon him, but he keeps intelligently and firmly to his ruling purpose, and is not satisfied until the result of his plan has been fully realized. So God Himself, in the government of His whole household--the universal Father and the Lord of all--is represented as having a certain plan or economy, in accordance with which He is pleased to work through successive times, until the result He contemplates be finally attained. II. What, then, is this grand result contemplated by the dispensation of the fulness of times? It is “ to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth even in Him.” But what are we to understand by this? What is the import of “ to gather together in one” ? And what maybe the full scope of “ all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth” ? The word rendered “ to gather together in one” occurs once again in Romans 13:9, where it is rendered “ briefly comprehended.” “ If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” There its import is plain; for all the commandments are summed up, “ briefly comprehended,” “ reduced to a head,” “ gathered together in one” in those two great commandments, love to God and love to man, of the last of which the apostle was giving instances. These two commandments are heads on which all the rest depend, from which they hang, in which they are summed up. This idea of summation, representation, headship, seems to belong essentially to the import of the word, and must not be lost sight of in the passage before us, where we read of the gathering up in one of all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. But as it is plain that “ all things” do not naturally belong to Christ, but on account of sin the things on earth at least are in a state of alienation, separation, revulsion, we must here necessarily suppose that the word implies the idea of “ bringing back” from that state and gathering up into the opposite state of union, harmony, love.1. The angels may be included in this gathering together in one. Although the unfallen angels do not stand in need of redemption from sin or misery, yet they need to be preserved from the risk of falling, and may well be supposed to owe their security and infallibility in some way to Christ. 2. There is no question concerning the including, or gathering up in one, all the redeemed of mankind. Separated though they may have been in life--according to the times in which they have existed, the countries they have dwelt in, the names and outward distinctions they have borne--their union to Christ, and to each other, has been real. It will, at length, become visible. 3. But it seems intended in this passage, as it is in keeping with the representations of Scripture elsewhere, that the material creation is to share in the glorious ingathering of “ all things in Christ.” III. This gathering up of “ all things” is “ is Christ,” even “ in Him.”1. Consider the wondrous person of Christ as the God-man, joining mysteriously the Creator and the creation--the Maker and His work in one--by an indissoluble and eternal union. 2. But consider, secondly, that Christ, thus completely fitted to represent the creation of God, by the assumption of the human nature, has been actually constituted head of all things, with all-sufficient power to accomplish the whole plan of God. (W. Alves, M. A.)All things to be gathered together in Christ He will yet gather together again, in one, all things in Christ, filling them from His own fulness laid up in Him; gladdening them with His own joy; quickening them with His own life; beautifying them with His own glory; and sustaining them with His own power and resources. Great indeed must be our Lord, in whom and through whom such purposes are to be fulfilled! And divinely inspired must be the record in which they are revealed! Towards the fulfilment and manifestation in us of that purpose, all God’ s past dispensations of grace have tended. Note their order.1. By the Holy Ghost given us and through the gospel, He gathers His people into one faith and one baptism. 2. By faith, as by a spiritual nerve or sinew, He unites us with Christ, making us to become one flesh with Him, as it is written (Ephesians 5:29, “ No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church” ). 3. He doth so unite us with Christ as to make us sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; nay, He makes us so much nearer to Himself, by how much God and Christ are more nearly united, than any natural father and son can be. As it is written: “ I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.” 4. By our being thus gathered together in Christ, we are gathered into the whole body of Christ, and to all that exists under Him, and His angels become our “ ministering spirits” ; nay, more, we are gathered to all, who in God’ s predestination belong to Christ, and all things are ours. Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and goodness of our God! There is a climax in our text.1. His grace in creating us, as Adam in innocency and angels before they fell. 2. His upholding grace, in preventing the fall of elect angels; and His long-suffering grace towards fallen sinners. 3. But beyond all, was that manifestation of the exceeding riches and glory of His redeeming grace, in the gift of His Son, and His revealed purpose to regather us again to Himself in Him, the purchase of His blood, and the partakers of His Divine nature. Creating grace has been surpassed by preventing grace; and preventing grace again by restoring and adopting grace; and thus God has made known unto us the mystery of His will, and “ His thoughts which are to usward.” (M. Rainsford, B. A.)Relation of the Atonement to the universe The mediation of Christ is represented in Scripture as bringing the whole creation into union with the Church or people of God. In the dispensation of the fulness of times it is said that God would “ gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him.” Again, “ it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and (having made peace through the blood of His cross) by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether things in earth, or things in heaven.” The language here used supposes that the introduction of sin has effected a disunion between men and the other parts of God’ s creation. It is natural to suppose it should be so. If a province of a great empire rise up in rebellion against the lawful government, all communication between the inhabitants of such a province and the faithful adherents to order and obedience must be at an end. A line of separation would be immediately drawn by the sovereign, and all intercourse between the one and the other prohibited. Nor would it less accord with the inclination than with the duty of all the friends of righteousness, to withdraw their connection from those who were in rebellion against the supreme authority and the general good. It must have been thus with regard to the holy angels, on man’ s apostasy. Those who at the creation of our world had sung together, and even shouted for joy, would now retire in disgust and holy indignation. But, through the mediation of Christ, a reunion is effected. By the blood of the cross we have peace with God; and being reconciled to Him, are united to all who love Him throughout the whole extent of creation. If Paul could address the Corinthians, concerning one of their excluded members, who had been brought to repentance, “ To whom ye forgive anything, I also” ; much more would the friends of righteousness say, in their addresses to the Great Supreme, concerning an excluded member from the moral system, “ To whom thou forgivest anything, we also!” Hence angels acknowledge Christians as brethren, and become ministering spirits to them while inhabitants of the present world. (A. Fuller.) Ephesians 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an Inheritance, being predestinated: according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the council of His own will.Priority in the purpose of redemption The connecting thought is the divulging of the purpose of redemption (Ephesians 1:9), in which there is development and a consummation (Ephesians 1:10). I. The easier born Jewish Christians are described as those who before hoped in Christ. The hoping in Him before He came implies the trusting in Him as come, and it is as believers that they were made possessors, of the inheritance. Why were they thus the first in privilege? “ To the praise of His glory.” It must have been the best method by which God could accomplish the end He had in view. II. The later born. Gentile Christians. III. The earlier born and the later born have certain things in common.1. A common seal. (1) What the seal is--the Holy Spirit of promise.(2) What is sealed on us--the Divine image.(3) What is sealed to us--that we are the sons of God. 2. A common guarantee. (1) To what the guarantee pertains--our inheritance.(2) How far the guarantee extends--until the redemption of the purchased possession.(3) In what the guarantee consists--the earnest of the Spirit. 3. They can join in a common doxology. (R. Finlayson.)The Christian inheritance 1. It is implied in this that it is a good of a most substantial and enduring kind. It is worthy of: the soul of man with all its cravings, aspirations, and desires, when these, too, have been purified, ennobled, and strengthened in the highest degree. 2. The second reflection we would point out from the expression here used, is that our everlasting happiness is a free gift from God. It is an inheritance; and what can be less merited on our part than that which we inherit by the will and deed of another? (W. Alves, M. A.)Heaven through Christ alone In the terms of a court of law, it’ s theirs, not by conquest, but by heritage. Won by another arm than theirs, it presents the strongest imaginable contrast to the spectacle seen in England’ s palace that day when the king demanded to know of his assembled nobles, by what title they held their lands? “ What title?” At the rash question a hundred swords leapt from their scabbards. Advancing on the alarmed monarch--“ By these,” they replied, “ we won, and by these we will keep them.” How different the scene which heaven presents! All eyes are fixed on Jesus; every look is love; gratitude glows in every bosom, and swells in every song. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)God accomplishes His purposes gradually Paul has just said that it is the Divine purpose to “ sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth.” This is the destiny of the universe. Unmeasured ages of imperfection, conflict, sin, and suffering lie behind us; and it may be that there are unmeasured ages of imperfection, conflict, sin, and suffering still to come. But at last the whole creation is to illustrate and fulfil the Divine thought, and is to reach its perfect unity and ideal perfection in Christ. That coarse conception of the Divine omnipotence which assumes that a Divine purpose is never obstructed or delayed, and that every Divine volition is immediately accomplished, receives no sanction either from the Jewish or the Christian Scriptures. It receives no sanction from those discoveries of God which are accessible through the physical universe and through the moral nature of man. It looks as though God did nothing at a single stroke, nothing by an immediate and irresistible exercise of mere force. It is His will that the summer should be beautiful with flowers, and that the autumn should bring the brown corn and the purple grapes; but flowers and grapes and corn are not commanded to appear suddenly, out of nothing; the Divine will accomplishes itself gradually, and by processes extremely complex and subtle. The world itself came to be a fit home for our race as the result of a history extending over vast and awful tracts of time. God intended that it should become what it now is; but His intention was accomplished by the action, through age after age, of the immense forces which are under His control. “ Fire and hail, snow and vapour, and the stormy wind,” have fulfilled His word. He gave a commission to millions upon millions of living creatures to build the limestone rocks. Through untold centuries vast forests grew and perished, to form the coal measures. Volcanic eruptions, frost and heat, the slow movements of glaciers, the swift rush of rivers, have all had their work to do in bringing the earth which is our home into its present condition. This seems to be the Divine manner of working. The Divine purposes are not achieved suddenly. God “ fainteth not, neither is He weary.” Chaos, with all its confusions, is only gradually being reduced to order; the great work is not completed yet; it will reach its term only when all things are finally summed up in Christ. The same law holds in relation to the moral and spiritual universe. We see it illustrated within narrow limits in the individual lives of good men. They only gradually approach the Divine conception of what they ought to be; their perfection is not consummated in an hour; their knowledge of God and of the will of God gradually widens and deepens; their moral and religious strength is very slowly augmented. It is God’ s will that they should know Him, and know their duty, but they have to be taught. It is God’ s will that they should be righteous, but they have to be disciplined to righteousness. The law is illustrated on a larger scale in the religious history of the race. The great revelation of God in Christ was not made in the earlier ages of the world. There was a long preparation for it. God began with the most elementary moral truths, and with the most elementary religious truths. He taught and disciplined the elect race by picture lessons, by a visible temple, a human priesthood, and a whole system of external rites and ceremonies. There were faint prophecies of the future redemption, but at first they were so obscure as to excite only the most vague and undefined hopes of a Divine deliverance from the evils by which human life was oppressed; and when they became clearer and more vivid, they were easily misunderstood. One generation of saints after another passed away, and the Divine purpose was still delayed. And even when the Christ came at last and the kingdom of heaven was set up among men, the hopes excited by that transcendent manifestation of God were not at once fulfilled. After eighteen hundred years the final triumph of the Divine righteousness and love seems still remote. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)God’ s sovereign will I. The will of God is the sovereign guide of all things, both natural and spiritual, in the world and in the Church.1. His sovereign rill is that His people should be saved (Jeremiah 23:6; Jeremiah 30:10; Isaiah 49:25). 2. That they should be saved by coming to Christ (John 6:37; Romans 5:1; 1 Corinthians 15:57). 3. That they should be holy (1 Thessalonians 4:7; Hebrews 12:10; Hebrews 12:14). II. The Divine will is the result of God’ s counsel.1. This counsel was Divine (Psalms 89:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:9). 2. It was a wise counsel (1 Corinthians 1:24; 1 Corinthians 2:7; Ephesians 3:9-11). 3. It was an efficient counsel (Isaiah 46:10; Isaiah 53:10; Psalms 105:3; Ecclesiastes 3:14). III. That the triune Jehovah worketh all things according to the purpose of His own will. 1. This is evident in the choice of His people (2 Thessalonians 2:13; Titus 3:5). 2. He works out their new birth by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:10). 3. He works all things for the preservation of His people and their comfort by faith (Romans 8:28; John 1:12; Acts 16:31). (T. B. Baker.)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? (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.)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, fore-ordination, 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 is pleased 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, fore-ordination, substitution. Remove the law of gravitation, and many a fair star “ flaming on the forehead of the sky,” yea, the big sun, and the whole stupendous universe, would rush to ruin, and wander off from the throne of God. Similarly, I believe, remove the laws of predestination, and you snap the many linked chain that binds man to God. And just as I have the power to violate God’ s great laws, to my destruction, so may! His laws in the plan of redemption, equally to my destruction. Obey His physical laws, and until the appointed hour I live. Obey His spiritual laws; accept “ eternal life” according to His predestinated way, even in and from God the Son, as offered in the gospel--and I am saved. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.)God’ s predestination overruling man’ s presumption It is said, that on the eve of Napoleon’ s departure on his Russian campaign, he related his schemes in detail to a noble lady, with such arrogant positiveness, that she tried to check him, exclaiming, “ Sire, man proposes, but God disposes.” To which the emperor haughtily replied, “ Madame, I propose and dispose also.” We find how, but a few months later, the disastrous retreat from Moscow, and the loss of his crown, army, and liberty vindicated the power of God. The purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. God’ s effectual working 1. Being in Christ, we find not only righteousness, but life everlasting. (1) In this life we receive the first fruits, “ the earnest of the Spirit.” Wards, while in their minority, have some allowance from their inheritance; and parents will prove their children with a small allowance, to see how they will behave, before they place in their charge the full estate they mean to leave them; and so does God. (2) We receive the fulness in the life to come. (a) Prerogatives, kings and priests to God, etc. (b) Glory put Upon our persons; the soul filled with the light of knowledge, etc. (c) Things given us to possess. “ All things are yours.” 2. The ground of all these benefits is our predestination. 3. Everything which comes about is God’ s effectual working. (1) He originally made all things out of nothing.(2) He continually sustains all things by His power.(3) He directs all things according to His own will. 4. Whatever God works or wills, He does it with counsel. (1) Let this assure us that all things are working together for good.(2) Let rash, self-willed persons take example by their Maker, who does nothing unadvisedly. 5. What God wills, He brings about--“ effectually working.” Where there is full power to work anything applied to the working of it, the thing wrought must needs follow. (Paul Bayne.)God’ s decrees of the counsel or purpose of God concerning all His works or all things in general. Here let us consider--1. The extent or objects of God’ s purposes.2. The properties of them. I. As to the extent or objects of God’ s purposes, it appeaers that everything which happens has a place in the Divine decrees in a manner suitable to its nature. And, indeed, if we go about to except anything, there would be no knowing where to stop: such is the series and connection of one with another. Let us take a brief survey of some instances, especially such as relate to our world. As(1) The work of creation with all the effects of God s providence over the natural world. (2) The purpose of God has before determined all the great revolutions and events of nations, kingdoms, and societies of men. (3) All events that befall particular persons in this world were likewise settled by a Divine decree. (4) The actions of men also are not exempted from God’ s previous purpose. (5) The dispensation of the gospel and means of grace, the revelations of the Divine will which have had a respect all along to the economy of salvation by Christ as welt as that economy itself, were adjusted in the counsels of God. These revelations were appointed to be made in that variety of ways, and in those parts and degrees, as also to such persons, and at such and for so long a time as has since fallen and will fall out. II. As to the properties of God’ s decrees.(1) They are sovereign and free acts of His will. God, though a necessary Being, is not a necessary Agent. To suppose this would be to make Him no Agent at all. (2) They are eternal. Not indeed in the same absolute sense as God’ s nature is, which always was, and could not but be what it is. For how would that consist with their being acts of will and liberty? But they are so eternal, as that it is impossible to assign or conceive any time when they were first formed. (3) They are infinitely wise. For they form a scheme of a prodigious compass, which reaches to endless ages, and whose various parts are all laid out and disposed together for execution in the best manner and to the best ends. (4) They are holy (Psalms 145:17). Consequently He is holy in all His purposes, which are the beginning of His ways, and which are accomplished in them. The infinite rectitude and blessedness of God is sufficient security, that He could neither design nor act anything contrary to justice and goodness. His counsels of old are faithfulness and truth (Isaiah 25:1). Let us now briefly improve this subject. And-- 1. Hence we learn that there is no such thing as chance or necessary fate, or the supreme independent government of two opposite principles, good and evil, but all events are subject to the purpose and providence of one intelligent, all-knowing, infinitely wise, powerful, holy and good Being. Nothing can ever arise to surprise Him, or cast any difficulty and perplexity on His way, He having already from eternity settled the proper measures of conduct in every case that shall emerge. 2. Let us own, and let us quietly submit to the supreme will of God as fulfilled in all that befalls us. We should consider that, even when we suffer wrongfully from men, the will of God so is (1 Peter 3:17). Let us then receive all our allotments with this language of resignation, “ The will of the Lord be done” (Acts 21:14). 3. This doctrine of God’ s decrees may inspire us with a good confidence about the final issue of all things. How securely may we trust in God for a fair account at last of the worst appearances of the most corrupt and disorderly state of the world, since they have not escaped His eternal foresight and provision! 4. What a spring is it, too, of generous, brave, and noble undertakings in the cause of God! When we believe that He has taken, even from eternity, the wisest and best care of all events, what remains for us to care about, but only to do our duty, and to apply to it so much the more vigorously, as we have no need to distract our minds about the issues of things! With what serenity and fortitude may a good man commit himself to God in well-doing! Application: What abundant cause does this excellent order which God observed in framing the world, as well as the quality of the creatures, which had all their parts fitted to a proper use, and were made subservient to one another for the good of all, afford us to break forth into that celebration of Divine wisdom! (Psalms 104:24, “ O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all!” ). Thus also the new creation of grace in Christ Jesus is executed gradually after the same model, which is the more from hence confirmed to be a point of wisdom and beauty. And how will the conducting it from a spiritual chaos of darkness and wild disorder through various periods and gradations to a glorious issue excite the most ravishing admiration in the saints, when they shall be able to carry their views from the beginning to the end of both these creations at once? How should we adore likewise the Divine power as infinitely great and wonderful in creation? Here, as in its proper province, omnipotence acted illustriously from first to last, and was only laid open to a more distinct survey in the wise order of its procedure. (J. Hubbard.)Of the decrees of God I. I am to explain the nature of a decree. The text calls it a purpose, a will. For God to decree is to purpose and fore-ordain, to will and appoint that a thing shall be or not be. And such decrees must needs be granted, seeing God is absolutely perfect, and therefore nothing can come to pass without His will; seeing there is an absolute and necessary dependence of all things and persons on God as the first cause. But there is a vast difference betwixt the decrees of God and men; whereof this is the principal. Men’ s purposes or decrees are distinct from themselves, but the decrees of God are not distinct from Himself. God’ s decrees are nothing else but God Himself, who is one simple act; and they are many only in respect of their objects, not as they are in God; even as the one heat of the sun melts wax and hardens clay. II. I proceed to consider the object of God’ s decrees. This is whatsoever comes to pass. He worketh all things, says the text. We may consider the extent of the Divine decree under the three following heads.1. God has decreed the creation of all things that have a being. 2. He has decreed to rule and govern the creatures which He was to make. He has decreed the eternal state of all His rational creatures. III. I come to consider the end of God’ s decrees. And this is no other than His own glory. Every rational agent acts for an end; and God being the most perfect agent, and His glory the highest end, there can be no doubt but all His decrees are directed to that end.1. This was God’ s end in the creation of the world. The Divine perfections are admirably glorified here, not only in regard of the greatness of the effect, which comprehends the heavens and the earth, and all things therein; but in regard of the marvellous way of its production. 2. The glory of God was His chief end and design in making men and angels. The rest of the creatures glorified God in an objective way, as they are evidences and manifestations of His infinite wisdom, goodness, and power. But this higher rank of beings are endued with rational faculties, and so are capable to glorify God actively. Hence it is said (Proverbs 16:4), “ The Lord hath made all things for Himself.” If all things were made for Him, then man and angels especially, who are the masterpieces of the whole creation. We have our rise and being from the pure fountain of God’ s infinite power and goodness; and therefore we ought to run towards that again, till we empty all our faculties and excellencies into that same ocean of Divine goodness. 3. This is likewise the end of election and predestination. 4. This was the end that God proposed in that great and astonishing work of redemption. In our redemption by Christ we have the fullest, clearest, and most delightful manifestation of the glory of God that ever was or shall be in this life. IV. I come now to consider the properties of God’ s decrees.1. They are eternal. God makes no decrees in time, but they were all from eternity. So the decree of election is said to have been “ before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). 2. They are most wise, “ according to the counsel of His will.” God cannot properly deliberate or take counsel, as men do; for He sees all things together and at once. 3. They are most free, according to the counsel of His own will; depending on no other, but all flowing from the mere pleasure of His own will (Romans 11:34). “ For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?” 4. They are unchangeable. 5. They are most holy and pure. 6. They are effectual. Whatever God decrees comes to pass infallibly (Isaiah 46:10). I conclude all with a few inferences.1. Has God decreed all things that come to pass? Then there is nothing that falls out by chance, nor are we to ascribe what we meet with either to good or ill luck and fortune. 2. Hence we see God’ s certain knowledge of all things that happen in the world, seeing His knowledge is founded on His decree. As He sees all things possible in the glass of His own power, so He sees all things to come in the glass of His own will; of His effecting will, if He hath decreed to produce them; and of His permitting will, if He hath decreed to suffer them. 3. Whoever be the instruments of any good to us, of whatever sort, we must look above them, and eye the hand and counsel of God in it, which is the first spring, and be duly thankful to God for it. And whatever evil of crosses or afflictions befalls us, we must look above the instruments of it to God. 4. See here the evil of murmuring and complaining at our lot in the world. How apt are ye to quarrel with God, as if He were in the wrong when His dealings with you are not according to your own desires and wishes? You demand a reason, and call God to an account, Why am I thus? But you should remember that this is to defame the counsels of infinite wisdom, as if God had not ordered your affairs wisely enough in His eternal counsel. 5. There is no reason for people to excuse their sins and falls, from the doctrine of the Divine decrees. Wicked men, when they commit some villainy or atrocious crime, are apt to plead thus for their excuse, Who can help it? God would have it so; it was appointed for me before I was born, so that I could not avoid it. This is a horrid abuse of the Divine decrees, as if they did constrain men to sin: whereas the decree is an immanent act of God, and so can have no influence, physical or moral, upon the wills of men, but leaves them to the liberty and free choice of their own hearts; and what sinners do, they do most freely and of choice. 6. Let the people of God comfort themselves in all cases by this doctrine of the Divine decrees; and, amidst whatever befalls them, rest quietly and Submissively in the bosom of God, considering that whatever comes or can come to pass, proceeds from the decree of their gracious Friend and reconciled Father. (T. Boston, D. D.)The Divine decrees and the free agency of man I. To explain and establish the doctrine of the Divine decrees. The Divine decrees are the eternal purpose, will, or plan of God, whereby He hath, for His own glory, predetermined whatsoever has, or shall come to pass.1. This purpose is eternal. If, therefore, God has existed from eternity, He has known from eternity what is the best plan by which to govern the universe; He has from eternity had a preference for that which is best, and from eternity determined to adopt and pursue it, and that is all that is intended by His eternal purpose--the determination of God, from all eternity, to do that, in every possible case, which it appeared most desirable to Himself that He should do. 2. His purpose is immutable. It cannot alter. An alteration in the Divine purpose would necessarily imply an alteration in the Divine mind, which would be, in fact, to suppose a fickle, changeable God. 3. His purpose is sovereign--not arbitrary. There are some who always understand the word sovereign as though it were synonymous with arbitrary; and, therefore, reject the idea of the Divine sovereignty altogether. No; in the purpose of God there is an end to be secured infinitely worthy of Himself, namely, His own glory; and that purpose is nothing more than the determination to secure this end by the best possible means. The sovereignty of His purpose lies in this, that it is perfectly independent of His foreknowledge, as its cause; and that in the adoption and prosecution of it, He is not, in any way, responsible to any of His creatures. II. To state what is necessary to the constitution of a free agent, or accountable creature, and to shew that man is such a creature.1. To constitute an accountable creature, or a free agent, there must be intelligence. 2. The exercise of will is absolutely essential to free agency, and it is in this especially that our own consciousness informs us our free agency consists. The actions which are not the result of choice or will, but contrary to it, are not, properly speaking, our own. 3. Where actions are concerned, sufficiency of means is also requisite to the constitution of a free agent, or an accountable creature. No man can be justly chargeable with guilt, in failing to accomplish what he had not sufficiency of means to perform. III. That the divine decrees, thus understood, and the free agency of man, thus defined, are not incompatible the one with the other; in other words, that the purpose of God does not destroy the freedom of human actions. If, indeed, the doctrine of the Divine purpose be established, and the free agency of man admitted, then the proposition is at once demonstrated. It is not the fact, but the mode of that fact which is the subject of inquiry,1. Hypothetical reasoning, or reasoning by supposition, is a legitimate mode of argument on topics such as these, where the object is not so much to establish the truth of a doctrine or proposition, as to show the possibility of its existence, by an appeal to some supposable cases. There are only two ways in which the Divine purpose or decree can be supposed to affect the free agency of man--either by rendering his actions certain, before they take place; or by compelling or constraining those actions against his will. Now, can we not suppose a finite being in every sense perfectly free--a being under no system of moral government whatever, left in every respect to himself, and whose actions should be, in the philosophical sense of the word, contingent? Would not such a being be allowed to possess every requisite qualification of a free agent? But the circumstance that all the actions of that being, and every volition of his mind, are perfectly foreknown by God, would not render them less free. 2. But we may appeal, as another ground of argument on this difficult subject, to our own consciousness. Are we ever conscious, either in our vicious or virtuous actions, of acting against our inclination? Were we ever conscious of choosing a thing against our choice, or of preferring a line of conduct contrary to our preference? 3. But we shall finally appeal to some scriptural illustrations of the doctrine. The first we shall introduce is that furnished by the text. Now the counsel and purpose of God are infallibly certain, but faith in Christ is the voluntary act of an intelligent creature; by this we mean, an act done with the full consent of the will. It may be asked, then, “ Is the will of man free to receive or free to reject Christ, so that it can as easily do the one as the other?” We answer, No; for by reason of the Fall, his will has naturally a bias to that which is evil, and would, therefore, in every case, without a Divine influence, reject Christ. Here, then, is the difference between free agency and free will. A free agent is one who has the power of willing and of acting according as his will shall dictate! but free will, in its popular sense, is an ability, in the will itself, to choose good or evil; and this is not the case with man; for the will that spontaneously and of itself chooses holiness, cannot be a depraved will; this supposition would, therefore, falsify the doctrine of human depravity, and, at the same time, annihilate the doctrine of the influence of the Holy Spirit; for the will that can choose holiness without a Divine influence, does not require a Divine influence; and, therefore, the office of the Holy Spirit is, in that case, unnecessary. The will, indeed, is uncoerced; the idea of a coerced will is absurd. But the will of a finite being is limited and bounded by the circumstances of his nature, and in man that nature being fallen, limits the exercises of his will to that only which is in harmony with his fallen nature. While the will to sin, then, is perfectly free (we use the term as opposed to coercion), he cannot, from the very necessity of his nature, will holiness without a Divine influence on the heart; and that influence is such as not to coerce the will, or render the will to holiness less free than was the previous will to sin. The one was the will of a corrupt and depraved nature--the other is the will of a renewed nature, both equally uncoerced; but, in the one instance, the principle was from within himself--in the other, it was from God. (T. Raffles, D. D.)Predestination When St. Paul speaks of our being predestinated or foreordained, he is speaking about this nature of ours and what it was made for? He says in effect, that the idea of a thing is in the constitution of the thing itself--but it is also in the mind of God before it is in our mind. Fore-ordination is that to which the thing was ordained before it was actually made. The idea of this building was in the mind of the architect before it was ever put on paper, before it was ever translated into material visibility. And the idea of every part of it was in other minds before it was in his. The idea of Gothic architecture was suggested to the mind of the first man who attempted it, by an avenue of trees, their branches hanging towards each other, forming a peculiar kind of arch. The idea of man and the destiny of man was in the Divine mind before this world was. Man was made according to a Divine idea, and for a definite purpose. Now, when Jesus Christ comes into the world Paul sees that there is God’ s idea and purpose for man fully and clearly revealed. And so he begins to speak of that for which man was predestinated; of that for which he was fore-ordained. His mind is full of it. It does not depress him; it inspires him; animates him, makes life purer and sweeter, grander and more glorious. So much so, that in speaking to the Romans with these ideas of predestination in his mind, he cries out, “ If God be for us, who can be against us.” Fore-ordination is God for us, according to the apostle. Predestination is God for us, according to the apostle. And there can be no room for doubt that to the mind of St. Paul these ideas had nothing in them of gloom or depression. But they have been so used as to bring gloom and depression to many minds. Predestination means purpose. It implies an end. And it implies the provision necessary to carry out that purpose and to accomplish that end. Rightly viewed, it means that the Creator does not work at random, nor blindly, but according to a preconceived idea and along the line of the law which leads up to making that idea into a fact. In every department of life there is the perfect type. The perfect thing is the complete thing--that which cannot be improved upon. To me predestination speaks of the end which God had in making man, of the type of man that the Creator intended, and of the unchangeable purpose that He has to produce that type--that type, the perfection and consummation of which we have in Jesus the Christ. A man conformed to that type is a man after God’ s own heart; not conformed to it he is breaking away from the destiny which God intended for him. (Reuen Thomas.) Ephesians 1:12 That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ.The dignity and obligations of those called early to faith I. To be brought to faith before others is a prerogative which persons so called have above others.1. Let us acknowledge their dignity. The young rise up before the ancient in nature; so should it be with us who are babes, when we meet with those who are veterans in Christ (see Romans 16:6; 1 Corinthians 16:15). 2. Let those so honoured walk worthy of their dignity, by adorning their age in Christ with graces corresponding, such as experience, wisdom, weanedness, all kinds of mortification. Should one of fifty have no more wisdom and staidness than another at fifteen, it would make their old age despicable. II. The end of all the benefits we obtain in Christ is, that we may set forth His glorious grace and mercy toward us. Let our words, our works, our whole man be at His command and service. The Church in the Canticles so praises the beauty of her spouse, that she wakens others; so should we from our hearts set forth the praise of our Christ, that others may by our means be brought to inquire after Him. Those who find bounteous masters on earth, how will they tell of their affability and liberality, of every circumstance wherein they do them any grace and favour? How will they protest themselves devoted to their service; how impatient are they of anything which so much as seems to tend to their disparagement? What a shame, then, it is that we should walk, neither feeling our hearts affected, nor yet opening our mouths to praise Him who has redeemed us and brought us to the hope of an immortal and incorruptible inheritance. (Paul Bayne.)Believers ministering to God’ s praise In order to understand this sentence, we must consider that the term, “ trusted in Christ,” implies more than it expresses; even the coming to God, or repentance, through belief, or hope, or trust that Christ, by His death, has made reconciliation with God for all who will come to Him in this hope, belief, and trust. The sentence, then, must be understood as thus: “ That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first drew near unto Him, through trust in the reconciliation which Christ has made” ; and then we see how this is to the praise and glory of God. For God’ s glory is manifested by the exercise of His gracious attributes of mercy and loving kindness and forgiveness; but these He is prevented from exercising towards men when their hearts are impenitent and unbelieving, as we find it recorded of our Lord, that “ He could there do no mighty works, because of their unbelief.” But what does the apostle mean when he speaks: “ we who first trusted in Christ” ? He is speaking apparently of the Jews, the first to whom the gospel was preached; as we find our Lord instructing His apostles, “ Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” ; and again, we have St. Paul saying that the offer and promise of salvation was made to the Jew first; and it is well to remember that all the first apostles and heralds of salvation were from among the Jews, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah and others, that “ the Word of the Lord” should “ go forth from Jerusalem” ; and hence we see how that, in more than one sense, the first Jewish believers may be said to have ministered to the praise and glory of God. For not only did they, by their faith and repentance, make room for God’ s glory to be manifested by the extension of mercy and forgiveness to themselves; but they, leading the way, were the occasion of others also embracing the faith, and themselves proclaimed it to the rest of the world. (A. P. Perceval, B. C. L.)God must have all the glory of grace A certain king had a minstrel, and he bade him play before him. It was a day of high feasting; the cups were flowing, and many great guests were assembled. The minstrel laid his fingers among the strings of his harp and woke them all to the sweetest melody, but the hymn was to the glory of himself. It was a celebration of the exploits of song which the bard had himself performed. He had excelled high Howell’ s harp, and emulated great Llewellyn’ s lay. In high-sounding strains he sang himself and all his glories. When the feast was over the harper said to the monarch, “ Oh, king, give me my guerdon; let the minstrel’ s mede be paid.” And the king said, “ Thou hast sung unto thyself; pay thyself; thine own praises were thy theme; be thyself the paymaster.” He cried, “ Did I not sing sweetly? O, king, give me the gold!” But the king replied, “ So much the worse for thy pride, that thou shouldest lavish such sweetness upon thyself.” Brethren, even if a man should grow grey-headed in the performance of good works, yet when at the last it is known that he has done it all to himself, his Lord will say, “ Thou hast done well enough in the eyes of man, but so much the worse, because thou didst it only to thyself, that thine own praises might be sung, and that thine own name might be extolled.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)We must trust Christ What had the woman who touched the hem of our Lord’ s garment heard? Nothing of His kindness towards herself, but towards others, and upon this she believed. So a rope is but cast down into the sea to a multitude of drowning men, and all are bidden for their life to lay hold on the rope that they may be saved; it were unreasonable and foolish curiosity for any of these poor men, now upon death and life, commanded to hold fast the rope, to dispute whether did the man who east down the rope intend and purpose to save me or not? and while my mind is perplexed on that point, I will not put out one finger to touch the rope. Fool! dispute not, but lay hold on the remedy. (S. Rutherford.) Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.The functions of the Word and the Spirit 1. God, by the hearing of His word, makes us partakers in His Spirit (John 6:45; Ephesians 4:21; Colossians 1:6). As the ground cannot be quickened with fruits till it receive seed and the clews from heaven, no more can our soul be quickened with the spirit and fruits of the Spirit, till by hearing it has taken in this seed immortal, and drunk in this heavenly shower of God’ s Word. It is not every hearing which is accompanied with the Spirit, but hearing with the heart, so as the heart is affected to do what it hears. (1) Where there is much hearing, yet the Word is not there heard as it should be. Some are viler after hearing than before. With much hearing they have become past hearing. As those who dwell near the continual roaring of mighty waters become deaf through constantly hearing such a great noise, so there are many who have so long had the Word of God in their ears, that they cannot discern anything in it, no matter what is spoken. (2) This must teach us to attend on hearing. Wouldst thou keep the Spirit from being quenched? Despise not prophecy, i.e., hearing the Scriptures opened to thy use. Even as the conduit pipes carry the water hither and thither, so does the Word convey the graces of the Spirit into our hearts. 2. The word of the gospel is that which, being heard, brings us the quickening Spirit. Hence the ministry of the gospel is called the ministry of the Spirit. 3. All God’ s promises made in Christ are true and faithful. (1) Let us not give God the lie by our deeds. “ He that believeth” not, maketh God a liar.” (2) Let this strengthen our faith toward the promises of God. 4. It is not enough to hear, but we must believe before we can partake of the good Spirit of Christ. (1) Let us labour to be one with Him by faith. (2) Let us take care that our faith is active and productive of holiness. Otherwise it is worthless. 5. The faithful are, as it were by seal, confirmed touching their salvation and full redemption (Ephesians 4:30; 2 Corinthians 1:22). As God sealed His Christ, as the Person in whom He would be glorious by working our redemption, so He seals us who are believers, for persons who shall have redemption by Him. Even as persons contracting do mutually seal and deliver each of them their deeds in several: so between God and the believer; the believer does by faith set to his seal, as it were, that God is true in that which He promises (John 3:33), and God seals unto the believer that he shall be infallibly brought to the salvation he has believed. (1) A seal sometimes makes secret the thing sealed. So the graces of the Spirit make believers unknown to the world. (2) A seal distinguishes. Believers are set apart from the world. (3) A seal authenticates. 6. The Holy Spirit, and the graces of the Spirit, are the seal assuring our redemption. 7. The Holy Spirit, not only as a seal, but as earnest money, confirms to us our inheritance. It is not with the Spirit and His gifts as with the sun and its light--the body of the sun being in the heavens, while the light is with us here on earth; but we are to conceive the Spirit Himself dwelling in this sanctuary of grace which He has Himself erected in our souls. Even as men assure others that they will pay them the whole sum due for this or that, by giving an earnest; so God makes us, as it were, part payment, that we may be persuaded of His gracious purpose of bringing us to our heavenly inheritance. (1) An earnest is part of the whole.(2) An earnest is but little compared to the whole.(3) An earnest assures him who receives of the good intention of him with whom he contracts. (Paul Bayne.)The Spirit’ s application of the promises to the believer’ s heart The “ sealing” of the Spirit is evidently a distinct act from faith, and the “ sealing of the Holy Spirit” appears to be a metaphorical expression to denote that the same Divine Agent who had implanted in their souls a principle of faith, and brought this principle into exercise, had likewise produced in their minds an assurance of their interest in the premises of the gospel, and in the blessings of salvation by a Redeemer. Preliminary observations.(1) There is such a Being as the Holy Spirit (Genesis 6:3; Proverbs 1:23; Luke 11:13; John 7:37-40; Romans 8:16; Romans 8:26; Ephesians 4:30). (2) The Holy Spirit is a Divine Person. (3) This Divine Spirit is the subject of many revealed and precious promises. (4) A true and saving faith in Christ is the special gift of the Divine Spirit--a principle produced by His gracious operations on the heart, and ordinarily effected by means of a preached gospel. (5) It is the peculiar office of the Holy Spirit to carry on and complete the work of sanctification in those who believe, and to comfort their minds by a sweet and spiritual application of the promises of grace in Christ Jesus to their souls. (6) It is a matter of unspeakable importance to know and believe, on substantial evidence, that we are the subjects of the Spirit’ s sanctifying and comforting influences. We inquire, then, “ How may we know this?” 1. Our characters must answer to the characters of those who have a right to claim an interest in the promises. They only who are brought to believe truly in Christ are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. 2. We must be led to see our need of His assistance. 3. Our state must be that of those for whom the promises are designed. Sorrow for sin, fear of God, etc. (Psalms 31:19; Psalms 27:14; Psalms 18:30; Psalms 37:40; Psalms 32:10; Psalms 112:7). If God be not the object of our reverence, confidence, and love, these promises do not belong to us. 4. In the application of a promise of Scripture to the heart, the Holy Spirit impresses the mind with a conviction that the promise is true, and gives the soul a persuasion on scriptural grounds, that God is both able and willing to perform it. 5. We may know that a promise of Scripture is applied to the mind by the Holy Spirit, when, upon a strict and impartial examination, we are directed to conclude that we are possessed of those several qualifications and graces of the Christian life which are inseparably connected with a right application of the promises to the heart (see Galatians 5:22-23). These graces are not the causes, but the necessary evidences of an interest in the promises. 6. There is ground to believe that we are interested in the promises, when our general conduct, both personally and relatively, answers to the rules and obligations prescribed in the Word of God (Hebrews 12:14). Inferences:1. Let us rejoice in the promises of revelation, and bless God for them. 2. Let us examine, strictly and closely, the foundation of our title to the promises. 3. Let those who have felt and enjoyed the application of the promises to their souls remember their obligations to sovereign mercy. (The Pulpit.)How Divine grace is manifested Let us observe how the operations of Divine grace are manifested in those who are the objects of it--that is, how those who are the objects of Divine grace are to be known. I. The power of Divine grace was proved in their attention to the word preached by the apostle. II. Faith in the Gospel of Christ, and trust in the Lord Jesus, is the manifestation of the power of Divine grace. III. The power of Divine grace, and their election to their inheritance, were manifested by the operations and influences of the Holy Spirit upon them. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)Truth and trust I. The Gospel which the Ephesians heard is designated--1. The word of truth, because in itself emphatically and entirely true. History, not romance. Christ’ s miracles were real events, manifesting the divinity of His person and mission; His doctrines, precepts, promises, threatenings, are the truthful declarations of the God of truth. (1) Evidential proof, from the testimony of the Church, etc. (2) Moral proof, from the witness of heart and conscience. The gospel, in some mysterious manner, is its own sufficient witness, and convinces the conscience of every man who prayerfully peruses it, that it is not a fable, but the word of truth. A most merciful provision of Almighty God! A man goes as a missionary among far off barbarians; how is he to convince these that the gospel he is gone to preach is not false, but true? How can the man do it? He has not the power to heal the sick, as the first evangelists and preachers of Christ’ s gospel had; he has not power to hush the elements, to expel devils, or to raise the dead, and, by such means, win the confidence and faith of his barbarous congregations. Nor would it be of any use for him to point out to such barbarians the evidences of Christianity arising from miracles and from history; such things are above their comprehension. Yet, despite all this, the man succeeds, and everywhere multitudes voluntarily renounce their idols and embrace Christianity--the gospel carrying kith it its own credentials, and commending itself to every man’ s conscience in the sight of God. (3) Divine truth, taught by God Himself, and which none but God could teach, and the very truth which meets man’ s needs, is found in the gospel. The gospel is a sun of God’ s own kindling, and the more you look at it the more you are dazzled by its unearthly splendour and Divine magnificence. Its truths are too big to be the inventions of the human intellect. It is a sun which knows no eclipse and no change. 2. The gospel of salvation. (1) Salvation is its great theme.(2) Salvation is the end at which it aims. II. The faith and the trust which the Ephesians exercised on hearing the Gospel.1. Historical belief in the Messiah-ship of Jesus of Nazareth. 2. Heartfelt trust and hope in His sacrificial sufferings and death, for present and personal salvation. Having believed Him to be what He said He was, they were emboldened to trust that He would do what He had promised. (Luke Tyerman.)Difference between belief and trust Imagine a storm at sea. There is a ship tossed as the merest plaything on the maddened waves, while the tempest round about roars like a black spirit from the vast abyss, and the sky overhead is bent down with the rumbling vengeance of rolling thunder. The sails of the ship shiver; the planks give way; the men on board are pale with terror, for they are all conscious that they are in the utmost danger of being drowned. Their hearts beat; their bosoms heave; their lips quiver; their eyes stare. They think as they best can of their beloved friends, far, far away; and then they look at the foaming, boiling, billowy sea which is likely to become their grave; and for awhile all is deep, and dead, and significant, and solemn silence. At length silence can endure no longer; and now, mingling with the howling and raging of the storm, you hear cries and groans and prayers, such as none but persons who are conscious that they are perishing can utter. In this fearful crisis a boat appears, and approaching them it offers to rescue them, and promises to ensure their safety. How is the offer treated? One group of the drowning men believe that the boat is not a pirate, but a friend--that its pretensions are sincere, and that its flag is genuine; but they still stand and fear and hesitate. One says that the boat is for the better class of passengers, not for a poor, miserable, degraded wretch like him. Another is free from all fear such as that, and yet he hesitates to step into the boat. Why? He looks at the dashing waves; and he listens to the howling winds, and he thinks of the distance between him and the nearest shore; and, all things being thus considered, he fears that the boat is not strong enough to outride the storm; and hence, despite warning words and inviting looks, the poor timorous man in question, as well as the self-deprecating one already mentioned, neglects to rush into the boat, and so is lost. Here you have a representation of an immensely numerous class of persons in the Christian Church--persons who believe in Christ, and yet for various reasons fail to trust in Christ. How many believe in Christ as a Saviour, but dare not trust in Christ as their Saviour! They believe He waits to save others, but they dare not trust that He will save them. How many others, again, there are who, whilst they believe that Christ loved them and gave Himself for them, dare not trust in the simple means which Christ has prescribed (or sinners being saved! They dare not. Looking, on the one hand, at the badness of their hearts, and the guiltiness of their lives, and then, on the other hand, looking at the simple and easy method of salvation which Christ propounds, they dare not trust in its sufficiency. They fear the thing is too simple to be right, and they say they dare not trust for the welfare of their souls, in time and in eternity, merely on the merits of another. This may be quite sufficient, but they are afraid it may be otherwise. There they are, believing Christ, but not trusting Christ; and for want of trust they perish. (Luke Tyerman.)Union of faith and trust Another class on the foundering ship see the lightning’ s flash, and hear the thunder’ s roll; they see the ocean tossed in tempest, and think of their distance from the nearest haven. Their plight is perilous--terrifically perilous; but the boat approaches, and is close at hand, They read the inscription on its flag; they listen to the invitations, and to the pledges of its commander; they count the cost; they know that the case is desperate. Anyhow, they feel their case cannot be worse than it is; and so, amid the tattering of sails and the splintering of masts, and forked lightnings and thunders terrible, amid howling winds and dashing waves, amid hearings and rockings and creakings and crackings, the poor perishing wretches make a rush, and, with a desperate leap, they trust themselves to the lifeboat which offers them assistance. Such were the Christian converts at Ephesus. They believed in Christ; i.e., they believed that He was no adventurer, but, in reality, what He professed to be:; but in addition to that historical faith in Christ there was also trust in Christ. They not only believed Him to be a Saviour, but trusted in Him as their Saviour--even theirs. Renouncing trust in everything else, they trusted in Christ, in His merits alone, for acceptance with God, and for the gift of eternal life in Him. Damned or saved, cursed or blessed, sink or swim, they made the venture, and put their whole trust for personal and for endless salvation in the merits and mediation of this Divine Redeemer. And with what result? In this lifeboat of salvation, launched by the illimitable benevolence of God, crimsoned all over with the blood of the Paschal Lamb, and bearing a banner emblazoned with the Cross, they found all they needed. The wind was sometimes boisterous; the sea was sometimes rough; ever and anon the waves dashed the rocks, lashed the cliffs, and seemed to splash the very skies; but in the midst of all the violence the boat is borne without a shrunken plank, or a tattered sail, or a splintered mast. (Luke Tyerman.)The Ephesians’ faith I. The object of their faith.1. The word of truth. It contains all that truth which concerns our present duty and our future glory. 2. The gospel of our salvation, It discovers to us our ruined, helpless condition; the mercy of God to give us salvation; the way in which it is procured for us; the terms on which we may become interested in it; the evidences by which our title to it must be ascertained; and the glory and happiness which it comprehends. II. The forwardness, and yet reasonableness, of their faith. They trusted in Christ after they heard the word of truth. They acted as honest and rational men: they did not trust before they heard it, nor refuse to trust after they heard it. III. The happy consequence of their faith.1. The sealing of the Spirit. 2. The earnest of the Spirit. (1) The virtues of the Christian temper, which are called the fruit of the Spirit, are to believers an earnest of their inheritance, because they are, in part, a fulfilment of the promise, which conveys the inheritance. (2) The graces of the Spirit are an earnest of the inheritance, as they are preparatives for it. (3) The sealing and sanctifying influence of the Spirit is especially called an earnest of the inheritance, because it is a part of the inheritance given beforehand. Concluding reflections: 1. Our subject teaches us that all the operations of the Divine Spirit on the minds of men are of a holy nature and tendency. 2. Our subject strongly encourages humble souls to apply to God for the needful influences of His grace. 3. It appears that we can have no conclusive evidence of a title to heaven, without the experience of a holy temper. 4. We see that Christians are under indispensable obligations to universal holiness. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)The effect of hearing the gospel I. We are to consider the interesting light in which the gospel is represented in the text.1. It is described as the word of truth. And it is thus designated, because it is not the word of man, but in truth the Word of God. 2. It is the gospel of your salvation. The best explanation of the word gospel, perhaps, is that given by the angel to the shepherds, when he announced to them the birth of the Saviour in these words, “ Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,” etc. (1) It is the gospel of our salvation, in the first place, because it acquaints us with our need of salvation. It does not take for granted that all is well with us. It does not flatter our pride, by giving us a lofty description of the dignity of human nature, or by furnishing us with a favourable account of our spiritual condition, Like a faithful friend, it lays before us a true, though a painful statement of our case. Like a skilful physician, it probes our wound to the bottom. (2) But while it thus acquaints us with our disease, it does not leave us in the dark as to a remedy--a suitable and efficacious remedy. It does not, like the priest and the Levite in the parable, leave us to perish unpitied by the wayside. Like the good Samaritan, it has compassion on us, and binds up our wounds, pouring in oil and wine. It reveals to us a new and living way, opened by the obedience and death of God’ s incarnate Son, through which we may not only escape the dreadful consequences of our sins, but secure to ourselves the possession of a glorious and eternal inheritance. 3. Moreover, the gospel, when accompanied with the influence of the Holy Spirit, is itself the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. II. The biassed effect which the hearing of this gospel is stated to have had on the Ephesians. “ In whom,” that is, in Christ, “ ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” Christ is the sum and substance of the gospel. All the rays of its Divine light meet in Him as in their common centre. But it may be asked, What is meant by trusting in Christ?--or, What does the expression imply?1. It implies that we have faith in His power or ability to save; faith in the all-cleansing virtue of His blood, in the perfection of His righteousness, in the prevailing efficacy of His intercession, in the all-sufficiency of His grace, in the everlasting strength of His arm, in His providential care and protection. Such a faith as this, it is plain, is absolutely necessary in order to our having anything like trust or confidence in Him. We must be fully persuaded that He can help us. 2. That trusting in Christ implies that we have faith in His mercy and grace, no less than faith in His power. It is not a persuasion of ability alone that can inspire confidence in the applicant for Divine aid. He must be equally convinced that sympathy and benevolence are connected with it; in other words, he must believe that there is in Christ a disposition to exert His almighty power for his relief. 3. Trust in Christ implies a simplicity of dependence upon Him for salvation. 4. Trust in the Lord, when steadfast and immovable, such as we may suppose that of the Ephesians to have been, implies a lively hope and expectation of receiving from Him all things that appertain unto life and godliness. A child, while he is conscious of being under the care and protection of a kind and affectionate father, fears nothing; but looks up to him with confidence for a due supply of all his wants. That parental love, tenderness, and care, of which he has constantly received the most pleasing and substantial proofs, leave him no room to doubt his father’ s disposition to succour and provide for him, but beget and cherish in his bosom the most lively hopes and expectations. Similar, then, are the feelings which those who trust in Christ manifest towards Him. (D. Rees.)The biography of trust Trust in Christ is the fruit of faith in Him. We cannot believe God’ s record concerning Christ without trusting in Him; and faith, which is the root of trust, cometh by hearing the word of the truth of the gospel. The word heard produces faith, and the Holy Ghost is the seal of the word believed. Trust in Jesus Christ regards Him from our standpoint as He is revealed to us in the word of the truth of the gospel. But the gospel reveals him to us from God’ s standpoint as “ all in all,” made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. There is nothing that God sees to be good for us that we may not have by trusting in Christ. “ He that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.” Imagine being in the centre of the circle of mercies!--mercy above, mercy beneath, mercy around us. All God’ s fulness is laid up for us in Jesus Christ, and abounds to us in superabounding mercies. Jesus Christ was the promise of the Old Testament to be believed. The Holy Ghost is the promise of the New Testament, and is from Christ to us who believe the seal of our union with Him. “ In whom ye also trusted.” There are three truths here stated, and referring in common to both those who first trusted in Christ and “ ye also.”1. “ In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth.” 2. “ In whom also we have obtained an inheritance” (verse 11). 3. “ In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance.” We both have trusted. We have both obtained an inheritance. We have both been sealed. “ Chosen! in Him before the foundation of the world.” Blessed! adopted! accepted! redeemed! forgiven!--and sealed for all these in Him! (M. Rainsford, B. A.)The inheritance and the seal I. The apostle here shows how or by what means the inheritance is obtained, i.e., how anyone comes actually to have a right and interest in it. When speaking of his own interest in the inheritance, the apostle’ s mind was occupied with a sense of that sovereign good pleasure of God, which is the foundation of all grace and mercy, and he seized on the opportunity of rendering praise to that original cause of his salvation. And so he might have spoken with regard to the Ephesians, for they likewise had been predestinated unto the adoption of children. But he rather refers in their case to the means by which that had been brought about under God. These are first, the word of truth, the gospel of salvation; second, the hearing that word; and third, the believing in Christ through the word. The first may be called the outward means, viz., the word read but especially preached; the second the inward means, hearing, i.e., the inward passage of the word through the sense of hearing and the intellect; and the third, the inner or inmost means, viz., faith, which is a thing of the heart or soul within. This accords with the statement made elsewhere, “ Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Here is a threefold cord not easily broken, by which man, in a way suitable to his nature, is drawn effectually heavenward from the horrible pit and the miry clay, into which all have plunged by sin.1. The outward means, “ the word of truth--the gospel of salvation.” The latter of these clauses explains the former. “ The word of truth” is “ the gospel of salvation.” 2. The necessity of hearing the word of truth, the gospel of salvation. This is the means by which the saving truth of God reaches the conscience and the heart. 3. It had become effectual to the Ephesians, who, after they had heard, says the apostle, believed in Christ. The truth had penetrated into their hearts, and there produced all those effects which at last resulted in a living faith or trust in the Saviour. How the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, had operated, what process it had followed, what advancing states of mind, conscience, and feeling it had given rise to in the inner chamber of the soul, the apostle does not delay to specify. Certain convictions would be produced--convictions of ignorance, of depravity, of guilt. New light broke into the mind on spiritual and heavenly things, setting before them in clear manifestation God’ s blessed and holy nature, His righteous law, His inflexible justice, whilst heaven and hell were disclosed to view. The terrible dominion of Satan, and their own bondage under him to sin, were revealed. Then the Deliverer, the Son of the Mighty One, was preached to them, nigh to justify, able to save to the uttermost. Seeing and believing all this, their hearts were at length moved in willing obedience to the gospel of their salvation. They submitted to the righteousness of God in Christ, and cast their own to the winds. II. What are some of the present advantages possessed by those who have obtained that inheritance, and who are the heirs of eternal life?1. Believers are sealed and made safe by the Holy Spirit. It is commonly understood that a seal put upon a letter or document secures it against detriment from any unfavourable quarter. The breaking of a seal would bring down the strong penalty of the law on the offender. The seal of the sovereign is the highest guarantee that can be afforded for the validity of any right, title, or possession which a subject can enjoy. 2. Believers are evidenced of the Holy Spirit as sealing them. (W. Alves, M. A.)The gospel of salvation Salvation in its proper sense means deliverance from something that is feared or suffered. For though salvation is sometimes taken to denote the happiness of heaven, yet still even then it directs our attention to those miseries out of which it is necessary that we be rescued before heaven can either be attained or enjoyed. That we may understand, therefore, the full import of this term, salvation, so frequently used and so vaguely apprehended, we must look to the situation in which we stand as sinners. We must look to it in its every aspect and in all its extent. We cannot at present do more than take a rapid sketch of those particular and specific benefits which are denoted by the term salvation in reference to the evils from which it delivers.1. It implies deliverance from ignorance--not from ignorance of human science or of worldly objects, with which however the gospel that reveals it does not forbid us to make ourselves acquainted, and upon which it throws a sanctifying light--but from ignorance of God, the first and the last, the greatest and the wisest, the holiest and the best of beings; the maker of all things; the centre of all perfection; the fountain of all happiness. 2. The salvation here spoken of implies deliverance from guilt. 3. The salvation we have been considering implies deliverance from the power of sin. We are naturally the slaves of this power. Sin reigns in us, as the descendants of apostate Adam. We cannot throw off its yoke by any virtue or efforts of our own. And so long as it maintains its ascendency, we are degraded, and polluted, and miserable. But provision is made in the gospel for our emancipation. 4. The salvation of the gospel implies deliverance from the ills and calamities of life. It does not imply this literally. For under the dispensation of the gospel there is, strictly speaking, no exemption from bodily disease, from outward misfortune, or from the thousand distresses that humanity is heir to. But Christ has given such views of the providence of God, He has brought life and immortality so clearly to light, and has so modified and subdued the operations of sin, which is the immediate or the ultimate cause of all our sufferings, that these are no longer real evils to them that believe. 5. The salvation here mentioned implies deliverance from the power and the fear of death. 6. And then, while the salvation revealed in the gospel implies our deliverance from all these evils, it also implies our admission into the heavenly state. It is in order to bring us there at last that all the other benefits we have been speaking of were conferred upon us. We were delivered from ignorance that we might know what heaven is--that we might be made acquainted with the way that leads to it--that we might be aware of the preparation necessary for dwelling in it. We were delivered from the sentence of condemnation that our forfeiture of heaven might be annulled, and that God might justly and consistently introduce us into its recompense and its glory. We were delivered from the power of sin that, by the removal of moral depravity, and the renewal of God’ s image on the soul, and the cultivation of holy habits, we might be qualified for the exercises and the joys of heaven, which are all most pure and immaculate. We were delivered from the ills and calamities of life as to all their evil influence, that they might be made instrumental in purifying our character, that they might be prevented from discouraging us in our progress towards heaven, and that they might enhance our blessedness there, by the greatness of our transition from trouble and sorrow to rest and joy. And we were delivered from the power and the fear of death that soul and body, united as constituent parts of the same redeemed child of God, might become, in heaven, joint partakers of that felicity for which they had acquired a joint title, and for which they made a joint preparation, upon earth; and that, regarding death as a messenger of peace rather than as the king of terrors, the prospect of his coming to summon us away might comfort us in the midst of those distresses, while it stimulated us to the discharge of those duties by which our meetness for glory would be hastened and matured. (Andrew Thomson, D. D.)Trusting brings salvation “ Well,” says one, “ then if God commands me to trust Christ, though I certainly have no reason why I should, then I’ ll do it.” Ah! soul, do it then. Can you do it? Can you trust him now? Is it a full trust? Are you leaning on your feelings? Give them up. Are you depending a little on what you mean to do? Give that up. Do you trust Him wholly? Can you say, “ His blessed wounds, His flowing blood, His perfect righteousness, on these I rest. I do trust Him, wholly” ? Are you half afraid to say you do? Do you think it is such a bold thing? Do it then; do a bold thing for once I Say, “ Lord, I’ ll trust Thee, and if Thou cast me away, I’ ll still trust Thee; I bless Thee that Thou canst save me, and that Thou wilt save me.” Can you say that? I say, have you believed in Him? You are saved, then; you are not in a salvable state, but you are saved; not partly, but wholly saved; not some of your sins blotted out, but all; behold the whole list, and it is written at the bottom of them all--“ The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)The way of salvation They(1) heard;(2) believed;(3) were sealed. Faith is our seal. Assurance is God’ s seal. God honours our sealing to His truth by His sealing by His Spirit. There must be the bargain before the earnest. (Trapp.)Ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. The sealing of the Spirit There are many who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who are extremely anxious to obtain some token for good, some witness from God which shall render them quite sure that they are saved. They feel that these matters are too important to be left at all uncertain; and they, therefore, pine for some sure witness or seal. I. First, let us speak of the position of this sealing. That sealing we can have, God does bestow it; but let us notice very carefully, lest we make a mistake, where that sealing comes in.1. It does not come before believing. According to the text it is “ after that ye believed, ye were sealed.” Now, there are hundreds of persons who are craving for something to see or to feel before they will believe in Jesus Christ; this is wickedness, and the result of an unbelief which is most offensive in the sight of God. If not a miracle, perhaps you demand a dream, or a strange feeling, or a mysterious operation; at any rate, if you do not see some sign and wonder, you declare that you will not believe. 2. Note, also, that this sealing does not necessarily come at once with faith. It grows out of faith, and comes “ after that ye believed.” We are not in every case sealed at the moment when we first trust in Jesus. Whether you feel that you are justified or not is not the point, you are to accept God’ s word, which assures you that every one that believeth is justified: you are bound to believe the testimony of God apart from the supporting evidence of inward experience. The foundation of our hope is laid in Christ from first to last, and if we rest there we are saved. The seal does not always come with faith, but it follows after. 3. Note, also, as to the position of its sealing, that, while it is not the first, it is not the last thing in the Divine life. It comes after believing, but when you obtain it there is something yet to follow. Perhaps you have had the notion that if you could once be told from the mouth of God Himself that you were saved, you would then lie down and cease from life’ s struggle. It is clear, therefore, that such an assurance would be an evil thing for you, for a Christian is never more out of place than when he dreams that he has ceased from conflict. Here we must labour, watch, run, fight, wrestle, agonise; all our forces, strengthened by the Eternal Spirit, must be expended in this high enterprise, striving to enter in at the strait gate: when we have obtained the sealing our warfare is not ended, we have only then received a foretaste of the victory, for which we must still fight on. This is the true position of the sealing. It stands between the grace which enables us to believe, and the glory which is our promised inheritance. II. We will notice, secondly, what are the benefits of this sealing, and while we are so doing, we shall be compelled to state what we think that sealing is, though that is to be the subject of the third head. No, brethren, the Holy Spirit does not make the promises sure, they are sure of themselves; God that cannot lie has uttered them, and therefore they cannot fail. Nor, my brethren, does the Holy Spirit make sure our interest in those promises; that interest in the promises was sure in the Divine decree, or ever the earth was, and is a matter of fact which cannot be changed. The promises are already sure to all the seed. The Holy Spirit makes us sure that the word is true and that we are concerned in it; but the promise was sure beforehand, and our interest in that promise was sure, too, from the moment in which it was bestowed upon us by the sovereign act of God. To understand our text, you must notice that it is bounded by two words, “ In whom,” which two words are twice given in this verse. “ In whom, after that ye believed, ye were sealed.” What is meant by “ In whom” ? The words signify “ In Christ.” It is in Christ that the people of God are sealed. We must therefore understand this sealing as it would relate to Christ, since so far, and so far only, can it relate to us. Was our Lord sealed? Turn to John 6:27, and there you have this exhortation: “ Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you: for Him hath God the Father sealed.” There is the clue to our text. “ Him hath God the Father sealed:” for since our sealing is in Him, it must be the same sealing.1. Notice, then, first, that the ever-blessed Son was sealed on the Father’ s part by God’ s giving a testimony to Him that He was indeed His own Son, and the sent one of the Lord. As when a king issues a proclamation, he sets his seal manual to it to say, “ This is mine;” so when the Father sent His Son into the world, He gave Him this testimony, “ This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He said this in words, but how did He give a perpetual testimony by a seal, which should be with Him throughout life? It was by anointing Him with the Holy Spirit. The seal that Jesus was the Messiah was that the Spirit of God rested upon Him without measure. Hence we read expressions like these: “ He was justified in the Spirit,” “ He was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” “ It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.” Now, the Spirit of God, wherever it abides upon a man, is the mark that that man is accepted of God. We say not that where the Spirit merely strives at intervals there is any seal of Divine favour, but where He abides it is assuredly so. The very fact that we possess the Spirit of God is God’ s testimony and seal in us that we are His, and that as He has sent His Son into the world, even so does He send us into the world. 2. To our Lord Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit was a seal for His own encouragement. Our Lord condescended to restrain the power of His own Godhead, and as a servant He depended upon the Father for support. When He began His ministry He encouraged Himself thus--“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has sent Me to bind up the broken hearted.” He found His stimulus of service, He found the authorization of His service, He found His comfort and strength for service, in the fact that God had given Him the Holy Spirit. This was His joy. 3. An evidence to others. 4. A witness to the world. Christ “ spake with authority.” Men knew not what Spirit He was of, but they knew they hated it, and straightway they began to oppose Hind. Those who have the same seal must expect the same treatment. Never in this world did the Spirit of promise appear without opposition from the spirit of bondage. 5. For perseverance to the end. III. Consider the sealing itself. The very fact that the Spirit of God works in you to will and to do according to God’ s good pleasure, is your seal; you do not require anything beyond. I do not say that any one operation of the Holy Spirit is to be regarded as the seal, but the whole of them together, as they prove His being within us, make up that seal. It is better, however, to keep to the doctrine that the Spirit of God in the believer is Himself the seal. Now let us look at what the context tells us about this.1. If you read on, the apostle tells us that wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God are part of the seal. See, then, if ye have believed in Jesus Christ the Spirit of God comes upon you, and He gives you wisdom and revelation. Doctrines in the Word which you never understood before become clear to you “ the eyes of your understanding being enlightened” ; the blessings promised are more distinctly discerned, and you see “ the hope of your calling, and the riches of the glory of the Lord’ s inheritance in the saints.” The deeper truths, which at first quite staggered and puzzled you, gradually open up to you, and you see and appreciate them,. 2. Following on to the next chapter you will see that the Spirit of God works in every man who possesses Him life, and that life becomes another form of the seal. “ You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sin.” That life is of a new kind, and has a renewing power, so that men forsake the course of this world, and no longer fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind. This new life they trace to God, who is rich in mercy, who in His great love wherewith He loved them, even when they were dead in sins, hath quickened them together with Christ. 3. Go on a little further, and you will notice upon the seal a further mark--fellowship (Ephesians 2:12-14). Those who have believed in Jesus Christ are led by the Spirit of God to love their fellow Christians, and thus “ we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” 4. Even more striking is that which follows, namely, that we have fellowship with God. The apostle speaks of us as reconciled unto God by the Cross, by which the enmity is slain, and he says of our Lord, “ Through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” I am following the course of the chapter. When you and I feel that we commune with God, that there is no quarrel between Him and us, that He is loved of us as we are loved of Him, that we can draw near to Him in prayer and speak to Him, that He hears us and deigns to grant us gracious answers of peace, these are blessed seals of salvation. 5. The apostle next puts in up building (Ephesians 2:20-21). Are you not conscious, believers, that you are being built up unto a divinely glorious form, after a high and noble model? 6. Last of all, the second chapter finishes up by saying, “ In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit, and this seems to me to gather up all that I have said before. The indwelling of the Spirit in the saints, in the whole of them united, and in each one in particular, is a choice seal. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The great Christian gift This sacred presence of the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts, with its three great effects--(1) of making us God’ s beloved and accepted children, (2) of joining us invisibly in a close and mystical union with Christ and His Church, and-- (3) of giving us a gift of new, sacred, spiritual life or vitality, is in its own nature everlasting. Having received it, we are in privilege, and should be, and may be, in fact, eternally possessed of it. The gift cannot wear out, nor can God cease to love His own children. There is no mortality or decay to which the gift is subject, for the gift is the seed of eternal life, by the presence of the eternal Spirit. And God loveth His own children, the accepted members of His Beloved, with an everlasting love. Nor can the gift be rendered frustrate by any direct malice or attack, or craft or subtlety of devil or man working against it; sin only, unrepented, can grieve, or wound, or quench the Holy Spirit, so as to make that cease, and come to an end, which is in itself, and in the design and desire of God, everlasting. But it is of the essence of this sacred gift to be capable of degrees. We received it as infants in such measure and degree as infants are capable of; we received the germ, the principle of Divine life. As the natural life in infants is a tender and precarious gift, hitherto capable of none of the greater exercises of older and more confirmed strength, needing tender and watchful care of nurse and mother, and slowly learning the natural lessons of strength and energy which the full estate of manhood is designed to enjoy and use, such in its tenderness, and need of tender care, is the spiritual life in infants. It is as the early spring and budding of vegetable life, when first the hair-like root is protruded from the bursting seed, and the soft colour and tender substance of the germinating plant give but faint promise of the rugged strength of the full grown oak. For infants indeed it is enough. Dying in their infancy, before actual sin, they are, as the Church teaches from Holy Scripture, undoubtedly saved. They pass pure and spotless to God’ s sacred presence, there to enjoy forever such degrees of bliss as suit their infant but perfected souls. But for those who are spared to the prayers and love of parents, and grow on through the opening years of childhood, passing by imperceptible degrees into the time when they can choose and determine, yield or resist, obey or disobey, the measures of infantine grace will no more suffice, than the early gift of animal or vegetable life would suffice to keep up the strength or growth of animal or plant without its regular and necessary aliment. They need the constant food of prayers, the training of Christian discipline, the habit of yielding up their will, the habit of unquestioning obedience, the unhesitating spirit of dutifulness, the gradual growth of affectionate and trusting love, the temper of industrious and rejoicing duty. These will bring them safely, by God’ s blessing, to their next stage. By such culture the Holy Spirit who is within them will be cherished, and His gifts not checked. (Bishop Moberly.)The seal of God I. What does the sealing mean? Clearly it is a figurative expression. To be “ sealed” by God implies that we are His and loved by Him--that we are in that sense distinguished from the world at large--that His love is free, unmerited, simply a gift of His affection--that it secures us, and keeps us safe forever; and it is in this way that the believer looks up and perceives his blessed state in the sight of God. II. How long is this sealing to endure? It is not to last forever; but “ until the redemption of the purchased possession.” III. Who are the parties that are thus sealed? The redeemed from among men. Unconverted, ungodly, and worldly men have no part in this. (H. M. Villiers, M. A.)The Spirit’ s seal What is this seal? It is a signet, or a signet ring, used by kings and others, for various important ends, some of which we shall now mention.1. The seal was attached to letters to give them the royal authority; and so the Church is the epistle of Christ, known and read by all men (2 Corinthians 3:3). The gifts and Daces of the Holy Spirit are the seal of God upon this epistle of His mercy, where the nations of the world and the angels of heaven may read His manifold wisdom (Ephesians 3:10). 2. The seal is used to secure the possession of property (Romans 15:28), and to show that it belongs to a particular master and no other. It has His seal. Jesus Christ has purchased His people with His own precious blood, and the sealing of the Spirit is the mark that they belong to Him. 3. As the seal is the conclusion of the letter or the agreement, so it signifies often the last, the end, the perfection; thus the Moslems call Mohammed the seal of the prophets, viz., the last and most glorious of them. In this respect also the sealing of the Spirit is full of meaning. He is the last of the heavenly witnesses, and to blaspheme Him is certain destruction. (W. Graham, D. D.)Sealed We have been already told we were chosen! blessed! adopted! accepted! redeemed! forgiven! and made an heritage! in Christ. Now, in addition to all, this great fact is added: “ In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.” This is the consummation of our Divine security. The shepherds of earthly flocks seal them separately with their own name, for distinction and identification. Their seal is a dead thing, but it marks the owner’ s property. God seals his flock individually for His own possession by a living seal--the Holy Ghost. The metaphor here employed alludes to the ordinary use of a seal amongst men.1. A seal is affixed to valuable property for its protection, identification, and security. It does not make the property precious, or give it value; but because it is valuable the owner seals it for its protection. Because we are valuable to God, the Holy Ghost seals us. We are His jewels: united to Christ, members of His body, and therefore the Holy Ghost seals us. 2. A seal is affixed to a man’ s act and deed, to make it irreversible. 3. A seal affixed is a public attestation and token of the sealer’ s promise, purpose, and undertaking. When the believer is sealed with the Holy Spirit, this is God’ s public assertion before earth and heaven that His act and will and deed is the salvation of His redeemed. 4. A seal imparts its own image and likeness to that which is sealed. “ That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” A new understanding, a new will, new affections, a new creation--a divine nature! God’ s Spirit seals Christ into the soul! 5. A seal establishes a matter. See 2 Corinthians 1:21 (where this is defined): “ Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God: who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” 6. Probably there may be an allusion to Acts 19:1-16. Formerly such signs followed; but now we live by faith, not by sight. If it be asked, “ How, then, can I know if I am sealed?” By the actings and operations of the Holy Ghost! After that ye heard the gospel of your salvation, ye also trusted, and after that ye believed ye were sealed. Have we heard the gospel? Not only with the outward ear, but also with the heart, the inward ear. If this is so indeed, then give the Holy Ghost the credit: He it is who alone has opened your eyes. In Christ a man is called into a new position in the world, a witness for Christ; he is made a new creature in Christ, and the Holy Ghost imparts a new nature, and stamps the impress of God’ s likeness upon the character, to fit him for the new position he is to occupy. All believers are thus sealed, and equally so. They are equally united to Christ, and equally indwelt by the Holy Ghost. Why, then, are some Christians so much less holy, happy, assured, than others? The answer is suggested in the text: “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” Alas! we grieve the Holy Spirit. There is no question as to His sealing us; but can a man who grieves Him in his daily walk and conversation be as happy, holy, assured as the man who lives to Serve Him? (M. Rainsford, B. A.)The sealing of the Spirit Whoever longs for a feeling of security--whoever sighs for a fuller certainty of God’ s love--to that man it will be a pleasant thought that one of the offices of the Holy Spirit is to “ seal.” And it will make it the more happy for every Christian to receive this “ seal,” if he recollect, for a moment, that his Master Himself had it--for Christ testified it, concerning His own person and His own work--“ Him hath God the Father sealed” --which word, “ sealed,” we are to understand to refer, first, to His baptism, when “ the water,” and “ the voice,” and “ the dove,” all designated His grace and mission; next, to His miracles--those witnesses of His power and His truth--but still more to His own infinite perfections, and His spotless reflection of the Father’ s character--through all which Christ was stamped, for His vast enterprise. Though we can only have in small measure, what He had “ without measure,” still the very same “ sealing” ; in baptism--grace--good works--and God’ s own likeness. Now, in this “ sealing,” the first, and I might say only, requisite--for God will take care of the rest--is to have a soft and an impressible heart. And, thank God, the “ Sealer” is the Softener--for He prepares His own work! Why, the great end, brethren, of half which happens to you in life--inwardly and outwardly--is to turn the iron of nature into the wax of grace. Here is the ecstasy of childhood--here is the immense importance of yielding to early drawings. Who can tell the hardening influence, day by day, upon the man, who is daily leading a worldly life? Who can tell the callousness, which one allowed sin is always depositing upon a man’ s life? And what is the consequence? There is an end to “ sealing.” The heart cannot take an impression. It is when one is able to say, “ My heart is like melted wax,” that the “ sealing” begins. The handle of “ the seal” may be what God pleases. It may be a promise--it may be a word--it may be the Bible--it may be a sacrament--it might be my preaching at this moment. But the actual “ seal” is beautifully described by St. Paul to Timothy. It has two sides. The one is God’ s own electing love; the other is personal holiness. What stamps any man a child of God? First, God’ s free choice and favour. What next? The sanctifying of the Holy Ghost--in him and on him. And thus God puts the two together, and sums it up--“ Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ, depart from iniquity.” This, then, is “ the seal” --exactly what you would have expected it to be--His own sovereignty, side by side with His own image. Now, the effect of this “ sealing of the Spirit” will be threefold. First, in its very nature it unites; and to be fastened, indissolubly fastened, to Christ--we in Him, and He in us; we in Him for our justification, and He in us for our sanctification--is exactly the first thing a poor sinner needs. This fastening the soul to Christ, the Spirit does. And He does it thus: He brings us near; first, Christ to us, and then us to Christ; He makes Him attractive, pleasant, precious, necessary, to a man’ s soul: and then the man’ s soul confiding, communing, all-abandoning to Christ. Then He draws the two closer ant closer, till He rivets, with thousands of acts of love downwards, and thousands of little thoughts of gratitude upwards--passing and repassing--till He binds all--with His own Omniscience and with His own Omnipotence--and “ the seal” is made. Secondly, it is a man’ s credential, that he has the Lord authorizing him and empowering him. It is a man’ s credential to himself. Is there the conscience within a man which will tell him when he is a Christian? Will there be a voice, and may a man believe that voice? Assuredly. How could it be otherwise? Can the great Presence of God be in a man and not speak? It tells a man; and, while it is telling him, it awakens a voice within the man, to repeat it to himself. “ The Spirit itself also beareth witness with our spirits” --the voice of the echo--“ that we are the children of God.” But not to ourselves only. Do not you know, brethren, that every one--who is a believer--is an epistle, to be “ known and read of all men” ? and that God has sent you out, like a letter; and that the letter is directed to the whole world--that the whole world may “ read” you. And the world will “ read” you. Whatever else the world may choose to “ read,” or not “ read,” they will “ read” you. And to this very end the Spirit has “ sealed” you, and set you apart by “ the sealing” --that all men may “ read Christ” in you; and that you, having His name and His likeness, may go, accredited, to all men, and that you may carry Him--His love--His work--His glory--into every society wherever you go. Therefore go--go, as a man who has a royal mark--go, as a man who is made for one purpose--go, as a man who has authority given him to speak! And thirdly, “ the seal” is for safe keeping and holy preservation. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The true position of assurance Many sincerely seeking souls are in great trouble because they have not yet attained to an assurance of their interest in Christ Jesus; they dare not take any comfort from their faith because they suppose that it has not attained to a sufficient strength. Their mistake seems to me to be this--they look for ripe fruit upon a tree in spring, and because that season yields nothing but blossoms, they conclude the tree to be barren. They go to the head of a river--they find it a little rippling brook, and because it will not float a “ Great Eastern,” they conclude that it will never reach the sea, and that, in fact, it is not a true part of the river at all. They look upon themselves as being little children, and such they are; but because they cannot speak plainly on account of having been so newly born, they therefore conclude that they are not the children of God at all. They put the last things first. They make comforts essentials. There are three steps by which the hallowed elevation is reached. The first is hearing--they heard first the preaching of the Word; the second is believing; and then, thirdly, “ after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” I. To begin then, faith cometh by hearing. The preaching of the gospel is God’ s soul-saving ordinance. It hath pleased God by the “ foolishness of preaching” to save them that believe. In every age God raiseth up men who faithfully proclaim His Word, and, as one departs, another arrives. Elijah ascends to glory, but his mantle falls upon Elisha. Paul dies not until Timothy is in the field. The true preacher has a claim upon men’ s attention. If God has sent him, men should receive him. The hearing of the gospel involves the hearer in responsibility. II. After hearing came belief. We know that believing does not always follow hearing immediately. There is a case told of Mr. Flavel having preached a sermon which was blessed to a man, I think eighty-five years afterwards, so that the seed may lay long buried in dust; yet, had not that man heard that sermon, speaking after the manner of men, he had not received the quickening Word. You may have heard the gospel long in vain, and it should be to you a source of very serious inquiry if you have done so. Faith will yet, we trust, come while you are hearing.1. This belief, you observe, is called trusting. Kindly look at the verse: “ In whom ye also trusted.” The translators have borrowed that word “ trusted,” very properly, from the twelfth verse. Do not, because you see it in italics, think that is not properly there. It is not in the original, but being in the twelfth verse it is very rightly understood here. Believing then is trusting. If you want it summed up in the shortest word, it is just this--trusting Christ. A message comes to me upon good authority--I believe it; believing it, I necessarily trust it. My receiving of the message is so far good, but the essential act, the act essential to salvation, is the trusting--the trusting Christ. The process of faith may be thus illustrated. You knew a friend of yours to be perfectly reliable--you are in debt. He tells you that if you will trust him to pay the debt, he will give you on the spot a receipt for it. Now, you look at him, you consider his ability to pay it, you consider the probability that he means what he is saying. Having once made up your mind that he is truthful, you could not then say, “ I cannot believe you.” If you once know that person to be truthful, I utterly deny that you can hold any argument about your power to believe him. So, if Jesus Christ declares that He “ came into the world to save sinners,” and, if He tells me, as He does tell me, that “ whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” --if I am already enabled by God’ s Spirit to believe in the perfect truthfulness of Christ, I should be lying unto my own soul if I said I had not power to believe in Him. Understand, power to believe in Christ is the gift of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit has given that power to all men who know the perfect truthfulness of Christ. 2. Observe this, further, that faith is due to Christ. The faithful and true Witness demands of me that I should believe what He says. Not trust God’ s own Son, the Mighty God, the Redeemer of men! It is due to Him that thou shouldst with thy whole heart lean upon Him, and give Him all thy confidence. 3. This faith is essential to salvation. Assurance is not essential, but no man can be saved unless he trusteth in the Lord Jesus Christ. You may get to heaven with a thousand doubts and fears; you may get to heaven without some of those graces of the Spirit which are the ornaments of the believer’ s neck, but you cannot get there without the life-giving grace of faith. 4. Remark, again, this faith is not required in any particular degree. In order to salvation, it is not declared in Scripture that you are to believe to a certain strength, but if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed--if that be a mountain-moving faith, surely it shall be a soul-saving faith. Faith is not to be estimated by its quantity but by its quality. 5. Observe, further, that this faith is very variable, but it is not perishable. Faith may go to an ebb, as the tide does, but it will come to a flood again. When faith is at its flood, the man is not therefore the more saved; and when faith is at its ebb, the man is not therefore the less saved; for, after all, salvation does not lie in faith, but in Christ; and faith is but the connecting link between the soul and Christ. Faith may take Christ up in its arms, like Simeon, and it is true faith; but, on the other hand, faith may only venture to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, and that faith makes men whole. III. The Holy Spirit’ s sealing.1. This sealing is evidently distinct from faith--“ after that ye believed, ye were sealed.” Believing, then, is not this sealing; and assurance, although it be akin to believing, is not believing. There is a distinction between the two things. I want you to notice the distinction. In faith the mind is active. The text uses verbs which imply action: “ ye trusted,” “ ye believed” ; but when it comes to sealing it uses quite another verb: “ ye were sealed.” I am active in believing--I am passive when the Holy Spirit seals me. The witness of the Spirit is a something which I receive, but faith is a something which I exercise as well as receive. In faith my mind does something, in being sealed my faith receives something. If I may say so, faith writes out the document, there she labours, but the Holy Spirit stamps the seal Himself, and there is no hand wanted there except His own. He stamps His own impression to make the document valid. 2. It is clear from the context that assurance follows faith--“ after that ye believed.” The apostle does not say how soon. Brookes gives the case of a Mr. Frogmorton, who was one of the most valuable ministers of his day, but was thirty-seven years without any assurance of his interest with Christ; he did trust Christ, but his ministry was always a gloomy one, for he could not read his title clear to mansions in the skies. He went to the house of a dear friend, Mr. Dodd, to die, and just before he died, the light of heaven streamed in--he not only expressed his full assurance of faith, but triumphed so gloriously, that he was the wonder of all round about him. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 1:14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance.The Holy Spirit the earnest of our inheritance I. The Holy Spirit imparts heavenly knowledge to the mind, and is thus the earnest of our inheritance.1. Heaven’ s glory will consist partly in the direct and full vision of God, whom the redeemed shall see, no longer darkly as through a glass, but “ face to face.” They will possess an immediate and intuitive knowledge of God in their minds, and as far as finite can comprehend the infinite, they will enjoy a clear perception of His nature and perfections, sufficient for their perfect satisfaction and blessedness. This knowledge is the most excellent possession which the intellect of man can conceive. It is the loftiest, the purest, and the most comprehensive of all kinds of knowledge. What a piece of goodness and condescension is it on God’ s part to give unto us His blessed Word, inspired of the Holy Ghost, as a means to dispel the darkness of our minds and bring us to the knowledge of “ the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, which is eternal life” ! He the glory of heaven alights upon earth, dimmed, it may be indeed, by the earthly atmosphere, but still essentially the same. If God the Spirit is to speak to man, if He is to communicate the knowledge of God to us in our imperfect state, He must use the language of man--the language of earth; and He must also have respect to our weak capacities. In the Bible we have a clear and sufficient revelation of God. This light is furnished by the Holy Spirit. 2. Let us also notice another department of knowledge in which the Spirit so instructs believers as to become “ an earnest” of heaven. We refer to the method of Divine Providence, a subject full of high and profitable instruction, but often difficult and inscrutable. II. The Holy Spirit is an earnest of the inheritance by the peace and joy and comfort which He imparts to the soul. The essential elements of the saints’ inheritance, apart from any outward sources of heavenly riches, will consist in a full and perfectly satisfying knowledge of God and His works, in a pure and perfect love dwelling in their hearts, and in a constant and ineffable joy filling their souls like a river. The vision of God, perfect love, and boundless delight, will go together to make up heaven’ s happiness--light, love, joy--a triune blessedness. (W. Alves, M. A.)The earnest of heaven So, then, heaven, with all its glories, is an “ inheritance.” Not a thing that can be bought with money, earned by labour, or won by conquest. It comes by birth; it is given to the man who shall receive it, because he has been “ begotten again unto a lively hope,” etc. They who come unto glory are sons. But is it possible for us, provided that heaven be our inheritance, and we are God’ s sons--is it possible for us to know anything whatever of that land beyond the flood? It is. God’ s Spirit can turn the veil aside for a moment, and bid us take a glimpse, though it be but a distant one, at that unutterable glory. There are Pisgahs even now on the surface of the earth, from the top of which the celestial Canaan can be beheld; there are hallowed hours in which the mists and clouds are swept away, and the sun shines in his strength, and our eye, being freed from its natural dimness, beholds something of that land which is very far off, and sees a little of the joy and blessedness which is reserved for the people of God hereafter. The text tells us that the Holy Spirit is the “ earnest” of the inheritance--not merely a pledge, but a foretaste of that which shall be enjoyed in full hereafter--the first-fruits of the eternal harvest. I. First, then, there are some works of the Spirit which are peculiarly an earnest to the child of God of the blessings of heaven.1. And, first, heaven is a state of rest. It may be because I am constitutionally idle that I look upon heaven in the aspect of rest with greater delight than under any other view of it, with but one exception. To let the head, which is so continually exercised, for once lie still--to have no care, no trouble, no need to labour, to strain the intellect, or vex the limbs! It is a rest which puts from them all carking care, all harrowing remorse, all thoughts of tomorrow, all straining after a something which they have not as yet. They are runners no more--they have reached the goal; they are warriors no more--they have achieved the victory; they are labourers no more--they have reaped the harvest. “ They rest, saith the Spirit; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” My beloved, did you ever enjoy on certain high days of your experience a state of perfect rest? You could say you had not a wish in all the world ungratified: you knew yourself to be pardoned; you felt yourself to be an heir of heaven; Christ was precious to you; you knew that you walked in the light of your Father’ s countenance; you had cast all your worldly care on Him, for He cared for you. You felt at that hour that if death could smite away your dearest friends, or if calamity should remove the most valuable part of your possessions on earth, yet you could say, “ The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Your spirit floated along the stream of grace, without a struggle; you were not as the swimmer, who breasts the billows, and tugs and toils for life. Your soul was made to lie down in green pastures, beside the still waters. You were passive in God’ s hands; you knew no will but His. Oh! that sweet day! It was a morsel taken from the loaf of delights; it was a sip out of the wine vats of immortal joy; it was silver spray from the waves of glory. 2. But, secondly, there is a passage in the Book of Revelation which may sometimes puzzle the uninstructed reader, where it is said concerning the angels, that “ They rest not day and night” ; and as we are to be as the angels of God, it must undoubtedly be true in heaven that, in a certain sense, they rest not day nor night. They always rest, so far as ease and freedom from care is concerned; they never rest, in the sense of indolence or inactivity. In heaven spirits are always on the wing; their lips are always singing the eternal hallelujahs unto the great Jehovah that sitteth upon the throne; they rest, but they rest on the wing; as the poet pictured the angel as he flew--not needing to move his wings, but resting, and yet darting swiftly through the ether, as though he were a flash shot from the eye of God. So shall it be with the people of God eternally; ever serving--never wearied with their service. “ They rest not day and night.” Have there never been times with you when you have had both the pledge and the earnest of this kind of heaven? 3. Heaven is a place of communion with all the people of God. A heaven of people who did not know each other; and had no fellowship, could not be heaven, because God has so constituted the human heart that it loves society, and especially the renewed heart is so made that it cannot help communing with all the people of God. Have we anything on earth like this? Ay, that we have, in miniature. We have the pledge of this; for if we love the people of God, we may know that we shall surely be with them in heaven. We have the earnest of it; for how often has it been our privilege to hold the highest and sweetest fellowship with our fellow Christians! 4. Part of the bliss of heaven will consist in joy over sinners saved. The angels look down from the battlements of the city which hath foundations, and when they see prodigals return they sing. Jesus calleth together His friends and His neighbours, and He saith unto them, “ Rejoice with Me, for I have found the sheep which was lost.” 5. But further than this--to put two or three thoughts into one, for brevity’ s sake: whenever, Christian, thou hast achieved a victory over thy lusts--whenever, after hard struggling, thou hast laid a temptation dead at thy feet--thou hast had in that day and hour a foretaste of the joy that awaits thee, when the Lord shall shortly tread Satan under thy feet. That victory in the first skirmish is the pledge and the earnest of the triumph in the last decisive battle. If thou hast overthrown one foe, thou shalt overthrow them all. Oh, Christian, there are many windows to heaven, through which God looks dawn on thee; and there are some windows through which thou mayest look up to Him. Let these past enjoyments be guarantees of thy future bliss; let them be to thee as the grapes of Eshcol were to the Jews in the wilderness; they wore the fruit of the land, and when they tasted them they said, “ It is a land that floweth with milk and honey.” These enjoyments are the products of Canaan; they are handfuls of heavenly flowers thrown over the wall; they are bunches of heaven’ s spices, brought to thee by angel hands across the stream. Heaven is full of joys like these. Thou hast but a few of them; heaven is strewn with them. There thy golden joys are but as stones, and thy most precious joys are as common as the pebbles of the brook. Now thou seest the glimmerings of heaven as a star twinkling from leagues of distance; follow that glimmering, and thou shalt see heaven no more as a star, but as the sun which shineth in its strength. 6. Permit me to remark yet once more, there is one foretaste of heaven which the Spirit gives which it were very wrong for us to omit. And now I shall seem, I dare say, to those who understand not spiritual mysteries, to be as one that dreams. There are moments when the child of God has real fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what fellowship between man and man means. There is as real a fellowship between the Christian and Christ. Our eyes can look on Him. I say not that these human optics can behold the very flesh of Christ; but I say that the eyes of the soul can here on earth more truly see Christ, after a spiritual sort, than ever eyes of man saw Him when He was in the flesh on earth. There are moments with the believer when, whether in the body or out of the body, he cannot tell--God knoweth--but this he knows, that Christ’ s left hand is under his head, and His right hand doth embrace him. Christ hath shown to him His hands and His side. He could say with Thomas, “ My Lord and my God” ; but he could not say much more. The world recedes; it disappears. The things of time are covered with a pall of darkness; Christ only stands out before the believer’ s view. 7. I do not doubt, also, that on dying beds men get foretastes of heaven which they never had in health. When Death begins to pull down the old clay house, he knocks away much of the plaster, and then the light shines through the chinks. The nearer to death, the nearer to heaven, with the believer; the more sick, the nearer he is to health. II. The black reverse of this picture. There is another world, for the wicked as well as for the righteous. They who believe not in Christ are no more annihilated than those who do believe in Him. If thou be this day without God and without Christ in the world, thou hast in thyself a few sparks of that eternal fire. Ungodly, unconverted men, have an uneasiness of spirit; they are never contented; they want something; if they have that, they will want something more. They do not feel happy; they see through the amusements which the world presents to them; they are wise enough to see that they are hollow; they understand that the fair cheek is painted; they know that its beauty is but mere pretence; they are not befooled; God has awakened them. Now, when a man gets into that uneasy state, he may make a guess of what hell will be. It will be that uneasiness intensified, magnified to the extreme. But unconverted men without Christ have another curse, which is a sure foretaste to them of hell. They are uneasy about death. I have my mind now upon a person who trembles like an aspen leaf during a thunderstorm. But those dreads of death are but the foreshadows of that darker gloom which must gather round your spirit, except you believe in Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The earnest of an inheritance An earnest is something given beforehand, to indicate and assure one of a greater good yet to come. It is a part of a man’ s wages, and a pledge of the rest. It is a part of the price paid for anything bought, and a pledge of the residue. Here the figure is commercial. “ Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.” It is a bounty which not only is valuable itself, but points to more value yet to come. It is used, in the New Testament, as substantially equivalent to the harvest term, first-fruits; and in some passages the two terms, earnest and first-fruits, are used interchangeably. The coming harvest is more advanced in some parts than in others. The owner gathers a handful of the earliest ripe grain, plucks the first yellow apple, singles out the purple cluster that is soonest ripe; and such early gatherings are, to be sure, good for what they are of themselves; but this is as nothing compared with what they promise and prophesy. One handful of grain gives the farmer promise of vast harvests just coming forward. One apple is forerunner of ten thousand. I wish today to illustrate this general truth, that God gives to His children, in this world, intimations of that to which they are coming in the next world--first-fruits of joys, and experiences, and revelations, which they are to reap in full harvest by and by.1. The general result of life, in teaching men how to employ themselves, gives us glimpses of that higher life to which we are coming--and only glimpses. Men are started in this world with some two score of separate faculties, which they do not know how to use--which they certainly do not know how to use together. A voyage we are put upon, with an undisciplined crew. They are rebellious, in part; none of them know how to work; some of them are too young; some of them are green; and all of them are to be trained before the voyage is ended. New machinery needs to wear smooth. But what if the machinery had to grow before it could perform its functions? What if part of the wheels were mere seed forms, and had to grow up into their different proportions and relations before they could work together? Nay, what if each wheel and spring was a voluntary agent, and had to consent to work instead of being coerced by physical laws? This would come nearer to what is taking place in every human soul. See, now, what this state of mind in this world comes to. How thoroughly the mind is waked up! How it learns to cooperate in all its parts! How much it gains in breadth, force, facility! And, above all, how strange the material history is, of passions, affections, moral sentiments, intellectual forces, and the will, in various conflicts, and in a common school of discipline, uniting into one final character, and working towards a perfect subordination and harmony! “ It doth not yet appear what we shall be” --it does not yet appear what a perfect character will be; but we do see, on every side, that there are startings forth of every part of our nature, and that, while travelling differing paths, they are converging--coming nearer and nearer together. 2. There are moments of fortunate conjunction in this life, in which the body, the feelings, the intellect, all parts of our being, are in such exquisite harmony with each other, and are liked up with such rare stimulus, that we think more and easier in one single moment than in days of ordinary life. I recollect to have stood upon a hill in Amherst, where the college is, and where is spread out one of the most glorious panoramas on earth, and witnessed a scene of rare interest. The landscape below was hid from my view. I could see here and there the top of some mountain, but the whole vast basin was as white as milk, enveloped as it was in exquisite morning mists. By and by one could see great undulations in the fleecy mass. The sun was working at it, and hurling his arrows of heat into it. Soon it began to break away; and I do not know how it could have been removed so suddenly, but in a minute, almost, not only did there appear great openings through it, but the whole immense ocean of mist and fog was lifted up, and I saw all at once the entire sweep of the valley beneath it. Thus out of the dust and din and mist and obscurations of life there come moments when God permits us to see in a second further, wider, and easier than by the ordinary methods of logic we can see in a whole life. 3. But there are, in connection with the occurrence of these states, some facts of great significance over and above the sense of that large life which we are coming to in the future. When any single feeling is strong in us, and kindled to white heat, the intellect perceives the truths which that feeling interprets, with a clearness and amazing accuracy which nothing else ever gives. The heart teaches the head. A large part of the power of knowledge is located in the feelings. In the world to come our knowledge will be measured, not by the amount of thought power we have, but by the amount of heart power. The resources of heavenly understanding are not to be measured by the resources of scientific knowledge, nor by any capacity of knowing physical things. Our heavenly understanding is to be in the ratio of our moral sentiments, our loving affections. When we come to that supernatural state to which we are tending, we may suppose that the eye will perceive in the proportion that the heart gives its power to perceive; and the man that has the deepest, sweetest, and most noble feeling here will be the furthest seeing there. 4. There are, in this life, we might say, hours of judgment given to us. Christ promised the apostles that they should sit upon twelve thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. We are to judge time, and earth, and life. And we sometimes, even here, have such a view as does not, for days and years, pass from us, of what this world is, and what its issues are. Do you not, in advance, sit in judgment upon earthly things, and rank them by a golden reed reached forth and put into your hand, as it were, from heaven? I very well remember going back, after having arrived at years of manhood, to the school house where I did not receive my early education. I measured the stones which, in my childhood, it seemed that a giant could not lift, and I could almost turn them over with my foot. I measured the trees which seemed to loom up to the sky, wondrously large, but they had shrunk, grown shorter, and outspread narrower. I looked into the old school house, and how small the whittled benches and the dilapidated tables were, compared with my boyhood impression of them. I looked over the meadows across which my little toddling feet had passed: they had once seemed to me to be broad fields, but now but narrow ribbons, lying between the house and the water. I marvelled at the apparent change which had taken place in these things, and thought what a child I must have been when they seemed to me to be things of great importance. The school ma’ am--oh, what a being I thought she was! and the schoolmaster--how awe-stricken I was in his presence! So, looking and wistfully remembering, I said to myself, “ Well, one bubble has broken.” But when you shall stand above, and look back with celestial and clarified vision upon this world--this rickety old school house, earth--it will seem smaller to you than did to me that old village school! 5. Christians have earnests of things spiritual and invisible. Ordinarily, we are under the influence of the things which are seen. In our lower life we must be under the influence of sense. But now and then, we know not how, we rise into an atmosphere in which spirit life, God, Christ, the ransomed throng in heaven, virtue, truth, faith, and love, become more significant to us, and seem to rest down upon us with more force than the very things which our physical senses recognize. There is an atmosphere of the soul as well as an atmosphere of nature. I dwelt last summer on a spot which overlooks a great variety of scenery. Hills, mountains, valleys, and forests, may be seen from almost every part of it. There were times when a thick haze so prevailed that all the glory of hill, river, and mountain was hidden. At length would come up storm; a plunging rain, sweeping winds, and cleansing commotion. The storm brought light, and turmoil peace. For, that past, every tree stood forth in every lineament clear against the horizon, every line and furrow and scallop of hill was distinctly visible, and the mountains not only appeared in their proper shapes, but were out so plain that forty miles seemed scarcely four; and things before quite beyond the vision were advanced almost to the very gate of the senses. And so, in the atmosphere of the soul, God sometimes brings down the Divine landscape--heavenly truths--so clearly that the soul rests upon them as upon a picture let down. 7. In this world we have an earnest of the future world, as a realm of everlasting praise. As a traveller over rugged mountains and hills now and then passes through exquisite little dells, where beautiful and fragrant flowers greet him at every step, where rills gush from every rock, and every tree is full of singing birds, so that he cannot but say, “ Oh, that I had a tabernacle here!” so, now and then, we pass into days that are grown all over with flowers fragrant with praise. All things seem beautiful; and we have a near and touching conviction that events flow from the gift-covered right hand of God, and that they are tokens of His particular thought of us! We say, “ The lines have fallen to us in pleasant places” ; and there is an irrepressible desire to render thanks, and earnest longing to give back love for love received. I do not know that there is any literature for this sense of gratitude except tears; and we can only stand before God and shake, as flowers shake when the wind blows upon them, and the dew drops off! The intimations which God is giving you are designed to be to you a means of grace, of instruction, of consolation, and of advancement in the Divine life. Look well at what God is revealing to you every day. There is much in it which you cannot afford to cast away. You will find that the interpretation of God’ s Word to your soul stands largely in the experience He is working out in you. It is not necessary that we should be able to reason upon these intimations, and understand them in every particular. Some persons attempt to ascertain exactly to What they point. This is foolish. If I am lost in a forest, and have waited all night long to learn the points of the compass, I do not stop when morning comes to get a full view of the sun. As soon as I see a growing brightness in the east, I say to myself, “ Now I know my direction; for that is east, and that is west, and that is north, and that is south.” I think there are thousands of intimations that we get which, although we cannot fully understand them, plainly indicate that they are designed of God to point out our way in this world; and that is enough. These partial views of the future--and not plenary ones--are just what we need to stimulate our hope and faith. They are transient, but they are long enough to work out God’ s designs in us They come quickly, and go quickly; but if we are wise, their impressions upon us will be abiding. You men of prevision, you prophets, you seers, you that are lifted out of darkness into light that you may discern the marvellous things that belong to the children of God, have you anything in your experience which answers to what I have spoken? Are you able to see the future through the present? (H. W. Beecher.)The assurance of the Christian inheritance How is the assurance of the spiritual inheritance to be attained? is one of the most vital questions of Christian life; and men conscious of its importance have variously endeavoured to answer it. Is it by searching into our inward experiences that we become sure of the future kingdom, or by measuring our outward actions by the standards of spiritual morality? Are we to look for it in moments of peculiar ecstasy, or are there aspirations constantly present in the Christian soul which form Divine pledges of its reality? This question is one of great practical significance to us. Paul here gives us the answer--he speaks of the Holy Spirit sealing us with an earnest of the kingdom. Our subject, therefore, is, The assurance of the Christian inheritance: Its nature--“ Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise” ; Its necessity - “ Until the redemption of the purchased possession.” I. Its nature.1. The ground on which the certainty is founded. We have seen that Paul teaches that the promises given us by the Spirit are earnests of the future, and at once the question arises, How do we know that they are? By what right do we feel so sure that these hopes and aspirations of today are the infallible assurances of the kingdom of God tomorrow? At first sight, the ground of assurance may seem very doubtful. Every man has his dreams, his aspirations, which seem to him to be promises of what he might be, and every man has found out how often they are vain. Visions of the future haunt the child, and he imagines they will be realized, but as life advances they flee like shadows away. Many, perhaps most, men are afraid of the awful light which Hope throws on the dark future, and fear to trust the whisper she breathes within. The question, therefore, is most important: if, in actual life, we find these promises of hope so delusive, do they form any ground of assurance to the Christian? How separate the false from the true, or rely on such longings as earnests of a kingdom to come? That is a question we have a right to ask; and let us try to answer it clearly, because in reality there is one of the strongest grounds of assurance here. It is a great law that those deep and unconquerable longings of a man are earnests of what he might be; they are proofs of hidden power--flashes of sleeping capacity. What you long to be--so deeply that your longings become a very spirit of promise--you may be. Apply this to spiritual things. The longings of the Christian life are the promises and actual earnests of what we shall be, for they are the whispers of the Holy Spirit, who is omnipotent to realize the promises He utters. He creates longings for what He can and will bestow; and the expectation is the dawning of their fulfilment. Thus we have the assurance--the hope, the outflashing of hidden capacity, the germ of the hidden spirit life; and the longings and aspirations of the soul promising the future kingdom are the actual commencement and first-fruits of its glory. 2. We pass on to illustrate the manner in which this assurance rises in the soul. This inheritance of spiritual life consists of three great elements: love, power, blessedness. (1) Love. And by Divine love I mean the firm conviction of God’ s love to us, and the answering love of the soul to Him; and we can only correspond to the love of the Infinite One by consecrating our natures to Him--by being filled with the love of the Father. This is our inheritance--the spiritual kingdom we seek for. It is a kingdom now. It robes life in splendour. It brings the glory of heaven into the soul. (2) Power. There can be no spiritual kingdom until the soul is king in its own house. But the Holy Spirit gives might to dash aside temptation, to endure with strength equal to our day; and all this is but an earnest of what we shall be. Kings to God we shall become, by being priests over the sacrifice of our own selves. (3) Blessedness, as a result of love and power. The Holy Spirit tells the soul of depths of bliss inconceivable, of which no tongue can speak--earnests are they all, assurances of the spiritual kingdom. II. Its necessity. Mark again the words, “ Until the redemption of the purchased possession.” The inheritance is given, but not reached. Between the gift and its attainment there lies a long path of conflict, in which the old struggle between the flesh and the spirit reveals itself in three forms.1. Sense against the soul. The body must be mastered, or it will master; its animalizing tendencies repressed, and brought into subjection. 2. The present against the future. We are constantly tempted to sell our heavenly birthright; to forget the eternal in the struggle for the temporal; to live carelessly here, for mere pleasure, regardless of our immortality. 3. Steadfast work against the roving propensities of the heart. We are ever prone to be discontented with the sphere in which God has placed us; to grow weary of the work which God has entrusted to us; to become faithless of the immortal harvest of spiritual toil; to despair, and to renounce the old quiet way of patient, persevering service to God. Therefore, until clothed with a spiritual body--until the temporal is changed fox the eternal--we have need of the assurance of our eternal inheritance. “ Grieve not,” then, “ the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” (E. L. Hull, B. A.)The Holy Spirit an earnest of our inheritance I. In what respects the Spirit is an earnest to us.1. A pledge of something yet future. 2. A part of something hereafter to be received in its entirety. As such the Spirit itself will never pass away from the possession of the Church. It is in itself a final end and supreme blessedness. But in another aspect of its presence and work it is only a part of what shall be. Powers (as of faith and holiness) are awakened and developed by its influence within us which do not belong to our bodily nature, but are the beginnings of a higher life, hereafter to be perfected in the presence of God. And it is one of a number of manifestations belonging to a new supernatural order or kingdom, whose completeness and glory are yet to be revealed (2 Corinthians 4:18; 2 Corinthians 5:5). Above all, it is “ the Spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:4)--a consciousness which seems to open up infinite vistas of possibility (Romans 8:17; 1 John 3:1-2). We are thus brought into universal relations, and are indissolubly linked with the eternal and Divine. II. What effect it is intended to produce. The Gentile Christians were “ sealed” with it, and were thus--1. Separated from unbelievers. As circumcision was a seal to Abraham of the personal acceptance with God of which he had been already assured (Genesis 15:6; Genesis 15:18; Genesis 17:11), so it became a seal to his children in the sense of separating them to God in covenant. In like manner the saints are said to be sealed with the name of the Lord (Revelation 22:4; Revelation 9:4), Something of the same general sense is conveyed by 2 Timothy 2:19. Christians are, by the indwelling of the Spirit, set apart, consecrated to God. 2. Confirmed in their own souls. By intensifying and rendering more vivid religious impressions and resolves, it seals believers “ unto the day of redemption.” (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The earnest of our inheritance An earnest is part of that which is to follow, and it is of the same kind as that of which it is the earnest. The earnest is not withdrawn. In this it differs from a pledge or bond. A pledge or bond is restored or cancelled when it is fulfilled. God’ s promise and oath are His pledges to His people, and they shall never be withdrawn till He has fulfilled His word. But the Holy Ghost given is the earnest of our inheritance; and he who gives an earnest pledges his faithfulness to give the rest. For this reason the earnest of the Spirit is called “ the first fruits of the Spirit.” Now, the first fruits of the harvest were a part, sample, and earnest of the harvest which would follow. The first fruits, moreover, consecrated the coming harvest for the use of God’ s people. The Holy Ghost is the earnest from God to us of His inheritance in us; and He is, also, the earnest to us of our inheritance in God. Now where the Spirit of the Lord is, the fruits of the Spirit follow. “ As many as received Him.” Notice, all is in the receiving. It is not something we have to do or to suffer, but only to receive: “ to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” “ And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6). We probably repeat the Lord’ s Prayer daily. We call Him Father, alas! often without apprehending that He is our Father. Let us not mock God. Believers have a rich, mighty, loving Father; and if we, being evil, know how to give good things to our children, how much more will He “ give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” God first sends the life of His Son into the soul, and then the spirit of His Son into that soul. First God the Holy Ghost gives us to believe, and then He seals us as believers. He first gives us the seal of the Spirit, and then He makes the sealing Spirit to be the earnest of our inheritance. When we seal a document we remove the instrument that makes the impression; but when God seals it is altogether different, for He leaves the instrument with which He seals the soul to be the earnest of the inheritance “ until the redemption of the purchased possession.” This earnest of the Spirit is not only our security, but also our ability for the enjoyment of our inheritance in faith here and in fruition hereafter. When the Holy Ghost is the earnest of our inheritance, everything of the believer’ s is sealed unto the day of redemption. Our Head has been sealed. He is the head of all principality and power. “ Him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27). He is our life, our title, our representative, our wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. The foundation on which we rest is sealed. “ The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His, and, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2:19). (M. Rainsford, B. A.)God’ s Holy Spirit the earnest of our redemption So much of the Spirit of grace and truth as we have here, is but the earnest and handsel of a greater sum, the seed and first fruits of a fuller harvest. Therefore the apostle mentions “ a growing” change from glory to glory by the Spirit of God. We must not expect a fulness till “ the time of the restitution of all things,” till that day of redemption and adoption, wherein the light, which is here but sown for the righteous, shall grow up into a full harvest of holiness and of glory. (Bp. Reynolds.)The present and the future inheritance “ The Holy Spirit of promise,” given to all who believe, is here declared to dwell in and to seal believers as the “ earnest” of their “ inheritance;” whilst, on the other hand, that sealing is declared to last until--or, as seems more probably the rendering of the preposition here, to be done with a view unto--the full redemption of God’ s purchased “ possession.” So that the two halves of the thought are intentionally brought together in these words of our text. And about both of them--God’ s possession of us and our possession of God--it is asserted or implied, that they are partially realized here, and are to be realized more fully in the future. An “ earnest” is a portion of the estate which is paid over to the purchaser on the completion of the purchase, as the token that all is his and that it will all come into his hands in due time. Like that part of a man’ s wages given to him in advance when he is engaged; like the shilling put into the hands of a recruit; like the half crown given to the farm servant at the hiring fair; like the bit of turf that in some old ceremonials used to be solemnly presented to the sovereign on his investiture; it is a portion of the whole possession, the same in kind, but a very tiny portion, which yet carries with it the acknowledgment of ownership and the assurance of full possession. So says my text, “ the Spirit of God is the earnest of the inheritance,” a small portion of it granted to us today, and the pledge that all shall be granted in the future. And the same idea of present imperfection is suggested in the corresponding clause, which speaks about God’ s entire purchase (for there is an emphasis in the Greek word in the original); His possession as also a thing of the future. So then here are the three points that I want to look at for a moment or two; first, a word about the imperfect present; second, about the present, imperfect as it is, still being a guarantee and pledge of the future; and, lastly, about the perfect future which is the outcome of the imperfect present. I. A word about this imperfect present, which is put here as being on one side the earnest of the inheritance, and on the other side as being God’ s partial acquisition of us as His possession. There can be nothing deeper, nothing greater, nothing more real in the manner of possession, than the possession which every one of us may have of an indwelling God for our life and our peace. It passes all human analogy; love gives us the ownership, most really and most sweetly, of the hearts that we love; but after all the yearning desires for union, and experience of oneness in sympathy, the awful wall of partition between spirits remains; and life may, and death must, separate; but he that hath God’ s Divine Spirit with him, has God for the life of his life and the soul of his soul. And we possess Him when, by faith in Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God dwells in our hearts. But most real and most blessed as that union and possession is, my text tells us that it is incomplete. I need not dwell upon that in order to prove it; I only want to apply and urge the truth for a moment. We have an Infinite Spirit to dwell with us; how finite and little is our possession of it! The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of “ a rushing, mighty wind,” and you and I say that we are Christ’ s, and that we have Him. How does it come, then, that our sails flap idly on the mast, and we lie becalmed, and making next to no progress? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of “ flaming tongues of fire,” and you and 1 say that we have it; how is it, then, that this thick-ribbed ice is round our hearts, and our love is all so tepid? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of “ rivers of water” ; and you and I say that we possess it. How is it, then, that so much of our hearts and of our natures is given up to barrenness, and dryness, and deadness? Oh, brethren, with an Infinite Spirit for our Guest and Indweller, any of us that look at our own hearts must feel that my text is too surely true, and that the present possession of the best of us is but a partial and incomplete possession. Many Christian people forget that if our present condition be, as it certainly is, necessarily imperfect, it ought also to be, and it will be, if there be any vital force of Christian principle within us, constantly and indefinitely approximating to the ideal standard of perfection that gleams there ahead of us. Or, to put it into plainer English, if you have life you will grow. If there be any real possession of the inheritance, it will be like the rolling fences that they used to have in certain parts of the country, where a squatter settled himself down upon a bit of a royal forest, and had a hedge that could be moved outwards and shifted on by degrees; and from having begun with a little bit big enough for a cabbage garden, ended with a piece big enough for a farm. And that is what we are always to do, to be always acquiring, “ adding field to field” in the great inheritance that is ours. II. Now turn to the second thought here--that this imperfect present, imperfect though it be, is a prophecy and a pledge of a perfect future. The “ earnest of our inheritance” till the full “ redemption of the purchased possession.” The facts of Christian experience are such as that they inevitably point to the conclusion that there is a life beyond. All that is good and blessed about religion, our faith, the joy that comes from our faith, the sweetness of communion, the aspiration after the increase of fellowship with Him; all these, to the man that enjoys them, are the best proof that they are going to last forever, and that death can have no power over them. “ Like thoughts, their very sweetness yieldeth proof that they are born for immortality.” To love, to know, to reach the hands out through the shows of time and sense, and to grasp an unseen reality that lies away beyond, is, to any man that has ever experienced the emotion and done the thing, one of the strongest of all demonstrations that nothing belonging to this dusty low region of the physical can touch that immortal aspiration that knits him to God; but that whatsoever may befall the husk and shell of him, his faith, his love, his obedience, his consecration, these at least are eternal, and may laugh at death and the grave. And I believe that even to the men that have not the experience, the fact of religious emotion, the fact of worship, ought to be one of the best demonstrations of a future life. But I pass that with these simple remarks, and touch another thing; the very incompleteness of our possession of God, and of God’ s possession of us, points onwards to, and, as it seems to me, demands a future. The imperfection, as well as the present attainments of our Christian experience, proclaim a coming time. That we are no better than we are, being as good as we are, seems to make it inconceivable that this evidently half-done job is going to be broken off short at the side of the grave. Here is a certain force at work in a man’ s nature, the power of God’ s good Spirit, evidently capable of producing effects of entire transformation. Such being the case, who, looking at the effects, can doubt that sometime and somewhere there will be less disproportion between the two? The engine is evidently not working full power. The characters of Christians at the best are so inconsistent and contradictory that they are evidently only in the making. It is clear that we are looking at unfinished work, and surely the great Master Builder, who has laid such a foundation stone tried and precious, will not begin to build and not be able to finish. Every Christian life, at its best and noblest, shows, as it were, the ground plan of a great structure partly carried out--a bit of walling up here, vacancy there, girders spanning wide spaces, but gaping for a roof, a chaos and a confusion. It may look a thing of shreds and patches, and they that pass by the way begin to mock. But the very fact that it is incomplete, prophesies to wise men of the day when the headstone shall be brought with shouting, and the flag hoisted on the roof tree. Fools and children, says the proverb, should not see half done work--certainly they should not judge it. Wait a bit. There comes a time when tendencies shall be facts, and when influences shall have produced their appropriate effects; and when all that is partial and broken shall be consummate and entire in the Kingdom that is beyond the stars. Wait! and be sure that the good and the bad, so strangely blended in Christian experience, are alike charged with the prophecy of a glorious and perfect future. III. Then, lastly, my text in the one clause asserts, and in the other implies, that the future is the perfecting of the present. The “ earnest” points onwards to an inheritance the same in kind, but immensely greater in degree. The “ redemption of the possession” is a somewhat singular expression; for we are accustomed to regard the great act of redemption as already past in the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. But the expression is employed here, as in several other places, to express not so much the act of purchase, the paying of the price of our salvation, which is done once for all and long ago, as the historical working out of the results of that price paid in the entire deliverance of the whole nature of man from every form of captivity to anything that would prevent his full possession by God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Grace but an earnest of glory As old Master Durham says, “‘ Tis but a taste!” You have tasted that the Lord is gracious, but you do not know how good and how gracious He is. We have not yet rested beneath the vines of Canaan; we have only enjoyed the first fruits of the Spirit, and they have set us hungering and thirsting for the fulness of the heavenly heritage. We groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption. We are like David; we have had a draught of water from the well of Bethlehem, that is within the gate, brought to us through the valour of Christ Jesus; but we have not yet drank the clear, cool stream, in all its perfection, at the fountainhead. We are but beginners in spiritual education; we have learned the first letters of the alphabet; we cannot read words yet, much less can we read sentences; we are but infants now; we have not come to the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus. As one says, “ He that has been in heaven but five minutes, knows more than all the general assembly on earth, though they were all learned divines.” We shall know more of Christ by one glimpse of Him in heaven, than we shall know by all our learning here. ‘ Tis but a taste here, and if a taste be so ravishing, what must it be to sit at the table and eat bread in the kingdom of God? (C. H. Spurgeon.)Heaven our inheritance We have heard of a great man who once took a poor believer and said--“ Do you look over there to those hills.” “ Yes, sir.” “ Well, all that is mine; that farm yonder, and that yonder, and beyond that river over there--it is all mine.” “ Ah,” said the other--“ look at yonder little cottage, that is where I live, and even that is not mine, for I have to hire it, and yet I am richer than you, for I can point up yonder and say, there lies my inheritance, in heaven’ s unmeasured space, and let you look as far as ever you can you cannot see the limit of my heritage, nor find out where it ends nor where it begins.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)Foretastes of heaven The more you are acquainted with God while you live, the more willing you will be to die, to go to Him; for death, to a child of God, is nothing else but a resting with God, in whose bosom he hath often been by holy meditation, when he was alive. Dr. Preston, when he was dying, used these words: “ Blessed be God, though I change my place I shall not change my company; for I have walked with God while living, and now I go to rest with God.” (Arvine.)Heaven a costly purchase There are sometimes rare and beautiful wares brought into the market, that are invoiced at almost fabulous rates. Ignorant people wonder why they are priced so high. The simple reason is that they cost so much to procure. That luxurious article labelled £200 was procured by the adventurous hunter, who at the hazard of his neck, brought down the wild mountain goat, out of whose glossy hair the fabric was wrought. Yonder pearl that flashes on the brow of the bride is precious, because it was rescued from the great deep at the risk of the pearl fisher’ s life, as he was lifted into the boat half dead, with the blood gushing from his nostrils. Yonder ermine, flung so carelessly over the proud beauty’ s shoulder, cost terrible battles with polar ice and hurricane. All choicest things are reckoned the dearest. So is it, too, in heaven’ s inventories. The universe of God has never witnessed aught to be reckoned in comparison with the redemption of a guilty world. That mighty ransom no such contemptible things as silver and gold could procure. Only by one price could the Church of God be redeemed from hell, and that the precious blood of the Lamb--the Lamb without blemish or spot--the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)The praise of His glory That must be a possession indeed, the bestowal of which shall be not only to the glory of Jehovah, but “ to the praise of His glory.” Observe the several things said here with regard to it. The nature of it--an inheritance. It is a choice possession--the gift of God, and to the praise of His glory. It is an inheritance by birthright. It is a purchased possession. Who can estimate the price? It is a possession already obtained: “ In whom also we have obtained an inheritance” (verse 11). Obtained in Christ, the Holy Ghost Himself has sealed us unto it, He is also the earnest of it in our hearts, and He remains in US, our seal and earnest, “ until the redemption of the purchased possession.” For it is not yet finally redeemed. Now let us endeavour, by degrees, to get some definite idea of this great subject. Our inheritance! As condemned lost sinners in ourselves, we have no inheritance of our own, save that of sin, and shame, and death, and hell. God gave Adam and Eve, in Him, a splendid inheritance. All things here below were under their dominion. But soon they lost their inheritance, their kingdom, their crown, their souls. And we lost all in them. Nevertheless, Adam was the image of Him that was to come, the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, the appointed heir of all things. But the possession is not yet fully redeemed. Redemption in the Bible is spoken of in two connections. There is redemption by payment of a price, and that is already done. Every believer has been redeemed, not with silver or gold, “ but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” But there is another redemption spoken of, even a redemption by power, and that is not yet. Oh, these poor frames of ours are sorry representatives of the power of God’ s redemption. Nay, we who have the first fruits of the Spirit, and are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and sealed unto the day of redemption, even “ we groan, being burdened,” carrying about with us a body of sin and death, liable to temptations, harassed by the world, the flesh, and the devil; and “ we are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.” Consider--1. Not only will God give us back the inheritance we have lost by sin, but He Himself shall become our inheritance. 2. Not only shall we be His inheritance, but also His purchased possession. 3. Meanwhile, and since we are still in the flesh, God has given us His Holy Spirit, our Comforter, to subdue, rescue, stablish, anoint, seal us, and be the earnest of our inheritance. 4. Our inheritance is not only kept for us, but we are kept by the power of God for our inheritance. 5. Finally, we have been adopted “ according to the good pleasure of His will,” redeemed and forgiven “ according to the riches of His grace,” and our purchased selves and our inheritance are and ever shall be “ to the praise of His glory.” Amen. (M. Rainsford, B. A.) Ephesians 1:15-16 Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and love unto all the saints.Faith a chief characteristic of the Christian I. It is the first condition of spiritual life.1. Uniting the sinner with the Lord of life. 2. Restoring the spiritual outcast to filial relations with God the Father. 3. Interesting and exercising the renewed nature in things unseen and eternal. II. It exhibits itself in the spirit and conduct of believers.1. The life of the believer is in the greatest contrast to the life of unbelief. (1) His own previous conduct.(2) The general behaviour of the world. 2. It impels to the promotion of the well-being of others. III. It ought therefore to be anxiously looked for and thankfully recognized by other Christians. But all Christians are not so deeply interested in the progress of Christ’ s kingdom as Paul was! It requires an unworldly and generous spirit to be possessed by such an enthusiasm.1. Awaking thanksgiving in him. As if it had been a personal advantage to himself. God is thanked as the Author of the spiritual life thus evinced. 2. Impelling to prayer. Because the fruits and spiritual outgrowth of faith were still to come. He who awakened faith in Himself alone can sustain and perfect it. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Christian faith and love I. Faith is the first gift of God which He mentions in their praise, and truly in many respects it deserves the first place in our letters, in our hearts, and in our lives. What is faith? It is a holy resting upon the word and promise of God as true and faithful, so that the natural consequence is peace of conscience and spiritual joy; it is a taking of God at His word. II. Now comes the next great gift for which the apostle praises them, love, brotherly love, love to all the saints. It has its fountain in the love of God as the Father of the whole redeemed family. His love to us produces corresponding love to Him, and in loving the common Father, we necessarily love one another. The bonds, indeed, which bind the saints together are very many and very strong. They are members of the same family, redeemed with the same precious blood, and filled with the same quickening Spirit. They have the same friends and the same enemies, the same hopes and fears, the same promises of good things to come, and the same living Head in heaven. How full, and deep, and strong should be their love to one another! The words of our text are instructive--“ Love to all the saints!” (W. Graham, D. D.)Recognition of good points in others Paul’ s thankfulness for what he heard about the faith and religious life of the Ephesian Christians is one of the many proofs that his nature was singularly ardent, generous, and sanguine. He knew that there were some, perhaps many, of them who were emerging only very slowly from the vices of their old heathen days, else he would not have thought it necessary to write what he has written in the later pages of this Epistle about the most elementary moral duties. But it was his habit to think of all that was fairest in the lives of Christian people. There were grave faults, there were gross sins, in the Church at Ephesus; but he had heard enough of the Church to be sure that it had not forgotten what he had taught it eight or nine years before. The faith of the Church in Christ was still steadfast, and the reality of that faith was still shown in their spirit and conduct to all saints. They themselves were loyal to Christ, and they regarded all Christians as comrades and brethren; and therefore he ceased not to “ give thanks” for them. That is an admirable temper. We are too much disposed to impeach the sincerity and worth of a man’ s faith if we see in him a single serious fault. That was not Paul’ s way. He had a keen eye for goodness; whatever might be his sorrow on account of the sins of Christian men, and however sternly he rebuked them for their sins, he rejoiced ardently in every manifestation, however faint, of a genuine desire to do the will of God. He watched the beginnings of a nobler life in his converts, as we watch the conflict between the dawn and the heavy darkness of the night. In some of them the rising glory was almost concealed by the dense clouds of heathen ignorance, superstition, and vice; but he could see gleams of light trembling through the gloom. Here and there between the broken clouds there was the clear blue of a diviner heaven. He rejoiced and gave thanks that the light of God had risen upon the darkness; not in a moment, but gradually and certainly, the dim, cloudy, troubled dawn would be followed by a bright and glorious day. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Observance of others’ religious progress 1.Ministers must labour to know how grace goes forward in those with whom they have to deal. It behoves shepherds to know their flock. 2. The Ephesians’ faith is occupied about the Lord Jesus Christ. (1) Faith in Christ is not only to know but to rely on Him: an affair not merely of the understanding, but also of the will. (2) Faith in Christ justifies and saves, inasmuch as it receives at His hand God’ s pardon and grace. 3. Faith and love are never disjoined, but go hand in hand with each other. Faith without love is but a dead carcase; love without; faith is but a blind devotion. Neither is pleasing to God without the other. Let us try the truth of our faith by the presence or absence of love. We may more easily carry coals in our bosom without burning, than by faith apprehend truly this love of God, without finding our hearts burn in answering love to Him. 4. The love of true believers is set on the saints, yea, on all the saints. Every creature likes to be with those who are united with it in communication of the same nature: so sanctified Christians cannot but love and like to be most with those who have received the like divine nature in which they are themselves partakers. (Paul Bayne.)Faith and love--immense affections No one who knows what faith and love are, according to the New Testament, will ever doubt that they are the most human of all our capacities. They are distinct, yet essentially one. They are significant signs of our vast future. Give yourself to history, to geology, astronomy, physiology, chemistry, and you will correspondingly inform and expand your mind. But by faith, your spirit is at one with the wisdom and goodness, the power and glory, the infinity and eternity of God. Faith involves, therefore, the utmost enlargement of soul, and yet begets nothing like self-exaltation. We say nothing of nominal believers; but minds which are in actual sympathy with the Son of God, are in the condition to become the master minds of the universe. Nor can anyone doubt this, who understands the scope of God’ s purpose in Christ Jesus. It is not possible that “ the power of God, and the wisdom of God,” should establish their empire in certain men, without constituting them “ kings and priests unto God.” The elements of essential precedency and power are rooted and grounded in them. By selfish thoughts of the gospel, as of a plan by which we are to be saved from misery and hell, we spoil it of its Divine glory. The gospel of God comprehends higher and broader reaches of thought, than any subject ever opened to the minds of angels or men. The noble-mindedness of faith is always associated with a corresponding noble-heartedness. Faith and love are inseparable bosom companions. I constantly thank God, writes Paul, for your faith and love. “ Your faith” is a Divine expansiveness given to your understanding, and “ your love unto all the saints” is a like vastness given to your affections. They are the double suns of your soul, sun within sun. Whole galaxies of wisdom are comprehended in faith, as in a mental firmament. And as to the new spirit of love, which is faith’ s associative soul, “ He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.” “ Wherefore, I cease not to give thanks for you,” that the goodness and the greatness which are everlasting are made sure to you. Your faith and love are of unknown value. They constitute your initiation into an endless progress. Infinite truth is the scope of your mind; and infinite love, the scope of your heart. (John Pulsford.)Faith in Christ I remember an old experimental Christian speaking about the great pillars of our faith; he was a sailor; we were then on board ship and there were sundry huge posts on the shore, to which the ships were usually moored by throwing a cable over them. After I had told him a great many promises, he said, “ I know they are good strong promises, but I cannot get near enough to shore to throw my cable round them; that is the difficulty.” Now it often happens that God’ s past mercies and loving kindnesses would be good sure posts to hold on to, but we have not got faith enough to throw our cable round them, and so we go drifting, down the stream of unbelief because we cannot stay ourselves by our former mercies. I will, however, give you something that I think you can throw your cable over. If God has never been kind to you, one thing you surely know, and that is, He has been kind to others. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Faith and love illustrated Some naturalists desired to obtain the wild flowers which grew on the side of a dangerous gorge in the Scottish Highlands. They offered a boy a liberal sum to descend by a rope, and get them. He looked at the money, thought of the danger, and replied, “ I will go if my father will hold the rope.” With unshrinking nerves he suffered his father to put the rope round him, lower him over the precipice, and to suspend him there, while he filled his basket with the coveted flowers. Reflex benefit of charity Where charity is, there doth God reside. Possess charity, and you will see Him in your own heart, seated as on His throne. (Augustine.)Self-denying charity John Howard, the philanthropist, having settled his accounts at the close of a particular year, found a balance in his favour, and proposed to his wife to make use of it in a journey to London. “ What a comfortable cottage for a poor family it would build!” was her answer. This hint met with cordial approbation; and the money was laid out upon that purpose accordingly. Brotherly love As the spokes of a carriage wheel approach their centre, they approach each other; so also, when men are brought to Jesus Christ, the centre of life and hope, they are drawn towards each other in brotherly love and relationship, and stand side by side, supporting each other, as they journey on together to their heavenly home. (J. F. Serjeant.)Love of our neighbour Cultivate ever a spirit of love to all. Love is the diamond amongst the jewels of the believer’ s breastplate. The other graces shine like the precious stones of nature, with their own peculiar lustre and varied hues; but the diamond is white; now in white all the colours are united (as a prism will show), so love is centred every other grace and virtue; for we are told that “ Love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rowland Hill.)Faith in Christ Faith looked at in reference to God is a spirit of quietude and repose. Nothing so full of conscious helplessness and simple trust. No little bird beneath its parent’ s wing, no child upon its mother’ s lap, so gentle and confiding. A lion in conflict with the powers of hell, faith lies down like a lamb at the feet of the Lord of heaven. It returns and rests “ in quietness and in confidence.” Indeed, in this way it obtains salvation and strength. The calm resting upon God makes it victorious over all beside. In truth, it is He who fights for the believer, with the believer, in the believer. Faith does nothing alone, nothing of itself, but everything under God, by God, through God. It is only in a qualified sense that faith makes war and gets victory. “ The excellency of power is of God, and not of us.” Its humble dependence, its meek, child-like spirit, after all constitute its proper self. These are the essence and life of faith. (J. Stoughton.)Love the fruit of faith When a rosebud is formed, if the soil is soft and the sky is genial, it is not long before it bursts; for the life within is so abundant that it can no longer contain it all, but in blossomed brightness and swimming fragrance it must needs let forth its joy, and gladden all the air. And if, when thus ripe, it refused to expand, it would quickly rot at heart, and die. And Christian love is just piety with its petals fully spread, developing itself, and making it a happier world. The religion which fancies that it loves God, when it never evinces love to its brother, is not piety, but a poor mildewed theology, a dogma with a worm in the heart. (Dr. J. Hamilton.)Thanksgiving and prayer for others 1. The graces of God in others must move Christians, especially ministers, to thankfulness. If a schoolmaster brings a rude untoward boy to behaviour and forwardness in learning, we much commend him, that he has wrought so far on so ill-disposed a subject; how much more is He to be magnified who works such alterations in sinners, dead in their sins and trespasses? 2. Christians are to help each other with prayer, especially ministers their converted people. 3. We must perseveringly follow God in those things we pray for. Some things God gives us before we ask for them; others, immediately upon our prayer; for others, again, He will have us follow Him with continuance before bestowing them. Thus He sees fit to exercise our sanctity, faith, and patience; to test whether our requests proceed from the heart; and to prepare us to receive the things we ask in greater measure, for the wider the soul is enlarged in desire, the more abundantly God means to fill it in His time. (Paul Bayne.)Intercessory prayer Prayer, generally speaking, is the life of a Christian Church, and when it takes the forms of thanksgiving and intercession it is peculiarly blessed and attractive. (W. Graham, D. D.)Prayer and thanks Prayer and thanks are like the double motion of the lungs: the air that is sucked in by prayer, is breathed forth again by thanks. (Goodwin.)Christian intercession The great secret of the success of Harlan Page was, that he always aimed at the conversion of someone; wrestling in prayer with God, and in affectionate entreaty with the sinner, till he saw his wishes realized. By following this plan, though he was in a humble sphere of life, in active work, and often in deep poverty, he lived to see more than a hundred brought to God, as the fruit of his zeal and intercessions. (Howes.)The meaning of intercession The question, “ What is meant by intercession?” being asked in a Sunday school, one of the children made a very apt reply, in the words, “ Speaking a word to God for us, sir.” Unceasing prayer When a pump is frequently used, the water pours out at the first stroke, because it is high; but, if the pump has not been used for a long time, the water gets low, and when you want it you must pump a long while; and the water comes only after great efforts. It is so with prayer. If we are instant in prayer, every little circumstance awakens the disposition to pray, and desire 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.)Intercessory prayer A young lady heard voice as of one engaged in conversation, and distinguished the words, “ O Lord, have mercy upon the dear youth of this place!” She was struck with the thought, “ Is this the way Christians go about the town, and mingle with the world? Do they pray thus for our souls? I have hardly ever prayed for my own.” From that day, she began to pray, and became the first-fruits of a glorious revival. A passion for prayer When Dr. Bacchus (the President of Hamilton College), was upon his death bed, the doctor called to see him, and, after examining the symptoms, left the room without speaking, but, as he opened the door to go out, was observed to whisper something to the servant. “ What did the physician say to you?” asked Dr. Bacchus. “ He said, sir, that you cannot live to exceed half an hour.” “ Is it so?” said the good man. “ Then take me out of my bed, and place me upon my knees; let me spend that time in calling upon God for the salvation of the world.” His request was complied with; and his last moments were spent in breathing forth his prayers for the salvation of his fellow sinners. He died upon his knees. So also did Drs. Krapt and Livingstone. Ephesians 1:17; Ephesians 1:19 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the rather of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.What young believers require to receive I. Increase of spiritual perception. Not so much new objects to contemplate, as clearer and deeper knowledge of objects already discerned. This is attained--1. Through exercise of faith already possessed. It grows with the using. 2. Through the influence of the Holy Spirit. It assimilates the perceiving power to its own nature, and imparts new knowledge of Divine things. The powers of the spirit in general are heightened and extended--“ a spirit of wisdom.” Truth not discernible by ordinary human faculties is made known--“ revelation.” II. Closer acquaintance with their Lord. “ In the knowledge of Him.” He is the life book we are to study. III. Access of Divine knowledge. IV. Growth in experience. Amid the vague, new elements that crowd into their knowledge, certain great, central objects are to be realized most intensely.1. The hope of their calling. Glory, complete salvation, eternal life, etc., are various aspects of this hope, which it is the great object of Christians to attain. 2. The riches of the glory of the Divine inheritance. The Kingdom of God grows in vastness, glory, and privilege, the more it is contemplated and sought. 3. The Divine resurrection power within themselves. The same power which raised Christ from the dead, and set Him at the right hand of God, works in the believer, evokes spiritual life, and sustains and develops it, from grace to grace, and glory to glory. As they compare their spiritual experience with His in resurrection and ascension, they will have grander realizations of the nature of the resurrection power that is working in themselves, and will trust it more intelligently and absolutely. There is no limit to this experience. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul I. The two mysteries which exist in the manhood of Christ, and in His mystic body, exist also in the ransomed soul; the presence of the Spirit, and union with the Son of God. You may conceive of the indwelling of the Spirit in Christ’ s human nature. It was spotless: original sin found no place there. In the foundations of Christ’ s created nature, there was no intermingling of the taint of the Fall. In His birth no sin, in His temptations no inward response. His soul was the mirror of unsullied holiness, and therefore a fit dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. But we are conceived in sin, born in sin, may have lived in sin, bear still the remains of a corrupt nature, “ the flesh lusteth against the Spirit.” Who would dare then to speak of the indwelling of Almighty God the Comforter in our souls, had He not unmistakably affirmed it? The New Testament points to it as the characteristic glory of Christian life. The Spirit, who first dwelt in Jesus in His fulness, extends His presence to all in union with that manhood. As the little cloud about the size of a man’ s hand, when it rose up into the heavens, spread itself out over the whole sky, and there was an abundance of rain, so the Ascended Lord gathers His Saints around Him, and pours down upon the parched earth streams of Divine Life. Each soul in grace is a partaker of the Divine Nature. The pure nature of Christ is the instrument of the Spirit in the soul. There is in every baptized soul, not only the indwelling of the Comforter, but a jet of the Life of Jesus, through which the transformation of our nature is being accomplished, and His character gradually impressed. II. Again, the expansion of the Church into the world finds its counterpart in the progressive development of the Kingdom of God within the soul. The same vital principles in both, if permitted to put themselves forth, will overcome all opposing forces. Of the Kingdom of God, it is said, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This may be true, too, of the reign of Christ in the soul. The Kingdom of God within has its persecutions to pass through. At its secret beginning, the whole of nature is in revolt; but if we are steadfast, grace will finally gain the ascendency, and sit in calm possession of the throne. The command of the Church, to disciple all nations, is only by degrees accomplished; so the leaven of grace in the soul will only gradually penetrate into our whole being, and in the end produce “ the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” The treasure of Divine truth, which the Spirit unfolds in the understanding, we will now consider. The understanding, through the Fall, is in a state of darkness as to supernatural things. Reason and conscience are two lights which “ rule the night.” They are the only guides by which we find our path. The understanding being thus overclouded, much of the sin that is committed may be traced up to some error in this faculty. The Holy Spirit, as the Illuminator, dispels the darkness, and amplifies the view, correcting and ennobling the natural faculty with the grace of faith, and the gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel. Faith is the dawn upon the soul of a supernatural world. It is the first fissure through the cloud. It may be only like the breaking of the day, an imperfect view, like the glimpse of the blind man, the sight of “ men as trees, walking” ; yet it is a revelation of the Invisible. The Invisible becomes a reality. Hence the gift of faith is the one the Spirit employs against the adversary. It is with the shield of faith we are to “ quench all the fiery darts of the wicked,” whom we must “ resist steadfast in the faith.” Why is faith the chosen engine against the Evil One, the shield of our spiritual armour? It is because through it a new set of motives is brought to bear upon our conduct. For instance: a temptation awaits us; the flesh is weak, and some powerful influence is required to prevent a fall. Faith supplies it. In the early stage of the spiritual life, the thought comes, “ There is heaven; if I commit this sin, I may lose it” ; or fear is excited; “ Here is hell; if I commit sin, I may fall into it.” If there is a deeper life the thought of the Cross of Jesus and His constraining love will be felt; “ If I commit this sin, I shall be crucifying Him afresh.” The light of faith furnishing motives which act either upon our fears or hopes, or rekindle our love, fulfils the office of a shield in the day of battle. Besides this grace, the Holy Spirit provides certain gifts which complete His work in the understanding, and are auxiliary to Divine faith. When the apostle used the words of the text, he was praying not simply for general enlightenment, but that his converts might possess and develop certain specific forms of spiritual knowledge. The gift of wisdom is the chief of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul prays that the Ephesians may be endued with “ the spirit of wisdom” ; and Isaiah places it first, when he enumerates the gifts as they dwelt in our Lord. It is the highest quality which the Spirit bestows. The apostle links with the spirit of “ wisdom” that of “ revelation.” This may correspond with the gift of understanding, for it is a spiritual insight into the mysteries of the kingdom of grace. The gift of knowledge is another form of light, having for its object not God and His perfections, nor the mysteries of grace, but God as He is seen in created things. It discloses His designs in them, what they are in themselves, what purposes they are intended to fulfil, what portions of His being they reflect, how they may be enlisted in His service, and brought through our instrumentality to minister to His glory, how they may be rightfully used or enjoyed. This gift, too, is important as it relates to our inner life. Self-knowledge is obtained through it. The gift of counsel completes our intellectual equipment. Its name describes its nature. It guides the soul in the choice of the best means to be used for arriving at the desired end. It seeks advice from all past occurrences; teaching us how to use our falls, the various remedies to which we have been directed to resort, those which have best suited our disposition, what have been the occasions of sin, what the results,--in short, the gift of counsel treasures up all the complex experiences of the spiritual life, and puts them to account. There are two thoughts which suggest appropriate lessons on this part of our subject. If it be true, that the Holy Ghost dwells within us; that each one is a temple of His presence, and a member of Christ; that our understanding is now replete with such wonderful powers, supplied with Divine lights for the removal of the darkness which sin has occasioned; that the same gifts which the mind of Christ possesses, are in their measure communicated to all His brethren: then, surely, sin committed in such a state, will have a special heinousness about it. Hence there is a more minute inspection of sin in the new dispensation. The inward presence brings up to light inward sin. What a thought to influence our conduct, “ I am the temple of God!” The rebuke of the apostle is not now unnecessary, or out of date--“ know ye not that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Another practical conclusion is to be drawn from what has been said. Life is manifested by action. A Divine life will be manifested by actions which exceed the power of nature. If I possess this life, I am thereby rendered capable of doing works which shall be pleasing to God. Grace, as a new principle of action, enables me to do works, which, by nature, I could not do. A supernatural life bestows on my actions a new value, so that they partake of the Eternity of God. The presence of the Holy Spirit imparts to them, when they are wrought in grace, and with a pure intention for God’ s glory, an imperishable character. “ They are wrought in God.” (W. H. Hutchings, M. A.)Growth in spiritual knowledge I. The means whereby this knowledge is attained. “ The spirit of wisdom and revelation.” Here are two things--the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation. This “ spirit of revelation” I understand to mean “ inspiration.” The prayer for its bestowment upon the Ephesian Church was in effect a prayer for the multiplication of its prophets, the then accredited guides and instructors of the Church, in the absence of the apostle, in all that related to spiritual matters. The spirit of revelation, however, is not a need of the Church now since it has the “ revelation of the spirit,” for where the revelation of the spirit is, there can be no need for the “ spirit of revelation.” But the spirit of wisdom is still a need of the Church, and will ever form one of its first necessities.1. To secure an attitude of firm, unflinching faith in this revelation. Just as the force by which the earth is hurled along in its ceaseless course through space has never succeeded in overcoming the force by which it is kept in its orbit, so the spirit of wisdom in the Church will ever prevent the centrifugal force of free thought and free criticism from overcoming the centripetal force of faith in the Divine revelation, humanity’ s moral sun, the source of its spiritual life and glory. 2. It is not alone in relation to the attitude we are to assume towards God’ s Word, in view of the modern spirit of unsparing, not to say reckless, criticism, that the spirit of wisdom is needed. It is needed also as the power by which alone we shall be able to unlock the spiritual secrets of that Word, to explore its hidden treasures, to take in fully and sympathetically its deepest teachings. II. We come now to consider the second division of the subject of the text, namely, the object to whom this spiritual enlightenment relates--“ God.” It is “ the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,” “ Him” as described in the preceding part of the verse. The full purport of this expression in reference to the Ephesians will be better understood if we remember that they had until very recently been heathens. It is thus reasonable to suppose that their conceptions of God were very defective. They had not as yet succeeded in entirely divesting their minds of the low, degrading notions of God with which their heathen training had impressed them. They had still much to learn concerning His nature and character. They had constant need of instruction whereby their notions of Him might be purified and elevated. Hence the prayer that they might have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Further, the apostle indicates the particular aspect of the Divine character upon which they were to seek further enlightenment--“ the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of glory.” It is a description of God that covers the whole ground of His redemptive relation to men. And it is God in this inexpressibly glorious aspect of His character that the text represents as the great object of Christian knowledge. It is that the Ephesian believers might have a more abundant entrance into the transcendent glories and the ineffable joy of this truth, that the apostle prays that they might have the spirit of wisdom and revelation. III. We now come to the consideration of the third truth indicated by the text, namely, the further experiences of spiritual things to which this knowledge of God conduces. The apostle specifies in the text and the next verse three things, to the right and full apprehension of which we come “ through the knowledge of Him.” These are--“ the hope of His calling,” “ the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” and “ the exceeding greatness of His power to usward” and Christward. The first includes God’ s purpose in relation to men--to call them into glory. The second refers to the glory that shall accrue to Himself through men thus glorified. The third refers to the transcendent character of the means adopted to secure these glorious ends. Here are three matters of knowledge arrived at by the enlightenment of the understanding through the knowledge of Him. They are matters of transcendent glory, and sweep the whole horizon of our salvation. Yes, we are to come into the full meaning of these superlative truths through our knowledge of God, as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. The Divine Being, thus apprehended, is the higher plane from which alone the full glory of our salvation can be viewed and comprehended. It forms our coign of vantage for the attainment of an adequate conception of at least three things respecting this salvation.1. The grandeur of its aim both as regards the individual and the race. 2. It is as viewed from this higher plane of spiritual knowledge that the infinite reasonableness of this munificent gift of grace and love will reveal itself to the mind. 3. Again, we notice that the knowledge of God is our vantage ground for understanding the infallible certainty of the accomplishment of these great ends. From this standpoint we enter into the full apprehension of the exceeding greatness of His power. Whatever fear or doubt may perplex the mind regarding the realization of the redemptive scheme, on the score of the grandeur of its aim and comprehensiveness of its scope, and the vastness of the difficulties in its way, will vanish in the light of this apprehension of the exceeding greatness of His power. This power covers every difficulty, is, in fact, illimitable and absolute in relation to the Divine purposes. He whose eyes have been enlightened knows this, and in this knowledge rests in unshaken tranquility. (A. J. Parry.)The spirit of wisdom 1. We must so consider God, when we come to Him in prayer, as to see Him in what we desire. St. Paul when about to pray for these Ephesians who had believed on Christ, and to seek the glorious gifts of the Spirit which might help them to know the glory reserved for them, sets God before him as the God of that Christ whom they had now received by faith into their hearts, and the Father of all glory: both of which considerations strengthened his faith; for he could not think that God, the God of Christ, would be wanting to those who were Christ’ s, or that the Father of all glory would deny those glorious gifts which he was about to ask Him to increase. So here is a lesson for all. Wouldst thou have remission of sin? Consider of God as a God with whom there is plenty of redemption or forgiveness. Wouldst thou have ease in any misery and grief? Consider of Him as a Father of all mercy and consolation, when thou comest to Him; this strengthens faith, and inflames affection. We seek things more securely, when we know them to be where we are looking for them; and we follow them more affectionately, when (so to speak) we see them before us. 2. Even true believers have great want of heavenly wisdom. They have it in a certain measure; but fall far short of what may be attained. (1) Let us labour to find this want in ourselves, and to see our folly, that we may be made wise. (2) Let us not be dismayed by our lack of wisdom. Things are not begun and perfected at once. Wisdom must rise from one degree to another in us. 3. We need light as well as wisdom. To have inward faculty of seeing is one thing: to have outward light, by means of which to see, is another. Light must come to light before we can see; the light in the eye must meet with the outward light of the sun, or a candle, or some other lightsome body, or nothing is perceived: so the light of wisdom which is in the soul must have shining to it this light of revelation, which makes manifest things spiritual; or else, be our sight never so quick, we shall be environed with darkness. The Spirit, therefore, is fitly compared with fire, which has not only heat resolving numbness and making stiff joints active, but also has light grateful to the eye of the body: so the Spirit has both love which warms our frozen hearts and affections, and also this light of revelation which delights the eye of the understanding and manifests heavenly things to its view. 4. It is God, by the Spirit of Christ, who works in us all true wisdom. It is not pregnancy of natural wit that can make us wise unto salvation, nor ripeness of years: but “ the inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding.” Yet we do attain ripeness of wisdom, under God, by the due use of means. (1) One day teacheth another. As a man grows older, he ought to grow wiser. (2) He tastes, as we say, many waters; finding by experience the good in some things, the evils in others. (3) He becomes gradually weaned from his youthful lusts which, like a back bias, drew after themselves the understanding. We see, then, to whom we must give all thanks for whatever wisdom we have received, and to whom we must fly for the increase of it--even to God, who gives it plentifully, and upbraideth not. (Paul Bayne.)Worldly wisdom worthless What does the philosophy of the Agnostic for the despairs of the sinking human soul? Hear the sad summing up of one of the votaries of the cold wisdom of the world, which “ knows not God.” It is that of Professor Clifford, dying early, with this sad word on his lips, “ My researches have revealed to me a soulless universe, looked down upon by a godless heaven.” We are nothing without God’ s wisdom in us “ See how much they think of me!” said a lantern to some dips that were hanging, on a nail close by. “ The master says he doesn’ t know what he should do without me these dark nights.” “ No doubt,” said the candle; “ but he’ d sing a different song if it weren’ t for one of us inside of you. Did it never occur to you, friend, that you wouldn’ t be of the least use to anybody if our light didn’ t shine through you?” (Mrs. Prosser.)The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Spiritual eye salve; or, the benefit of illumination The special grace here prayed for is illumination. I. The eye is the most excellent organ of sense. In a clear eye, the looker sees his own image; so God, in a sanctified understanding, sees a limited resemblance of His infinite Self. God has set two lids to defend the corporal eye from annoyance; and, in like manner, He has given faith and hope, to shelter the understanding.1. The situation of this spiritual eye is in the soul. God, framing man’ s soul, planted in it two faculties: the superior, that is the understanding, which perceiveth and judgeth; the inferior, that is the will, which being informed of the other, accordingly follows or flies, chooseth or refuseth. The Scripture, favouring the simplest capacity, compares these two powers of the soul to two known parts of the body: the understanding to the eye, the affections to the foot--the eye directing, the foot walking. Every man is naturally born blind and lame: as Zedekiah, captivated to the king of Babylon; first they “ put out his eyes” (2 Kings 25:7), and then they lamed his feet with fetters of brass. So is every man by nature, and therefore easily made a slave to the king of infernal Babylon, if the mercy of Christ should not redeem him. This consideration reacheth forth to us two uses; the one of instruction, the other of reprehension:-- (1) This teacheth us to desire in the first place the enlightening of our eyes; and then after, the strengthening of our feet. (2) This reprehends a common fashion of many auditors. When the preacher begins to analyse his text, and to open the points of doctrine, to inform the understanding, they lend him very cold attention. Your affections are stirred in vain without a precedent illumination of your souls. You must know to do before you can do what you know. And indeed he that attends only to exhortation, and not to instruction, seems to build more upon man’ s zeal than God’ s Word. 2. I come from the situation to the qualification of this spiritual eye: “ enlightened.” For this blessing the apostle prays to the “ Father of lights, from whom comes every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17): from Him, and from Him only, comes this grace of illumination. I cannot leave this excellent organ, the eye, till I have showed you two things: (1) The danger of spiritual blindness;(2) The means to cure it. Spiritual blindness shall appear the more perilous, if we compare it with natural. The body’ s eye may be better spared than the soul’ s; as to want the eyes of angels is far worse than to want the eyes of beasts. The want of corporal sight is often good, not evil: evil in the sense, and good in the consequence. He may the better intend heavenly things, that sees no earthly to draw him away. Many a man’ s eye hath done him hurt (Genesis 6:4). Besides, the bodily blind feels and acknowledgeth his want of sight; but the spiritually blind thinks that none have clearer eyes than himself. He that wants corporal eyes blesseth them that see; this man derides and despiseth them (John 9:41). The blind in body is commonly led either by his servant, or his wife, or his dog: there may be yet some respect in these guides. But the blind in soul is led by the world, which should be his servant, is his traitor. Now the means to clear this eye is to get it a knowledge of God, of ourselves. That the eye may be cured, this knowledge must be procured. Now God must be known by His works, His word, and His Spirit. II. We have now done with the organ of seeing, the understanding, or soul’ s eye: let us come to the object to be seen, “ the hope of His calling, and the riches of the glory of God’ s inheritance in the saints.” The object is clear and transparent to a sanctified eye. The philosophers propound six necessary occurrences to our perfect seeing; and you shall see them all here met:--1. Firmness or good disposition of the organ that seeth. A rolling eye beholds nothing perfectly. A Dinah’ s eye is the prologue to a ravished soul. 2. The spectacle must be objected to the sight: the eye cannot pierce into penetralia terrae, or sublimia caeli; nor can the understanding see into these supernatural joys, unless the Lord object them to it. Hence it is that many neglectfully pass by (sine lumine lumen) the light, for want of eyes to regard it. 3. That there be a proportional distance betwixt the organ and the object: neither too near, nor too far off. A bright thing held too near the sight confounds it: be it never so bright, if too far off, it cannot discern it. God hath sweetly ordered and compounded this difference. Those everlasting joys are not close by our eyes, lest the glory should swallow us up; for mortal eyes cannot behold immortal things, nor our corruptible sight see steadfastly that eternal splendour. 4. It is required that the objected matter be substantial; not altogether diaphanous and transparent, but massy, and of a solid being. But this object here proposed is no empty chimera, or imaginary, translucent, airy shadow, but substantial: “ the hope of God’ s calling, and a glorious inheritance” ; which though nature’ s dull eye cannot reach, faith’ s eye sees perfectly. 5. Clearness of space betwixt the organ and the object; for the interposition of some thick and gross body prevents the faculty of the eye. The quickest eye cannot see through hills; and a crass cloud is able to hide the sun from us at noonday. 6. Lastly, the object must be stable and firm, for if it move too swiftly, it dazzleth the eye, and cannot be truly (according to the perfect form of it) beholden. (T. Manton, D. D.)The eyes of the understanding Already, as believers in Christ, we are entitled in Him to all the spiritual blessing and Divine fulness laid up in Him; but for a fuller revelation of Him and of them the apostle prays. If we may use an illustration, it is as if a man were taken during the night to some lofty eminence shrouded in darkness and mystery. Suppose him surrounded on every side by a landscape of surpassing beauty and glory as yet unseen. But presently the morning dawns, the sun arises, the shadows flee away, the mists disperse in all directions, rolling up the mountain side in curling wreaths, and disclosing to the man’ s delighted vision the glories of the inheritance that unfolds itself. Such is the case before the apostle’ s mind. (M. Rainsford. B. A.)The eye open to spiritual things To grow up in the acknowledging of Christ is the way to attain fuller measure of the Spirit in every kind. Everything which respects life or godliness is said to begiven us through the knowledge or acknowledging of Christ. When we first come to know Him as the truth is in Him, we partake according to our measure in His Spirit; when we grow to behold Him as in a mirror or glass, more clearly, we are turned into the same glorious image by the Spirit of the Lord more and more; when we shall see Him and know Him evidently and fully, we shall be as He is. The more we know Him, the more fully He dwells in us, the more we enjoy the influence of His Spirit; even as this bodily sun, the nearer it approaches to us, the more we have the light and heat of it.1. They whose spiritual sight is restored, have need still to depend upon God, that their eyes may be more and more enlightened by Him. As it is with bodily sicknesses, when we recover from them, health comes not all at once, but by ounces (as we say): so in spiritual. When God raises us up from our death, we neither are fully sanctified, nor yet fully enlightened; it is with us as with the blind man (Mark 8:24); we see, but confusedly and indistinctly. Now this enlightening comprehends these four things, which we have still need to ask God for. (1) The removal of those things which impede our sight. Mists of ignorance. Clouds of lust. Veils of hardness of heart. (2) The inward light of knowledge augmented in us. (3) The light of revelation. (4) A direction and application of the mind’ s eye, to behold spiritual things. If the natural man and all his faculties move in God, much more the spiritual. God is said to make the eye seeing, and the ear hearing; i.e., not only to create them, but govern and apply them to what they do; otherwise we might be like Hagar, not seeing that which was before our eyes. Even as it is not so much the eye that sees, as the soul in and by the eye, whence it is that if the mind be abstracted in serious thought, men see not that which is before them; so it is not so much the eye of our understanding, as the Spirit of Christ, which is the soul of all the Body Mystical, which causes sight in us. 2. Even true believers know not at first, in any measure, those hopes which are kept in heaven for them. (1) The reason why these hopes are not fully known is partly because of their excellence, and the abundant light which is in them. (2) The weak sight of younglings in Christianity, is not proportioned and fitted as yet to so high an object as this. Bring the light of a candle near to the natural babe, and it cannot endure to look up against it. (3) Even as children are so taken up with their childish affairs, that they cannot bring themselves to the serious consideration of more important matters; so believers are long so carnally affected that they cannot set themselves steadily to this contemplation. (4) As those possessed of valuable earthly goods are surrounded by crafty companions who will keep them from knowing the value of things belonging to them; so the devil tries hard to keep us hoodwinked this way. 3. There is no grounded hope, but of such things as God has called us to obtain. (1) This calling is such a revealing of His grace within our heart, as makes us come to Him and follow Him for the obtaining of life through Christ. (2) To those called, God reveals His will. We may know that we are called if our hearts answer God, and our wills respond to the indications of His will. 4. The inheritance kept for us is abundantly glorious. We are passing through this vale of misery to an excellent eternal weight of glory. Let this draw up our hearts. Riches and glory, what do they not with mortal men? But, alas, these worldly riches and glorious dignities are but pictures, not having the substance of what they show for. Men will sue upon their knees to recover small inheritances on earth. While time lasts, seek this inheritance. Let us think what a heart break it is to a man when he finds that by some default he has forfeited some earthly matters which he might have held had he been wary; but what a grief and confusion will this cause, when men shall see that through carelessness they have lost an everlasting inheritance of glory which they might have attained. There is but one life between us and possession; why should we be so negligent as we are? 5. It is to the saints that this inheritance belongs--those who are not only cleansed from the guilt of dead works, but by the Spirit of Christ renewed to true holiness. (1) See how those deceive themselves who expect to be saved, but love not holiness; who love to live after their ignorance and lusts, and mock at men who will not run to the same excess of riot that they do. Know this, that just as wise men will not leave their substance to the children of an adulteress, so God will never give thee the inheritance of glory while thou continuest a child of this world, loving nothing so much as its pleasures, pomps, and profits. (2) Labour for holiness. True holiness is not a good nature, nor moral justice, nor external profession of religion so far as fits in with our own will. No; where we first renounce our will, there we first begin to be holy. We must strike at the root, by getting purged of sin, and seeking all things from God. (Paul Bayne.)The seat of the spiritual eye I see there is a rendering of the text which runs thus, “ The eyes of your heart being enlightened,” and it strikes me that this version has about it the appearance of being the correct one, because Divine things are usually better seen by the heart than by the understanding. There are a thousand things which God has revealed which we shall never understand, and yet we can know them by a loving, trustful experience. Our Saviour says, “ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The purifying of the heart is the enlightening of the spiritual eye. Strange as it may seem, the true eye of the renewed man is seated rather in the heart than in the head: holy affections enable us to see, and as far as possible to understand Divine things. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Universal need of enlightenment This prayer was offered for Christians. He who sees most needs to have his eyes enlightened to see more, for how little as yet of the glory of God have any of us beheld! Even that favoured pilgrim who has been led by the shepherds to the top of Mount Clear, to stand there with telescopic glass and gaze into the glories of Immanuel’ s land, has yet only commenced to perceive the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. I pray God that if we do already see, we may see more, until our eye shall be so strengthened that the light of the New Jerusalem shall not be too strong for us, but amid the splendour of God which outshines the sun we shall find ourselves at home. But if believers need to have their eyes enlightened, how much more must those who are unconverted. They are altogether blinded, and consequently their need of enlightenment is far greater. They were born blind, and the god of this world takes care yet further to darken their minds. Around them there broods a sevenfold midnight, the gloom of spiritual death. “ They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night.” O blind eye, may Jesus touch thee! (C. H. Spurgeon.)The eyes of understanding Myra used to be entertained by her grandfather, who likened her to a fresh bud, that would soon burst into a flower, and himself to a faded leaf, which was almost ready to fall from the tree. One day, after Myra had taken a pleasant walk with her grandfather, she sat down with her mother, and then they talked together in the following manner: “ I wish I had grandfather’ s eyes, mother! What can you possibly want with the eyes of your grandfather, Myra?” “ Oh, if I had his eyes I should see all that he sees when we are walking together; but now I cannot see half as much as he does.” --“ How is that, when you are young and he is old. He often says that his sight is not what it used to be; and though the Bible is in large print, he is obliged to use spectacles.” “ Yes, mother, but for all that he can see more than I can.” “ Tell me what you mean, my child, for I do not understand you.” “ Why, when we walk out in the fields and lanes, let us look at what we will, he says he sees the goodness of God in everything.” “ Ah, Myra! it’ s not grandfather’ s eyes, but grandfather’ s faith that you want. Pray to God to open the eyes of your understanding, to give you a heart to love and trust Him, and you will then see Him, not only in all the works of His hand, but in all the events of life.” Spiritual enlightenment “ I remember once being present,” says Captain Basil Hall, “ at a meeting of the Geological Society, when a bottle was produced which was said to contain certain zoophytes (delicate water animals, having the form of plants). It was handed round in the first instance among the initiated on the foremost benches, who commented freely with one another on the forms of the animals in the fluid: but when it came to our hands, we could discover nothing in the bottle but the most limpid fluid, without any trace, so far as our eyes could make out, of animals dead or alive, the whole appearing absolutely transparent. The surprise of the ignorant at seeing nothing was only equal to that of the learned, who saw so much to admire. Nor was it till we were specifically instructed what it was we were to look for, and the shape, size, and general aspect of the zoophytes pointed out, that our understandings began to cooperate with our eyesight in peopling the fluid, which, up to that moment, had seemed perfectly uninhabited. The wonder then was, how we could possibly have omitted seeing objects now so palpable.” How many are the things which appear to the illuminated Christian to be palpably revealed, which the unconverted cannot discover to have any place at all in the Scriptures of Truth; and how very much surprised does he feel, that he could ever have at any former time overlooked them! (F. F. Trench.)What is the hope of His calling.--The hope of His calling Dwell for a moment on--1. The ground of this hope. His calling! May He not do as He will with His own? 2. The grace of this hope. “ The God of all grace has called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 5:10). When the Lord Jesus Christ “ called blind Bartimeus” (Matthew 20:32), He also “ commanded him to be called” (Mark 10:29); and He further commanded him to be brought unto Him (Luke 18:40). And thus it was with our apostle himself. “ It pleased God, who separated me from my mother’ s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me” (Galatians 1:15). 3. The objects of this hope. “ Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified” (Romans 8:29-30). 4. The subject of this hope. “ Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Colossians 1:27-28). (M. Rainsford, B. A.)The hope of His calling This may be taken either in the sense of the hope which God inspires into the hearts of His people, by the Spirit; or it may be taken for the object of hope. In either case it is scriptural, and might be suitable in this passage; the first includes the second, for when that hope which the Spirit inspires is given to the heart, the “ hope laid up for it in heaven” is the object of its anticipation. I therefore take this as being the fullest sense: as the hope to which He calls His people, that is the hope which those who are called by the Lord are privileged to possess and enjoy. God works in the mind, through the medium of its natural feelings. Hope is the great, animating principle of all human conduct. Hope is the expectation of a good to be attained, founded on a belief that we can attain it. I. The nature of God’ s calling.1. It is a calling to peace (Colossians 3:15). 2. Through peace to hope. Called to inherit a blessing, and so to hope for the inheritance (1 Peter 3:9). 3. It is a sure calling. Those who are called by the Spirit of God are never left to perish. II. What is the hope founded upon this?1. It is a hope that springs from faith. Founded on the belief of the truth--the only sure foundation. 2. A sober hope, drawn from the source of God’ s truth. The hope of the gospel. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)The three whats I. What is to seen and known according to the text? Three “ whats.”1. What is the hope of His calling? Brethren, let me describe the hope of those of us who have come out to walk by faith in Christ Jesus. We have already obtained enough abundantly to reward us for obedience to the call, and even if nothing were shut up in the closed hand of Hope, her open hand has greatly enriched us. Christian man, you have in possession already the forgiveness of your sin, acceptance in Christ, adoption into the Divine family, and the nature, rank, and rights of a child of God. Still our main possession lies in hope. We carry a bag of spending money in our hands, but the bulk of our wealth is deposited in the Bank of Hope. What then is the Christian’ s hope? (1) He hopes and believes that he shall be under Divine protection forever and ever, that he shall be the object of Divine love time out of mind, and when time shall be no more. He expects a stormy voyage, but because Christ is at the helm he hopes to come to the fair havens at the last. Sustained by this hope he dreads no labours and fears no difficulties. (2) We hope also, and have good ground for it, that after death at the day of judgment we shall have, as we believe we have now, a perfect justification. (3) We hope also for absolute perfection. The God who has changed our hearts will continue the good work of sanctification till He has taken every sin out of us, every desire for sin, every possibility of sin. (4) We hope also that this body of ours will be perfected. Raised--changed, but still the same as to identity. Perpetual youth. (5) We hope that being thus cleared in judgment and made thus absolutely perfect, we shall forever enjoy infinite happiness. We do not know what form the joys of eternity will take, but they will take such form as shall make us the most happy. (6) Nor even now have we come to an end, for something more yet remains. You say, “ Can more be?” Yes, we expect forever to be in a condition of power, and honour, and relationship to God. This is the hope of our calling. 2. What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints? (1) He has spent riches of love upon them, for He loves them, poor as they are, and sick and sorry as they often are. (2) Moreover, the Lord has spent a wealth of wisdom on His saints. This enhances their value in His eyes. (3) He has expended a life of suffering upon them. (4) There comes great glory to God from the workmanship which He puts into His people. An artisan can put into a small piece of iron, of no worth at all, so much labour that it shall be valued at scores of pounds, and the Triune God can expend so much workmanship upon our poor nature that a man shall be more precious than the gold of Ophir. Valued thus, the Lord may well speak of “ the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” 3. What is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe? Now, learn ye this and know it--that in the conversion, preservation, and salvation of any one person God exhibits as great power as He manifested when He raised Jesus Christ from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places. The salvation of no man in the world is by his own strength. It is by the power of God, “ for we are His workmanship.” II. Why we wish you to see and know all this.1. That you may not neglect it, nor set anything in competition with it. 2. That you may see where your hope lies. Not in being your own any more, but in being the Lord’ s. If you are His, He will take care of you. 3. That you may not doubt, or despond, or despair, but cast yourselves before the incarnate God, and let Him save you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Spiritual enlightenment 1. The source of spiritual enlightenment is God. 2. The agency is that of the Holy Spirit. 3. The end sought is the owning of the glory of God. For the marginal reading seems preferable here. “ For the acknowledgment” of God, that in this whole matter He may be known, owned, glorified, is this prayer for the enlightenment of His people offered. But now, what is it that in terms of this apostolic prayer we are thus to know? Three things are specified, embracing three aspects of the religious life. I. “What is the hope of His calling.” The hopefulness of God’ s calling; what hope there is in it; how full of hope it is.1. Consider who it is who calls, and in what character. God, in the character of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory; the God who gives grace and glory. 2. Consider who are called. Men; all men, such as they are. 3. Consider the nature of this calling. (1) The calling of God is hopeful; there is hope in it for sinners, because it is on the one hand absolutely free, and on the other hand peremptorily sovereign and commanding. (2) The calling of God is hopeful, because it is on the one hand earnest, in the way of persuasion; and on the other hand effectual, as implying a Divine work of renewal in the will within, (3) The calling of God is hopeful, because it is, on the one hand righteous, and on the other hand holy: righteous, as proceeding upon provision made for the righteousness of God, the righteousness of His character and government being maintained without compromise; holy, as making provision for our becoming personally righteous--upright, pure, holy. 4. There is hope in this calling of God; as being on the one hand sure on His part, and on the other hand capable of being made sure on our part. II. “What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance is the saints” ; its rich glory; its glorious richness. God takes us to be His inheritance. III. “ And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.” That is the third thing to be known. And here the apostle gives us a measure. It is “ according to the working,” etc. It is a measure of amazing compass. It is nothing short of this, that you who believe may rely and reckon upon the power of God as available on your behalf, to the full extent of its exercise on behalf of Christ; in His victory over death, His resurrection to life, His ascension to the right hand of God, and His investiture with dominion over all. Application:1. The knowledge for which Paul prays is altogether Divine; coming from a Divine source, through a Divine agency, for a Divine end. It is meant to be a knowledge both assured and assuring. But it cannot be so unless these conditions of it are duly observed. 2. The highest point in this threefold knowledge of God is the centre, and that implies your being His saints, His holy ones. It must be as His holy ones that you reach and realize the knowledge of the riches of the glory of His inheritance in you. Let no false humility come in here. 3. The exceeding greatness of God’ s power is put forth in your exercising faith: it is “ to usward who believe.” (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)What the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.--God’ s inheritance in His saints Among men there is possession and inheritance, in beings as in things. The husband has a portion in his wife, and parents have a portion in their children. “ Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord.” And, according to the text, God has His inheritance in the saints. He who is the first cause of all things owns all things, and all things are His inheritance, and as part of this vast possession, living beings are God’ s peculiar treasure. That God has an inheritance in the things which He has made, is a fact asserted sometimes by Himself (Psalms 50:10-12; Psalms 127:3; Exodus 19:5; Haggai 2:8; Job 41:11, etc.) The redeemed of mankind--men, women, children--are God’ s estate, His riches, His wealth.1. God’ s inheritance in the saints is possession of the highest kind. That which lives is superior to that which is inanimate. That which is moral and religious in its constitution is superior to that which is without moral sensibility. And the highest and best beings are they which are most like to God, possessing His image and wearing His likeness. God’ s inheritance in the worlds upon worlds which He has made is inferior to His inheritance in the saints. 2. God’ s inheritance in the saints is His own original possession. It is underived from any ancestor. He never was heir to it; He holds it in no succession. The saints are His from the beginning, and His alone. 3. While the saints are God’ s inheritance naturally, He has a second or double title to the possession (Exodus 15:16; Psalms 74:2; Ephesians 1:14; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, etc.). The sick child lifted up from the gates of death is a special inheritance to the mother who has fondly nursed it. The prodigal son restored to his father is a special inheritance to the parent, whose life was a blank until the lost one was found. A forgiven transgressor, an ungodly man justified, a bad man regenerated, a man in a second sense God’ s child, is His peculiar treasure. 4. This inheritance, looked at from the God side and from the heaven side, is a rich and glorious inheritance. Considered from the human and earthly side, the possession is very poor. What can we see in ourselves that can make God rich? But God considers Himself rich and exalted and renowned, in being able to say of His saints, “ They are mine.” The state of God’ s heart toward His inheritance makes it appear to Himself as rich and glorious. We have seen that God has a rich and glorious inheritance in the saints. Upon this fact we proceed to make a few practical observations.1. If God have a rich and glorious inheritance in the saints, He will claim it. He will not leave it alone, as though it did not belong to Him, or as though it were worthless. And God does claim it. He claims it by the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking in the hearts of the saints. He claims it by the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. He claims His inheritance by His work upon it. He claims it by His providence over it. He claims it by His conduct, when this inheritance is defiled or given to another. He claims it by frequently reminding His saints that they are not their own. 2. If God have a rich and glorious inheritance in His saints, He will take care of His possession. All the looking to and attention and regard and oversight, which it requires for its safety and prosperity, cannot but be bestowed. And this care will partake of all the qualities of His own nature. It will be independent care, almighty care, righteous care, loving care, sufficient care, perfect care. 3. If God have a rich and glorious inheritance in His saints, He will make use of that inheritance. The little in God’ s hand shall produce more, and the more much, and the much a greater abundance. Christians are not senseless ornaments in God’ s house, but servants. 4. If God have a rich and glorious inheritance in His saints, He must take pleasure in it. Although this delight may be disturbed by sin and by sorrow, without doubt it exists with no variableness or the shadow of turning. 5. If God have a rich and glorious inheritance in His saints, He will not forsake it. His natural and His special title to it, His having claimed it, His use of it, and care for it, and delight in it, are all so many reasons for retaining it. And He has the capacity and ability to retain it. The inheritance which husbands and wives have in each other, is an inheritance which by reason of death fades away. The inheritance which parents have in children, is one which by reason of death in some cases, of removal from home in other cases, and of other circumstances, either partially or entirely fades away. But in this case the heritor lives, and the inheritance itself is everlasting. And while He lives He changes not. 6. If God have a rich and glorious inheritance in His saints, and if He claim His inheritance, care for it, make use of it, and take pleasure in it, and if He will not forsake it, the saints themselves should think and feel and speak and act and live in harmony with this position. They who come suddenly into a fortune, or rise unexpectedly to a high social position, do not at first see and understand all that is required of them. And thus the appreciation of their position by the saints is a gradual experience. 7. If God have His inheritance in the saints, we ought to esteem it highly, and to cherish a living and loving care for it. Christians should care for themselves, because they are not their own, and should care for themselves for God’ s sake. To defile or degrade or debase themselves, or to waste their energies, is to defile and debase and waste the inheritance of God. What motives are here to the cherishing of purity and righteousness and Christ-likeness! And how careful should saints be of each other! (S. Martin, D. D.)God’ s inheritance Our inheritance in God is Christ, life, righteousness, peace, fulness, acceptance, Fatherhood, grace, and glory! But what can we say of His inheritance in us? Only this. That it is by His saints God intends to make known to principalities and powers in heavenly places His manifold wisdom, tenderness, long suffering, patience, and the boundless and inexhaustible abundance of His mercies and pardoning love. For even as this dark world needs the sun, so doth the sun need a world such as ours to shine upon, else his fulness of light and quickening, gladdening power would be unrevealed. And as the fulness of the earth sets forth the beauty and resources of the sun, so shall His vessels of mercy and His monuments of grace set forth the glory of our God. You may remember God speaks of His people as His “ garden.” The figure is very instructive and very beautiful. What our gardens are to the sun, God’ s children are to Him. As each flower attracts and absorbs the sun’ s rays, receiving and reflecting his light and heat, and giving forth fragrance and fruit according to its nature, absorbing some rays and reflecting others, but all together setting forth in a variety of tints and shades, and fragrance and fruit, the infinite fulness and beauty of the light in which they dwell,--even so it shall be by and by when “ the Sun of Righteousness arises on us with healing in His wings.” Each saint shall reflect some blessed aspect of His fulness of grace and glory. One shall set forth His patience, another His tenderness, another His faithfulness, another His strength, another His fulness, another His fruitfulness, another His loving kindness and tender mercies, but all together shall show forth the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His marvellous light. (M. Rainsford, B. A.) Ephesians 1:19-20 And what the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.The mighty power which creates and sustains faith 1. Be it never forgotten by us that the salvation of a soul is a creation. Now, no man has ever been able to create a fly, nor even a single molecule of matter. No human or angelic power can intrude upon this glorious province of Divine power. Creation is God’ s own domain. Now, in every Christian there is an absolute creation. “ Created anew in Christ Jesus.” 2. In the regeneration of every soul there is a destruction as well as a creation. The old man has to be destroyed. 3. The work of salvation is most truly a transformation. “ Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” You who have been made anew in Christ Jesus, know in your own hearts how great that transformation is. 4. Remember, too, as if this were not enough, that the conversion of a soul is constantly compared to quickening--the quickening of the dead. How great the miracle when the dry bones in Ezekiel’ s vision suddenly became a great army! I. Consider the analogy which the apostle here points out. You have to conceive of the power by which the dead body of Christ is brought to all that preeminence of honour, and then to remember that just such power is seen in you if you are a believer.1. In examining the wonderful picture before us, we begin with Christ in the grave, by noticing that it was in Christ’ s case a real death. So with us; by nature we are really dead. Our heart is dead in trespasses and sins. 2. Among the dead. Our outward life was just like that of other ungodly men. 3. A heavenly messenger comes. There is a Divine mandate for our resurrection, as much as for that of Jesus Christ. 4. There came with that messenger a mysterious life. 5. An earthquake. 6. The stone being removed, forth came the Saviour. He was free; raised up no more to die; He stood erect, beheld by His followers, who, alas I did not know Him. And even so we, when the Divine life has come, and the Divine energy has burst our tomb, come forth to a new life. 7. In the resurrection of Christ, as in our salvation, there was put forth nothing short of a Divine power. It was not angelic or arch-angelic, much less was it human. It is not the ministry, it is not the Word preached, nor the Word heard in itself; all the power proceeds from the Holy Ghost. 8. Observe again, that this power was irresistible. All the soldiers and the high priests could not keep the body of Christ in the tomb. Irresistible is the power put forth, too, in the Christian. No sin, no corruption, no temptation, no devils in hell, nor sinners upon earth, can never stay the hand of God’ s grace when it intends to convert a man. 9. Observe, too, that the power which raised Christ from the dead was glorious reflected great honour upon God and brought, great dismay upon the hosts of evil. So there is great glory to God in the conversion of every sinner. 10. Lastly, it was everlasting power. “ Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.” So we, being raised from the dead, go not back to our dead works nor to our old corruptions, but we live unto God. The parallel will hold in every point, however minute. “ Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” We have only proceeded so far as to see Christ raised from the dead; but the power exhibited in the Christian goes further than this--it goes onward to the ascension.1. If you will carefully read the story of the ascension, you will notice first that Christ’ s ascension was contrary to nature. How should the body of a man without any means be borne upward into the air? “ While He blessed them He was taken out of their sight.” So the Christian’ s rising above the world, his breathing another atmosphere, is clean contrary to nature. 2. You will observe again, that the disciples could not long see the rising Saviour. “ A cloud received Him out of their sight.” So in our case, too, if we rise as we should rise, if the Spirit of God worketh in us all the good pleasure of His will, men will soon lose sight of us. They will not understand us; they will be certain to run hither and thither, wondering at this and marvelling at that; they will call us mad, fanatical, wild and enthusiastic, and I know not what. 3. Jesus Christ continued to ascend by that same Divine power, until He had reached the seat of heaven above; He was gone, really gone from earth altogether. Such is the Christian’ s life. He continues to ascend, the Lord makes him dead to the world, and the carnal multitude know him no more. 4. See, beloved, we have stretched our compass somewhat wide now, when we say that there is as much Divine power seen in raising the Christian above the world, as in raising Christ from the grave into heaven. But that is not all. When the Master had come to heaven, we are told in the text that He was made to sit down at the right hand of God. Sitting at the right hand implies honour, pleasure, and power. Conceive the change!--from depths of reproach to heights of glory; from fearful deeps of sorrow to glorious summits of bliss; from weakness, shame, and suffering, to strength, majesty, dominion, glory. Such is the change in the Christian too. 5. Complete triumph. “ Far above all principalities and powers.” As Christ, so Christ’ s, for we are in Him. 6. You will not fail to observe that He has also universal dominion. Follow the passage--“ And hath put all things under His feet.” And so hath the Lord put all things under His people’ s feet. Their sins and corruptions, their sorrows and afflictions, this world and the world to come, are all made subject unto us, when He makes us kings and priests, that we may reign forever. II. Now we must note, in the second place, the reason of this. Why does God put forth as much power towards every Christian as He did in His beloved Son? Well, my brethren, I believe the reason is not only that the same power was required, and that by this means He getteth great glory, but the reason is this--union. It lays in the word--union. There must be the same Divine power in the member that there is in the head, or else where is the union? If we are one with Christ, members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, there must be a likeness.1. Note, first, that there cannot be a body at all--I mean not a true living body--unless the members are of the same nature as the head. If you could conceive a human head joined to bestial limbs, you would at once understand that you were not looking upon a natural body. If here were a dog’ s foot, and there a lion’ s mane, and yet a man’ s eyes and a human brow, you could never conceive of it as a body of God’ s creation; you would look upon it as a strange monstrosity, a tiring to be put out of sight, or to be shown for fools to gaze at as a nine-days’ wonder; but certainly not as a thing to display Divine wisdom and power. A body of God’ s making will be of the same material all the way through. 2. If all the members were not like the head and did not display the same power it would not be glorious to God. Some of the old tapestries were made at different times and in different pieces, and occasionally the remark is heard, “ That part of the battle scene must have been wrought by a different needle from the other. You can see here an abundance, and there a deficiency of skill; that corner of the picture has been executed by a far inferior hand.” Now, suppose in this great tapestry which God is working--the great needlework of His love and power--the mystical person of Christ--that we should say, “ The head has been wrought, we can see, by a Divine hand; that glorious brow, those fire-darting eyes, those honey-dropping lips, are of God, but that hand is by another and an inferior artist, and that foot is far from perfect in workmanship.” Why, it would not be glorious to our Great Artist; but when the whole picture is by Himself we see that He did not begin what He could not finish, and that He has not inserted a single thread of inferior value. 3. Note again, that it would not be glorious to our Head. I saw the other day a cathedral window in the process of being filled with the richest stained glass. Methinks the great person of Christ may be compared to that great cathedral window. The artists had put in the head of the chief figure in the most beautiful glass that ever human skill could make, or human gold could purchase; I have not seen it since, but imagine for an instant that the workers afterwards found that their money failed them, and they were obliged to fill in the panes with common glass. There is the window, there is nothing but a head in noble colours, and the rest is, perhaps, white glass, or some poor ordinary blue and yellow. It is never finished. What an unhappy thing, for who will care to see the head? It has lost its fulness. There is the head, but it is strangely circumstanced. If you complete it with anything inferior, you mar and spoil it; it is the head of an imperfect piece of workmanship. But, dear friends, when all the rest of the picture shall have been wrought out with just the same costly material as the first part, then the head itself shall be placed in a worthy position, and shall derive glory from as well as confer glory upon the body. Ye can read this parable without an interpreter. 4. I must add, that if anything, the power manifested in the member should be greater than that manifested in the head--if anything, it should be greater. A marble palace is to be built. Well, now, if they build (and oh, how many people do this kind of thing in their houses) the front with costly stone, and then erect the back with common stock bricks; if the pinnacles be made to soar with rich Carrara to the skies, and then down in the walls common stone is seen, everybody says, “ This was done to save money.” But if the whole structure throughout, from top to bottom, is of the same kind, then it reflects much honour upon the great builder, and declares the wealth which he was able to expend upon the structure. But suppose that some of the blocks of marble used in the foundation have lain in a very dark quarry, and have been subject to damaging influences, so that they have lost their gloss and polish, then surely they will want more polishing, more workmanship, to make them look like that bright cornerstone, that noble pinnacle which is brought out with shoutings. Christ Jesus was in His nature fit, without any preparing, to be a part of the great temple of God. We in our nature were unfit; and so, if anything, the power should be greater; but we are constrained to rejoice that we find in Scripture that it is just the same power which lifted the man Christ Jesus to the throne of God, which now shall lift each one of us to live and reign with Him. Moreover, to conclude this point, the loving promise of our Lord will never be fulfilled (and He will never be contented unless it be), unless His people do have the same power spent upon them as He has. III. Inferences.1. What a marvellous thing a Christian is. 2. Why should I doubt God’ s power for others? If He has put forth so much power to save me, cannot He save anyone? 3. Why should I ever have any doubts about my ultimate security? Is this irresistible power engaged to save me? Then I must be saved. 4. How doleful the state of those who are not converted. But God may have pity on you yet. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Resurrection power I. The prerogative of God. Originally the possession of God the Father, then conferred on the Son of God. It was through “ the eternal Spirit” Christ offered Himself, and by the Spirit He was quickened (Hebrews 9:14; 1 Peter 3:18). II. Exercised chiefly in the case of the Son of God.1. In restoring life.2. In exalting life to higher conditions and more spiritual states.3. In glorifying the human nature.4. In bestowing universal power and authority. III. Extended to believers.1. This suggests the greatness of the work requiring to be accomplished with regard to them. (1) Already accomplished.(2) Still to be completed. 2. It increases their faith. By the revelation of the vastness of the power that is being put forth; by the light cast upon their own experience; and by the pledge it affords of God’ s faithfulness. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The glorious analogy of spiritual life in believers The universality and power of the gospel are grandly reflected in this Epistle--like Bunyan’ s “ Pilgrim’ s Progress,” the outcome of solitary meditation in a cell. So the simplest disciple is the germ of all The gospel is magnified, and the believer encouraged by this demonstration of the mighty power of God in resurrection, because His spiritual life is-- I. Caused by the Risen One.1. Originated.2. Sustained. II. Itself a manifestation of the same power. The new life is a resurrection from spiritual death. III. Interpreted and ennobled by its fellowship with Christ in His resurrection. The latter was the greatest miracle of time. It transcended all the antecedent phenomena of nature and human history, and even the mightiest works of Christ’ s life, previous to His crucifixion, are that--1. Greater forces were opposed. 2. The question at stake was infinitely greater. 3. The Risen One was to have power to quicken others. 4. He was raised through and into “ the power of an endless life.” (1) The forces of regeneration might have been entirely hidden. Many of the greatest factors of nature and history are thus hidden. The kingdom of God as a whole and essentially is hidden. And believers are conscious of innumerable hidden influences and visitations of Divine grace. (2) But God for wise ends has revealed them. (a) To help us to a true estimate of the spiritual life--of all that it has involved in order to its creation and continuance, and of its character as a communion with “ the things that are above” (Colossians 3:1-2). (b) To encourage us. We are not alone. The weakest saint is sustained by this “ mighty power.” Fellowship with Christ reveals a glorious destiny. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Those who think it easy to believe are destitute of saving faith I. The difficulty of believing. That which requires the greatest power and strength to effect it, is no easy thing. But believing requires the greatest power to effect it. Therefore it is no easy thing to believe. I prove the assumption; namely, that the greatest power in heaven and earth is required to raise up faith in us.1. Because faith deals with the power of God only about those things which it believes. Bears itself up upon that; and when God is about to persuade a sinner to believe His free grace, He first convinces him of His power, that He is able to perform His promises. (1) God asserts His power. He declares Himself to be an Almighty God. So to Abraham (Genesis 17:1); and in the New Testament He often asserts His power, that all things are possible to Him. (2) God doth exert and put forth His power in some visible exemplification of it, that fully demonstrates His omnipotency, and can signify nothing less. Such an instance we have in the text, in the resurrection of Christ. This overt act speaks out His infinite power; it is matter of fact, and cannot be denied. (3) God gives the saints some feeling and experience of the exceeding greatness of His power put forth in their own souls, by working faith in them. 2. Because no natural principle in man can take in the objects of faith. Flesh and blood cannot reveal them to us. Faith is an act above reason. 3. That which makes believing so difficult, is the seeming contradictory acts of faith. It seems not to consist with itself. Here I take faith more generally, as it has for its object the whole Word of God, the law and the gospel. The special object of faith, as saving, is the promise; saving faith seeks life, which is not to be found in commandments and threats, but in a promise of mercy. Faith, acting upon the whole Word of God, seems to contradict itself; for faith believes, a sinner is to die according to the law, and that he shall live according to the gospel. Faith has the Word of God for both, both for the death and life of a sinner; and both are true. The law must be executed, and the promise must be performed; but how to reconcile this is not so obvious and easy to every one. “ Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid” (Galatians 3:21). It is impossible both should be accomplished in the person of a sinner; he cannot die eternally, and live eternally; yet both are wonderfully brought about by Jesus Christ, according to the manifold wisdom of God, without any derogation to His law and justice. 4. The reigning unbelief that is among the generality of men. So it was in our Saviour’ s time: the Jews, who had been the only professors of the true religion for many ages, in opposition to all idolatry and false worship--they stumble at the gospel; the Greeks, who were the more learned sort of the heathen world--they counted it “ foolishness.” 5. The notorious apostasy of many professors this day, who have made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience (1 Timothy 1:19), may convince you all that it is no easy matter to believe; so to believe as to persevere in the faith. 6. Believers themselves find it a difficult matter to act their faith. If their lives lie upon it, they cannot act it at their pleasure, without the special aid and assistance of the Spirit. It is God [that] must “ work in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). II. The reason why many professors count it an easy thing to believe. The main reason is this, and I will insist upon no other; namely, because they mistake a formal profession of faith for real believing. A formal profession is general; takes up religion in gross, but is not concerned in any one point of it. But real believing is particular; brings down every gospel truth to ourselves, shows us our concernment in it. III. They who count it an easy matter to believe, are destitute of saving faith. I prove it thus--1. They who have never found any conflict in themselves about believing, are destitute of saving faith: but they who count it an easy matter to believe, have never found any conflict in themselves about believing: if faith did not act in opposition to carnal reason, and carry it against all the strong reasonings of the flesh to the contrary, supernatural truths would never enter, never be admitted, never find acceptance in the soul; we should never be brought over to assent to them, so as to make them the sure ground of our trust and confidence in God. Bat faith captivates all rebellious thoughts that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5), as if they could disprove all that the gospel says; but the demonstrations of the Spirit are with that power, that we cannot resist them. 2. They who were never convinced of the sinfulness of sin, and of the dreadfulness of God’ s wrath against sinners, are destitute of saving faith: but they who count it an easy matter, etc. I do not mean that all must pass under the like terrors of conscience: some have a more easy passage from a state of nature to grace, from death to life, from terror to comfort; they may sooner get over their fears, and attain to peace, than others may. 3. Those who have never been tempted to unbelief, are destitute of saving faith: but those who count it an easy matter to believe, were never sensible of any temptation to unbelief. No man ever got over temptation to unbelief without difficulty. Unbelief has much to say for itself; and it will be sure to say all it can to hinder the soul from closing in with Christ. 4. He who is not much in prayer, much in the use of all means to increase and strengthen his faith is destitute of saving faith. But he who counts it an easy matter to believe takes no pains this way, but thinks he can believe at any time. Then thou canst do that which flesh and blood never did, that no mortal man ever did in his own strength. 5. He who does not look upon a life of faith to be a careful, studious, laborious life, is destitute, etc. Faith has new rules, counsels, and methods of living, that a man was never acquainted with before: he meets with many scruples: doubts, and intricate cases, that put him to it, to find out the right way of pleasing God; for that is the great design of faith. (T. Cole, M. A.)The power working in believers The power that is working in them is not a weaker power, nor another power, but the same power, as that which wrought in the crucified and entombed body of our Lord. Paul sends us to that chamber in the rock, for our chief lesson. There lies the mangled and bloodless body. A lance has been thrust through His heart: not a drop of blood remains therein. Watch, and you shall see God’ s own illustration of His power and working in all believers. By nature, we are as sepulchres in which our immortal nature lies in death. Only God can raise us from the dead. Year by year He raises nature from the dead, but He hides His great power under a veil of surprising gentleness. The effects are seen, but we see not the power working. Even so Jesus rose from the dead. There was neither stir nor voice in that tomb. God filled that lifeless form, as the spring warmth fills the trees, swells their buds, and opens them into leaf. Jesus rose as quietly as a flower lifts its head to the dawn. Calmly, and as free from excitement, as one awaking from sleep, He left the sepulchre. The linen that was about His body bore witness to His calm self-possession. A leisurely hand had folded it up. Such is the Godlike way in which death is destroyed by a power greater than death, and the light of immortality kindled in man. Man is saved. The power that moves in the tree, moves in the branches too. “ I am the vine, you are the branches.” His new life warmth is in us. Christ liveth in us. The diffusion of His ascension through our souls is as much a fact as the diffusion of solar rays through the earth. The change which has been wrought in Christ shall be wrought in His members also. (John Pulsford.)The power of God working in believers I. God’ s believing children know not at first at all clearly the great power of God which works in them. As He reveals His wisdom in afflicting us once, twice, and we hear Him not; so He manifests His power again and again, but we are not able to conceive it. By what means may we come to know this power better?1. By seeking to God, who has promised that we shall know Him to the least of us, praying Him to open our eyes, that we may see His glory more clearly. 2. By looking into that double mirror of His Word and His works, through which the light of His glorious power is reflected to us. 3. By observing the experience we have ourselves of this power both working in us and for us. 4. They in whom the power of God works are true believers. The more we are united by faith with God in Christ, the more does His virtue or power work upon us, both in conforming us to Himself, and in doing otherwise what is desirable. (1) What a power is that which so changes men, and makes lambs of lions, chaste and sober of filthy and intemperate, humble of proud--a thing harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. (2) To continue and promote the work of sanctification in us, who are carnal, sold under sin, is a thing no less strange than to keep in fire and make it burn higher and higher in the water. (3) The quickening of us with heavenly desires and holy affections is no small power; neither is it less wonderful than to see iron and lead flying upward, were it no less frequently wrought than the other. (4) What a power is it, that inwardly confirms and strengthens us, so that we are not overcome; yea, that chains up these spirits of darkness, that they cannot disturb and assail us. These things ace daily done in us. Now this power is ready to work in time to come our deliverance from all evils, the further supply of graces which we yet find ourselves to want, the further healing of our sinful natures, and the full redemption of our souls and bodies. 3. It is the effectual working of God’ s Almighty power which brings us to believe. The creating of us anew in Christ is a greater work than giving us our natural being in Adam, and therefore may not be ascribed to any power which is not almighty. This will be more apparent if we consider (1) what state we are in of ourselves; (2) what powers hold us captive, even those strong ones whom none but the Strongest can overcome; (3) to what estate God raises us by believing, even to such an estate as is beyond comparison more excellent than that we received. Conclusion: What a power is that which shakes the hearts of the most secure sinners! It is a strong wind that shakes an oak, but to bring a heart like the jailor’ s to tremble is a matter requiring a mighty power. Again, to give a hand or an eye to one blind or maimed were much; how great then is the power by which the hand and eye of faith are restored? Wherefore, let us look to Him who has thus mightily brought us to believe, that He would finish our faith by the same power. (Paul Bayne.)The greatness of God’ s power Pompey boasted that, with one stamp of his foot, he could rouse all Italy to arms; but God by one word of His mouth, nay, by a wish of His mind alone, can summon the inhabitants of heaven, earth, and the undiscovered worlds, to His aid, or bring new creatures into being to do His will. God’ s power of raising to life If this earth could but have its mantle torn away for a little while, if the green sod could be cut from it, and we could look about six feet deep into its bowels, what a strange world it would seem! What should we see? Bones, carcasses, rottenness, worms and putrifying corruption. And you would say, Can these dry bones live? Can they again start up into being? Yes, “ In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the dead shall be raised.” God speaks--they are alive! See them scattered! bone comes to his bone. See them naked! flesh comes upon them. See them still lifeless. “ Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain!” When the wind of the Holy Spirit comes, they live; and they stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Will there be any longer doubt among men of God’ s power in having raised His own Son from the dead? And not only so, but of having exalted Him to His throne in heaven above? (C. H. Spurgeon.)The resurrection a fact So clear is the evidence of Christ’ s resurrection, that when Gilbert West--a celebrated infidel--selected this subject as the point of attack, sitting down to weigh the evidence and to digest the whole matter, although filled with prejudice, he was so startled with the abundant witness to the truth of this fact, that he expressed himself a convert, and has left as a heritage for coming generations a most valuable treatise, entitled, “ Observations on the Resurrection of Christ.” He laid down certain laws of evidence to begin with, and then went to the matter as though he had been a lawyer examining the pros and cons of any matter in dispute; and this, which is the fundamental doctrine of our faith, seemed to him so exceedingly clear that he renounced his unbelief, and became a professor of Christianity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Resurrection honours Passing by a house a short time since I noticed the intimation, “ This House to Let.” “ How is this? Is the former tenant dead?” I asked. “ Oh no, sir,” said the caretaker; “ he has removed to a larger house in a better situation.” Even thus, as we look upon the clay tenement in which some loved Christian friend has dwelt, we answer, “ No, he is not dead, but removed into the enduring house in ‘ the better country,’ where the ‘ better resurrection’ is, and where eternal life is.” (Henry Varley.)The fact and power of the resurrection Of one lever and power the apostles of Christ speak with enthusiasm. When they touch upon the Resurrection, their words are winged with rapture, and burst into anthems. I. The fact of the resurrection. Compare the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke with that of St. John. It is as nearly as possible correct to say that in the accounts of the risen Lord, St. Matthew mentions Galilee without Jerusalem (after the first appearance), while St. Luke mentions Jerusalem without Galilee. And in this respect St. Matthew is consistent with his purpose from the beginning. St. John, on the other hand, gives us, after his fashion, an idealized picture of the risen Jesus. He selects the appearances which he will relate, and moulds the record so as to show the identity (under glorified conditions) of the “ Word made flesh” before and after the resurrection. That is(1) The identity of the human body which rose from the grave with that which came from the Virgin’ s womb, and hung upon the cross; (2) the identity of the human soul, the permanence of the human sympathy of the risen Lord. And thus in the twentieth anti twenty-first chapters the Saviour is with His own. Not only does He recognize the old faces; He calls them by name--“ Mary,” “ Thomas,” “ Simon, son of Jonas.” They traverse unforgotten places. The same palms are quivering in the air; the same waters are veiled with the hot morning haze, or sleeping under the blazing noon in their golden mountain cup. Think how He speaks--for a short while, indeed, not entirely recognized, but lovingly, like one from a higher sphere, as the eternal Wisdom who can teach them what they need to know. Then those two words after the loaf and the fish are so mysteriously prepared--“ come, dine.” There is no link or particle in His brief sentence to break the hush of awe which mingles the familiarity of the breakfast upon the white beach with the enfolding depths of the presence of God. II. The power of the resurrection.1. Think of that power in increasing and sustaining the Church. In our time the Church seems weak. In one great capital of Europe the Good Friday of the present year saw a hideous revel, a ball of Antichrist, in which masked dancers moved to the strains of the sacred music which is heard in Christian churches. And people ask--why are such blasphemers allowed to live? why are they not struck dead? Ah! He is patient because He is eternal. If we could follow the histories of those revellers to the end, let us be sure that we should find not a few of them bowing before Him. And that for two reasons. First, the soul cannot live without God. A boy who lived in a rude cottage by the sea was once found by a wealthy relative and taken to an inland valley. There he was given a fairer home, and surrounded by every luxury. But he missed something sorely. He missed the morning and evening music of the tumbling tides, and the dewy spray upon his cheeks; and he climbed the highest point of the farthest hill, until far off, with a beating heart and moisture upon his eyelid, he saw a blue speck in the distance, and cried, “ the sea!” And so the human soul misses that eternal, infinite Ocean which we call God. And as the ocean child cries--“ give me the ocean!” so the soul, made for God and restless ever until it finds rest in Him, cries--“ give me God!” Again, of those revellers there are some whom Christ will one day win by His voice. He will lay them on a sick bed. In His loving discipline He will open their hearts with that pierced hand which knows every bolt of the door of the heart. And when they are asked--“ how were you converted?” --they will say that Jesus is not a memory, but a Person; that He lives and works, not as Napoleon or Luther, by the mere influence of a history and of ideas, but by a present living love; and that God has acted upon them “ according to the working of the mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead.” 2. Consider the power of the resurrection in making believers holy. There is one great principle of the spiritual life which is deeply imbedded in the thought of St. Paul, and which pervades the conception of the Church’ s year. All that was done in Christ is mystically repeated in Christ’ s people. 3. Think of the power of the resurrection as regards our hope for the future of our dead. Remember what has been said of the two closing chapters of St. John. 4. Consider, lastly, the bearing of this resurrection power as a principle of conciliation in the national life of Christian nations. What if a nation contains within its womb two races and two manners of people? What if each of those two races has its own hostile tradition and its own thread of history, in whose texture the strands of right and wrong are so strangely intertwined that the subtlest analysis fails to distinguish where one ends and the other begins? “ The muse of history is, after all, not hate, but love.” So wrote a great French philosophic historian more than half a century ago. In this our land there shall yet be two words, not stamped upon stone or metal, upon coin or plinth, but upon the fleshy tables of men’ s hearts, upon remote mountains, in great cities where the voice of thousands, homeless, or barricaded within squalid walls, now rises like the restless hum of bees that have lost their queen. These two words are--“ Pacata Hibernia.” From brother to brother shall come the Easter greeting which came first from the heart of the Risen Christ--“ peace be unto you.” The resurrection of love will be the true resurrection of our nation. (Bp. Wm. Alexander.)The wonderfulness of Christ’ s resurrection How is it that Paul speaks with such a passion of emphasis of “ the working of the strength of God’ s might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” ? The apostle seems struggling with an idea too large for expression. The Divine power manifested in the resurrection of Christ appears to him so immense that he accumulates epithet on epithet to describe it. What is the explanation of the extraordinary strength of the apostle’ s language? The answer is to be found in the unique character of our Lord’ s resurrection. When the daughter of Jairus was brought back to life, she returned to the same life that she had lived before she died; she was a child again in her father’ s home. We know nothing of her later history; but if she lived many years she passed through all the common experiences of the race; she grew up to womanhood; she may have married; she had the ordinary cares and sorrows and joys of womanhood; illness came to her as it came to others, and at last she died a second time and was buried. It was the same with the young man at Nain. He went home with his mother, continued to work at his trade, took once more the place in the common ranks of men which for a few hours had been vacant, lived and died like other men. It was the same with Lazarus. He took up the broken threads of life just where he had left them, and was the same man that he had always been, except that the days of death and the hour in which at the command of Christ he returned to the common paths of men must always have been recalled by him with a certain wonder and awe. But the resurrection of Christ was not a return to the life which death had interrupted. It was the beginning of a new life under altogether new conditions. The resurrection was followed by the ascension. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The sovereignty of the risen Christ Paul attributes to Christ a real and effective sovereignty over all worlds, seen and unseen. He is not merely surrounded with the pomp and circumstance of supreme authority. He does not merely watch, with a perfect sympathy of joy, the infinite activities of the Divine life and the tremendous manifestations of the Divine power, as a son might watch the successive triumphs of his father’ s heroism and his father’ s genius. He Himself is Lord of all. He controls and governs all the immense forces of the material universe, and the more immense and awful forces of the moral and spiritual universe. He, the Christ whom men knew on earth, He--and not another--He who was born at Bethlehem, who was a child in the home of Joseph and Mary at Nazareth, who grew in wisdom and stature, who was tempted, who delivered the sermon on the mount, whose arms enfolded little children, who was betrayed by Judas, who was charged with treason against Caesar and with blasphemy against God, who was scourged, who was crucified--He, and not another, is Lord of all. He is supreme in the Church as well as in the rest of the universe; and the Church is “ His body” in which all the wealth and the energy of His life are revealed, the perfect organ of His will, the very home of His glory. And yet it is not in the Church alone that the power and glory of Christ are manifested. He gives to the whole creation its substantial being; apart from Him it would be a phantom universe; He is the centre and support of universal law; the spring of universal life; the author of all beauty and of all joy and blessedness: He filleth all in all. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) Ephesians 1:20-21 And set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality.The Christian’ s exaltation 1. The same power which raised Christ, raises us. 2. God leaves His dearest children to the depth of misery before He sends relief. (1) This He does to glorify His power, which does not so brightly appear until things are desperate. (2) That we may learn the better to put our trust in Him when reduced to extremities. (3) That He may the more endear His benefits to us, He lets us struggle on long without them. 3. God always sends salvation to His people in due time. There is a double salvation. (1) Staving off evil, so that it cannot come near us or touch us. (2) Keeping us, so that it shall not hold us, much less prevail over us. 4. Glory correspondent to humiliation. (Paul Bayne.)The throne resumed I. The throne of essential and eternal majesty, which from everlasting belonged to Christ. Sovereign of all worlds, ruling in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, swaying the sceptre as a right of His own self-existence, which the Father owned, and which the Holy Ghost taught the apostle to call “ the sceptre of Christ.” Well, then, we are forbidden to find any fault with the manner in which he sways that sceptre. It is a right sceptre. If He sways it to bring a scourge on the land, it is right; if He sways it to bring affliction on any of His people, it is right. If He sways His sceptre to thwart our carnal desires and imaginations, it is right. Now this sceptre of righteousness, this righteous sceptre, which Jesus sways from His high throne eternal in the heavens, set up from everlasting or ever the earth was made, demands righteousness in all the creature performs; and while He bestows and communicates it to all the election of grace, it is so far a sceptre of righteousness that He will execute righteous judgment upon all who live and die haters of His gospel and His truth, and He will extend from the top of His sceptre, as Ahasuerus did to Esther, life, and privilege, and promise, “ Whatsoever ye ask shall be done.” II. Look now at the humiliation to which Christ stooped from His eternal, essential throne. “ Though He was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” yet He “ took not on Him the nature of angels,” much as He loved them, and much as He employed them, but He “ took upon Him the seed of Abraham,” and “ humbled Himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.” Then observe, this stoop of humiliation was for the purpose of establishing His mediatorial kingdom on earth. III. The enthronization resumed. The Father has raised Him up, having suffered the penalty, paid all, done all, conquered all, rescued all the election of grace from the ruin of the Fall. The Father hath raised Him up--not to go through another scene of poverty, persecution, despising, and ridicule, but set Him at His own right hand, as the emblem of power, and that, too, in heavenly places. Then I view my glorious Christ ascended up to where He was before, and exalted up far above all heavens to fill all things, that from His high throne He may manage still all the affairs of His Church, invested with official authority, insisting on the progress and prosperity of His Church, imparting all supplies of grace, even grace for grace, and having engaged, under solemn responsibility, to bring all His redeemed and regenerated family to sit with Him upon His throne. But there are more heavenly places than one. It is given in my text in the plural. I grant the first meaning to be, on the throne of glory in the invisible world, in common with the Father and the Holy Ghost, having all power given to Him in heaven and in earth, that He may give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given Him, viewing Him there enthroned, and never more to quit the throne. Then observe, He is seated at the Father’ s right hand, as well as all these heavenly places, to give of His fulness for the reception of His Church; and therefore the apostle said, “ Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” Glory to His name, that we have liberty to come as often as we feel our grace vessel empty, and have it replenished, crying unto Him, “ More grace, Lord; more grace, Lord!” (J. Irons.)The exaltation of Christ 1. Our Saviour Christ, as man, is taken to have prerogative before every other creature. (1) This being so, what reverence ought we to show Him in all our services about Him whose excellence is so high above every creature. (2) Having one so eminent for our Saviour and Mediator, let us cleave contented to Him, caring to know nothing but Him, accounting all dross that we may be found in Christ. 2. Christ not only as God, but as man also, has power over every creature. (1) What reason have we, then, to subject ourselves to Him. (2) Let this strengthen our confidence that He will subdue for us all our enemies. 3. Christ is crowned with glory at God’ s right hand before and above all things. (1) This should draw up our hearts to heaven, where He now sits in majesty. Should we have some friends highly advanced, though in parts very remote from us, we would long to see them and make a journey to them. (2) This assures us that all we who are Christ’ s shall in due time be brought to heaven where He is. The Head and members must be united (John 17:24). 4. There is a world to come, in which those who are Christ’ s shall reign with Him forever. (1) This should afford comfort to us in the trials and sorrows of this present life. (Paul Bayne.)The triumph and glory of heaven Heaven is a place of complete victory and glorious triumph. This is the battlefield; there is the triumphal procession. This is the land of the sword and the spear; that is the land of the laurel wreath and jewelled crown. This is the land of the garment rolled in blood, and of the dust of the fight; that is the land of the trumpet’ s joyful sound; that is the place of the white robe, and of the shout of conquest. Oh, what a thrill of joy shall shoot through the hearts of all the blessed when their conquests shall be complete in heaven; when death itself, the last of man’ s foes, shall be slain; when Satan shall be dragged captive at the chariot wheels of Christ; when He shall have overthrown sin, and trampled corruption as the mire in the streets; when the great shout of universal victory shall rise from the hearts of all the redeemed. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christ now in heaven Suppose a king’ s son should get out of a besieged prison and leave his wife and children behind, whom he loves as his own soul; would the prince, when arrived at his father’ s palace, please and delight himself with the splendour of the Court, and forget his family in distress. No; but having their cries and groans always in his ears, he should come to his father, and entreat him, as ever he loved him, that he would send all the forces of his kingdom and raise the siege, and save his dear family from perishing. Nor will Christ, though gone up from the world and ascended into glory, forget for a moment His children that are left behind Him militant here on earth. (W. Gurnall.) Ephesians 1:22 And gave Him to be Head over all things to the Church.The kingly office of Christ In this scripture let these four things be seriously regarded.1. The dignity and authority committed to Christ. “ He hath put all things under His feet” ; which implies full, ample, and absolute dominion in Him, and subjection in them over whom He reigns. This power is delegated to Him by the Father: for besides the essential, native, ingenite power and dominion over all, which He hath as God, and is common to every person in the Godhead (Psalms 22:28), there is a mediatory dispensed authority, which is proper to Him as mediator, which He receives as the reward or fruit of His suffering (Philippians 2:8). 2. The subject recipient of this authority, which is Christ, and Christ primarily and only. He is the first receptacle of all authority and power. Whatever authority any creature is clothed with, is but ministerial and derivative, whether it be political or ecclesiastical. Christ is the only Lord (Jude 1:4). The fountain of all power. 3. The object of this authority, the whole creation; “ all things are put under His feet.” He rules from sea to sea, even to the utmost bounds of God’ s creation; “ Thou hast given Him power over all flesh” (John 17:2). All creatures, rational and irrational, animate and inanimate, angels, devils, men, winds, seas, all obey Him. 4. And especially, take notice of the end for which He governs and rules the universal Empire. It is for the Church, i.e., for the advantage, comfort, and salvation of that; chosen remnant He died for. He purchased the Church; and that He might have the highest security that His blood should not be lost, God the Father hath put all things into His hand, to order and dispose all as He pleaseth. For the furtherance of that His design and end, as He bought the persons of some, so the services of all the rest; and that they might effectually serve the end they are designed to, Christ will order them all in a blessed subordination and subserviency thereunto. (J. Flavel.)Christ’ s sovereignty and its administration That Jesus Christ hath a providential influence upon all the affairs of this world, is evident, both from Scripture assertions, and rational observations, made upon the actings of things here below. But my business, in this discourse, is not to prove that there is a providence, which none but atheists deny. I shall choose rather to show by what acts Jesus Christ administers this kingdom, and in what manner; and what use may be made thereof. First, He rules and orders the kingdom of providence, as follows.1. He supports the world and all creatures in it by His power. 2. He permits and suffers the worst of creatures in His dominions to be and act as they do. 3. He powerfully restrains creatures by the bridle of providence, from the commission of those things to which their hearts are propense enough. 4. Jesus Christ limits the creatures in their acting, assigning them their boundaries and lines of liberty; to which they may, but beyond it cannot go. 5. The Lord Jesus providentially protects His people amidst a world of enemies and dangers. 6. He punishes the evil doers, and repays by providence, into their own lap, the mischief they do, or but intend to do, unto them that fear Him. 7. And lastly, He rewards by providence the services done to Him and His people. Out of this treasure of providence God repays oftentimes those that serve Him, and that with a hundredfold reward now in this life (Matthew 19:29). This active, vigilant providence hath its eye upon all the wants, straits, and troubles of the creatures; but especially upon such as religion brings us unto. What huge volumes of experiences might the people of God write upon this subject! Secondly, We shall next inquire how Jesus Christ administers this providential kingdom. And here I must take notice of the means by which, and the manner in which He doth it. The means, or instruments He uses in the governing the providential kingdom (for He is not personally present with us Himself), are either angels or men; the angels are “ ministering creatures sent forth by Him for the good of them that shall be the heirs of salvation” (Hebrews 1:14). Luther tells us they have two offices, to sing above, and watch beneath. These do us many invisible offices of love. They have dear and tender respects and love for the saints. To them, God, as it were, puts forth His children to nurse, and they are tenderly careful of them whilst they live, and bring them home in their arms to their Father when they die. And as angels, so men are the servants of providence; yea, bad men as well as good. Yea, there is not a creature in heaven, earth, or hell, but Jesus Christ can providentially use it, and serve His ends, and promote His designs by it. But whatever the instrument be, Christ uses, of this we may be certain, that His providential working is holy, judicious, sovereign, profound, irresistible, harmonious, and to the saints peculiar.1. It is holy. Though He permits, limits, orders, and overrules many unholy persons and actions, yet He still works like Himself, most holily and purely throughout. 2. Christ’ s providential working is not only most pure and holy, but also most wise and judicious (Ezekiel 1:20), “ The wheels are full of eyes.” They are not moved by a blind impetus, but in deep counsel and wisdom. The most wise providence looks beyond us. It eyes the end, and suits all things thereto, and not to our fond desires. 3. The providence of Christ is most supreme and sovereign. 4. Providence is profound and inscrutable. The judgments of Christ are “ a great deep, and His footsteps are not known” (Psalms 36:6). There are hard texts in the works, as well as in the words of Christ. The wisest heads have been at a loss in interpreting some providences, (Jeremiah 12:1-2; Job 21:7). The angels had the hands of a man under their wings (Ezekiel 1:8), i.e., they wrought secretly and mysteriously. 5. Providence is irresistible in its design and motions; for all providences are but the fulfillings and accomplishments of God’ s immutable decrees (Ephesians 1:11). 6. The providences of Christ are harmonious. 7. The providences of Christ work in a special and peculiar way, for the good of the saints. Inferences:1. See to whom you are beholden for your lives, liberties, comforts, and all that you enjoy in this world. Is it not Christ that orders all for you? He is, indeed, in heaven, out of your sight; but though you see Him not, He sees you, and takes care of all your concerns. When one told Silentiarius of a plot laid to take away his life, he answered, “Si Deus mei curam non habet, quid vivo?” “ If God take no care of me, how do I live? how have I escaped hitherto?” 2. Hath God left the government of the whole world in the hands of Christ, and trusted Him over all? Then do you also leave all your particular concerns in the hands of Christ too, and know that the Infinite Wisdom and Love, which rules the world, manages everything that relates to you. It is in a good hand, and infinitely better than if it were in your own. 3. If Christ be Lord and King over the providential kingdom, and that for the good of His people, let none that are Christ’ s henceforth stand in a slavish fear of creatures. It is a good note that Grotius hath upon my text; it is a marvellous consolation (saith he) that Christ hath so great an empire, and that He governs it for the good of His people, as a head consulting the good of the body. Our Head and Husband, is Lord general of all the hosts of heaven and earth; no creature can move hand or tongue without His leave or order; the power they have is given them from above (John 19:11-12). The serious consideration of this truth will make the feeblest spirit cease trembling, and set it a singing (Psalms 47:7), “ The Lord is King of all the earth, sing ye praises with understanding” : that is, (as some well paraphrase it) every one that hath understanding of this comfortable truth. 4. If the government of the world be in the hands of Christ, then our engaging and entitling of Christ to all our affairs and business, is the true and ready way to their success and prosperity. 5. Lastly, eye Christ in all the events of providence; see His hand in all that befalls you, whether it be evil or good. “ The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein” (Psalms 111:2). (J. Flavel.)Christ Head over all things to the Church I. That the church is the object of preeminence in this world; its prosperity and completeness are the great purposes for which the world exists. The illustrious rank of this institution, the Church, may be judged of when you recollect that--1. The Church is the realization of the highest Divine idea or thought respecting this world. 2. And then, another element in the Church’ s magnificence, arises from the fact that the Church was brought into existence by the most remarkable and interesting means. There was a vast preparation for it, as if to direct the minds of all to this as a nobler work--a creation which stood higher than all the rest. The great design of the Church had existed in the eternal counsels of God, and then when it was to be completed, He sent his only Son into our world, who took upon Him our nature, bled, suffered, agonized, and died, that justice might be satisfied, and sinners return to God. He gave His life for those who were dead in trespasses and sins. Now, dear brethren, if you are to judge of the importance of an end by the means employed for its attainment, then what end can be so noble as this? Surely you must at once perceive that the Church takes a place of preeminence, which nothing can approach and nothing can rival. And then another fact which gives it so much interest is that-- 3. It supplies a special manifestation of the Divine character and perfections. The unswerving rectitude of His government, the infinite purity of His character, the exhaustless fertility of His resources, the infinite wisdom of His mind, the exalted benevolence, the tender pity, the matchless mercy of Ills heart, are all illustrated. His moral attributes shine forth most conspicuously here. Still further, the Church’ s preeminence consists in its being-- 4. The source of the highest and purest blessing to the world. The Church is emphatically “ the light of the world.” It is called “ the salt of the earth.” It soars above everything else. It takes the highest position; and looking down in pity and love on all besides, seeks to raise them to a loftier elevation and to invest them with a holier character. It says to them, “ Come and join us, and in joining us you will be rendered pure and happy for time, and blessed to all eternity.” This being the case, you cannot wonder at another feature in the Church’ s elevation, and that is, that-- 5. It is the object of special Divine love and complacency. II. The subordination of all other things to the church. Christ is “ Head over all things to the Church” evidently implying that these things are under the dominion of Christ for the good of the Church. Hence--1. All things have been and still are working in aid of the Church. 2. The Church should use all things for its own progress and advantage. All inferior things are given for the use of man, and he is only required to employ them wisely and becomingly. So all things are intended to be subordinate to the service and welfare of the Church, and all that is demanded is, that the Church should use them in a prudent and Christian spirit. III. The guarantee that is furnished for the attainment of this high end, in the universal supremacy of the Redeemer. He is Head over all things to the Church, and hence we need not doubt. For--1. He has the ability and the authority to render all things subservient to the Church. When you remember what He has accomplished, you will feel that He is able also to accomplish this. Surely, you must conclude that “ the government is upon His shoulders,” because He is “ Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” 2. His love to the Church will secure this result. For His love to the Church was no common affection. 3. That the Saviour’ s position, as Head over all things to the Church, and its consequent elevation, are the reward of His mediatorial work. “ Therefore God hath highly exalted Him, and gave Him a name above every other name.” And in the context it is implied that because of His work He is raised “ far above all principality and power, and might and dominion” ; all things are put under His feet, and He is appointed Head over all things to the Church. Then, be assured, He will secure His own triumph, and His own reward. The Church’ s completeness will be His richest recompense. It was “ for this joy that was set before Him, that He endured the cross and despised the shame” ; and when He shall behold this, He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. As Christ, therefore, is Head over all things to His Church, all things shall work together for the Church’ s good. (J. C. Harrison.)Christ’ s sovereignty The brow once crowned with thorns now wears the diadem of universal sovereignty; and that arm, once nailed to the cross, now holds in it the sceptre of unlimited dominion. He who lay in the tomb has ascended the throne of unbounded empire. Jesus, the Brother-Man, is Lord of all: He has had all things put under His feet. This is the true apotheosis of humanity. (John Eadie, D. D.)Christ’ s Headship Under His “ over all” Headship, everything that happens benefits His people--discoveries in science, inventions in art, and revolutions in government--all that is prosperous and all that is adverse. The history of the Church is a proof extending through eighteen centuries; a proof so often tested, and by such opposite processes, as to gather irresistible strength with its age, a proof varied, ramified, prolonged, and unique, that the exalted Jesus is Head over all things to the Church. (John Eadie, D. D.)The power of Christ Sosomenes relates that when the Holy Family, in their flight into Egypt, reached the termination of their journey, and approached the city of Heliopolis, a tree which grew before the gates of the city, and was guarded with great veneration by the heathen citizens, as the seat of a god, bowed down its branches at the approach of the infant Christ. Likewise it is related (not in legends merely, but by grave religious authorities), that all the idols of the Egyptians fell with their faces to the earth. I have seen pictures of the flight into Egypt, in which broken idols lay by the wayside. (Mrs. Jameson.)Triumphs of Christ A little prior to the death of Julian the apostate, Sibanius Julianus, it is said, a teacher of paganism, tauntingly asked a Christian instructor, “ What is the carpenter’ s son doing?” “ He is preparing a coffin for Julian,” replied the Christian. (Baxendale).Jesus above all We have seen in mountain lands one majestic peak soaring above all the rest of the hills which cut the azure of the horizon with their noble outline burning with hues of richest gold in the light of the morning sun; and so should the doctrine of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, and reigning, be preeminent above the whole chain of fact, doctrine, and sentiment which make up the sublime landscape--the magnificent panorama--which the Christian preacher (or teacher) unfolds, and makes to pass in clear form and brilliant colour before the eye of his people’ s faith. (Evangelical Magazine.)Christ essential to Christians So intimately connected are the head and the body, that one cannot exist without the other. In her freaks, no doubt, Nature does produce strange monsters, which, though deficient, some of this and some of that part, contrive to live; and it is marvellous to see what formidable lesions the body can suffer, of what valuable members it may be maimed, and yet survive. But the loss of the head is the loss of life. Death descends on the knife of the guillotine. A bullet whistles through the parting air, the lightning flashes, the sword of the headsman gleams in the sun, and--there is a corpse! before the eye has winked, the man is dead, stone dead. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Christ is the Head of the Church “ If,” says Augustine, “ a man should come up to embrace thee, to kiss and honour thee upward, and beneath with a pair of shoes beaten full of nails, tread upon thy bare foot; the head shall despise the honour done unto it, and for the foot that smarteth, say, Why treadest thou upon me? So when feigned gospellers honour Christ our Head, sitting in heaven, and oppress His members on earth, the Head shall speak for the feet that smart, and say, Why treadest thou on Me?” Paul had a zeal toward God, but he did tread upon Christ’ s feet on earth, for whom the Head crieth forth of heaven, “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” Although Christ sitteth on the right hand of His Father, yet lieth He on earth; He suffereth all calamities here on earth, He is many times evil entreated here on earth. (Bernard Gilpin.)Christ the Head of the Church 1. The term “ Head” frequently conveys the idea of supreme dignity and preeminence. In this sense it is properly applicable to Christ. 2. The “ Head” is also frequently designed to express a state of supreme power and authority. In this sense of the term, Christ is the Head of the Church in opposition to all who sacrilegiously usurp the title. 3. The title “ Head” is sometimes more literally used, as expressing the relation which that part of the body sustains to the members with which it is vitally connected. Strong and expressive as this figure may appear, Christ is, in this sense, as to all the purposes of spiritual life, the Head of His body, the Church. This idea deserves our particular attention. I. It denotes the strict and intimate union that subsists between Christ and His people. II. It conveys an idea of the comprehensive and infinite fulness of Christ. III. It implies that the Lord Jesus Christ communicates or imparts from His fulness to every individual member of His mystical body. IV. This relative character of Christ supposes the absolute need which He and His people have of each other, in order to the completeness of the body. (W. Roby.)The Headship of Christ over believers 1. The closeness of Christ’ s union with His members. (1) He has taken our nature. (2) By His sufferings He has procured for us all things spiritual and temporal. (3) He unites us to Himself more closely than the angels. 4. He communicates to us the whole life of grace and glory which we have. (5) He directs and moves us (a) outwardly, by signifying His will; (b) inwardly, by sending His Spirit. (6) He strengthens us with aids outward and inward. 2. Christ, whom God hath given to be Head over believers, is also Head over all creatures. (1) The necessity of this Could He not bind Satan and cause him to deliver up his prey, how should we be ever set at liberty? Could He not dissolve the works of Satan, and swallow up death, and create life in us, our case were lamentable. (2) A spur to thanksgiving’ . (3) A ground of confidence. What need we fear any creature, when we have Him who is over every creature? If He be ours, who can hurt us? (Paul Bayne.)The Head of the Church I. He hath placed all things under His feet. I believe it will be necessary to remark both the nature and the extensiveness of this dominion; for you will observe it is the effect of Divine appointment. “ He,” that is, God the Father, “ hath put all things under His feet,” therefore it is very different from that dominion which essentially belongs to His Divine nature. This He alway possessed; this, therefore, He could not obtain. “ All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” ; “ All things are delivered unto Me,” etc. The question is, How He obtained it? that is, whether He obtained it by an actor bounty, or by an act of grace, or by an act of recompense? The angels obtained their preeminence by pure bounty; the saints obtained their preeminence by pure grace; but the Saviour obtained His as a recompense. And as it was thus obtained, so you will observe with regard to its extent that it is universal, it is boundless. “ He hath put all things under His feet.”1. He hath put all beings under His feet. Angels, devils, men. Not a being in the universe but is either His servant or His slave. 2. And God hath put all things under His feet. The ordinances of nature; the heavenly bodies; the elements, etc. What a dignity does this attach to our Lord and Saviour! What an enemy must this render Him to those who are His adversaries! II. God hath made Him to be the head over all things to His Church. His mediatorial power and dominion are peculiar, and principally for the sake of His own people. Let us explain. When God delivered Joseph from prison, He raised him also to a state of distinction; he was made governor, not of a mere village, or town, or province, but over all the land of Egypt, then the most renowned monarchy in the world; and without him, as the expression is, no man was to lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. But what was the end of this dispensation: Was it the mere aggrandisement of this youth? No; but the preservation, the welfare of one particular family, his own family; a family of little note in the world, living in obscurity, and now on the verge of famine, and yet a family of singular importance; a family attached to the worship of God, who were the depositories of His laws, heirs of the righteousness of faith, to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came. To Joseph they all repaired for support: he had all the stores at his disposal, and all the command of them. By him they were preserved and nourished; and that his exaltation was peculiarly and principally for their sakes, appears undeniable, in that as soon as he was removed by death they were in bondage, and enslaved and in the lowest state of degradation, for there arose another king which knew not Joseph. Thus was Joseph a striking representation of the Messiah who was to come, and who came to give His life a ransom for us; who came not only that His people might have life, but that they might have it more abundantly. What would have become of them but for His exaltation on their behalf? But, says He, “ Because I live, ye shall live also.” III. That this Church is His body. We shall observe four things; and--1. The body has its progress as it passes from one state and condition to another; so it is with the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church, the apostle says, grows in “ the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” 2. There is another article of resemblance. Though the body is of one substance, yet it has various parts, and all these have a mutual relation, not only to the head, but to each other. So in the Church there is the intellectual eye, the active hand, the speaking tongue, etc.; all equally useful and necessary in their respective places. 3. The body is united to the head. It is of the same flesh and blood and constitution as the head. So we are assured that Christians are joined to the Lord, and are of one spirit with Him. 4. The members depend upon the head, so does the Church rely entirely upon Christ. Take away the head, and what becomes of the members? The head is the watching part, the guiding part, the governing part, and all the members yield to it and obey it. There are the eyes placed to see; there are the ears placed to hear; the tongue to speak, and the palate to taste; there all the senses have their residence. All the parts of the body are influenced and governed by the head: down from the head to the feet, animal life descends and flows through the whole frame of man by means of nerves and ligatures. Thus Jesus is the life of the Church, and holds communion therewith. IV. This body is His fulness. How is this? There are only two conceivable ways: either because the Church fills Him, or because He fills the Church. It is true in both senses. We are the recipients of this fulness; therefore so far it may be called our fulness. But then He is the author and the source of it; therefore it must be called His fulness. What are we in ourselves spiritually considered? V. This fulness is the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, which is designed to show us His greatness and the infinite degree of His fulness: that it is not the fulness of a stream, if it be as wide as the Nile or the Ganges, but the fulness of a fountain, which supplies the streams; not the fulness of a lighted candle, which fills only one room with light, but the fulness of the sun, which enlightens the world, so that nothing is hid from the heat thereof. “ He filleth all in all.” He fills the universe with worlds. How many can the eye see: how many more does the telescope enable us to behold? “ He filleth all in all.” He fills heaven with His glory, the earth with His goodness, and hell with His wrath. He fills all the Scriptures of truth: all its types, all its prophecies, and all its promises He fills all ordinances; without Him they are as clouds without water, or as wells that are dried up. He fills all creatures. “ The eyes of all wait upon Him, and He giveth them their meat in due season; He openeth His hand and satisfieth the desires of every living thing.” He fills all His subjects; philosophers with wisdom, mechanics with skill; and there is no creature in heaven or in earth that is not under His control. “ The fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” He has filled His people in all ages of the world. He filled the patriarchs with faith; the prophets with capacity to foretell future events; the apostles with the Holy Ghost. He fills all common believers; He fills their understanding with knowledge; their consciences with peace; their wills with holy desires; their affections with love to holiness; their lives with all “ the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God.” (W. Jay.)Christ the Lord of all If a stream be a symbol of the multitude of the believers, Jesus is the fountain. If a tree be an image of the whole Church, Jesus is the root and the trunk. If a kingdom represent the disciples of this dispensation, Jesus is the prince. Or does the conjugal union in the person of the wife illustrate the relation of the Church to our Saviour? Then, as the husband is the head of the wife, so is Jesus the Head of the Church. Or, if the human body, in its parts, and as a whole, represent the Church and the Saviour, then Jesus is the Head of the body. We will briefly attempt to define the sovereignty of Jesus Christ as here declared, and then inquire into some of the circumstances which this headship involves--circumstances, the consideration of which may tend to produce confidence and repose of soul. I. “And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church.” We must supply the antecedent, “ The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” “ The Father hath put all,” “ and gave Him.” “ Gave,” here means, as you know, appointed, or constituted. The pronoun “ Him” distinctly refers to Christ, “ Christ” being the antecedent in the twentieth verse. And there can be no doubt as to the meaning of the word “ Head” : it expresses the highest authority, and the supreme power. This explanation is confirmed by the words, “ and hath put all under His feet.” Ancient conquerors sometimes trampled the vanquished Under the feet of their horses, and crushed them with their chariot wheels. Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, now reigns supreme. His mind devises, His will determines, His lips decree, and His power executes. Jesus does not now serve; He ordains and exacts service. He does not now obey; He commands. He does not now submit; He rules. And Jesus asserts and maintains His sovereignty in every sphere with special relation to His Church. And it may help further to develop this topic if we remark, still briefly, that Christ’ s Headship in His humiliation is distinct from His Headship in His exaltation. In His humiliation He was the Head in the sense of substitution and representation. That Headship was, however, mere representation; the Headship of which our text speaks is dominion. The former was temporary; this is forever. That was for man only; this is over all. That was in humiliation and sorrow; this is in a state of exaltation and joy. That was the foundation; this the beautiful and sublime superstructure. We must also remark that Christ’ s Headship to His Church is distinct from His Headship over all. The two are one in design, but they are distinct in character and manifestation. As the Head of the Church, Jesus dwells in the highest and best affections of those who compose the Church. He rules them by conviction, and by persuasion, and in love. II. What does the headship of Jesus Christ involve? Universal government, then, is really in the hands of that Being whom you trust with yourself, and whom you trust as your Saviour. His authority is not nominal, but actual; and His power is not in word and in boast, but in deed and in truth. No hireling power supplants Him; no flattering sycophant blinds Him; no lawless opposition awes Him. And, brethren, the redemption of a countless multitude, glory for the redeemed, and honour to God, will be the result of Christ’ s dominion. Not a slave among them; not a captive; not a prisoner; none widowed; none orphaned; none poor; not a sinner a sinner still; not sufferer a sufferer still; not a sinner nor a sufferer--no, not one! It was not always so. Time was when poverty, sickness, oppression, death, and evil of every kind, ran riot among the subjects of this very King; but the Head, Christ Jesus, shall then, from all these evils, have saved them; and having saved, glorified them. And God shall be glorified in them. As the maiden in the mirror sees what manner of person she is; and as the fisher in the clear lake beholds his full length image; so God in this glorified multitude shall see Himself--His power--His righteousness--His wisdom--His love--Himself. And in this glorified multitude, the angels, as in a crystal sea, shall behold their God. But, brethren, look at the process. The process is as remarkable as the consummation is glorious. The establishing of righteousness and blessedness among fallen men is an object of eternal purpose. The goings forth of the Head, Christ Jesus, are of old, from everlasting. The promise of this Headship relieved the expulsion from Eden of its dark and dense gloom. Abraham rejoiced to See the day of this King Jesus. As “ the Angel of the covenant” He was with the Church in the wilderness, and with the Church upon Zion. From Adam’ s fall until the incarnation of Jesus, the world was in a course of preparation for the founding of His empire. The world was allowed to grow weary under human dominion; and at the climax of its groaning this empire was born. The King Himself is a martyr King; and He passed through death to reach His throne. (S. Martin.)The second Incarnation A glowing prophecy of a second and yet more glorious Incarnation of Christ. There was a first coming, and there is to be a second coming, of the Saviour. He is supreme in heaven. He is also to be supreme on earth. Christ is to fill all with Himself--all governments; all laws; all policies under the government; all commercial and industrial organizations; all societies; all circles; all households; all individuals. All are to be filled with the mind, and will, and spirit of the Head; and Christ is to be the brain of the whole world. In other words, all physical economies and civil organizations, just as much as spiritual economies and religious organizations, are to be absolutely filled and dominated by Him. This is what I call the second Incarnation. It is the injection, as the first Incarnation was the lapse, as it were, into the human body, of the mind and will of Christ--the Divine Christ, subjecting Him to the law of matter, to its limitations and its infirmities, as we are controlled by the physical laws which surround us. So there is to be a more glorious Incarnation, by which the sum total of the globe itself, and all its members, are to be gloriously filled full of the mind, and feeling, and will, and disposition of Christ. As one little body bore about His spirit, so this greater body, the comprehensive race and the globe, is to bear about in it the mind and will of God; and everything is to move harmonious from pole to pole, and round and round the world. The whole world is to be as perfectly harmonious as the whole body is harmonious under the control of an intelligent, healthy, right minded man. This is poetry indeed, but it is the poetry of prophecy: It is the ideal of progress. It is that bright conception toward which, whether men know it or not, they are certainly drifting or steering. Will not that be the millennium? You may think it is fantasy. It is poetry now, but it will be fact yet. For there is to be a second great Incarnation; and as the Spirit Divine filled the body of Christ, and filled it full, so that great body which is the Church, which is the whole human race, is yet to be filled full of Him who filleth all things with all things. All the processes of society are to exhibit more of Christ; so that at last the day shall come when in all the earth, like a man without a pain from head to foot, mankind shall be without a sadness, or a sigh, or a sorrow; when the whole globe, in all its parts, shall be filled full of Him who filleth all things, who is the head and animating brain of the time and the world; and the globe, no longer singing a requiem, no longer singing of things gloomy and sad, clothed with light and inspired with joy, shall go chanting in its rounds, and the heaven and the earth shall sing together; and so the consolation shall come. I. If this be so, then, first, dismiss the unworthy conceptions of Christ’ s saving which have sprung from a judgment formed upon the inchoate and undeveloped state of things that has existed hitherto. Many men seem to think that the gospel is sent into this world as a life boat, to pick off from the foundering wreck as many of the great population as they possibly can, and let the rest go down. But Christianity is not a mere wrecker’ s boat. In saving men, we ought to do it with the feeling that we are aiming toward the final consummation--the salvation of mankind. I believe the world will come to its final state as my tulips will come to blossom next spring. They are in the winter now, but they are in the bulb, and will come forth. And the world is coming to blossom yet. Not in my day, and not in your day, but ere long in ages to come. As it takes a great many years to bring an orchard into full fruitfulness, but as at last the trees come to maturity and begin to bear fruit, so by and by men will begin to be fruitful unto God, and the whole globe will be a great tree of the Lord, filled with Divine fruit on every side and on every branch. II. This whole globe is my Lord’ s; and when I speak about anything that concerns His kingdom, whether it be science, or art, or learning, or politics, or anything else, I am talking about my Father’ s business. “ The earth is the Lord’ s, and the fulness thereof.” III. If these views be correct, then all those tendencies which now alarm and discourage Christian men, as, for instance, the insurrection of science against faith, have no real cause of fear in them. Now, as I have already said, the globe itself, that is, the realm of natural material laws, is to receive a second Incarnation of Christ. Science is now making the swaddling clothes of Christianity. If it takes from the world many ecclesiastical notions which men would not otherwise give up, very good. The world will be the wiser for it. If there be many superstitions which are supposed to be religion, but which are not religion, and they are taken away, very good. The world will be the better for it. IV. If these views be correct, we shall not see the true glory of redemption here. We cannot imagine it. We shall not be in a condition to see it until we have passed from this mortal state. We are told that a man in the midst of a battle is the least able to describe the battle. The smoke and the noise, and the intensity of the conflict, prevent him from having a large view of the movements of the whole field. We are secluded. Each age is, as it were, but a note in the whole period of time. It cannot be that we rise so high, or stand at a period so late, that we see the whole disclosure. Then only shall we understand the nature of Christ, then only the comprehensive plan of His mercy, then only this second and greater Incarnation, by which He interjects the whole globe and its processes with His Spirit, when we reach the other world. Then and there only shall we be furnished with that vision by which we may see His grace, so that worthily we may worship Him, rejoicing that He is lifted above all kings, all princes, all principalities of every name. (H. W. Beecher.)Christ and His Church I. In what respects Christ is the Head of the Church.1. For guidance.2. For strengthening and establishing all the dependencies.3. For reconciling the whole body to God.4. For the spiritual government of the body. II. The character of the Church. III. In what sense the Church is the fulness of Christ.1. The Church has the fulness of Christ’ s love.2. The Church possesses the fulness of Christ’ s redemption. (J. F. Crossman, M. A.)Christ the Head of the Church Now in the Word of God the Church is compared to a variety of objects--to “ a vine,” to “ a building,” to “ a temple,” and in our text to “ a human person,” made up of two parts, the head and the body, the head representing Jesus, the body representing the collective members of the Church of Christ “ And gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body.” Our subject presents us with several important ideas or principles. I. The idea of importance. The head is everything to the body--it sees for the body, it hears for the body, it smells for the body, it tastes for the body, it masticates food for the body, it thinks for the body, it schemes, it purposes, in one word, it does everything for the body. So Jesus Christ is everything to the Church. II. The idea of indispensableness. Lop off this limb and then that--amputate one of your members and then another, the limbless trunk of your body will still be alive; but let that body be beheaded, and it dies in a moment. So it is with the Church of Christ. III. The idea of identity. The same fluid which courses through the body flows through the head, and the same food which is the nourishment of the body is the sustenance of the head. The component parts of the one are the component parts of the other. And just so it is between Christ and all believers. There is a sameness of nature. Christ and all Christians are alike in their desires, in their aims, in their pleasures, in their friendships, in their enmities, in their principles, in their motives, in their standard, in the one grand object ever before them--the glory of God. IV. The idea of sympathy. If your foot be crushed the head will feel it; if any other member of the body, however distant from the head, be in pain, the head will feel it--and such is the sympathy between Christ and all His suffering people. Am I speaking to any who are heavy hearted and cast down? What is the cause of your sorrow? Is it the shading of your prospects? Is it the presence of disease in some beloved member of your family? Is it that you are going down the hill of adversity, and because your pride is being humbled at every step? Is it because you have just received some deep wounds from a quarter whence you least expected them? Or, is your grief some secret silent sorrow which your tongue refuses to divulge? It matters not what may be the sorrows, there is sympathy in the living head for the sorrows of all the suffering members of “ the mystical body.” And oh, fellow Christians, what a sympathy is the sympathy of Christ! It is a sympathy which knows all our griefs, and all the particulars and details of all our sorrows. It is a sympathy which supports us under all our griefs, nay, it is a sympathy which makes use of those sorrows as a means of fetching us back from our wanderings; nay, more, which will make all our sorrows to “ work out for us a far more exceeding and as eternal weight of glory.” V. The idea of glory. The glory of the head is always reflected upon the members of the body. Now just consider what the glory of Christ is (John 1:1). Oh, what an honour to belong to the body of such a Head! Then consider the works of Christ--“ All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” What an honour to be a member of the body of such a Creator! Then consider the possessions of Christ. With mortal lips and with human tongue He said it--“ All things that the Father hath are Mine.” Oh, the honour of being a member of the body of such a possessor! Then look at His immensity; our text speaks of it as “ the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.” Oh, the honour of being a member of that body! That man can well afford to part with dust and ashes who is in possession of gems, and precious stones, and priceless rubies; nay, who can call kingdoms; nay, who can call the world; nay, who can call Jesus his own! That man can afford to trample under his feet all the pleasures of his fellow creatures, who can say, “ My beloved is mine, and I am His.” VI. The idea of the resurrection of the body. For where lies the head, there will lie the body; and where reigns the head, there will reign the body too. As our Head, even Jesus, once lay in the sepulchre, so shall we His followers lie there too; and as Jesus our Head is now reigning in glory, so shall we reign in glory too. (Alfred Pope.)The Headship of Christ I. The text affirms the supreme political power and authority of Immanuel. Just as in Israel there was established a Theocracy, the Almighty claiming to be recognized as the Head of their civil and ecclesiastical polity, and just as all judges and rulers were expected to recognize their power as delegated to them from above; and just as the Divine right and title were not subverted nor destroyed when rulers and people sank into sin and idolatry; so now on earth there is established a larger civil and ecclesiastical government, of which Jesus is the Head, and of which the Theocracy was the symbol; and all rulers and all subjects are required to acknowledge their lawful Lord who sits upon the holy hill of Zion, the stability of whose government and the legitimacy of whose claims upon all are no more affected by the godlessness of the nations and the impiety of their rulers than were the claims of the Shepherd of Israel set aside by the wanderings of His flock, or the usurpations of her hirelings. II. The power of Christ as King of Nations is subordinated to His purposes as King of saints. He is Head over all things to the Church, or for the Church--for her peace, her prosperity and perpetuity; so that He is now described as putting His honour on His people, even as the head puts honour on the body. Jesus is the Head of His new creation. But more particularly we remark--1. He is Head over all things, that He may bring together the materials, and build them up into a Church unto Himself. He is the head cornerstone, living’ , tried and precious, upon which there must be reared a blemishless, indestructible fabric, composed of living stones selected from the quarry of humanity, polished and prepared by the Spirit of all grace, and cemented together by the binding of undying love. 2. Christ is Head over all things for the beautifying of His Church; that is, He exerciseth His power over all things so as to promote and advance the beauty of His Church. The beauty of a Church is her purity in doctrine and her holiness in practice, her strict unbending conformity to the law and the order of her exalted Head; and the administration of her wise and her gracious Ruler is all ordered and arranged, so that at length she may be presented in the heavens a glorious Church, without spot and blemish or any such thing. In order to this she is tried with the storm and strengthened with the sunshine; the fire and the flood are brought to bear upon her goodly fabric, so as to purge out all that is polluted and profane, and hasten on the perfection of her coming state. 3. Jesus is Head over all things in order that He may perfect His body the Church. Of all those who are given unto Him, of them He can lose none. Time, with its thousand vicissitudes, must roll along whilst there remaineth one, whose name is written above, alive or unacquainted with the grace that is in Christ. Its plans and its purposes shall have existence until the completion of Christ’ s body the Church; its discoveries in science and improvements in arts; its advances in civilization; its augmentations in commercial zeal; its treaties and its friendships; are all the secondary causes in His hand for finishing His plans, and for making one with Himself all His covenant children. (J. Macnaughton, M. A.)The Headship of the God-Man I. Let us meditate, first, upon the important statement, that “ God hath put all things under Christ’ s feet, and made Him Head over all things.” II. But the text tells us--and this is the second point--that it was for the sake of the Church that God put all things under Christ’ s feet--that He was made Head over all things. Although exalted at God’ s right hand, angels and principalities and powers being made subject to Him, He has not abandoned the designs which He entertained, or lost the feelings which He cherished, towards men, while He tabernacled with them upon earth. His exaltation has produced no change of feeling towards His former associates, as it too often occurs among the weak and depraved children of men. He has carried up with Him to the right hand of His Father and the throne of the Universe the same feelings of love and compassion towards His people His whole conduct upon earth so strongly expressed. Even now He entertains those very feelings which once prompted Him to leave the glory He had with His Father before the world began--to lead upon earth a life of poverty and ignominy and shame--and at last to endure the cruel and ignominious death of the cross. We may be assured, then, that He will not leave unfinished a work which He has already done, and suffered so much to effect, but that He will bring to bear upon its accomplishment all the power and authority with which He has been invested. Conclusion: Thus extensive and thus absolute is the power with which Christ has been invested, and which He is continually exercising, and this power is at all times directed to bear on the interests of the Church--to promote the conversion, the sanctification, and the everlasting redemption of all those whom the Father gave Him. In the scheme of Divine Providence, the establishment of general laws, and the arrangement of the most important transactions, does not prevent an equally careful attention to, and an equally certain provision for, the most minute. Christ does indeed direct and overrule for the good of His Church the councils of monarchs, and the conflicts of armies, and the fortunes of nations, but amid all these great events He does not neglect the least circumstance in the life and history of any of His chosen people--of any individual member of His body. While He is opening up channels for the extension of His Church and the spread of His gospel, by overthrowing dynasties, or by destroying systems of wide and commanding influence--He is at the same time providing the food with which the most obscure of His people is fed, and the raiment with which he is clothed. Christ’ s kingdom not being of this world, the good of individuals, or the good of the whole, or of the many, can never come into collision, as is sometimes the case in matters which have a reference to this world’ s business and this world’ s interests. Everything connected with the sanctification and final happiness of each individual believer is as carefully attended to, and as effectually provided for, as if Christ had been made Head over all things for his sake alone. (W. Cunningham, D.D.) Ephesians 1:23 Which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.Believers are the body of Christ 1. As Christ is the Head of believers, so they are His body, and every believing soul a member of this body whereof He is the Head. Believers are so said to be the body as the body stands in opposition to the head, not as it includes the head within its own compass. The multitude of believers are fitly so called; for, as in a body are divers members, having their several faculties for the good use of the whole, so in the Church there are divers kinds of members, some taught, some teaching, some governing, some governed, some distributing,--yea, every member has, as it were, his distinct grace whereby he may serve the well-being of the whole. 2. Christ does not count Himself full and complete, without all His faithful members. (1) None of those who either live knit to Christ only by external profession, or who receive some of the effects of the Spirit which for a time only abide in them; none of all those who in the end shall hear the sentence, “ Depart from Me,” were ever true parts of Christ’ s body; for Christ is made full and complete by all His true members, and should be maimed if He lacked one of them. These, therefore, belonged to His body as a wooden leg or glass eye does to the body of a man; or, at the most, as an excrescence which is more inwardly continued, and has a kind of life, but is not quickened as a member of the body, which is more complete when it is cut off. (2) Christ will keep those who are true members of Him, and not suffer anything to separate them from Him. What natural head would part with a member, were it in its power to keep it? But we know Christ has “ all power” ; so may assure ourselves that He will preserve us in that union and, communion which as members we have attained with Him. (3) A ground of patience in face of the contempt which believers meet with from the world. Men often deem them the refuse and offal of all others; but Christ thinks so highly of them, that He counts Himself maimed and imperfect without them. 3. Whatever is in us as Christians, all of it is from Christ. In Him we are complete, filled with all heavenly gifts which serve to remove evil or set us in a state of blessedness. (1) He fills us with all the fulness of God, which begins in grace, and is perfected in glory when God shall be all in all. (2) How we come to be filled. All fulness is in Christ, who has received it without measure. As the sun has fulness of light in that perfection which agrees to light, and the moon has light from the sun in that measure wherein it is capable: so Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, has fulness without measure, but the Church with all her members are filled from Him according to their capacities as members under Him. By being partakers of Christ Himself we come to be filled with the fulness of grace and glory in Him, as by eating and taking the substance of earthly nourishment we come to have the virtue in them. These benefits are conveyed to us by the means of grace, viz., the Word and the Sacraments. We also receive Him partly by humility, which empties us of ourselves, and makes room for Him; partly by belief, which feeds on and applies Him; partly by walking in Christ, and exercising ourselves spiritually. Conclusion: Let this teach us to come to Christ. Bountiful lords want none to retain to them, happy is he who may shroud him self under their wings. Shall we not press with reverence to this Lord of lords who fills all with His spiritual blessings? As He complained of the Jews, “ How oft would I have gathered you but you would not,” so may He say to us, how oft would I have had you, blind, naked, miserable by nature, come to Me, that you might be filled with righteousness and life, but ye have refused? Well, did we know what we are called to, and what we might find in Him, then would we come and be suitors to Him. But, alas! this is hid from our eyes. (Paul Bayne.)Christ’ s body I. Who the persons here spoken of are: “ The Church.” The Greek word ἐκκλησία simply means “ the called out.” This is a title often given to the disciples of Christ. They “ are called to be saints.” They are “ called unto His kingdom and glory.” God “ hath saved them, and called them with a holy calling.” The persons, then, who constitute the Church are those who have been “ called out.” II. We are now in a position to consider with profit what the connection is which subsists between Christ and His Church. “ The Church is His body” ; the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.” “ The Church is His body” ; then He is its Head: the Church is “ His fulness,” and “ He filleth all in all.” Let us consider these weighty words.1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of His Church. Like the head in our natural body, He is the channel of all their perceptions, the source of all their desires, the guide of all their actions. Through Him they see and hear and think, by Him they live and move and have their being. As our text says, “ He filleth all in all” --every member with all its life. 2. The reality and intimacy of this union will be more fully realized if we observe, not only what the Lord Jesus Christ is to His disciples, but also what they are to Him. Paul tells us not only that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, but also that “ the Church is His body” --not only that Christ “ filleth all in all,” but also that “ the Church is His fulness.” III. Let us now consider the inward blessings and the outward duties that are implied in this connection.1. The inward spiritual blessings which are implied in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church which is His body. These blessings, as we have seen, flow only to those who really are His disciples. Are we true members of the body of Christ? Then let us realize that we have suffered and died with Him on Calvary. Again, are we true members of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ? Then we are delivered, not only from the punishment due to past, sins, but also from the power of present sinfulness. Again, are we true members of the body of Christ? then let us remember that we are related, not only to Him, but also to one another as members of the same body. Again, are we true members of the body of Christ? then we need not fear anything that man can do unto us. We cannot suffer but Jesus suffers with us. He is “ afflicted in all our afflictions.” He would lose in our loss. He rejoices in our joy. Once more, are we true members of the body of Christ? then our comfort reaches not only to the grave, but beyond it. 2. Of the duties which they owe to Him as the Head of government. Obedience--implicit obedience--is the duty of each member of His body individually--obedience in all things. I pass on to speak of the duty of the members of His body in their collective capacity--when associated together as churches. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head, not merely of each member of His body separately, but of “ the, whole body.” He has commanded His disciples to recognize each other, and to, associate themselves together for common work and for common worship. He has given rules for the government of His Church. All these and such like commandments are addressed to the Church in its collective capacity. (W. Grant.)The connection between Christ and the Church Head and body are correlative, and are organically connected. The body is no dull lump of clay, no loose coherence of hostile particles; but bone, nerve, and vessel give it distinctive form, proportion, and adaptation. The Church is not a fortuitous collection of believing spirits, but a society, shaped, prepared, and life endowed, to correspond to its Head. The Head is one, and though the corporeal members are many, yet all is marked out and “ curiously wrought” with symmetry and grace to serve the one design. There is organization, and not merely juxtaposition.1. There is, first, a connection of life: if the head be dissevered, the body dies. The life of the Church springs from its union to Christ by the Spirit, and if any member or community be separated from Christ it dies. 2. There is also a connection of mind: the purposes of the Head are wrought out by the corporeal organs--the tongue that speaks, or the foot that moves. The Church should have no purpose but Christ’ s glory, and no work but the performance of His commands. 3. There is, at the same time, a connection of power: the organs have no faculty of self-motion, but move as they are directed by the governing principle within. The corpse lies stiff and motionless. Energy to do good, to move forward in spiritual contest and victory, and to exhibit aggressive influence against evil, is all derived from union with Christ. 4. There is, in fine, a connection of sympathy. The pain or disorder of the smallest nerve or fibre vibrates to the head, and there it is felt. Jesus has not only cognizance of us, but He has a fellow feeling with us in all our infirmities and trials. And the members of the body are at the same time reciprocally connected, and placed in living affinity, so that mutual sympathy, unity of action, cooperation and support, are anticipated and provided for. No organ is superfluous, and none can defy or challenge its fellow. (John Eadie, D. D.)Christ’ s fulness Observe, there is an all to be filled, and an all and in all wherewith’ to be filled. Poor trembling believer in Jesus Christ, thou art a portion of the fulness of Him “ in whom all fulness dwelleth,” a member of Him “ that filleth all in all,” and the Lord hath need of thee. There is a special adaptation in His fulness for thy special need, for all His fulness must be displayed and communicated to His members. “ The head cannot say to the foot, I have no need of you.” An infinite variety of needs in the members is essentially necessary in order to manifest the boundless supply in the fulness of the Head, that He may be glorified, even as the branches of the vine are necessary as its only channels for the display of its wealth of fruitfulness: It shall one day be fully manifested to heaven and earth, to angels and to men, that Christ’ s people stand in Him alone, and that they have no resources or supplies whatever but in His fulness. Come then, bring empty vessels not a few, here are gilts laid up for all sorts, and no denial for any kind of sinner, in order that His fulness may be seen, and that each believer may be in his own case a living monument to show forth the perfections and praises of Him in whom all fulness dwelleth. One shall receive and display His fulness of strength who is evermore “ a strength to the needy in his distress.” Another shall be an example of His patience; another, of His care; another, of His long-suffering; another, of His tenderness; another, of His power; another, of His guiding mercy and gentleness; and all, of His changeless love. There are gifts and graces inexhaustible, and boundless operations and treasures of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge for the filling, and all sorts of needy ones to be filled--all of them, all the parts of them, body, soul, and spirit; all the powers, faculties, and immortality of all of them, for He “ filleth all in all,” that He may be glorified. Verily the consolations of God are contained in these facts. Consider a few of the consequences resulting from them:1. If Christ’ s believing people are His body and His fulness, then none of them shall be wanting when He shall come to be admired in His saints. If otherwise?--no fulness. 2. If Christ’ s believing people are His body and His fulness, then not one of them shall be lacking in any matters essential for their perfection. If otherwise?--no fulness. 3. If Christ’ s believing people are His body and His fulness, then no member shall be out of place, and no desire unsatisfied. If otherwise?--no fulness. 4. If Christ’ s people are His body and His fulness, then no grace, or continuance of grace, laid up for us in Him, shall be unsupplied. If otherwise?--no fulness. 5. If Christ’ s people are His body and His fulness, then shall there be no want of salvation, security, growth, attainment, station, proportion, or symmetry in any of them. If otherwise?--no fulness. 6. If we are His body and His fulness, all of us are absolutely necessary for the completeness of our glorious Christ Himself, and even the very hairs of our head must all be numbered. If otherwise?--no fulness. 7. If we are His body, then must His members be presented faultless, holy, unblameable, and unreprovable, and without spot or wrinkle. If otherwise?--no fulness. 8. Finally, if any member be absent or incomplete, misplaced, undeveloped, or deficient, either overgrown, or undergrown, or wanting in proportion, then would there be no fulness. (M. Rainsford, B. A.)Christ’ s fulness The word pleroma, “ fulness,” is used in a definite and almost technical sense in the Epistles of the Captivity, and especially in the Epistle to the Colossians, having clear reference to the speculations as to the Divine Nature and the emanations from it, already anticipating the future Gnosticism. The word itself is derived from a verb signifying, first, to “ fill” ; next (more frequently in the New Testament), to “ fulfil” or complete. It is found(1) in a physical sense of the “ full contents” of the baskets, in Mark 6:43; Mark 8:20; and of the earth, in 1 Corinthians 10:26-28; and in Matthew 9:16; Mark 2:21, it is applied to the patch of new cloth on an old garment. It is used next (2) of fulness, in sense of the “ complete tale or number,” “ of time” and “ seasons,” in chap. 1:10; Galatians 4:4; of the Jews and Gentiles in Romans 11:12; Romans 11:25. In the third place (3) it is applied to the full essence, including all the attributes, of a thing or Person; as of the Law (Romans 13:10), and of the blessing of Christ (Romans 15:29). Lastly (4), in these Epistles it is applied, almost technically, to the fulness of the Divine Nature. Thus in Colossians 1:19 we have, “ It pleased the Father that in Christ all the fulness” --i.e., all the fulness of the Divine Nature--“ should dwell” ; or (to take an admissible but less probable construction), “ In Him all the fulness is pleased to dwell” ; and this is explained in chap. 2:9, “ In Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Similarly, though less strikingly, we read in this Epistle, that those who are in Christ are said (in Galatians 3:19; Galatians 4:13) “ to be filled up to all the fulness of God,” and “ to come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” In which of these last senses is the Church here said to be the “ fulness of Christ” ? If in any, probably in the last of all. As the individual, so the Church, by the presence of Him who filleth up all things for Himself in all, comes to be “ His fulness,” the complete image of Him in all His glorified humanity. But it may be questioned whether it is not better to take here a different sense, corresponding to the “ patch” in Matthew 9:16, and signifying the “ complement.” In the original Greek of Euclid (in book 1, prop. 4), the cognate word, parapleroma, is used of “ the complements.” In this compound word the idea is, no doubt, more unequivocally expressed. But of the simple word here employed it may be reasonably contended that, if one thing or person alone is contemplated, the pleroma must be the fulness of the one nature: if, as here, two are brought in, each will be the “ complement” to the other--as the patch to the garment; and the garment to the patch. So here (says Chrysostom) “ the complement of the head is the body, and the complement of the body is the head.” Thus, by a daring expression, St. Paul describes our Lord as conceiving His glorified humanity incomplete without His Church; and then, lest this should seem to derogate, even for a moment, from His dignity, He adds the strongest declaration of His transcendent power. “ to fill up for Himself all things in all,” in order to show that we are infinitely more incomplete without Him than He without us. (A. Barry, D. D.)Communion with Christ What! is Christ thy Brother, and does He live in thine house, and yet thou hast not spoken to Him for a month? I fear there is little love between thee and thy Brother, for thou hast had no conversation with Him for so long. What! is Christ the Husband of His Church, and has she had no fellowship with Him for all this time? (C. H. Spurgeon.)The Church is Christ’ s body Christ has but one Church. The second Adam, like the first, is the husband only of one wife. Just as the Church cannot have two heads, so the one Head cannot have two bodies; for as that body were a monster which had two heads, so the head which had two separate bodies. (F. Guthrie, D. D.)The Head and the body At a celebrated battle there was one position from which the enemy, after suffering defeat in every other part of the field, kept up an unabated fire. There, a huge twenty-four pounder vomited forth galling and continuous discharges; nor could our artillery, nor musketry, nor riflemen, silence it. “ That gun,” said the commanding officer, addressing the men of two regiments, “ must be taken by the bayonet. I must have it” ; adding, as he placed himself at their head, “ No firing, and recollect that I am with you.” There needed no more. They advanced; and in a short time they had taken the gun and the position. Let the Church go forth at the command of her glorious Head, and there is no position and weapon of the enemy but shall yield before their united assaults. (F. Guthrie, D. D.)The freshness and fulness of Christ In the square of the Doge’ s palace are two wells, from which the sellers of water obtain their stock-in-trade, but we can hardly compare either of them with the overflowing spring from which the preacher of righteousness draws his supplies. One of the wells is filled artificially and is “ not much used for drinking, since the coldness and freshness of water springing naturally from earth’ s deep fountains is lacking. It is to be feared that many preachers depend for their matter upon theological systems, books, and mere learning, and hence their teaching is devoid of the living power and refreshing influence which is found in communion with “ the spring of all our joys.” The other well yields most delicious water, but its flow is scanty. In the morning it is full, but a crowd of eager persons drain it to the bottom, and during the day as it rises by driblets, every drop is contended for and borne away, long before there is enough below to fill a bucket. In its excellence, continuance, and naturalness, this well might be a fair picture of the grace of our Lord Jesus, but it fails to set Him forth from its poverty of supply. He has a redundance, an overflow, an infinite fulness, and there is no possibility of His being exhausted by the draughts made upon Him, even though ten thousand times ten thousand should come with a thirst as deep as the abyss. We could not help saying, “ Spring up, O well,” as we looked over the margin covered with copper, into which strings and ropes--continually used by the waiting many--had worn deep channels. Very little of the coveted liquid was brought up each time, but the people were patient, and their tin vessels went up and down as fast as there was a cupful to be had. O that men were half as diligent in securing the precious gifts of the Spirit, which are priceless beyond compare. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The witnessing Church The Church is called the body of Christ. Through his body a man holds communication with the outer world and works in and on that outer world. So through His Church Jesus the Christ acts upon society, upon men in general. I do not say that this is She only medium through which He works and acts, but it is the principal medium. A Church, then, must be organically fitted to express the mind and will of Christ. In inquiring as to the nature of the Church of Christ, the following ideas demand recognition:1. Jesus Christ is its Head; its sole Head, its source of doctrine, of law and of order. He only has authority. “ One is your Master even Christ, and all ye are brethren.” Of course in every society there must be a head, even a mob must have a leader. There must in every society be law and order. Otherwise there can be no peace and no progress. The self-will of the individual becomes everything. And in such a state of things there can be no cooperated movement. The sole headship of Christ in the Church is the basis doctrine of all law and order. 2. The membership of the Church is a brotherhood. If we have the ability of the subordination of our own wills to the will of Christ, the practical result will be, that we shall be of the same feeling and disposition as all others dowered with the same ability. The spirit of brotherhood will be in us. For when anything of the love of God enters the heart, the love of man comes with it. And the love of man is not some sentimental feeling which is here today and gone tomorrow. It is the diametric opposite of the spirit of judgment and accusation. It is necessary to add further that the Church of Christ is not democratic, but theocratic. The people are not the fountain of law and order. This also must be added, that the Church is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God, which fact is evidence by these fruits of the Spirit which hang thick and threefold upon it, as upon a tree of life. We must not omit to add, that the Church is Christ’ s great Teacher to the nations. The last great command to the apostles runs thus: “ Go ye and male disciples of all the nations, baptizing,” etc. And lastly, the Church is the beginning of that permanent society which God is organizing to embody and express His will. The Book of the Revelation of St. John gives intimations of a perfected society into which there enters nothing that defileth, neither that which believeth or maketh a lie, a society of the pure and true, or rather of those who are purified and made true, men from all ages and all nations, all kindreds and all tongues, a society of men like in sympathy and disposition though various in many other ways. The Christ of God is the centre of that society; its inspiration; its archetype; a society based on inward character not on anything else, the inward character being attested by outward allegiance to this Christ of God. In that society we shall get the perfection of communion, the ideal fellowship, all lovelessness gone, no envy there, no hatred, nothing that leads to schism, no insincere man there, no unbrotherly man, the society of which the Church on earth has been, in its best estate, only the promise and prefiguration. (Reuen Thomas.)In what respects the Church is Christ’ s fulness 1. The Church is Christ’ s fulness, because it has grown out of Christ, and He has increased outwards so as to form the Church. He has developed into it. He has ‘ expanded into it; as a seed grows into a tree with its branches. First, Christ fills the Church and each true believer with His Spirit, and Christ thus lives, by His Spirit, in each and all. The Spirit and Christ are one. Another view, secondly, is that presented in the words, “ out of His fulness have we all received, and grace for grace.” Faith is the instrument of receiving out of His fulness, or, the medium of communication. The Christian by faith receives a corresponding grace to every grace that was in Christ. And he is at length filled, according to his measure or capacity, out of Christ. But, thirdly, Christ imparts to the Church and to each believer all spiritual blessedness. 2. Let us now consider the idea of the Apostle in its other aspect. We have seen how the Church is the fulness of Christ, in the sense of its being the development, as it were, of the root, by which it grows up into a full body, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The other side of the idea is embodied in the thought that the Church fills up, completes, and perfects Christ. We must still contemplate Christ and His Church as one. He, in condescension, has taken it to be part of Himself, and, in this view, without it, He would be incomplete. So Paul in one place calls the Church “ Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). The body is Christ according to this passage. It forms part of Him, and completes Him. We are thus led to consider all true Christians as necessary parts of what Christ Himself has chosen for His own body; and the whole Church of the redeemed, when gathered together, will, together with the Head, make one Christ. (W. Alves, M. A.). Ephesians 2:1 And you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.The quickening power of the gospel This the peculiar characteristic of the preaching of Christianity in the first age. It came into a world preoccupied by other systems of religion, Jewish and Gentile, and succeeded where they had failed. The secret of its success is the same today--vital power. I. Upon whom is it exerted?1. The spiritually dead.2. The bondslaves of Satan.3. The subjects of Divine wrath. II. Through whom does it operate? Christ, the manifested Son of God, is the Alpha and Omega of its proclamations.1. Through faith men are united to Him.2. Share in His resurrection. III. In whom is its source? It is God who ordained the means of salvation, sent His Son into the world to die for sinners, and raising Him from the dead raised also all those who were united to Him by faith by a spiritual resurrection, that they might “ walk in newness of life.” This gracious work is due--1. To His nature. “ Being rich in mercy.”2. To His affection for men. “ For His great love wherewith He loved us.” (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Regeneration I. The change here noticed is of a remarkably decided nature. A change of the whole human character, by which the dispositions of men become thoroughly altered from that which is evil to that which is good, and by which there are implanted and formed within them those spiritual graces which are essentially connected with the bestowment of the Divine favour and the restoration of the Divine image. II. This change is accomplished purely by Divine agency.1. The agency of the Spirit of God in the work of renovation is sovereign. 2. The agency of the Spirit is mysterious. 3. The agency of the Spirit is connected with the instrumentality of the Word. III. This change is absolutely essential for the salvation of the immortal soul.1. This is evident, if you consider the occupation, society, and enjoyments of heaven. 2. It is also evident by considering the express testimony of God on the subject. (J. Parsons.)Quickening of the dead I. The Scripture phrases by which the sinful state of man is described. Sleep. “ Therefore let us not sleep, as do others,” etc. (1 Thessalonians 5:6, etc.). “ Wherefore he saith, ‘ Awake thou that sleepest,’” etc. (Ephesians 5:14). Death in trespasses (see text). “ And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh,” etc. (Colossians 2:13). A corrupt tree. “ A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,” etc. (Matthew 7:18). “ For he shall be like the heath in the desert,” etc. (Jeremiah 17:6). Darkness. “ But ye, brethren, are not in darkness,” etc. (1 Thessalonians 5:4). Led captive, etc. (Ephesians 2:3). Enmity (Romans 8:7). II. How the scriptures describe the change that is wrought in those that shall be saved and state God as the Author of it. Being quickened--by God (see text). Born again--by God (John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:3). Washed and sprinkled--by God (Ezekiel 16:8-9; Ezekiel 36:25). Writing the law in the heart--by God (Jeremiah 31:33). Grafting--by God (Romans 11:23-25). Creating light to shine where was darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6). III. No means short of God can quicken and convert such a sinner. Let us consider everything that is likely.1. Will miracles? No (Exodus 8:16-18; John 12:10-12; Acts 4:16-17). 2. Will the fulfilment of prophecies? No (Cf. Matthew 27:62, etc. with Matthew 28:11, etc.). 3. Will prosperity? No (Psalms 73:3). 4. Will adversity? No (Proverbs 27:22). 5. Will preaching the gospel? No (1 Corinthians 1:23). 6. Will one rising from the dead? No (Luke 16:31). The necessity of a Divine agent in the Church of God. IV. Evidences of being quickened.1. A feeling sense of the evil of sin (Romans 7:18; Psalms 38:3-7). 2. A dying to self-confidence, and a trusting in Christ alone (Romans 7:7-11; Galatians 2:19-20; Philippians 3:7-9). 3. An appetite for the means of grace (1 John 2:3). 4. Love to the brethren as such (1 John 3:13-14). (H. Foster, M. A.)Various manifestations of death The frightful presence of death is manifested in many ways.1. The dead have no motion; they cannot come to God; they are helpless as was Lazarus till the voice of Jesus reached him; grace alone can quicken the dead soul. 2. The dead have no sensation; they are past feeling; all the fountains of passion and emotion are sealed (Ephesians 4:19); so that before they can love God or hate sin they must get a new life. 3. The dead have no enjoyment; food satisfies, beauty pleases, and music charms no more. It is even so. Sin has perverted the moral sense, and shut up the heart against the enjoyment of God Himself. His character and His love please us no more. All the wonders of grace, as well as the excellencies of the Divine character, which the Cross reveals, fall upon us like sunbeams on the eyes of the dead. 4. The dead have no restorative power. Life, that mysterious, incomprehensible principle, which, though ever present with us and filling all things, eludes research and baffles reason, has a wonderful restorative power. Indeed, life is a sort of miracle, for it reverses, suspends, and modifies most of the laws of nature. In every plant, in every living creature, you see life assimilating and incorporating most heterogeneous elements, counteracting the law of gravity, nullifying the most potent chemical agencies, and resisting the mechanical laws. The dead are destitute of all these mysterious powers; they remain as they are, or they become more and more corrupt. There is no healing process going on in the dead soul by which, in the course of nature, it can become pure and healthy and happy in the enjoyment of God. (W. Graham, D. D.)The dead man I. St. Paul reminds the Ephesians of their former condition. Contraries give lustre one to another. It magnifies grace marvellously to consider the opposite condition. It should also stir up our thankfulness when we consider from what we are delivered. Now to come to the words themselves. What is death? Death is nothing else but a separation from the cause of life, from that from whence life springs. The body having a communicated life from the soul, when the soul is departed it must needs be dead. Now death, take it in a spiritual sense, it is either the death of law, our sentence--as we say of a man when he is condemned, he is a dead man--or death in regard of disposition; and then the execution of that death of sentence in bodily death and in eternal death afterward. Now naturally we are dead in all these senses.1. First, by the sin of Adam, in whose loins we were, we were all damned. And then there is corruption of nature as a punishment of that first sin, that is a death, as we shall see afterward, a death of all the powers; we cannot act and move according to that life that we had at the first; we cannot think, we cannot will, we cannot affect, we cannot do anything [that] savours of spiritual life. 2. Hereupon comes a death of sentence upon us, being damned both in Adam’ s loins and in original sin, and likewise adding actual sins of our own. If we had no actual sin it were enough for the sentence of death to pass upon us, but this aggravates the sentence. 3. We are dead in law as well as in disposition. This death in law is called guilt, a binding over to eternal death. Now what is the reason of it why we are dead? First of all, the ground of it is; by sin we are separated from the fountain of life; therefore we are all dead. Secondly, by sin we lost that first original righteousness which was co-produced with Adam’ s soul. When Adam’ s soul was infused it was clothed with all graces, with original righteousness. The stamp of God was on his soul. It was co-natural to that estate and condition to have that excellent gracious disposition that he had. Now, because we all lost that primitive image and glory of our souls, we are dead. Nay, sin itself, it is not only a cause of death--of temporal death as it is a curse, and so of eternal death; of that bitter sentence and adjudging of us too, both that we feel in terrors of conscience and expect after--but sin itself is an intrinsical death. Why? Because it is nothing but a separation of the soul from the chic! good, which is God, and a cleaving to some creature; for there is no sin but it carries the soul to the changeable creature in delight and affection to its pride and vanity, one thing or other. Sin is a turning from God to the creature, and that very turning of the soul is death; every sinful soul is dead. In these and the like considerations you may conceive we are all dead. Let us consider a little what a condition this is, to be “ dead in trespasses and sins.” And what doth death work upon the body? 1. Unactiveness, stiffness; so when the Spirit of God is severed from the soul it is cold, and unactive, and stiff. Therefore those that find no life to that that is good, no, nor no power nor strength, it is a sign that they have not yet felt the power of the quickening Spirit; when they hear coldly and receive the sacrament coldly, as if it were a dead piece of work and business; when they do anything that is spiritually good coldly and forced, not from an inward principle of love to God, that might heat and warm their hearts, but they go about it as a thing that must be done, and think to satisfy God with an outward dead action. 2. Again, death makes the body unlovely. 3. Loathsomeness. 4. We sever dead persons from the rest. 5. Death deprives of the use of the senses. He that is spiritually dead can speak nothing that is good of spiritual things. And as he is speechless, so he hath no spiritual eyes to see God in His works. There is nothing that we see with our bodily eyes, but our souls should have an eye to see somewhat of God in it, His mercy and goodness and power, etc. And so he hath no relish to taste of God in His creatures and mercies. When a man tastes of the creatures, he should have a spiritual taste of God and of the mercy in him. Oh, how sweet is God! A wicked man hath no taste of God. And he cannot hear what the Spirit saith in the Word. He hears the voice of man, but not of the Spirit when the trumpet of the Word sounds never so loud in his ears. 6. As there is no sense nor moving to outward things, so no outward thing can move a dead body. Offer him colours to the eye, food to the taste, or anything to the feeling, nothing moves him. So a dead soul, as it cannot move to good, so it is moved with nothing. That affects a child of God and makes him tremble and quake, it affects not a carnal man at all. 7. And as in bodily death, the longer it is dead, the more noisome and offensive it is every day more than other, so sin makes the soul more loathsome and noisome daily, till they have filled up the measure of their sins, till the earth can bear them no longer. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)On spiritual death I. To what sins this representation is to be applied, and to what description of persons it belongs.1. The apostle expressly includes himself among those whose former state he had been considering. 2. The same expression is applied generally to those who never were heathens (Matthew 8:22). 3. It is the declared intention of Jesus Christ, by His appearance in our world, to give life to the world by exhibiting Himself as the Bread of Life. “ I am come that they might have life.” 4. True Christians, without any exception, are described as persons who have “ passed from death unto life.” II. Explain the import of this representation.1. It implies a privation, or withdrawment, of a principle, which properly belongs, and once did belong, to the subject of which it is affirmed. The withdrawment of God is, with respect to the soul, what the withdrawment of the soul is in relation to the body. In each case the necessary effect is death; and as that which occasioned that withdrawment is sin, it is very properly denominated a “ death in trespasses and sins.” Now this view of the subject ought surely to fill us with the deepest concern. Had man never possessed a principle of Divine life, there would have been less to lament in his condition. We are less affected at the consideration of what we never had, than by the loss of advantages which we once possessed. We look at a stone, or a piece of earth, without the least emotion, because, though it be destitute of life, we are conscious it was never possessed. But, when we look upon a corpse, it excites an awful feeling. 2. To be dead in trespasses and sins, intimates the total, the universal prevalence of corruption. Life admits of innumerable degrees and kinds. There is one sort of vegetative life, as in plants, another subsists in animals, and in man a rational, which is still a superior principle of life. Where life is of the same sort it is susceptible of different degrees. It is much more perfect in the larger sorts of animals than in reptiles. The vital principle in different men exists with various degrees of vigour, so that some are far more animated, alert, and vigorous than others. But there are no degrees in death. All things, of which it can be truly said that they are dead, are equally dead. (R. Hall, M. A.)Standing, yet dead Whilst visiting the beautiful island of Tasmania our attention was often called, nay, arrested, to huge trees which appear as “ bleached ghosts of a dead forest.” They stand out in the brilliant moonlight with a weirdness that is surprising and magnificent. The reason for their condition is as follows: On account of their great size and the heavy cost of what is called “ grubbing up,” the settler leaves them in the ground, but proceeds to cut them round the trunk at a height of about four feet. The axe cuts through the bark and about an inch into the tree. The effect is that when the next early spring comes all the sap exudes from the “ gashed wounds,” and the monster of the forest dies. The great branches wither, the leaves fall off, the bark strips, and a year or two suffices to join the army of the upright dead. The farmer can now plough the ground between, sow his corn, and reap the harvest in the huge mausoleum of the forest. No sheltering foliage hinders the sun’ s rays and the wheat plant thrives and ripens amidst hundreds of towering trees whose only voice is the silence of the dead. As we looked upon these dead ones we were reminded of an experience which comes to many men who are dead also even while they too are in posture, at least, upright. Hewed round in the trunk of their robust life, the axe of “ the adversary,” hews and cuts until the sap, the rising, spreading, and expanding life, is drained. The spring time in these goodly trees of promise is followed by the bleach and ghostly death which comes of the exuding of conscience, honour, strength, and life. Alas, alas! this living human mausoleum knows no wheat growth or harvest at its base. The malaria of death is there, and the spreading corruption infects other trees also, and the forest of the dead extends. Welt does the apostle say of such, “ They wax wanton and are dead while they live.” (Henry Varley.)Partially quickened I desire, brethren, for myself and you, that we may be alive all over, for some professors appear to be more dead than alive; life has only reached a fraction of their manhood. Life is in their hearts, blessed be God for that; but is only partially in their heads, for they do not study the gospel nor use their brains to understand its truths. Life has not touched their silent tongues, nor their idle hands, nor their frost-bitten pockets. Their house is on fire, but it is only at one corner, and the devil is doing his best to put out the flame. They remind me of a picture I once saw, in which the artist had laboured to depict Ezekiel’ s vision, and the dead bodies in course of resurrection. The bones were coming together, and flesh gradually clothing them, and he represents one body in which the head is perfectly formed, but the body is a skeleton, while in another place the body is well covered, but the arms and legs remain bare bones. Some Christians, I say, are much in the same state. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christ quickens the morally dead I remember once conversing with a celebrated sculptor, who had been hewing out a block of marble to represent one of our great patriots--Lord Chatham. “ There,” said he, “ is not that a fine form?” “ Now, sir,” said I, “ can you put life into it: Else, with all its beauty, it is still but a block of marble.” Christ, by His Spirit, puts life into a beauteous image, and enables the man He forms to live to His praise and glory. (Rowland Hill, M. A.)The nature and universality of spiritual death To explain the context and show you the connection, I shall make two short remarks. The one is, That the apostle had observed in the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the foregoing chapter that the same almighty power of God, which raised Christ from the dead, is exerted to enable a sinner to believe. The same exertion of the same power is necessary in the one case and the other; because, as the body of Christ was dead, and had no principle of life in it, so, says He, ye were dead in trespasses and sins; and therefore could no more quicken yourselves than a dead body can restore itself to life. Death is a state of insensibility and inactivity, and a dead man is incapable of restoring himself to life; therefore the condition of an unconverted sinner must have some resemblance to such a state, in order to support the bold metaphor here used by the apostle. To understand it aright we must take care, on the one hand that we do not explain it away in flattery to ourselves, or in compliment to the pride of human nature; and, on the other hand, that we do not carry the similitude too far, so, as to lead into absurdities, and contradict matter of fact. A sinner dead in trespasses and sins may be a living treasury of knowledge, an universal scholar, a profound philosopher, and even a great divine, as far as mere speculative knowledge can render him such; nay, he is capable of many sensations and impressions from religious objects, and of performing all the external duties of religion. Trespasses and sins are the grave, the corrupt effluvia, the malignant damps, the rottenness of a dead soul: it lies dead, senseless, inactive, buried in trespasses and sins. Trespasses and sins render it ghastly, odious, abominable, a noisome putrefaction before a holy God, like a rotten carcase, or a mere mass of corruption: the Vilest lusts, like worms, riot upon and devour it, but it feels them not, nor can it lift a hand to drive the venom off. You have seen that the metaphorical expression in my text is intended to represent the stupidity, inactivity, and impotence of unregenerate sinners about divine things. This truth I might confirm by argument and Scripture authority; but I think it may be a better method for popular conviction to prove and illustrate it from plain instances of the temper and conduct of sinners about the concerns of religion, as this may force the conviction upon them from undoubted matters of fact and their own experience. I. Consider the excellency of the Divine Being, the sum total, the great Original of all perfections. How infinitely worthy is He of the adoration of all His creatures! how deserving of their most intense thoughts and most ardent affections! Yet how insensible are we and all men to His perfections and majesty. The sun, moon, and stars have bad more worshippers than the uncreated Fountain of Light from which they derive their lustre. Kings and ministers of state have more punctual homage and more frequent applications made to them than the King of kings and Lord of lords. Created enjoyments are more eagerly pursued than the Supreme Good. Search all the world over, and you will find but very little motions of heart towards God; little love, little desire, little searching after Him. The reason is, men are dead in trespasses and sins. II. The august and endearing relations the great and blessed God sustains to us, and the many ways He has taken to make dutiful and grateful impressions upon our hearts. What tender endearments are there contained in the relation of a Father! Now the name of a father is wont to carry some endearment and authority. Children, especially in their young and helpless years, are fond of their father; their little hearts beat with a thousand grateful passions towards him; and they fly to him upon every appearance of danger: but if God be a father, where is His honour? here, alas! the filial passions are senseless and immoveable. And is not a state of death a very proper representation of such sullen, incorrigible stupidity? Living souls have very tender sensations; one touch of their heavenly Father’ s hand makes deep impressions upon them. Concluding reflections:1. What a strange, affecting view does this subject give us of this assembly! 2. Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, that Christ may give thee light. The principle of reason is still alive in you; you are also sensible of your own interest, and feel the workings of self-love. It is God alone that can quicken you, but He effects this by a power that does not exclude, but attends rational instructions and persuasions to your understanding. 3. Let the children of God be sensible of their great happiness in being made spiritually alive. Life is a principle, a capacity necessary for enjoyments of any kind. 4. Let us all be sensible of this important truth, that it is entirely by grace we are saved. If we were once dead in sin, certainly it is owing to the freest grace that we have been quickened; therefore, when we survey the change, let us cry, “ Grace, grace unto it.” (President Davies, M. A.)Dead The epithet implies--1. Previous life. Death is but the cessation of life. The spirit of life fled from Adam’ s disobedient heart, and it died, for it was severed from God. 2. It implies insensibility. The dead, which are as insusceptible as their kindred clay, can be neither wooed nor won back to existence. The beauties of holiness do not attract man in his spiritual insensibility, nor do the miseries of hell deter him. 3. It implies inability. The corpse cannot raise itself from the tomb and come back to the scenes and society of the living world. The peal of the last trump alone can start it from its dark and dreamless sleep. Inability characterizes fallen man. And this is not natural but moral inability, such inability as not only is no palliation, but oven forms the very aggravation of his crime. It is inability not of mind but of will. He cannot, simply because he will not, and therefore he is justly responsible. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Quickening grace Hence learn--1. It is not sufficient that the servants of Jesus Christ do only preach privileges, and hold forth unto believers that happy estate unto which they are lifted up through Christ; it is necessary also that jointly herewith they be calling them to mind their woeful, miserable, and lost estate by nature: for the apostle, in the preceding chapter, having spoken much of those high privileges unto which the Ephesians were advanced by Christ, he doth here mind them of that miserable state wherein God found them; “ And you who were dead in trespasses and sins.” 2. There is nothing contributeth more to commend the doctrine of free grace to people’ s consciences, and so to commend it as to make them closely adhere unto it, both in possession and practice, than the serious perpending of man’ s woeful and altogether hopeless estate by nature: this alone would do much to scatter all that mist whereby human reason doth obscure the beauty of this truth, by extolling man’ s free will as a co-worker with grace (Romans 3:19-20). 3. Believers in Jesus Christ are not to look upon their lost and miserable estate by nature separately, and apart from, but jointly with God’ s free grace and mercy, which hath delivered them from that misery; for otherwise the thoughts of sin and misery may, if God should give way, swallow them up (Matthew 27:4-5). Hence is it the apostle hath so contrived his discourse here, that all along, while he speaketh of their misery in the first three verses, the mind of the reader is kept in suspense without coming to the perfect close of a sentence, until God’ s mercy in their delivery from this misery be mentioned (verse 5); for the original hath not these words, “ He hath quickened,” in this verse: but the translators have taken them from verse 5, to make up the sense, without suspending the reader so long until he should find them in their own proper place, “ And you who were dead,” etc. 4. Every man by nature, and before conversion, is dead, not to sin (for that is proper to the regenerate only; see Romans 6:2, where the grammatical construction is the same in the original with that which is here; only the sense is much different), but in sin, whereby he is wholly deprived of all ability and power to convert himself (Romans 9:16), or to do anything which is spiritually good (Romans 8:7). (James Fergusson.)Dead souls When there is an estrangement of the soul from the Spirit of God and Christ, sanctifying, and comforting, and cheering it, then there is a death of the soul. The soul can no more act anything that is savingly and holily good, than the body can be without the soul. And as the body without the soul is a noisome, odious carcass, offensive in the eyes of its dearest friends, so the soul, without the Spirit of Christ quickening and seasoning it, and putting a comeliness and beauty upon it, is odious. All the clothes and flowers you put on a dead body cannot make it but a stinking carcass; so all the moral virtues, and all the honours in this world, put upon a man out of Christ, it makes him not a spiritual living soul; he is but a loathsome carrion, a dead carcass, in the sight of God and of all that have the Spirit of God. For he is under death. He is stark and stiff, unable to stir or move to any duty whatsoever. He has no sense nor motion. Though such men live a common natural civil life, and walk up and down, yet they are dead men to God and to a better life. The world is full el dead men, that are dead while they are alive, as St. Paul speaks of the “ widow that lives in pleasures” (1 Timothy 5:6). A fearful estate, if we had spiritual eyes to see it and think of it. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)Sin is the death of the soul Sin disengages the love of God to the creature, because it renders the creature useless as to the end for which it was designed. Things, whose essence and being stand in relation to such an end, have their virtue and value from their fitness to attain it. Everything is ennobled from its use, and debased as far as it is useless. As long as a man continues an instrument of God’ s glory, so long his title to life and happiness stands sure, and no longer. But now, sin in Scripture, and in God’ s account, is the death of the soul. “ We were dead in trespasses and sins.” Now death makes a thing utterly useless, because it renders it totally inactive; and in things that are naturally active, that which deprives them of their action bereaves them of their use. The soul, by reason of sin, is unable to act spiritually; for sin has disordered the soul, and turned the force and edge of all its operations against God; so that now it can bring no glory to God by doing, but only by suffering, and being made miserable. It is now unfit to obey His commands, and fit only to endure His strokes. It is incapable by any active communion or converse with Him to enjoy His love, and a proper object only to bear His anger and revenge. We may take the case in this similitude. A physician has a servant; while this servant lives honestly with him, he is fit to be used and to be employed in his occasions; but if this servant should commit a felony, and for that be condemned, he can then be actively serviceable to him no longer; he is fit only for him to dissect, and make an object upon which to show the experiments of his skill. So while man was yet innocent he was fit to be used by God in a way of active obedience; but now having sinned, and being sentenced by the law to death as a malefactor, he is a fit matter only for God to torment and show the wonders of His vindictive justice. (R. South, D. D.)Spiritual insensibility Announce to a man who believes himself possessed of an enormous capital that bankruptcy and beggary await him; tell a prisoner who hopes for certain deliverance that the sentence of death is passed on him, and he may expect the summons of the executioner; inform a man who thinks he has got but a slight disease, that it is the symptom of a fatal plague, and advise him to prepare for death; thunder at a man’ s door, and shout that the house is on fire, and bid him escape for his life--and surely nothing but that men had sunk in death before these tidings reached their ears, could prevent their being suitably affected by them. But men can hear of the judgments and the wrath of God as though they heard them not; such announcements are like those of the destruction of Sodom by Lot, “ He seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law,” or like the language of unbelieving Israel to the prophet, when he proclaimed the fearful judgments to come, “ Ah, Lord God! they say of me, doth he not speak parables?” (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)The solemnity of death What a solemn sight is presented to us by a dead body! When last evening trying to realize the thought, it utterly overcame me. The thought is overwhelming, that soon this body of mine must be a carnival for worms; that in and out of these places, where my eyes are glistening, foul things, the offspring of loathsomeness, shall crawl; that this body must be stretched in still, cold, abject, passive death, must then become a noxious, nauseous thing, cast out even by those that loved me, who will say, “ Bury my dead out of my sight.” Perhaps you can scarcely, in the moment I can afford you, appropriate the idea to yourselves. Does it not seem a strange thing, that you, who have walked to this place this morning, shall be carried to your graves; that the eyes with which you now behold me shall soon be glazed in everlasting darkness; that the tongues, which just now moved in song, shall soon be silent, lumps of clay; and that your strong and stalwart frame, now standing in this place, will soon be unable to move a muscle, and become a loathsome thing, the brother of the worm and the sister of corruption? You can scarcely get hold of the idea; death doth such awful work with us, it is such a Vandal with this mortal fabric, it so rendeth to pieces this fair thing that God hath builded up, that we can scarcely bear to contemplate his works of ruin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)All are dead by nature Now, endeavour, as well as you can, to get the idea of a dead corpse, and when you have so done, please to understand that that is the metaphor employed in my text to set forth the condition of your soul by nature. Just as the body is dead, incapable, unable, unfeeling, and soon about to become corrupt and putrid; so are we, if we be unquickened by Divine grace, dead in trespasses and sins, having within us death, which is capable of developing itself in worse and worse stages of sin and wickedness, until all of us here, left by God’ s grace, should become loathsome beings: loathsome through sin and wickedness, even as the corpse through natural decay. Understand, that the doctrine of the Holy Scripture is, that man by nature, since the Fall, is dead; he is a corrupt and ruined thing; in a spiritual sense, utterly and entirely dead. And if any of us shall come to spiritual life, it must be by the quickening of God’ s Spirit, vouchsafed to us sovereignly through the goodwill of God the Father, not for any merits of our own, but entirely of His own abounding and infinite grace. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Man dead in trespasses and sins One Sunday Father Taylor preached upon the Atonement. His text was, “ Dead in trespasses and sins.” “ Dead!” he exclaimed; “ not only dead, but buried; and you can’ t get out! A big boulder lays on the main hatch, keeping it down over your heads. You may go to work with all your purchases--bars, handspikes, winch, and double tackles; but you can’ t make it budge an inch. But hark! who is it that has the watch on deck! Jesus Christ. Now, sing out to Him, and Sing out loud. Ah! He hears you; and He claps His shoulder against this rock of sin, cants it off the hatch, the bars fly open, and out you come.” Image of the unregenerate The unregenerate man may be said to be made up of two parts--a living body and a dead soul. In states of disease and injury we sometimes find something analogous, in one part of the body being full of life, and another part of it palsied and dead. I have seen a person after injury of the lower part of the neck surviving for a time; the head perfectly alive and well, but the body and limbs perfectly motionless. In the last fatal duel fought near Edinburgh a bullet struck the spine of the challenger. I have often heard this unhappy man’ s physician tell that when he first visited him, some hours afterwards, and asked him how he felt, “ I feel,” he replied, “ exactly what I am--a man with a living head and a dead body mysteriously joined together.” Every unbelieving man consists of a dead soul mysteriously joined to a living body. (Sir James Simpson.)A dead soul As a dead man cannot inherit an estate, no more can a dead soul inherit the kingdom of God. (H. G. Salter.)Care for souls When on a visit to a city in the neighbourhood of Ephesus, St. John commended to the care of the bishop a young man of fine stature, graceful countenance, and ardent mind, as suited to the work of the ministry. The bishop neglected his charge. The young man became idle and dissolute, and was at length prevailed on to join a band of robbers, such as commonly had their strongholds in the neighborhood of ancient Greek cities. He soon became their captain, and attained to notoriety in crime. Long after St. John entered the city again, and inquired for the young man. “ He is dead,” said the bishop, “ dead to God.” Having ascertained the particulars, the apostle exclaimed, “ I left a fine keeper of a brother’ s soul!” then, mounting a horse, he rode into the country, and was taken prisoner. He attempted not to flee, but said, “ For this purpose am I come, conduct me to your captain.” He entered the presence of the armed bandit, who, recognizing the apostle, attempted to escape. “ Why dost thou flee, my son,” said he, “ from thy father--thy defenceless, aged father? Fear not, thou still hast hopes of life. I will pray to Christ for thee. I will suffer death for thee. I will give my life for thine. Believe that Christ hath sent me.” The young man was subdued, fell into the apostle’ s arms, prayed with many tears, became perfectly reformed, and returned to the communion of the Church. (Legend of St. John.)Spiritual death and life I. The original condition of the Ephesians. They were deaden trespasses and sins. The two words, “ trespasses and sins,” have almost the same meaning. They imply the breaking, not keeping, or offending against the moral law of God. The negative symptoms of spiritual death are--1. The want of spiritual perception. As a dead body has not the five bodily senses, so a dead soul has not the spiritual senses. It neither sees nor hears, nor tastes, nor perceives the perfume, nor feels the reality of the spiritual world. The glory of God shineth forth in the gospel of Christ, but dead souls are blind and cannot see it (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). God speaketh by His providence and by His inspired word in loudest tones of reproof, admonition, invitation, and love, warning, and terror; but the dead soul is deaf, like the adder that heareth not the voice of the charmer, charm he never so sweetly. The dead soul cannot taste and see that God is gracious. 2. No spiritual understanding. “ There is none that understandeth.” “ The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned” (Romans 3:2). 3. Want of spiritual desires. “ Depart from us, we desire not knowledge of Thy ways.” “ There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” 4. The dead soul has no spiritual strength. The natural man is, in spiritual exertion, absolutely helpless and powerless. 5. The dead soul has no capacity of spiritual enjoyment. Dead in trespasses and sins, it can have no true or permanent happiness. Having thus enumerated five qualities in which the spiritually dead soul is deficient, we may now mention those which such a soul has.1. It has entire corruption and depravity. 2. From entire depravity proceeds the second positive quality in the dead soul--it is constantly committing actual sin. 3. A third property of a spiritually dead soul is, that it is under the wrath and curse of God (Galatians 3:8). 4. The fourth and last property which we shall mention is, that the soul in this state is deserving of and prepared for eternal death. “ The soul that sinneth shall die” is the unchangeable word of the inflexibly just God. “ The wages of sin is death.” II. The change which the Ephesians underwent, so as to bring them into the state in which they were when the apostle transmitted to their Church this epistle--“ You hath He quickened.” Under this head we might direct your attention to the five following particulars: The nature, author, qualities, effects, and subjects of this change.1. As to the nature of this change. It was to the souls of the Ephesians what the resurrection of Lazarus was to his body, the actual communication of life to what was previously dead. 2. Who was the author of this mighty transformation? Not the apostle; he utterly disclaims the power, as well as the honour, of effecting it (1 Corinthians 3:5-6). Not the Ephesians themselves. Can the dead quicken the dead? “ You hath He quickened.” 3. As to the qualities of this change. If our time permitted, we might describe it as being supernatural in its origin, nature, and effects; immediate, abiding (1 John 2:19), saving, transforming, and a most glorious and happy change, giving glory to God, and conferring happiness on men. 4. The effects of this change of being quickened from spiritual death were two-fold--inestimable privilege and holy fruit. 5. The subjects of this change. “ You hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” III. Let us now endeavour to apply to our own use what we have learned respecting the Ephesians. Should anyone be saying, “ I greatly fear that I am dead, but oh that I knew how I may be quickened!” Be of good courage, my brother, and despair not, for the mercy of God is unsearchable, and may reach even to you. If anyone in this assembly be quickened from his death in sins, to him I would say, You have been quickened in order that God in Christ may be glorified in you and by you. You are a monument of the marvellous grace of God, therefore glorify the grace of God by ascribing your salvation to sovereign grace as its origin, depending on efficacious grace as its means, and living to the praise of redeeming grace as its end. (W. Mackenzie,)I. In the first three verses the state and character of the Ephesians before their conversion is described. As to their state, they “ were dead in trespasses and sins.” This death may be viewed as two-fold, namely, legal and spiritual. The former consisted in the condemning sentence of the Divine law, under which they lay, as its transgressors; the latter consisted in the moral pollution of their natures, in consequence of which they were utterly incapable of any holy obedience to God. As to their character, or external deportment, the Ephesians are described in verses second and third, They “ walked in sins.” The term “ walk” is expressive of a regular habitual course. Their whole life was sin. The sinful life which the Ephesians led was more particularly distinguished by conformity to the world, and compliance with the devil. They walked in sins “ according to the course of this world,” “ according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” II. We come, secondly, to consider the great change which had taken place in the wretched condition of the Ephesians through Divine grace.1. This blessed change is explained in verses 1, 4, 5, and 6. In verse 1 we are informed in what the change consisted “ You hath He quickened.” To quicken is to implant holy principles in the soul, so that it becomes alive to God and righteousness. 2. We have next the author of this gracious change, in verses 4 and 5--“ But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).” To quicken dead souls is a Divine work, as much so as is the resuscitation of a dead body to life. The new birth is as far above the effort of nature as the rearing of a world. 3. We have next the formal or meritorious cause of this change--“ He hath quickened us together with Christ” (verse 4). Christ was quickened by the mighty power of God when He rose from the dead; end His resurrection was the Father’ s testimony to the perfection and acceptance of that glorious work, which is the foundation of all the grace which flows from heaven to poor sinners. 4. “ And hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Jesus not only rose from the dead, to which His people are conformed in regeneration, but also ascended into heaven, and “ sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” ; and this He did as the Head, so that in Him His people sat down in heavenly places; and His exaltation there is the assurance that they shall personally appear in heaven, and share in the glory the Father hath bestowed on Him. 5. We have, finally, the moving cause of the grace shown to the Ephesians, in verse 4--“ But God, who is rich in mercy,” etc. The cause of the grace manifested to Jews and Gentiles lay in God alone, not in any measure in them. It was love residing in the bosom of the Eternal Himself which moved Him to quicken these wretched sinners. III. We come, thirdly and lastly, to the ultimate object of God’ s grace to sinners of the Jews and Gentiles. It is mentioned in the seventh verse--“ that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” This was a noble end, in all respects worthy of our gracious God. These poor idolaters, quickened to a heavenly and endless life, are patterns of Divine grace to every age, and to every sinner of every age, till time has run its course. Let me shortly improve this subject by urging on you the lessons it inculcates. Learn, first, from this subject, the guilt and wretchedness of our spiritual condition by nature. We learn, secondly, from this subject, how great is the grace of God in Christ Jesus. (M. Grigor.) Ephesians 2:2 Wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.The life of the unregenerate 1. The life of the unregenerate is a walk in transgression. Whatever they occupy themselves in, it is all sin. 2. The corrupt example of such encourages others to sin. Even as damps put out a light, so this fog of sin suffocates and smothers the lightsome blaze of saving graces in the godly, though it cannot altogether quench them. 3. The unregenerate are under the power of the devil. He works effectually in their hearts, and turns them in whatever direction he pleases. (1) How woeful is our estate, under Satan’ s thrall, until by Christ we are delivered. Men think the devil not half so fearful as he is, and so they smart by him before they discern their danger. Be wise in time, and prevent so great mischief of a subtle, malicious, and implacable enemy. (2) No power, but the power of God, can set us free. (Paul Bayne.)Satanic influences I. Their variety. They operate--1. Through fashion and custom. “ The course of this world.” 2. By continual suggestion of evil. “ The power of the air.” 3. Through impulse. “ The spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.” The nature being corrupted, its instincts are perverted and its tendencies evil. II. The advantage they possess.1. Illusion. They falsify the vision of the soul, distort the perspective of experience, and clothe themselves with the garb of utility, reasonableness, etc. In this way they present their suggestions as-- (1) Supreme wisdom. The collective authority of the past, and the universal opinion of the present. (2) Free and spontaneous impulses. Deluded by them the sinner says, “ I am free. I am my own master.” 2. Proximity. (1) Locally--the whisper of Satan. (2) Temporally--“ first thoughts.” 3. Intangibleness. Like the pressure of the atmosphere, so universally distributed as scarcely to be felt. The first origins of evil may be apparently neutral, or even laudable. III. Their overthrow. “ I am come,” says Christ, “ to destroy the works of the devil.” How? By the introduction of light, to expose the works of darkness; of life, by which their spell is broken, and they are overcome. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Subtlety of evil spirits Without any perceptible noise or effort, you breathe the air and live thereby; but more noiselessly, and without awaking the slightest suspicion of their presence, designing spirits enter your souls, kindle desire, and lead forth thought, “ according to their will.” The secret evil which is done by them every day is beyond all power of calculation. “ The spider puts forth from herself a gossamer thread, which floats in the air and catches hold of something where she is not; but no sooner does she find the farther end of her thread fastened, than she goes forth upon it, strengthening it and making it her highway. She thus opens and establishes communication over a gulf, which, but for her airy bridge, she could not cross. Having suspended her bridge, she lets down pendants, and weaves between them an all but invisible gauze, in which her prey are to be taken before they suspect their danger.” The crafty spider would be still more Satan-like, if she could prevail upon the flies to weave the web, in which she meant to take them. “ The prince of the power of the air” is master enough of his art to do this. He persuades the souls of men, by a projection of their thoughts and desires, to weave themselves into connection with himself. And the more logical and conclusive their thought system can be made to appear, so much the stronger is the connecting web between them and his kingdom. By this web he holds them, and over it he travels to poison and destroy them. It would be beyond his power to hold, or to poison any single soul, unless he first obtained the cooperation of that soul. He is, therefore, unsparing in the use of flattery. He compliments the human intellect on its system of thought. He persuades strong-minded men that the Christian faith is a weakness, but that their scientific method, being based on actual facts, is unanswerable. Honeyed poison. “ The depth of Satan.” He leads men to make a joke of his very existence, and at the same time, gives direction to their thoughts and imaginations, that they may weave themselves into his power. (John Pulsford.)The prince of the power of the air The connection of the “ world” with the Evil One as its “ prince” is not uncommon in Holy Scripture (see John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11); and the power of this passage is exactly that which Satan claims as “ committed” to him in Luke 4:32. But the phrase “ the power of the air” is unique and difficult. We note(1) that this phrase signifies not “ a power over the air,” but “ a power dwelling in the region of the air.” Now, the word “ power,” both in the singular and the plural, is used in this Epistle, almost technically, of superhuman power. Here, therefore, the Evil One is described as “ the prince,” or ruler, of such superhuman power--considered here collectively as a single power, prevailing over the world, and working in the children of disobedience--in the same sense in which he is called the “ prince of the devils,” the individual spirits of wickedness (Matthew 9:34; Matthew 12:24). Next (2), Why is this spoken of as ruling “ in the air” ? There may possibly be allusion (as has been supposed) to the speculation of Jewish or Gentile philosophy; but it seems far more probable that the “ air” is here meant simply to describe a sphere, and therefore a power, below the heaven and yet above the earth. The “ air” is always opposed to the bright “ ether,” or to the spiritual “ heaven” ; the word and its derivatives carry with them the ideas of cloudiness, mist, and even darkness. Hence it is naturally used to suggest the conception of the evil power, as allowed invisibly to encompass and move about this world, yet overruled by the power of the true heaven, which it vainly strives to overcloud and hide from earth. In Ephesians 6:12 the powers of evil are described with less precision of imagery, as dwelling “ in heavenly places,” the opposition being there only between what is human and superhuman; yet even there the “ darkness” of this world is referred to, corresponding to the conception of cloudiness and dimness always attaching to “ the air.” (A. Barry, D. D.)Ruin by worldliness When Henry the Fourth of France asked the Duke of Alva’ s opinion respecting some of the astronomical mysteries of heaven, he said, “ Sire, I have so much to do on earth that I have no leisure to think of heaven.” Such a conviction would be ruin to us: we must think of heaven, if we would be prepared for heaven; we must think of heaven, if we would rightly do our work on earth. (Charles Stanford, D. D.)Sinners are captives In my childhood I sometimes saw rabbits that had damaged a cornfield, caught in snares. My first experience of the process melted me, and the scene is not effaced from my memory yet. The creature was caught by the foot. It was a captive, but living; oh, the agonized look it cast on us when we approached it. As a child I could not conceive of any more touching, thrilling appeal than the soft rolling eye of that dumb captive. After I began to go my rounds as a watchman on my allotted field, I fell upon a youth who but lately was bounding hopefully along, bidding fair for the better land, caught by the foot in a snare I went up to him, surprised to find him halting so; but ah! the look, the glare from his eyes; soon told that the immortal was fast in the devil’ s toils. He lived, but he was held. The chains have sunk into his flesh. O wretched man, who shall deliver him? Only one word can we utter in the presence of such a case--“ Nothing is impossible with God.” Having uttered it, we pass on with a sigh. (W. Arnot, D. D.)The corrupting power of sin Observations-- I. The course of this world is a walking forward in trespasses and sins (Psalms 14:1, etc.; Romans 3:1, etc.). Evidenced in--The man of pleasure. The covetous. The ambitious. II. Before regeneration, God’ s people walk in the same way, and under the same spirit, as others. Two thieves. Saul (1 Corinthians 1:6-11). III. There is a government observed by infernal spirits under Satan as prince (Ephesians 6:12; Matthew 12:24-26; Matthew 25:41; Mark 5:9). IV. While men go on in sins, it is under the influence of the devil, etc. Eve. Judas. Ananias. V. Conformity to the world fatal, and a certain evidence of spiritual death. Inferences:1. How awfully has sin corrupted angels and men!2. The generality of mankind are going to destruction.3. Scripture and experience harmonize in the account of fallen man. (H. Foster, M. A.)With or against the course of this world “ I have come along so pleasantly with the stream,” said a chip, just stopped by a tuft of grass, to a minnow which was making its way against it. “ I much wonder you do not choose the easier method, and swim down with, instead of going against, the stream.” “ Nay,” replied the little fish, “ I would much rather to stem the stream, proving I have a will of mine own, than to be borne away whither it wills, which would prove me only and wholly under its power. And so, to be plain with you, your being carried along as you describe convinces me you are not your own master; and as to pleasure, if you can find it in a wandering downward course, it is more surely found in approaching toward the source of the stream, which is my present happy object and effort” ;--at which moment, the minnow, by a lively motion of its body, caused a little ripple in the water, which clearing the chip from its obstruction, it was again floated along, whilst the minnow with joyful feelings pursued its course, as before against the stream. Given up to sin How often does it happen in the history of these wilful sinners of the flesh, that, after a while, all things seem to smile upon them and prosper them according to their hearts’ desires. Are they mad for gold?--gold seems to roll in upon them. Are they mad for pleasure?--their seductive arts are successful, and victims come readily to their lure. Are they mad for drink?--those around them, kindred, friends, cease to strive with them, and give it up as hopeless. Shame, too, abandons them; they may wallow in beer or gin, nobody cares. It is very wonderful to see how often, if a man is bent on an end which is not God’ s end, God gives it him, and it becomes his curse. God does not curse us. He leaves us to ourselves, to follow our own bent and inclination, that is curse enough;. and from that curse what arm can salve us? We will have it, and we shall have it. We leap through all the barriers which He has raised around us to limit us;, yea, though they be rings of blazing fire, we will go through them, and indulge our passions; and, in a moment, He sweeps them all out of our path; perhaps even roses spring to beguile, where flames so lately burnt to warn. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)Hatred of sin I preach and think that it is more bitter to sin against Christ, than to suffer the torments of hell. (St. Chrysostom.)If hell were on one side and sin on the other, I would rather leap into hell than willingly sin against my God. (St. Anselm.)Satanic agency In the first place we have to consider the very singular title given to Satan, “ the prince of the power of the air” ; and, in the second place, the agency ascribed to Him, as “ the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Now, we know it to have been a prevalent opinion among the Jews that fallen angels had their residence in the air, filling the medium that obtains between the earth and the firmament. We can hardly say whence this opinion was derived, nor by what sufficient reason it can be supported. But it would seem from the text that St. Paul favoured the opinion, and it might have been almost said that he had given to it the sanction of his authority. It is, however, of but little importance that we determine where fallen spirits have their habitation; and perhaps, the title, “ The prince of the power of the air,” is not so much intended to define the residence of Satan, as to give information as to the nature of his dominion. We mean it is probable that the expression does not mark that the devil dwells in the air--though that also may be true--but rather what he has at his disposal, the power of the air, so that he can employ this element in his operations on mankind. And we know of no reason whatsoever why the power of the devil should be regarded as confined to what we are wont to call spiritual agency, so as never to be employed in the production of physical evil--why the souls, and not the bodies, of men should be considered as the objects of his attack. Indeed, forasmuch as the soul is the nobler part of man--the more precious and dignified--it would be strange if this alone were exposed to his attacks, and the body were altogether exempt. Indeed, if it could even be supposed that, engaged in attempting the destruction of our immortal part, the devil would care nothing for our mortal--knowing it already doomed to death, and therefore, not worthy of his malice--yet, when we remember how the mind may be acted on through the body, and how difficult, and almost impossible, it is to turn the thoughts on solemn and deep inquiries when there is great suffering of the flesh, you would conclude it probable that the body, as well as the soul, would be assaulted and harassed by Satan and his angels. And this is no philosophical supposition, but rather one which may be abundantly supported by the pages of the Bible. It is certain, from the representation of Scripture, that Satan has much to do with inflicting diseases upon the body. The woman that had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together--what said Christ to her, when the ruler of the synagogue was indignant at her being made straight on the Sabbath day? “ Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this band on the Sabbath day?” The disease, you observe, is expressly referred to Satan, throughout its long continuance, “ whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years.” We know not, again, what the thorn in the flesh was which St. Paul suffered, but the expression makes it probable that it was some acute bodily pain or distemper; and the apostle distinctly refers to it as “ a messenger from Satan sent to buffet him.” You will all remember the case of Job. In the Book of Psalms, moreover, when David is describing how God brought a terrible plague on the disobedient Israelites, what does he say? He declares that “ He sent evil angels amongst them.” We seem quite justified, I think, in inferring, from these intimations, that Satan is greatly concerned with bringing on men corporeal maladies; and if this be once allowed, we may enter into the meaning of the title, “ The prince of the power of the air.” We are accustomed then, as it would seem, with thorough accuracy, to refer to certain states of the air as producing certain diseases of the body. Without being precisely able to trace the connection, or investigate the cause, we consider that the atmosphere is frequently impregnated with the seeds of sickness, so that we may be said to inhale death whilst inhaling what is essential to life. Is he not, then, to be defined as a prince, because of the many legions which obey his commands; and the prince of the power of the air, because he can assault the persons and property of men through the invisible but tremendous machinery of the atmosphere? We would remind you that whatsoever is visionary and unstable, whatsoever is mere delusion and cheat, this we are accustomed to connect with the air, and so to describe it as aerial, what we find to be unstable or deceitful. Indeed, this has been reduced to a proverb, so that, to accuse a man of building castles in the air, is to accuse him of wasting time in imagining what cannot be realized; and of allowing his fancy so to supersede his judgment, that he plans with no chance of executing, and reckons on what it is almost impossible that he can obtain. The dreams, the phantoms, the meteors, by which many are regulated, or which they pursue--these are all, if we speak metaphorically, full of the air. It is undoubtedly by and through putting a cheat on men that the devil, from the first, has effected their destruction. His endeavour has been, and too often successful, to prevail on them to substitute an imaginary good for the real, a creature for the Creator, and to make, and to mock, their own capacities for happiness, by seeking it in the finite and the perishable. And if there be any truth in this account of the process--so to speak--through which Satan carries on his attacks upon men, it is hardly possible not to allow the appropriateness of the title, “ The prince of the power of the air.” If it be by what we may call a series of optical deceptions that he acts on our race, distorting one thing, magnifying another, and throwing false colouring on a third, is he not proceeding so as to avail himself of those strange properties of the air, whence spring such a phenomenon as that of the Egyptian mirage--the weary traveller being cheated with the appearance of the blue waters, with a lake on whose margin the green trees are waving, but finding, as he approaches, that there is only the hot sand, and not a drop of moisture with which to cool his tongue. If, again, it be by crowding the field with forms of gorgeous thrones and splendid pageantry, which sweep before the mind, as they beckon it onward to disappointment--if it be thus that Satan retains, undisturbed, his dominion over thousands, what can he be so truly said to employ, as the power of the air--wielding those brilliant meteors, which have seemed to pass to and fro, as though ranging from cloud to cloud, causing those strange illusions which have startled the peasant, and made him think the deep glen into which he was entering tenanted by shadowy and mysterious beings. In short, if all the forms by which Satan enrolls and deceives mankind be unsubstantial--if the ambitious, the voluptuary, and the avaricious, be all and each pursuing a beckoning shadow--if the whole apparatus by which the world is lulled into slumber, or roused to self-destruction, be made up of the mere imagery of happiness, can any description be more apposite than that which represents the devil as lord of that element in which floats the mote, through which glides the spectre, and out of which can be formed nothing we can grasp, though it may be the vehicle of a thousand deceptions arranged into beautiful array? Yea, if the devil be empowered thus to employ the fleeting, and specious, and transient--is there not an extraordinary appropriateness in the title of the text--is he not most fitly characterized as “ The prince of the power of the air.” But it is time that we pass from considering the title which St. Paul gives to Satan, to examine the account subjoined of the agency of this spirit. Having called the devil “ the prince of the power of the air,” the apostle proceeds to speak of him as “ the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” We do not at all doubt that these words are applicable to our own days, as well as to earlier, though, at the same time, it would appear that St. Paul designed to represent Satan as just then peculiarly energetic. You observe, he says, “ the spirit that now worketh,” as though he had not before worked, or not with the same vehemence, or precisely the same design. It was the tenet of certain fathers of the Church that, until the coming of Christ, Satan did not know his own eternal condemnation. We pretend not to say whether such a tenet is worthy of consideration; but we know that, at the time of the setting up of Christianity, Satan mustered all his forces, and laboured with unprecedented vehemence and hostility against the people of God. It was only requisite that Christianity should universally supersede heathenism, and there would depart from the earth that gross ignorance which had been the fit theatre for the despotism of fallen angels. Whence the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus? who had gone about doing good, healing all manner of sickness; and He, who had lightened every form of human misery, was buffeted and slain by the children of disobedience, urged on by “ the prince of the power of the air,” who had dazzled their eyes with visions of temporal dominion. Whence the sufferings of the apostles? We have already said that we are to take heed not to charge our faults upon the devil, and thus make his guidance an apology for our sinfulness. We are quite persuaded that it is not the devil who destroys a man; it must be the man who destroys himself. He is then an enemy to be dreaded and resisted--this “ prince of the power of the air” ; but we thank God for the assurance that we are hastening to the crisis when the malignant enemy shall be bound, and spoiled of his power to assault. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Ephesians 2:3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of Our flesh. All men by nature alike 1. The chosen of God have, before conversion, nothing differing from other sinners. Even those whom God takes to mercy were sinful as others, before by His grace they are changed. And why? (1) That the mercy of God may be magnified, and made manifest in the free grace of justification. (2) That love may be engendered in us who have been justified. Mary, who had many sins forgiven, loved much. 2. Where there is no fear of God, no outward privileges will procure us His favour. When God’ s people do not obey Him, their circumcision is made uncircumcision. How can this be, seeing the one profess the true God, while the other does not? (1) In deeds they deny Him. (2) In deeds they set up false gods--their lusts, pleasures, riches, etc. 3. We must not be ashamed to confess ourselves sinners with the worst. The most upright are most forward in confession. It is the proper fruit of grace, to freely confess and give glory to God. 4. By nature the state of all is such that God’ s wrath abides on them. (1) We are born separated from God.(2) We are given up to Satan.(3) Subject to every curse in this life, whether spiritual or corporal.(4) To death temporal.(5) To death eternal. 5. By nature all of us are sinful; not only in regard of Adam’ s sin imputed, but of corruption or concupiscence with which we are conceived (Psalms 51:5; Psalms 58:3; Genesis 8:21; Ezekiel 16:4-6; Isaiah 53:6; Isaiah 1:4). 6. Even the children of the godly are by nature children of wrath. (Paul Bayne.)The misery of man’ s natural state A sinful state cannot but be a miserable state. If sin goes before, wrath follows of course. In the text we have four things.1. The misery of a natural state; it is a state of wrath, as well as a state of sin. The natural man is a malefactor, dead in law, lying in chains of guilt; a criminal, held fast in his fetters, till the day of execution; which will not fail to come, unless a pardon be obtained from his God, who is his judge and his opponent too. 2. Here is the rise of this misery; men have it by nature. They owe it to their nature, not to their substance or essence; for that neither is nor was sin, and therefore cannot make them children of wrath; though, for sin, it may be under wrath: not to their nature, as qualified at man’ s creation by his Maker; but to their nature, as vitiated and corrupted by the Fall; to the vicious quality, or corruption of their nature, as before noticed, which is their principle of action, and, ceasing from action, the only principle in an unregenerate state. 3. The universality of this misery. All are by nature children of wrath, “ we,” says the apostle, “ even as others” ; Jews as well as Gentiles. Those that are now, by grace, the children of God were, by nature, in no better case than those that are still in their natural state. 4. Here is a glorious and happy change intimated. We were children of wrath, but are not so now; grace has brought us out of that state. And thus, it well becomes the people of God to be often standing on the shore, and looking back to the Red Sea, or the state of wrath, which they were once weltering in, even as others. The state of nature is a state of wrath. I. What the state of wrath is. No one can fully describe it. Enough may be discovered, however, to convince men of the absolute necessity of fleeing to Jesus to escape it.1. There is wrath in the heart of God against the natural man. (1) His person is under God’ s displeasure (Psalms 5:5). 2. There is wrath in the Word of God against him (Revelation 2:16). 3. There is wrath in the hand of God against him. He is under heavy strokes of wrath already, and is liable to more. (1) There is wrath on his body (Genesis 2:17).(2) Wrath, on his soul.(3) Wrath on his enjoyments.(4) He is under the power of Satan (Acts 24:18).(5) The natural man hath no security for a moment’ s safety from the wrath of God coming on him to the uttermost. The curse of the law, denounced against him, has already tied him to the stake: so that the arrows of justice may pierce his soul. Does he lie down to sleep? There is not a promise that he knows of, or can know, to secure him that he shall not be in hell ere he awake. He walks amidst enemies armed against him: his name may be Magor-missabib, that is, terror round about (Jeremiah 20:3). Thus the natural man lives, but he must die too; and death is a dreadful messenger to him. It comes upon him armed with wrath, and puts three sad charges in his hand.1. Death charges him to bid an eternal farewell to all things in this world; to leave it, and haste away to another world. 2. Death charges soul and body to part, till the great day. His soul is required of him (Luke 12:20). O what a miserable parting must this be to a child of wrath! Care was indeed taken to provide for the body things necessary for this life; but, alas! there is nothing laid up for another life. As for the soul, he was never solicitous to provide for it. 3. Death charges the soul to appear before the tribunal of God, while the body lies to be carried to the grave (Ecclesiastes 12:7). II. I shall confirm the doctrine of the state of wrath. Consider--1. How peremptory the threatening of the first covenant is: “ In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). 2. The justice of God requires that a child of sin be a child of wrath; that the law being broken, the sanction thereof should take place. 3. The horrors of a natural conscience prove this. Conscience, in the breasts of men, tells them that they are sinners, and therefore liable to the wrath of God. 4. The pangs of the new birth, the work of the Spirit on elect souls, in order to their conversion, demonstrate this. Hereby their natural sinfulness and misery, as liable to the wrath of God, are plainly taught them, filling their hearts with fear of that wrath. As it is the Spirit’ s work to “ convince of sin, righteousness, and judgment” (John 16:8), this testimony must needs be true; for the Spirit of truth cannot witness an untruth. 5. The sufferings of Christ plainly prove this doctrine. Wherefore was the Son of God a son under wrath, but because the children of men were children of wrath? III. I now proceed to apply this doctrine of the misery of man’ s natural state. Is our state by nature a state of wrath? Then--1. Surely we are not born innocent. Those chains of wrath, which by nature are upon us, show us to be born criminals. 2. What desperate madness is it for sinners to go on in their sinful course! What is it but to heap coals of fire on thine own head! to lay more and more fuel to the fire of wrath! (Romans 2:5). 3. Thou hast no reason to complain as long as thou art out of hell. “ Wherefore doth a living man complain?” (Lamentations 3:39). If one, who has forfeited his life, be banished from his native country, and exposed to many hardships; he may well bear all patiently, seeing his life is spared.1. To you that are yet in an unregenerate state, I would sound the alarm, and warn you to see to yourselves, while there is yet hope. O you children of wrath, take no rest in this dismal state; but flee to Christ, the only refuge. The state of wrath is too hot a climate for you to live in. But if any desire to flee from the wrath to come, and for that end to know what course to take, I offer them these few advices. (1) Retire to some secret place and there meditate on this your misery. (2) Consider seriously the sin of your nature, heart, and life. A proper sight of wrath flows from a deep sense of sin. (3) Labour to justify God in this matter. To quarrel with God about it, and to rage like a wild bull in a net, will but fix you the more in it. (4) Turn your eyes towards the Lord Jesus Christ, and embrace Him as He offers Himself in the gospel. 2. I Shall drop a few words to the saints. (1) Remember, that in the day our Lord first took you by the hand, you were in no better a condition than others. (2) Remember there was nothing in you to engage Him to love you, in the day He appeared for your deliverance. (3) Remember, you were fitter to be loathed than loved in that day. (4) Remember, you are decked with borrowed feathers. It is His comeliness which as upon you (Ephesians 2:14). (5) Remember your faults this day, as Pharaoh’ s butler, who had forgotten Joseph. Mind how you have forgotten, and how unkindly you have treated, Him who remembered you in your low estate. (6) Pity the children of wrath, the world that lies in wickedness. Can you be unconcerned for them, you who were once in the same condition? (7) Admire that matchless love, which brought you out of the state of wrath. (T. Boston, D. D.)Inherited depravity When, nine years after his marriage, the birth of his son Nero was announced to him, he (Nero’ s father) answered the congratulations of his friend with the remark, that from himself and Agrippina nothing could have been born but what was hateful and for the public ruin. (Archdeacon Farrar.)The mind sinful The wall thought it very unfair to influence a child’ s mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion and be able to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. “ How so?” said he, “ it is covered with weeds.” “ Oh,” I replied, “ that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.” (Coleridge’s Table Talk.)Fleshly depravity Conversation does not mean talking. There is no instance where it has this signification in the English Bible. It means, as the Greek original does, deportment, conduct, character, as in the following passages: 2 Corinthians 1:12; Galatians 1:13; Ephesians 2:3; Ephesians 4:22; 1 Timothy 4:12; Hebrews 13:5; Hebrews 13:7; James 3:13; 1 Peter 1:15; 1 Peter 1:18; 1 Peter 2:12; 1 Peter 3:1-2; 1 Peter 3:16; 2 Peter 2:7; 2 Peter 3:11. In Philippians 1:27, conversation signifies citizenship; so that to have a good conversation is to act worthy of the New Jerusalem to which grace has called you. But this former conduct or conversation of theirs was “ in the lusts of the flesh.” This refers--1. To carnal or sensual appetites, in which the heathen world was sunk, and Paul asserts in the text that the Jews were the same (Romans 6:12; Romans 7:8-9; 1 Timothy 6:9, and many others). This implies and includes luxuries, the pleasures of the table, drunkenness, and all such forbidden pleasures. 2. These fleshly desires are seen most perfectly in the systems of false worship adopted by the heathen world in general. Baalim was the embodiment of lewdness; Buddhism is the embodiment of the dogma of priestly rule; so is Hindooism and other forms of religion. The Greeks and the Romans deified nature and the dead. The flesh is the teeming fountain of vileness from which all these and similar systems flow:--the picture, the image, the idol, the oracle are the four head forms or developments of false worship, and they all come from the flesh. 3. Flesh is always contrasted with spirit, and in general denotes alienation from God. The law of the flesh is sin; the works of the flesh are evil; the carnal mind is enmity against God (Romans 8:6-7); to walk after the flesh is ungodliness; to be in the flesh is not to know or please God. Jesus Christ crucified it, and He gives us the principle and power of doing the same. (W. Graham, D. D.)Original sin, a fact Original or birth sin is not merely a doctrine in religion, it is a fact in man’ s world acknowledged by all, whether religious or not. Let a man be providing for an unborn child; in case of distribution of worldly property, he will take care to bind him by conditions and covenants which shall guard against his fraudulently helping himself to that which he is to hold for or to apportion to another, He never saw that child; he does not know but that child may be the most pure and perfect of men; but he knows it will not be safe to put temptation in his way, because he knows he will be born in sin, and liable to sin, and sure to commit sin. (Dean Alford.)Man innately bad Many inquirers find it difficult to believe themselves innately bad, simply because they have been told that such a belief is required of them. No man taught the doctrine of original sin, commonly so called, so impressively as Jesus Christ, and yet He never mentioned it. His whole scheme was founded upon the assumption that men were wrong. Every call to a new point, every frown upon sin, every encouragement of well-doing, meant that society needed regeneration. Men may come upon the doctrine of original depravity in one of two different ways; for example, they may come upon it as a dogma in theology. The first thing that some theologians do is to abuse human nature, to describe it as being, covered with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and as deserving nothing but eternal burning. Human nature resists this as a slander: it says, “‘ No; I have good impulses, upward desires, generous emotions towards my fellow creatures; I resent your theological calumnies.” So much for the first method of approaching the doctrine. The second is totally unlike it. A man, for example, heartily accepts Jesus Christ, studies Him with most passionate devotion, and grows daily more like Him in all purity, gentleness, and self-oblivion. From this attitude he looks back upon his former self; he compares the human nature with which he started with the human nature he has attained, and involuntarily, by the sheer necessity of the contrast, he says, “ I was born in sin and shapen in iniquity.” This conclusion he comes to, not by dogmatic teaching, but by dogmatic experience; what he never could have understood as an opinion he realizes as a fact. Suppose a tree to be conscious, and let it illustrate what is meant by growing into a right understanding of this hard doctrine. Tell the tree in April that it is bare and ungainly in appearance; very barren and naked altogether. The tree says, “ Nay; I am rooted in the earth; my branches are strong; I live in the light; I drink the dew; and I am beautiful; the winds rock me, and many a bird twitters on my boughs.” This is its April creed. Go to the same tree after it has had a summer’ s experience: it has felt the quickening penetration of the solar fire, quenched its thirst in summer showers, felt the sap circulating through its veins; the leaves have come out on branch and twig; the blossoms have blushed and bloomed through long days of light; fruit has been formed, and mellowed into maturity. Now hear the tree! “ I am not what I was in April; my very identity seems to be changed; when men called me bare and rugged I did not believe them a few months ago; now I see what they meant--their verdict was sound; I thought the April light very beautiful, but it is nothing to the blazing splendour of the later months; I liked the twitter Of the spring birds, but,. it is poor compared with the song of those that came in June. I feel as if I had been born again.” The parable is broad enough to cover this bewildering, and at times horrifying, doctrine of hereditary depravity. Men cannot be in April what they will be in September. Each year says to growing hearts, “ I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” In old age men may accept the rejected doctrines of their youth. Experience brings us round many a rugged hill, and gives us better views of condemned, because misunderstood, opinions. (J. Parker, D. D.)Universal depravity a proof of original sin As it is absolutely impossible for a man to believe, when the dice are thrown sixes successively a thousand times, that the dice are not loaded, so is it a thousand times more impossible to believe, when every human being of all nations and generations, without a single exception, begins to sin the instant he enters moral agency, that his will is not biassed by a previous effectual tendency in his nature to sin. (Hodge.)The state of nature and the state of grace I. Jews and Gentiles (i.e., all)are by nature alike prone to and lovers of sin. Before and after the flood. In Asia, Europe, Africa, etc. II. Believers can happily say that the time of their sinful conversation is past. (See text; Isaiah 55:13; Romans 6:17; Titus 3:8.) III. When a man knows himself, he will confess that his nature is sinful as others. Job; David; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Paul. IV. The corruption of nature is sinful before it appears in thoughts, words, etc. (Matthew 15:19; Romans 9:11-13). V. The sinfulness of every man’ s nature justly exposes him to the wrath of God. VI. The Scriptures tell us satisfactorily how the world comes to be so wicked. Improvement: The necessity of regeneration. “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” etc. (John 3:6-7). The necessity of daily self-denial. The fatal delusion of Pelagians. The fatal delusion of Arminians. Grace must make one to differ from another. (H. Foster, M. A.)A misinterpreted proof text It is assumed far too axiomatically that the wrath referred to can mean nothing else than God’ s personal wrath against sin, whether original or actual. We are ready to admit that sin in any form must draw down the Divine displeasure. God would be less than God unless sin drew down on it that consuming fire by which at present it is punished, and so held in check, and by which it will ultimately be destroyed forever when He who sits as a refiner shall have purged His silver from the last speck of dross. In this sense God’ s wrath against sin--a wrath punitive and a wrath purifying; for they are both, stages of the same process--is an essential conception of His character. But while admitting this, it is going too far to assume that this wrath of God descends on us at the beginning, instead of at the end, of our moral career. If we are children of wrath in this sense, by our descent from Adam, we can easily see how this view tends to efface all moral distinctions of good and evil. The race is a doomed one from the beginning, and we are all overwhelmed alike in the same whirlpool of perdition here and hereafter. Men may shrink from such remorseless logic, and seek to soften it down; but as long as the text, that we are by nature children of wrath, stands unrevised in our so-called Revised Version, is it strange that the English reader appeals to that text as decisive on the extreme or Augustinian doctrine of birth sin and its consequences? But is this the true interpretation of the text? Will the words bear any other rendering? There must be a mistake somewhere. May it not lie in the inattention of learned men to the fact that the Apostle Paul wrote in Greek, but thought in Hebrew, and that consequently Hebraisms crop up in cases where students of classical Greek are not on the lookout for them as they should be. The present is a case in point. In the previous verse the apostle has described mankind as children of disobedience, which is a strong adjectival form in Hebrew for children thoroughly disobedient. In this verse, returning to this thought and emphasizing it, he reminds us that we all once lived in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath--i.e., children of a wicked, passionate impulse, even as others. The text in this sense not only confirms in this way what goes before, but it also throws a fresh, though lurid, light on human nature, Jew alike and Gentile. It reminds us that these lusts of the flesh and mind all had their root in a principle of passionate impulse (ï̓ñãç) which is congenital to us, and which is so much our nature that we may in a sense be described as the children of this passionate desire, or the slaves of it, as we should say in modern phrase. Surely this is a dark enough description of human nature, without adding that other dark hue of Augustinian theology, that in consequence of this we are born under God’ s wrath, and that the curse of God descends on us as a kind of birth, taint. (J. B. Heard, M. A.)Children of wrath What is it to be a child of wrath? It is to turn every blessing that this earth can give into aggravated misery. The happier we see a man--the more exalted in station, the more renowned by fame, the more endowed with wealth--the more miserable is his lot when precipitated from them all to everlasting ruin. Belshazzar was more to be commiserated and contemned than the poorest beggar within the city of Babylon, when the hand of fire came forth to write his doom upon the wall; the louder he had laughed--the more triumphantly he had “ praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone” --the deeper draughts of luscious wine that he and all his court had quaffed from the golden vessels of Jehovah’ s temple--the deadlier was the livid paleness of his face, the loosening of his joints, and the smiting of his knees, when the fatal characters of death and judgment were traced, before his eyes. What profit in the vast domains of wealth, when the trumpet of eternal judgment shall awake their haughty owners from the death of trespasses and sins? When they shall call, but call in vain, upon those lofty mountains, of which, in their pride of heart, they had boasted as their own, to fall on them and cover them, and hide them from the wrath of that God whom they have dishonoured and despised? (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)Nature’ s testimony to the wrath of God Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with love, and in the utmost solitudes of nature the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as of heaven. It is well for us to dwell with thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the black, perilous whirlpools and the mountain streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty into darkness, of all strength into dust--have these no language for us? We may seek to escape their teachings by reasonings touching the good which is wrought out of evil, but it is vain sophistry. The good succeeds to the evil as the day succeeds to the night, but so also the evil to the good. Ebal and Gerizim, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man and his futurity. (Ruskin.)Discipline of the passions The passions may be humoured till they become our master, as a horse may be pampered till he gets the better of his rider; but early discipline will prevent mutiny, and keep the helm in the hands of reason. (Cumberland.)The power of religion A clergyman, having made several attempts to reform a profligate, was at length met with the decided statement, “ It is all in vain, sir; you cannot get me to change my religion.” “ I do not want that,” replied the good man; “ I wish religion to change you.” Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.The mercy of God 1. God is a God of rich mercies. (1) Let us acknowledge His mercy to us. (2) Let us imitate it in our dealings with others. 2. It is the love of God which procures His mercy toward us. (1) This may assure us of God’ s favour towards us. If a man out of love have sought the friendship of his enemy, and used means to be reconciled to him, is it not likely that he will be constant in his love to him to the end? However this may be with man, it is certain that God will not change (John 13:2; Malachi 3:7). (2) This teaches us our duty to God and man. He has loved us first, therefore must we love Him again, His love must constrain us; and our love is a reflection of His to us (1 John 4:19; 2 Corinthians 5:14; 1 John 4:11). (Paul Bayne.)God’ s mercy towards the sinner I. The motives of the Divine mercy.1. The promotion of His own glory. To show mercy is the most sublime work, and, emphatically, a Divine action. (1) Never despair of the boundless mercy of God; to doubt is to dishonour Him. (2) Show mercy also to others, that God’ s Spirit may be made manifest in you. 2. His holiness. God, by His love of all that is good, and by His hatred of all that is bad, is moved to extirpate what is morally bad. This design is best accomplished by the conversion of the sinner, because if he were to die a sinner, that which is bad would be and would remain permanent in him. Hence the long suffering of God, His attempts to save the sinner, His readiness to forgive, that sin may be abolished. 3. The love of the Father for His Son. Jesus has purchased and redeemed mankind by His death. By losing one soul, He loses a most dear property, the price of His own precious blood. Therefore, the Father is moved by love to save the redeemed and to recover the lost soul (John 6:39). 4. His infinite benevolence. II. The immense greatness of Divine mercy.1. Like all the Divine perfections, it is as great as God Himself. “ Thy mercy is above the heavens.” 2. It extends to all sins. (1) Despair not because of their number (Isaiah 1:18). (2) Nor on account of their hideousness (Romans 5:20). Have not the saintly penitents obtained forgiveness of the most hideous crimes? “ A murderer is the first stone God made use of in establishing His eternal kingdom,” says Augustine. 3. It embraces all sinners without exception. 4. It lasts till death. III. The wonderful manner of its manifestation.1. Before the sinner is converted. This love is manifested (1) By graciously sparing him who, a criminal as he is, has forfeited every right to temporal and eternal life. When all nature is in arms against the sinner, God restrains it. (2) By incessantly seeking, inviting, urging, with such tender solicitude, as if the Shepherd had forgotten all His faithful sheep. (3) By ardently longing for Him. 2. Whilst the sinner is converted. (1) By receiving him kindly and meeting him graciously. (2) By forgiving and forgetting all offences. (3) By rejoicing exceedingly at finding again him who was lost. 3. After the sinner is converted. (1) By granting His efficacious graces. (2) By recalling to life the merits which in consequence of mortal sin had died away (Zechariah 10:6). (3) By admitting the penitent to a participation in the sacraments and ordinances of the Church. (4) By receiving him into His everlasting joy and happiness in heaven. (Querico Rossi.)God is rich in mercy Mercy is the aspect of God which the sinner first and most needs. Dare I approach His awful throne, all wretched and guilty as I am? The apostle answers, He is rich in mercy! But let us contemplate the riches of God a little more generally, and see how His bounty meets and supplies all our wants.1. We are creatures who have test all--have nothing and need much; and to meet this God is rich in goodness (Romans 2:4). He is good--that is, He is God; for the name God is derived from His goodness. The earth and the heavens, the laws of the moral and physical worlds, are conceived and established out of pure goodness. His fulness overflows, and worlds and boundless systems of worlds arise to manifest and enjoy His goodness. 2. Are we impotent and incapable of procuring the Divine favour? Then, says Paul, He is rich in grace (Ephesians 2:7), which is the same nearly as “ the rich in mercy” of my text. You need no merit--you require no preparation in coming to God. 3. But wherein is this riches of mercy seen? It is seen in the degradation and ruin from which it delivers us; it is seen in the glory and blessedness to which we are raised; it is seen in the number and heinousness of the sins which it forgives; and it is seen in the greatness of the number of the saved. 4. But there is still another aspect of the human character, which the riches of God meets. We long for power, for fame, for glory and immortality. We would be great, and the aspiration is not in itself wrong, but it is often misdirected. We find ourselves in this world bounded on every side by insurmountable barriers, baffling all our efforts of knowledge and of power. But are we satisfied? No, no; the soul longs for complete knowledge, pines for the possession of power, seeks to wing her flight through the sparkling stars and circumambient worlds, up to the empyrean throne itself, from whence proceed such manifestations of wisdom, beauty, and strength. And God meets this longing of the soul by that other word, “ the riches of His glory” (Philippians 4:19). He is rich in goodness, He is rich in grace, He is rich in mercy, and He is rich in glory. Here, honourable ambition may expand itself; and the soul, enlarged and purified by the Spirit of God, may drink deeply and more deeply forever--may approach forever and for evermore, in love, wisdom, knowledge, and power, the character of Him who loved us, and whom we love. 5. Mercy is nearly allied to pain or misery, and the ideas are in most languages connected. It is not impossible that “eleos” (mercy) may come from the Hebrew “chil,” to be in pain, as the English word is from misericordiae, the pain of the heart, the sorrow which goodness feels at the sight of wretchedness and woe. It is this feeling (if we may apply it so) in the heart of our heavenly Father which is the fountain of redemption. (W. Graham, D. D.)The love of God Not as the world loves doth God love. They love today and hate tomorrow; wearing their friends like flowers, which we may behold in their bosoms whilst they are fresh and sweet, but soon they begin to wither, and are laid aside. Whereas the love of God to His people is everlasting, and He wears them as a signet upon His right hand, which He will never part with. (E. White.)The signs of love The signs and tokens of love are four.1. We think of those whom we love. Love begins in the heart, and leads away the thoughts over seas, rivers, mountains, and all kinds of impediments, to its object. Such is the love of God. Its dwelling place is His own bosom; and before all worlds His delights were with the sons of men. 2. But love seeks fellowship with its object; and God visited us in the person of His Son that He might woo our fond hearts from the world to Himself. 3. Then, again, true love willingly suffers for its object, if need be, and the affection which abides not this test is not genuine. God cannot suffer, but His incarnate Son did, and all the fountains of the great deep of Divine sorrow were broken up on the cross. 4. Love seeks to exalt its object; and so God, having taken our nature into union with His own, did exalt and glorify the Son of man, our Eider Brother and Head, with His own right hand, in heavenly places, far above all principality and power. (W. Graham, D. D.)God rich in mercy I asked, in New Hampshire, how much it took to make a farmer rich there; and I was told that if a man was worth five thousand dollars he was considered rich. If a man had a good farm, and had ten thousand dollars out at interest, oh! he was very rich--passing rich. I dropped a little farther down, into Concord, where some magnates of railroads live (they are the aristocrats just now), and I found that the idea of riches was quite different there. A man there was not considered rich unless he had a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in pretty clear stuff. I go to New York, and ask men how much it takes to make one rich, and they say, “ There never was a greater mistake made than that of supposing that five or six hundred thousand dollars make a man rich. What does that sum amount to?” I go into the upper circles of New York, where millionaires, or men worth a million dollars or over, used to be considered rich; and there, if a man is worth five or ten millions it is thought that he is coming on. It is said, “ He will be rich one of these days.” When a man’ s wealth amounts to fifty or a hundred millions he is very rich. Now if such is the idea of riches in material things, what must riches be when you rise above the highest men to angels, and above angels to God! What must be the circuit which makes riches when it reaches Him? And when yon apply this term, increscent, to the Divine nature, as it respects the qualities of love and mercy, what must riches be in God, the infinite, whose experiences are never less wide than infinity! What must be love and mercy, and their stores, when it is said that God is rich in them? (H. W. Beecher.)His great love The Rev. John Davies says, “ A certain man had a wayward son; his conduct brought down his father to a premature grave. On the day of the funeral the son was present, saw unmoved the pale face of his father in the coffin, and stood unmoved on the brink of the grave. The family retraced their steps. Their father’ s will was read; in that testament was the name of the undutiful son. As his name was read his heart heaved with emotion, his eyes were bedewed with tears, and he was heard to say, ‘ I did not think that my father would have so kindly thought of me in his will.’ In the family of Christ some of us in reading His Testament, and thinking upon His great love and marvellous gifts, feel our unprofitableness and unworthiness, and are filled with love and wonder.” God is rich in mercy When Dr. Arnot was in this country--he is now in heaven--I heard him use in a sermon an illustration that impressed me. He said: “ Have you not been in a home where the family were at dinner, and have you not seen the old family dog standing near and watching his master, and looking at every morsel of food as if he wished he had it? If his master drops a crumb he at once licks it up and devours it; but if his master were to set the dish of roast beef down and say, ‘ Come, come,’ he would not touch it--it is too much for him. So with God’ s children; they are willing to take a crumb, but refuse when God wants them to take the whole platter.” God wants you to come right to the throne of grace, and to come boldly. (D. L. Moody.)Mercy Divine and human I have seen the lifebuoy spun out to a drowning man, and, amid the crowd on the pier that gazed in horror, there was none, as they watched its course over the roaring waves, but wished in his heart that it might reach its mark. Nor is it only that God is “ willing that all should come to Him, and live.” What mother but would open her door who heard the knocking, and recognized the well known voice of some poor, fallen child, that had sunk down there amid the winter drift, and cried, with failing breath, O mother, mother dear, open and let me in. And who thinks so ill of God as to believe that when He hears such a cry at the door of mercy, He will not rise to let us and to welcome us in! (T. Guthrie, D. D.)The mercy and love of God I. First, then, we are to notice the richness of God’ s mercy and the greatness of God’ s love. There appears to me to be a difference in the terms which are used here, and that this difference is intentional--that the mercy, in fact, refers to man in his fallen state, and that the love refers to the manner in which that mercy is manifested. And taking it in this point of view, it will be necessary to dwell upon the two expressions separately--the mercy which is called rich, the love which is called great.1. This mercy appears to be called great on account of the amount of mercy which is dispensed. But when we look at the inspired Word of God, we see at once the amount of mercy which is being dispensed to the world, for God has been pleased to reveal Himself as “ plenteous in mercy.” “ He keeps mercy for thousands.” I put these two facts together, and I read that for backsliders there is a willingness on the part of God to manifest His rich mercy. I look at the history of Matthew the publican, sitting at the receipt of custom, one of a whole body famed for their extortion; and I look into the world, and I see the mammon hunters of the day, and feel myself privileged to press upon them also the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; because I see that for the extorting Matthew there was converting grace, there was God’ s rich mercy. 2. On this verse, then, we may speak of the mercy of God being rich; but you will perceive the apostle speaks also of the love of God, of the “ great love” of God. And why should not that epithet be used, when we remember that it is the love of a great God to great sinners? II. But we must pass on to inquire, in the second place, how this love is manifested. And keeping to the text before me, I read that it is by quickening us, by giving us of His spiritual life--“ God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, hath quickened us” --hath given us spiritual life. But this is connected, indeed, with the next expression in the text, which speaks of God having “ raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Here, of course, reference is made to the resurrection and the glorified state, when there shall be rest from our labours, when there shall be eternal pleasure, and when we shall enter into the joy of our Lord. But notice, in the next place, when this mercy was manifested. The Scripture describes the manifestation of this mercy to have been “ when we were dead,” when we were dead in our sins. (M. Villiers, D. D.) Ephesians 2:5-6 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.Salvation for the lost I. First, then, the text shows you the misery from which you must be rescued. “ Even when we were dead in sins.” Every individual, descended from Adam, having a polluted nature, and living in this world, is “ dead in sins.” This is an awfully emphatic expression--“ dead in sins.” A more wretched state can scarcely be conceived, except that of “ the angels who kept not their first estate,” and whom God has “ reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” But I need not tell you that it is a metaphorical expression, because it declares that a living man is “ dead.” Not dead naturally. He is not dead as to natural actions; he can eat, and drink, and sleep. Nor as to rational actions; he can reason, and judge, and consider. Nor as to civil actions; he can “ buy and sell and get gain.” Nor as to moral actions; he can be kind, he can read and pray and hear the Word and meditate upon it; he can listen to the voice of God’ s judgments; he can call his ways to remembrance; he can humble himself before the God of his mercies. So far went Ahab and Herod, yet continued spiritually dead. Let me try to describe this death. It consists of two parts.1. The sinner living in enmity to God is condemned to death. 2. The symptoms of spiritual death are manifest upon him. Sin has separated the soul from God, so that man cannot commune with God, and God cannot commune with man; “ your iniquities,” says the prophet, “ have separated between you and your God.” II. In the second place, the agent and the means of deliverance are here presented. “ God hath quickened us together with Christ.” Your case, my brethren, is too desperate for the arm of man to reach. No expedients, which human might and human wisdom can afford, can remedy your misery. “ God hath quickened us together with Christ.” III. Thirdly, the felicity to which this deliverance will raise you, is also here presented. “ And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Here you see that a regenerate sinner is a living saint. Before, the man was dead; now, he lives. Before, as death locks up the senses and all the powers and faculties of the soul, so did a state of sin to the performance and enjoyment of anything that is really good; but now, when a change takes place, grace unlocks and opens all, and so enlarges the soul that it brings every faculty into operation as that of a living man. And do you ask me, what is this life? A life of justification; when no charge can be brought against the sinner. A life of sanctification; where holiness is the element of being. A life of dignity; where Christ is the companion forever. IV. But, fourthly, you have here the source from whence you must expect this life. “ God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.” Mark how language labours for expression: “ rich mercy” and “ great love.” Inexhaustibly rich mercy; inexpressibly great love. V. But there is one more point to be noticed: the end to be secured by this wonderful manifestation of His mercy. “ That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness towards us through Jesus Christ.” This expression, “ the ages to come,” sometimes refers to any future period; but it has especial reference to two.1. To the times of the gospel. Brethren, these are “ the ages” which were “ to come.” This is “ the acceptable year;” this is “ the day of the Lord;” this is “ the accepted time;” this is “ the day of salvation.” The days since Christ was born and suffered are the most blessed and happy days that ever shone upon our fallen world. No days have been like them. 2. The phrase refers also to the last great day. Then will be the full and wondrous exhibition of the scheme of mercy, at which the world may wonder. (James Sherman).Deliverance I. The free love and undeserved grace of God, as the sole origin and moving cause of our deliverance. II. See, then, how the purpose of God’ s love has been effected. See the Divine precision--the exact adaptation of the means to the end--the finished perfection in the result. III. But we are led on a step higher at verse 6--we are introduced into “ heavenly places.” What, then, is the peculiar significance of the expression in that sixth verse--“ raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Five times over in the course of the Epistle, you meet with the phrase “ heavenly places,” or (literally) “ the heavenlies.” Thus, in Ephesians 1:20, we are told that after God raised Jesus from the dead, He set Him at His own right hand in the “ heavenly places.” It was not enough that He should rise out of the grave, however necessary might be His resurrection as one intermediate link in the process. So long as He remained on earth (as He did for forty days), He had not entered on the fulness of His joy. A crowning proof was awanting, and that was not furnished until the hour of His enthronement in the “ heavenly places.” Then was Jesus in all the glory of His acceptance, in the fulness of His honour! Into “ the places” of reward, and enjoyment, and unfading glory, He entered, and there lives an “ everlasting sign” that the work for which He visited the earthly places has been perfectly fulfilled. But Jesus is not alone in these “ heavenly places.” Every true believer is there in Him. “ Seated together with Christ,” therefore, ought we not now to be made partakers with Him, in some measure, of heavenly blessings? to he sharers here, in some degree, of the joy that fills His heart? Let us see, then, what some of those things are which are now making glad the heart of Christ in heaven, and look at them, that we may ask of God to enter more fully into the power and experience of them.1. One great joy of His heart in heaven must be in His own deliverance, and in the certainty of the deliverance of His people with Him from the curse of hell, in His having so satisfied the everlasting demands of Divine justice and truth, that the law has now no more any claims against Him, or those for whom He died! And ought not we to share with Him in that joy, by tasting something of the rest, the satisfaction, the quietness and assurance of knowing that in Him we “ are justified from all things,” and freed from the curse? 2. Another joy of His heart in heaven must be, in seeing the guilt of countless multitudes of human beings (though the sins of each of them be more in number than the sand) daily met ,and taken away by an atonement, whose efficacy is inexhaustible to the close of time. And ought not we to rejoice before Him in that which is the cause of our cleansing in His sight, and continually to make use of it for bringing us and keeping us near to Himself, and for renewing in us the joy of our salvation? 3. Another cause of joy to Christ in heaven is the manifestation of the glory of all the attributes of God, and the vindication of the holiness of His name in a work which has “ magnified His law and made it honourable.” And should not we who are in Him be enabled to “ sing” at once of “ mercy and of judgment,” to “ give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness,” as the very bulwark of our safety; and even in the midst of all that is terrible in the execution of His righteous judgments, be preserved in holy calms, as those that are at home with God, dwelling “ in the secret place of the Most High,” and “ under the shadow of the Almighty.” 4. Another joy of His elevation to the heavenly places must be in the overthrow of Satan’ s kingdom, and in the certain prospect of the everlasting fall of every foe. And should not we, who are yet in the midst of the conflict, be encouraged in Him to anticipate certain victory, and be assured that we too shall be made more than conquerors through Him that loved us? (J. S. Muir.)The cause, means, and effects of salvation I. The cause of salvation. God’ s rich, free, sovereign grace. No other source of salvation to guilty man.1. There is no power in man to save himself. A dead body cannot walk; nor can a dead soul move by its own will. 2. There is nothing to attract love in a dead, corrupting carcase, and there is nothing to attract God’ s love in a dead, corrupting soul. II. The means of salvation. Christ’ s death. We must here dwell on the contrast, and at the same time the union, between Christ and the sinner, as mutually interchanging their condition each with the other; the sinner transferring through God’ s grace, or rather God transferring through His grace, and the sinner embracing with gratitude by faith the blessed transfer, of all his guilt, misery and curse to Jesus; and Jesus transferring, God the Father imputing, and the sinner by faith with joyful gratitude receiving, all the riches of Christ’ s righteousness, redemption, and salvation, put down to his account as a guilty sinner. III. The effects of salvation. “ Hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Believers become the children of God, and sharers in His inheritance. Your children, you would say, are your heirs; they are to possess your property. Men make their eldest son the heir of their properties. The law which subverts that of primogeniture, which divides estates and necessitates that property be divided among all the members of a family, soon reduces the family to beggary, for our poor earthly properties are easily exhausted. But the children of the King of kings are all heirs of eternal glory. The rays of the sun are undiminished in their bright effulgence, the lustre of that luminary is not dimmed, although the beams of His glorious orb have been diffused throughout the world from the first moment of the morning when God set him in the firmament of the heavens to rule the day; he still pours forth from his redundant fountain floods of unexhausted and exhaustless light, and every creature that basks beneath his beams enjoys the fulness of their power too much to leave him room to grudge the world beside. But what is all the glory of the orb of day compared with that of Him whose fiat struck that orb but as a spark from solid darkness? and what is the inheritance of him who is an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ? (John 17:22.) Christ’ s inheritance. Christ’ s glory is their inheritance and their glory, and there is not one whose glory is diminished by the fulness of glory that all enjoy. (P. J. McGhee, M. A.)Resurrection with Christ I. Celebrate first a great solemnity, and descend into the charnel house of our poor humanity. According to the teaching of the sacred Scripture, men are dead, spiritually dead. Certain vain men would make it out that men are only a little disordered and bruised by the Fall, wounded in a few delicate members, but not mortally injured. However, the Word of God is very express upon the matter, and declares our race to be not wounded, not hurt merely, but slain outright, and left as dead in trespasses and sin. There are those who fancy that fallen human nature is only in a sort of syncope or fainting fit, and only needs a process of reviving to set it right. You have only, by education and by other manipulations, to set its life floods in motion, and to excite within it some degree of action, and then life will speedily be developed. There is much good in every man, they say, and you have only to bring it out by training and example. This fiction is exactly opposite to the teaching of sacred Scripture. Within these truthful pages we read of no fainting fit, no temporary paralysis, but death is the name for nature’ s condition, and quickening is its great necessity. Man is not partly dead, like the half-drowned mariner, in whom some spark of life may yet remain, if it be but fondly tendered, and wisely nurtured. There is not a spark of spiritual life left in man--manhood is to all spiritual things an absolute corpse. Step with me, then, into the sepulchre house, and what do you observe of yonder bodies which are slumbering there? They are quite unconscious! Whatever goes on around them neither occasions them joy nor causes them grief. The dead in their graves may be marched over by triumphant armies, but they shout not with them that triumph. It is thus with men spiritually dead; they are unaffected by spiritual things. A dying Saviour, whose groans might move the very adamant, and make the rocks dissolve, they can hear of all unmoved. Even the all-present Spirit is undiscerned by them, and His power unrecognized. Angels, holy men, godly exercises, devout aspirations, all these are beyond and above their world. Observe that corpse; you may strike it, you may bruise it, but it will not cry out; you may pile burdens upon it, but it is not weary; you may shut it up in darkness, but it feels not the gloom. So the unconverted man is laden with the load of his sin, but he is not weary of it; he is shut up in the prison of God’ s justice, but he pants not for liberty; he is under the curse of God, but that curse causes no commotion in his spirit, because he is dead. II. We now change the subject for something more pleasant, and observe a miracle, or dead men made alive. The great object of the gospel of Christ is to create men anew in Christ Jesus. It aims at resurrection, and accomplishes it. The gospel did not come into this world merely to restrain the passions or educate the principles of men, but to infuse into them a new life which, as fallen men, they did not possess.1. In this idea of quickening, there is a mystery. What is that invisible something which quickens a man? Who can track life to its hidden fountain? In the language of the text, you trace it to God, you believe your new life to be of Divine implantation. You are a believer in the supernatural; you believe that God has visited you as He has not visited other men, and has breathed into you life. You believe rightly, but you cannot explain it. He is the great worker, but how He works is not revealed to us. 2. It is a great mystery then, but while it is a mystery it is a great reality. We know and do testify, and we have a right to be believed, for we trust we have not forfeited our characters, we know and do testify that we are now possessors of a life which we knew nothing of some years ago, that we have come to exist in a new world, and that the appearance of all things outside of us is totally changed from what it used to be. 3. This life brings with it the exercise of renewed faculties. The man who begins to live unto God has powers now which he never had before: the power really to pray, the power heartily to praise, the power actually to commune with God, the power to see God, to talk with God, the power to receive tidings from the invisible world, and the power to send messages up through the veil which hides the unseen up to the very throne of God. III. I must pass on very briefly to the third point. The text indicates a sympathy: “ He hath quickened us together with Christ.” What does that mean? It means that the life which lives in a saved man is the same life which dwells in Christ. To put it simply--when Elisha had been buried for some years, we read that they threw a man who was dead into the tomb where the bones of Elisha were, and no sooner did the corpse touch the prophet’ s bones than it lived at once. Yonder is the cross of Christ, and no sooner does the soul touch the crucified Saviour than it lives at once, for the Father hath given to Him to have life in Himself, and life to communicate to others. We are quickened together with Christ in three senses:1. Representatively. Christ represents us before the eternal throne; He is the second Adam to His people. Christ is accepted, believers are accepted. 2. Next, we live by union with Christ. So long as the head is alive the members have life. 3. Then we also live together with Christ as to likeness. We are quickened together with Christ, that is, in the same manner. Now, Christ’ s quickening was in this wise. He was dead through the law, but the law has no more dominion over Him now that He lives again. So you, Christian, you are cursed by the old law of Sinai, but it has no power to curse you now, for you are risen m Christ. You are not under the law; its terrors and threatenings have nought to do with you. Christ’ s life is a life unto God. Such is yours. He does not quicken us with the inward life, and then leave us to perish; grace is a living, incorruptible seed, which liveth and abideth forever. IV. And this brings us to the last word, which was a song. We have not time to sing it, we will just write the score before your eyes, and ask you to sing it at your leisure, your hearts making melody to God. Brethren and sisters, if you have indeed been thus made alive as others are not, you have first of all, in the language of the text, to praise the great love of God, great beyond all precedent. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Salvation in Christ I. The progress of a sinner’ s salvation.1. God loves him, though dead in sins. 2. He quickens him. 3. He raises him up. (1) Spiritually here (Colossians 3:1, etc.).(2) Corporally hereafter (Romans 8:11). 4. He sets him in heavenly places. (1) By faith now.(2) In fact hereafter. II. Why the blessings of God’ s chosen are said to be in and with Christ. Because they are first in Him as Head, and from Him communicated to them as members, viz., their election, justification, sanctification, etc. III. Why the Scripture speaks of what is yet to be done for God’ s people as done already. From the certainty of their accomplishment. To encourage the faith and hope of His. “ God hath spoken in His holiness,” etc. (Psalms 55:6, etc.). Believers may look backward and forward, and see themselves surrounded with mercies. How different their end from what they deserve! Woe to them that think of going to heaven without Christ. (H. Foster, M. A.)Man’ s misery and God’ s mercy 1. Man’ s misery commends God’ s mercy (Ezekiel 16:8; Ezekiel 16:4-5; 1 Corinthians 6:11; Titus 3:8; 1 John 4:10; Romans 5:10). (1) If we would see the love of God, we must get a true knowledge and sense of our natural condition. Dead men, in whom there is not by nature the least spark of spiritual and heavenly life: our natural life being but a shadow of life: it is but a goodly vizor drawn over a dead and rotten corpse. The consideration of this will work true humility. (2) This also is a ground of hope that God will never leave us; for that mercy of God which when we were dead put life in us and quickened us, will now much more help us and comfort us in all our miseries (Isaiah 49:15; Romans 5:10). 2. Man has no power or disposition to save himself. 3. The believer is brought to partake of the life of God. (1) The life of God is nothing but the created gift of grace which frames the whole man to live according to God, or supernatural grace giving life, and bringing forth motions according to God, as the natural life. (2) The power of God alone, with the Word and Sacraments, give this life. (3) The order in which this life is wrought. (a) There is a taking away of sins, for while we live in them we are in death. (b) There is a taking of life in our behalf. (c) A holding out of these things, with the voice of God unto the soul (John 5:25). A receiving of Christ, a forgiving of our sins, and quickening with the Spirit. (4) The property of this life is eternal; it has no ending. Christ being raised, dieth no more, nor a Christian. (5) How may we know that we have this life? (a) Every life seeks its own preservation; as natural life seeks that which is fit for that life, so does this spiritual life that which is fit for itself. As the life is immortal, so it seeks immortal food by which it lives to God; the life of grace is maintained by bread from heaven, from the living God. (b) Every natural life, in the several kinds of it, seeks its preservation of him and by him who is the author of it; children of their parents, etc. So here they that are quickened with the life of God are ever and anon turning to Him as their Father, crying and calling upon Him for supply in all their wants. (c) He who has this spiritual life in any measure is sensible, and ever complaining of spiritual death, and of corrupt nature, the sight of which is most noisome to his sense. (d) Life is active and stirring. If I see an image still without motion, I know for all the eyes, nose, etc., that it has no life in it: so the want of spiritual motion in the soul toward God, and the practice of godliness, argues want of spiritual life. (e) Love to the brethren (1 John 3:14). (Paul Bayne.)The dead quickened I. The past estate of those to whom the apostle wrote.1. Dead in point of law.2. Dead as under the power of sin. II. Their present state. “ Quickened.” The mercy of God is exercised still in the same way.1. He has delivered you from the sentence of condemnation. 2. You have experienced the production of spiritual life by the influences of the Holy Spirit. III. The source of this quickening. Union with Christ. IV. The light in which this subject places the love of God. (Thomas Young.)By the grace of God An officer during an engagement received a ball which struck him near his waistcoat pocket, where a piece of silver stopped the progress of the nearly spent ball. The coin was slightly marked at the words “Dei gratia.” This providential circumstance deeply impressed his mind, and led him to read a tract, which his beloved and pious sister gave him on leaving his native land, entitled “ The sin and danger of neglecting the Saviour.” This text it pleased God to bless to his conversion. Quickening the dead When a man is dead it is hopeless for us to attempt to quicken him. But what we cannot do Christ does. Henry Varley says, “ A coachman in a family at the West End of London was taken seriously ill, and a few days afterwards saw him pass into the presence of God. I knew and had visited him before in order to bring to his mind and heart the Saviour of sinners. Again I called at the house, found the door open, and quietly ascended the staircase which led to the room where the sick man lay. There, bent over the prostrate, form of the man, was his eldest son, deeply affected and weeping bitterly. His face was close to that of the father’ s, and I heard him, in an agony of earnest words, say, Father, “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Oh, my father, do trust Jesus! His precious blood cleanses from all sin. Only believe. My father I my father! O God, save my father!’ The hot tears and the intense anxiety of that young man I shall never forget. Poor fellow! he literally shouted into the ear that lay close to his lips. I had watched the scene for some minutes almost transfixed at the door. At length, approaching the bed, I observed that the father was dead. Tenderly I raised the young man, and quietly said, ‘ His spirit has passed away; he cannot hear; you cannot reach him now!’ Poor fellow! he had been speaking into the ear of a corpse; the father had been dead some minutes.” The grace of God When a friend observed to him that we must run deeper and deeper in grace’ s debt, he replied, “ Oh yes; and God is a good creditor; He never seeks back the principal sum, and, indeed, puts up with a poor annual rent” (Life of Rev. John Brown, of Haddington.)Salvation by grace A physician who was anxious about his soul, asked a believing patient of his, how he should find peace. His patient replied, “ Doctor, I felt that I could do nothing, and I have put my case in your hand: I am trusting in you.” This is exactly what every poor sinner must do, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. He saw the simplicity of the way, and soon found peace in Christ. Heavenly places When Paul wrote of “ heavenly places” as the lot of Christ’ s people on earth, it was not to please the imagination or dazzle the fancy with mere spiritual visions--but to show us how near and how available is the source of spiritual and saving strength for daily life. To be “ with Christ,” therefore, “ in the heavenlies,” is-- I. To be living at the source of power for new obedience, and to draw from thence for support in that service which is true freedom, freedom from slavish fears, from corroding cares, from every inordinate affection which would hinder you in the doing of His will. Brought nigh to God--living in the fellowship of God, through Jesus--you have a well-spring of new motives of action opened for you in His service, and of strength for patient rest in His will. That well-spring is ever full and never failing. These Divine resources are ever near, and ever the same; though your experience of them, alas! may ebb, and flow, and fluctuate. II. But we come now to notice another view of the position of those who are raised up to sit with Christ. It is to be armed for conflict. The spirits of evil have still power to tempt and molest. And if these evil influences are to be repelled and quenched, it can only be done from within the citadel of power which is provided in the fellowship of a risen Lord. III. The “ heavenly places” to which all believing ones are raised up on earth to sit with Christ, are (in a peculiar manner) places of thanksgiving. As the cleft of the Rock to which you have fled from the fury of the storm, what else should your place be but one fitted for thanksgiving,--a “ tabernacle” to be filled with the “ voices of rejoicing and salvation” and praise ever going forth in testimony to Him, whose almighty hand opened the refuge and averted the destruction! IV. And now, in conclusion, the text points to the future--into “ the ages” of eternity--to that great hereafter on whose brink we are ever walking, and which at any moment we may be called to enter. (J. S. Muir.)Heaven won Won by other arms than theirs, it presents the strongest contrast imaginable to the spectacle seen in England’ s palace on that day when the king demanded of his assembled nobles by what title they held their lands. “ What title?” At the rash question a hundred swords, leaped from their scabbards. Advancing on the alarmed monarch, “ By these we won, and by these we will keep them!” they replied. How different the scene which heaven presents! All eyes are fixed on Jesus: every look is one of love and gratitude, which are glowing in every bosom, and swelling in every song. Now with golden harps they swell the Saviour’ s praises; and now descending from their thrones to do Him homage, they cast their crowns in one glittering heap at the feet which were nailed to Calvary’ s shameful cross. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Religion raises men up Ah! brethren, you will not mind my telling out some of the secrets, secrets that bring the tears to my eyes as I reflect upon them. When I speak of the thief, the harlot, the drunkard, the sabbath breaker, the swearer, I may say, “ Such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye rejoice in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” How many a man has been going by the door there, and has said, “ I’ ll go in and hear Old Spurgeon.” He came in to make merriment of the preacher, and very little that troubles him. But the man has stood there until the Word goes home to him, and he who was wont to beat his wife, and to make his home a hell, has before long been to see me, and has given me a grip of the hand and said, “ God Almighty bless you, sir; there is something in true religion!” “ Well, let us hear your tale.” We have heard it, and delightful it has been in hundreds of instances, “ Very well, send your wife, and let us hear what she says about you.” The woman has come, and we have said, “ Well, what think you of your husband now, ma’ am?” “ Oh, sir, such a change I never saw in my life! He is so kind to us; he is like an angel now, and he seemed like a fiend before; oh! that cursed drink, sir! everything went to the public house; and then if I went up to the house of God, he did nothing but abuse me! Oh! to think that now he comes with me on Sunday; and the shop is shut up, sir; and the children who used to be running about without a bit of shoe or stocking, he takes them on his knee, and prays with them so sweetly. Oh! there is such a change!” (C. H. Spurgeon.)Promotion by goodness In old times it was the custom to crown a brave soldier with laurel before all the people. Zeno never went out to fight for his country, but spent his life in a better service, for he tried to teach a nation to be wise and good. At last the people felt that the only way to be great is to do good. They gave to Zeno the laurel crown; but he won for himself a far nobler prize--the respect and love of all who knew him. (Denton.)Heavenly places Dr. Preston, when he was dying, used these words, “ Blessed be God, though I change my place I shall not change my company; for I have walked with God while living, and now I go to rest with God.” (Baxendale.) Ephesians 2:7 That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.The riches of God’ s grace 1. The end of all God’ s grace and mercy towards believers in Christ, is for the manifestation of His glory, and praise of His name. This must teach us, that whatever good things God has bestowed upon us, we make God known by it. 2. All the saving graces of God are most worthy the consideration of all Christians in all ages. If we be God’ s children, let us show it by bringing forth eternal and immortal fruit to His glory. 3. The special favour of God consists in the giving of Christ. (1 John 4:9; Romans 5:6). 4. All God’ s kindness, and the fruit thereof, must come to us through Christ. (1) No room for presumption.(2) No room for despair. 5. All our blessings are treasured up in Christ. 6. In all things Christ hath the preeminence. 7. From hence note the stability of all the blessings given to the faithful. (2 Timothy 1:12). (1) This is full of comfort. If one had earthly treasure, we are glad when it is so bestowed that we may be sure of it, and so be free from care. Well, Christ is in heaven, our true treasure, where neither thief, nor moth, nor canker can come; this is our happiness, that He keeps our treasure; it is out of the reach of devils and men; were it in our own hand, we should soon betray it; if we are set in heaven with Christ, Christ may as soon be pulled out of heaven, as we disappointed of our inheritance. (Paul Bayne.)Salvation by grace Salvation is a term inclusive of all the benefits enjoyed by a penitent believing sinner through the mediation of Christ. I. Illustrate it upon leading scriptural principles. The whole scheme of redemption is traced up to its source in the Divine benevolence--“ God so loved the world,” etc. It means a principle of love, proving its reality by gifts; love to sinners, fraught with kindest volitions, costly blessings. This love was self-moved, not necessarily excited by any external cause. There was no excellence to provoke, but sin to prevent its exercise. Hence its freeness is made to appear distinctly--“ Not that we loved God, but that He loved us.” Hence, too, the sovereignty of this love appears. He has placed mankind under a dispensation of forbearance. II. Illustrate it by a reference to facts and doctrines belonging to Christian experience.1. The declared depravity of human nature.2. The doctrine of justification by faith.3. The blessing of sanctification.4. The prospects of the Christian eminently involve the grace of his salvation. Let us observe from these remarks--1. How completely the gospel meets the wants of sinners, their ignorance, their guilt, their pollution, their destitution. It represents God to be full of compassion, salvation to be an act of unqualified grace, while its proclamation is made to all, not excepting the most guilty. 2. How awful to abuse this grace. 3. How dreadful the character and prospects of unbelieving, ungodly men! They not only break the law of God, but despise the grace of His gospel. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)Blessings in the ages to come Two interpretations are given of this verse. I. By ages to come, some understand the times that were to succeed the apostle to the end of, the world. And then the sense of the verse is--That God poured out the exceeding riches of His grace upon the apostles and churches of old to be encouraging examples to the end of the world. Which they are--1. As to the characters of those whom He has saved. They were sinners. They were the chief of them. “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation,” etc. (1 Timothy 1:15-16). They were all sorts. “ And such were some of you,” etc. (1 Corinthians 6:11). “ Who will have all men to be saved,” etc. (1 Timothy 2:4). “ For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed,” etc. (Romans 10:11, etc.). 2. As to the blessings given to them. They were sought out. Quickened, justified, adopted, sanctified, preserved, glorified. 3. As to the grace given them, suited to their trials. To Abraham, faith. Job, patience. To Daniel, integrity. Paul, zeal. II. By ages to come, some understand future glory (Hebrews 6:5). Then the sense is--That God bestows various and inestimable blessings upon His people here, that they may see them more perfectly in glory (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). (H. Foster, M. A.)God’ s kindness to man I. Describe God’ s kindness to man in Christ.1. In the assumption of our nature (Hebrews 2:16).2. In His obedience and sufferings for us (1 Peter 3:18).3. In the resurrection of that nature (Romans 6:9),4. In taking it up into glory (Psalms 68:18).5. In His intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25).6. In finally bringing us to glory (John 17:24). It is also further manifest that God’ s kindness is experienced by the Christian in--1. The personal remission of his sins (Ephesians 1:7).2. In the donation of the Holy Ghost (Romans 8:16).3. Uniting us to His person (John 17:21).4. Bringing us into covenant relation with Himself (Genesis 17:7).5. Justification of our persons (Psalms 32:1).6. In the renewal of our nature (1 Peter 1:3).7. In adopting us into His family (1 John 3:1).8. In giving us victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:57).9. In our final glorification (Psalms 73:24). II. The objects of this grace or kindness. As creatures.1. Frail creatures (Isaiah 40:6).2. As worthless worms (Job 25:6).3. As less than nothing (Isaiah 40:17). As fallen creatures.1. As impotent creatures (Romans 5:6).2. Impoverished creatures (Revelation 3:17).3. As enemies to God (Colossians 1:21).4. As dead to all good (Ephesians 2:1).5. As being Satan’ s children (John 8:44). III. How God’ s kindness is shown in Christ Jesus.1. It is in Christ meritoriously (Ephesians 1:3).2. God’ s kindness to us flows through His kindness to Christ (Ephesians 1:6).3. Given to us through Christ (Romans 6:23).4. Dispensed by Christ (Acts 5:31).5. As Christ includes all God’ s kindnesses (Colossians 3:11). IV. The reason for showing these riches.1. Because God’ s nature is love (1 John 4:8).2. To exalt man, His chief creature (Titus 3:4).3. And for His own glory (Psalms 106:8). Inferences:1. There is no cause of boasting in ourselves (Romans 3:27).2. Meditate frequently on God s kindness and grace (Isaiah 63:7).3. Prize that gospel that reveals this great kindness (Romans 1:16).4. Pray truly to believe it (Mark 16:16). (T. B. Baker.)The exceeding riches of grace There is a story of Mithridates, a celebrated king in Asia, which illustrates this part of our subject very well. This king became interested in an old musician who had taken part in the music performed at a feast in the royal palace. On awaking one morning, this old man saw the tables in his house covered with vessels of silver and gold; a number of servants were standing by, who offered him rich garments to put on, and told him there was a horse standing at the door for his use, whenever he might wish to ride. The old man thought it was only a dream he was having. But the servants said it was no dream at all. It was a reality. “ What is the meaning of it?” asked the astonished old man. “ It means this,” said the servant, “ the king has determined to make you a rich man at once. And these things that you see are only a small part of what he has given you. So please use them as your own.” At last he believed what they told him. Then he put on the purple robe, and mounted the horse; and as he rode along, he kept saying to himself, “ All these are mine! All these are mine!” (D. L. Moody.)Unappropriated riches Men fail because they try to do too large a business on too small a capital. So with Christians; but God has grace enough and capital enough. What would you think of a man who had one million dollars in the bank, and only drew out a penny a day? That is like you and me; and the sinner is even blinder than we are. The throne of grace is established, and there we are to obtain all the grace we need. Sin is not so strong as the arm of God. He will help and deliver you, if you will come and procure the grace you need. (D. L. Moody.)Good things to come Rowland Hill tells a story of a rich max and a poor man of his congregation. The rich man came to Mr. Hill with a sum of money which he wished to give to the poor man, and asked Mr. Hill to give it to him as he thought best, either all at once or in small amounts. Mr. Hill sent the poor man a five pound note with the endorsement--“ More to follow.” Every few months came the remittance, with the same message--“ More to follow.” Now that is grace. “ More to follow” --yes, thank God, there is more to follow. Oh, wondrous grace! (D. L. Moody.)The ages to come There is something very impressive and admirable in that long look ahead which distinguished the worthies of old. None ever lived so sympathetically in the present as they did. None ever lived so far away from the present, and so far ahead of it, as they did. They fed their Souls upon the visions of ages to come.1. We need just such a forelooking. The condition of the human race as it now exists is not a theme for pleasurable meditation. To those who believe in the moral government of God and in the active administration of affairs in this world and in nature by the Divine mind, the actual condition of the race seems inexplicable. 2. The condition of the Church itself leads one to rebound from the present, and to seek comfort in looking into “ the ages to come.” 3. Our knowledge of God in the present state of things, with all that has been done to winnow the wheat from the chaff, is exceedingly incomplete and unsatisfying. 4. The “ ages to come,” will reveal a personal experience in us of which now we have but the very faintest trace in analogy. (H. W. Beecher.)The believer’ s future We are quite certain that what we are cannot be the end of God’ s design. When I see a block of marble half chiselled with just perhaps a hand peeping out from the rock, no man can make me believe that that is what the artist means it should be. And I know I am not what God would have me to be, because I feel yearnings and longings within myself to be infinitely better, infinitely holier and purer, than I am now. And so it is with you; you are not what God means you to be; you have only just begun to be what He wants you to be. He will go on with His chisel of affliction, using wisdom and the graving tool together, till by and by it shall appear what you shall be for; you shall be like Him, and you shall see Him as He is. Oh! what comfort this is for our faith, that from the fact of our vitality and the tact that God is at work with us, it is clear, and true and certain, that our latter end shall be increased. I do not think that any man yet has ever got an idea of what a man is to be. We are only the chalk crayon, rough drawings of men; yet when we come to be filled up in eternity, we shall be marvellous pictures, and our latter end indeed shall be greatly increased. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Unexpected developments We cannot at present form a conception of perfection in the elements which constitute character. You never can tell what the ripe is from looking at the green. If an unknown seed be brought to you, and you plant it in the ground, and it sprout, and grow for five years, only throwing out leaves, and for five years more, still only throwing out leaves, can you tell how its blossoms are going to look? You never saw them. The tree is a new one. You have seen the root, the leaves, and the bark, and you have cut into the wood; you know its habits for the first ten years; you know when its leaves appear in the spring, and when they fall off in the autumn; you know everything about it as far as it has gone during those ten years; but you cannot guess whether its blossoms are white or yellow. You cannot tell whether they will hang in racemes, or rise up in circles. You cannot tell whether they will stand out in spikes, or be pendant. You cannot tell whether they will be early or late. You cannot, if the shrub or tree be unknown, find out the prophecy of the blossoms. But at last the blossom comes out. Now tell me what that blossom is going to produce. Look at it. Is it going to put forth a pod, or is it going to be a fruit? Is it going to be a seed, or luscious food? You cannot tell from a blossom what the fruit is going to be, except by analogues; and I am now supposing a new plant of which there has been no congener within your knowledge, and that you are attempting, from a lower state, to conceive of the higher. Now, in regard to human beings, there is nothing in the unripe state of the mind which is a fair interpretation of what ripeness in it is going to be. You could never have told, except by seeing it, what the human reason was competent to do. Consider the force of reason, by which the whole physical universe is being now unbarred; by which the most distant orbs are being searched, weighed, analyzed; by which we are unwrapping the sun, and taking off coat after coat; by which we know more about the sun itself than oftentimes men do of the province in which they live on earth. What an education! What an outstretch of thought! What development of the reasoning, searching power of the mind! Who Could have suspected it in the days of barbarism? No man could then have told that. And who now can fortell what new development the human reason is capable of? As from the lower stages you could not suspect the higher, so from the present stages you cannot anticipate those which are yet to come. Now we think; but in the higher forms of thinking there is the intuition, the jump, as it were, the flash of thought, with which our present thinking is not to be compared. We call it intuition, we call it inspiration, we call it names; but names are not things. There is evidently the hint of a wondrous disclosure of power in the direction of reason “ in the ages to come.” We do not see it here. We cannot know it. We can only know what is the perpetual suggestion of it. Says the apostle St. John: “ We are the sons of God; but it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” (H. W. Beecher.)How grace operates The kindness of God in Christ Jesus is a phrase expressive of the manner in which grace operates. His grace is in His kindness. Grace may be shown among men in a very ungracious way, but God’ s grace clothes itself in kindness, as well in the time as in the mode of its bestowment. What kindness in sending His grace so early to Ephesus, and in converting such men as now formed its Church! Oh! He is so kind in giving grace, and such grace, to so many men, and of such spiritual demerit and degradation; so kind as not only to forgive sin, but even to forget it (Hebrews 8:12); so kind, in short, us not only by His grace to quicken us, but in the riches of His grace to raise us up, and in its exceeding riches to enthrone us in the heavenly places in Christ! And all the grace in this kindness shown in the first century is a lesson even to the nineteenth century. What God did then, He can do now and will do now; and one reason why He did it then was to teach the men of the present age His ability and desire to repeat in them the same blessed process of salvation and life. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Restraining grace During the ministry of the Rev. Ralph Erskine at Dunfermline a man was executed for robbery, whom he repeatedly visited in prison, and whom he attended on the scaffold. Mr. Erskine addressed both the spectators and the criminal, and after concluding his speech he laid his hands on his breast, uttering these words--“ But for restraining grace I had been brought, by this corrupt heart, to the same condition with this unhappy man.” Ephesians 2:8; Ephesians 2:10 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.For we are His workmanship. The respective places of faith and works in salvation I. Consider now we are saved by or through faith.1. Without faith we cannot be saved. (1) Faith is necessary in the appointment of God.(2) Faith is necessary in the nature of the case. 2. All who have faith will be saved. But remember, faith is not a mere assent to and profession of the truth; but such a belief as purifies the heart and governs the life. II. Consider what place and influence works gave in our salvation.1. In one sense our Salvation is not of works. (1) We are not saved by works, considered as a fulfilment of the original law of nature. (2) Nor are we saved by virtue of any works done before faith in Christ, for none of these are properly good. 2. Yet there is a sense in which good works are of absolute necessity to salvation. (1) They are necessary as being radically included in that faith by which we are saved. A disposition to works of righteousness is as essential to faith, and therefore as necessary to salvation, as a trust in the righteousness of the Redeemer. (2) A temper disposing us to good works is a necessary qualification for heaven. (3) Works are necessary as evidences of our faith in Christ, and of our title to heaven. (4) Good works essentially belong to religion. (5) Works are necessary to adorn our professions and honour our religion before men. (6) Works are necessary, as by them we are to be judged in the great day of the Lord. III. The necessity of works does not diminish the grace of God in our salvation, nor afford us any pretence for boasting. The whole scheme of redemption originated in God’ s self-moving mercy. And our spiritual services are acceptable only by Jesus Christ, not by their own intrinsic worth. Practical reflections:1. Humility essentially belongs to the Christian temper. 2. The mighty preparation which God has made for our recovery, from ruin teaches us that the human race is of great importance in the scale of rational beings, and in the scheme of God’ s universal government. 3. It infinitely concerns us to comply with the proposals of the gospel. 4. Let no man flatter himself that he is in a state of salvation as long as he neglects good works. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)The source and way of salvation The Christian salvation may be divided into three parts: the salvation which delivers us from sin and its consequences; the salvation which restores us to the favour, image, and communion of God; and the salvation which preserves us amidst all the temptations and dangers of our present state until we reach the heavenly kingdom. Yet the salvation itself is but one. Its several parts are inseparably united to each other; and they form that mighty scheme which excludes all evil and involves all good, which fills time with peace and eternity with triumph. I. The source from which our salvation flows is “ grace” --the grace of God.1. It is the grace of God which gave origin and existence to the scheme of our salvation by the death of the Messiah. 2. It is the grace of God which has given execution or accomplishment to the scheme of our Christian salvation. 3. It is the grace of God which gives application and effect to this scheme of salvation. II. The way in which the Christian salvation is to be obtained--“ through faith.”1. An exceedingly plain and simple way.2. A divinely appointed way.3. A humiliating way.4. A holy and practical way. (John Hannah, D. D.)Salvation of God through faith If we drew out, in order, the teaching of these verses, it would perhaps fall into something like the following statements. That an affection in the Divine nature is the primary cause of human salvation--“ By grace ye are saved.” This affection of God is apprehended by the creature’ s faith--“ By grace ye are saved through faith.” Though the creature’ s faith is his own, by the free consent and voluntary exercise of his own heart and mind, nevertheless, in its principle and operation, it is the work of God--“ not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Man’ s salvation, instead of consisting in a single act of God, is His most patient work--“ For we are His workmanship.” With respect to our new nature, which is the work of God, Jesus Christ is our father Adam--“ We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” This new nature gives evidence of itself by a corresponding excellence of character--“ We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” These good works are adequately provided for by a prearranged plan of God, and by the nourishment of our new nature in His Son--“ Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God before prepared that we should walk in them.” We must consent to it with our whole heart, that our salvation from first to last is of God and by God. (John Pulsford.)Salvation 1. Look at salvation in its origin--it is “ by grace.”2. Look at it in its reception--it is “ through faith.”3. Look at it in the manner of its conferment--it is “ a gift.” (J. Eadie, D. D.)Saved by grace It is a very important word surely, that word “ saved.” It brings before our minds the most solemn consideration that we can possibly be occupied with. Nothing is nearer to us than our own souls; hence there is nothing more important than that we should not lose those souls of ours. Some of us love our money dearly, but what is money to our soul? Some of us love our friends very dearly, but we shall have to part company with them. Some of us love the pleasures of life dearly. What is it to be “ saved” ? Before we can answer that question, we must ask another: What is it to be in danger? If I were to meet one of you strolling along the road, and rushed up to you with frantic eagerness, and seized you by the arm, and said, “ My dear friend, do let me save you!” you would think I had come out of a lunatic asylum, and would wish that I were back there again. Nobody in his senses would address his neighbour in that way, under such circumstances. But supposing we were at Brighton together, and I was walking along the Esplanade, and, looking out to sea, saw you in a little cockle shell boat, tossing about on the waves, and, by and by, I saw that boat go over, and you sinking in the sea; and suppose I stripped off my clothes, and sprang into the water, and swam out to you, and as I drew near, you heard me shout, “ Will you let me save you?” would you be astonished at my asking you the question, under such circumstances. Then that brings before us this conclusion--we only want a Saviour when we are in danger. Before the Lord Jesus Christ is of any use to us as a Saviour, we must endeavour to realize what our danger is. Let us, then, try and discover what it arises from. It is not a pleasant thing to think that we are in danger, is it? There is one way of getting away from the sense of danger, that is to trifle with God’ s truth, and persuade ourselves that danger is not danger. We flatter ourselves that all is safe, when all the time, in the sight of God, we are in a state of terrible danger. Now, I want to point out to you that, so far from that making matters better, it only makes them worse. If I was wandering out near some of your cliffs, on a night dark as pitch, so that I could not see my hand before my face, I should be in a state of great danger. If I knew that there were sharp precipices descending to the sea, three or four hundred feet, I should be on the look out for them, feeling my way carefully with a walking stick, if I had one, doing all I could to avoid falling over the precipices and being dashed to pieces. But supposing I did not know that there were any precipices in the neighbourhood, and I said to myself, “ I have only to walk along this moor, and, sooner or later, I shall get to the place I want to reach,” how should I walk then? Although it was dark, I should step out bravely; if I had only so much as a single star to direct me, or a light in the distance, I should steer my course by it, and I should go on, probably, till I came to the edge of the precipice, and, taking a false step, should go over. Do you not see that if we are in danger it is far better for us to know that we are in danger than to think that we are in safety? Now, I cannot help thinking that there are some of us in this double danger: first of all, we are in danger because we are sinners; and, in the second place, we are in danger because we do not think that we are sinners; or, if we think that we are sinners at all, we think so little about it that we really do not feel “ the exceeding sinfulness of sin,” and therefore do not tremble at the thought of what sin must bring. And what does our danger proceed from? It proceeds from the fact that sin has entered our nature. Let us look at a consumptive patient. He is walking down the lane with a brisk step, and is not so very unhealthy looking. You ask him how he is. “ Oh,” he says, “ he is not so particularly bad; he has got a cold, but he is going to shake it off.” You look at him carefully; you are a doctor, and you know about such things; you see the hectic flush on his cheek, a certain appearance in his complexion that alarms you: there is a ring in his cough that seems to tell of something fatally wrong. What is the matter with him? He is in terrible danger, he does not know it, but he is none the less in danger. What is it makes him in danger? A disease has taken hold of his body. Somewhere in the lungs there is a formation taking place; he cannot see it, but its effects begin to manifest themselves. There is a poison within the blood, so to speak, and the man is doomed; in all probability, in the course of a few months, you will see him laid on a bed of languor and wretchedness, and in a few months more he will be carried to his grave, a wasted corpse, the terrible disease having done its work! Now, sin is a disease of the soul. The question is not whether the disease has been largely developed, or whether it is only just beginning to develop itself! the point is, Is the disease there? Has it begun its fatal work? If it has, then you are in terrible danger. If I were drowning off Brighton sands, and a man came along the Parade, with a multitude of medals of the Royal Humane Society on his breast, indicating the number of lives he had saved; if I cried out to him, “ Come and help me!” and he replied, “ Oh! I am a saviour, I have saved lots of people,” I should say, “ Save me; yea are of no use to me unless you save me; I am drowning; don’ t talk of how many you have saved, but save me.” Then suppose he said, “ Hope on; perhaps I will think about it by and by,” and then went on and left me drowning, would that be any considerable consolation to me? Suppose he had said, “ Perhaps, by and by, when you have gone under water three or four times more, and lost all consciousness, and you think you are dying, I will take it into consideration whether I will save you,” would that be a comfort to me? Would you like to have such a saviour as that? Now, when I have this terrible disease of sin upon me, what I want is a Saviour who will save me now, who will bring me into a state of conscious salvation, or safety--for that is the meaning of the word in plain English. Can we get such a Saviour? We can. The Saviour revealed in the gospel is a Saviour who comes down to me, and lays hold of me as I am sinking in the jaws of death, and puts me in a position of safety, so that I tan look round triumphantly, and say as the apostle said, “ Being justified by faith, I have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Now I come back to the old question. We have seen what the danger is, and we have seen what the salvation is; now we come to ask--How is a man to be saved? What is it that will save him? The apostle makes a very clear statement here--“ By grace are ye saved.” What does “ grace” mean? There is not a child here who does not know. By favour, by God’ s free kindness towards us. We do not deserve any favour, do we? If you knew a man who had been robbing and injuring you, trampling on your rights, and rebelling against your will, that is not the man you would choose to do a favour to, naturally. Well, that is just how we have treated God; we have been robbing Him of all that He has most a claim to; robbing Him of our time, of our money, of our influence; rebelling against His laws, turning our back upon His love, playing the part of base ingrates against His mercy. We have no claim upon God’ s favour. “ Now,” says the apostle, “ the grace of God which brings salvation to every man hath appeared.” Now, I want you to know, dear friends, that that “ grace” floods this sin-stricken world like a glorious tide. Wherever it reaches a human heart, it brings salvation to our very door. There is not one of you who is not included in this assertion of the apostle, “ The grace of God, which bringeth salvation to every man, hath appeared.” You may bring the biggest nugget of gold in the world to my door; there it may be outside on a wheelbarrow, and I may be inside dying of starvation; the nugget will do me no good if I do not take it in: if I do not turn it into money, and apply it to the satisfaction of my wants, I shall be as badly off as if the nugget had never been presented to me at all. The glorious gift of salvation is brought to our doors, and the question is, Have we taken it into our hearts? Now, my brother, God will either give you salvation, or else you shall never have it; it shall be His free gift, accepted by you for nothing, or else it shall never be yours; so if you are going to purchase it by your tears, your repentance, your good works, your good resolutions, or your faith--if you come and offer God such terms, you will simply have to go empty away. It is an insult to a man to offer him money in payment for a gift, is it not! Supposing I were to go home to Lord Chichester tonight, and he were to make me a handsome present; suppose he said, “ That splendid clock, worth a couple of hundred guineas, is to be yours, if you will accept it,” and suppose I put my hand into my pocket, and said, “ My lord, I should like to pay something towards it, will you accept sixpence?” How would he feel? It would be a great insult to him, would it not? If I received it gratefully, and thanked him for it, I should be pleased, and he would be pleased; I should be the gainer, and he would have the pleasure of making me a handsome present; but if I insisted on paying my sixpence, it would make a mess of it all; probably he would be offended with me, and I with him, and we should part enemies instead of friends. That may serve to bring before you how ridiculous it is to try and buy God’ s salvation with anything. If you pay so much as a single tear for your salvation, it spoils the whole arrangement. Do I mean that you are not to shed tears? No, no. By all means, if God has given you oceans of tears, shed them, but not to purchase salvation. If God has given you all the sorrow and penitence that ever racked the human heart, there is no objection to that, but do not offer it for salvation. If God gives you the strongest faith that ever moved in the human soul, exercise it, but do not bring it in payment for salvation. That is wholly and solely the gift of God. Is it not a glorious gift? (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)The freeness of grace and love I. It is a great matter and of infinite concernment to be saved and to go to heaven forever. For--1. You are thereby saved from wrath to come. Yea-- 2. You shall be delivered from all sorrow, both inward and outward; and if so, how blessed and happy are you, for you shall die in the Lord. 3. You shall not only be freed from these troubles, but you shall also be brought into a possession, into an “ inheritance that is incorruptible, that fadeth not away.” 4. If you go to heaven and be saved, you shall then be filled with glory. If you have but a little taste of glory here, you are ready to break under it, under a little glory; but the time will come when you shall be filled with glory, and your hearts shall bear up under it; your bodies shall be changed; you shall be filled with glory, soul and body both. 5. If you be saved, your graces shall be always in act, always in exercise; your understandings shall be fully enlightened, your difficulties shall be removed, and your wills, hearts, and affections shall be drawn out to God with infinite satisfaction and infinite delight. 6. If you be saved, you shall have the knowledge of the continuance of this condition. II. But in what way does a man come to this attainment? How and in what way is a man saved? Why, in a way of free love and grace; for, if God bestow anything in a way of gift, it is free, for what is more free than gift? Now do but consider what these things are which are called in Scripture, salvation; and you may observe that they all come in a way of gift. Sometimes salvation is put for the Author of salvation, Jesus Christ (Luke 2:29-30). Sometimes salvation is put for eternal glory. “ Who would have all men to be saved, both Jew and Gentile.’” And this salvation is the gift of God too. “ But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Now salvation, as to the Author of it, as to the means of it, and as to the salvation itself; it is all of free grace. III. But you will say, If it be so, that by free grace we are saved, then why need we use the means of salvation; you say we are saved by grace, by free grace, wherefore then need we endeavour? Yes, we are to endeavour: do you not use your endeavour to get your daily bread? and yet that is the gift of God. IV. Wherein doth the freeness of the grace of God appear in the matter of our salvation? There is a great deal of free grace in this, that God should ordain us to eternal life and salvation (2 Timothy 1:9). Yet, further, it is in the matter of our salvation, as it is in the matter of our consolation and comfort; and as I said of that, so I say also of this: That the greater and the more glorious any mercy is, and the more worthy and great the person is that giveth it, and the more unworthy the person is that receives it, the more doth the grace of him appear who giveth it; now what greater mercy, what more glorious mercy, than heaven and salvation? It is called the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven; it is called the kingdom of glory, and eternal glory; it is called joy, enter into the joy of our Lord: and great is the joy of our Lord; that joy which was set before Christ, that is the joy of the saints in heaven. Now, what are the arches and pillars of free grace and love, upon which our salvation under Christ is laid? I shall name some of them. The absoluteness of the covenant. That God justifies the ungodly. Thus our righteousness is not in us, but in Christ. That the guilt of our sins by which we lay liable to condemnation is removed. That a little sincerity covers a great deal of infirmity. That what God calls ours is not indeed ours, but God’ s, as our graces, our duties, which are not indeed ours but God’ s. That God will in due time glorify us and honour us. Sin doth provoke God and cause Him to be angry with us, but grace doth provoke Him to love us; and, therefore, the pillars of our salvation are laid under Christ upon grace, upon free grace and love: and thereby the freeness of the grace of God doth the more appear in the matter of our salvation. V. Salvation is a work of grace; and seeing we are saved by grace alone, why then doth God choose to save men in this way of free grace? I answer, It is because this is the most honourable way unto God. If there was somewhat of the good pleasure of God in the world’ s condemnation, all the reason in the world then that there should be free grace in the way of salvation. Pray, how came Adam to stand for the whole world? He was not chosen by us, why it was the good pleasure of God that he should stand for the whole world, and that he sinning, we should be all guilty of sin by, and through him: so, I say, if there was, as I may speak with reverence, somewhat of the good pleasure of God in the old world’ s condemnation, why then should there not be free grace in the soul’ s salvation. God would have heaven and salvation to be of one piece; He would have the work of heaven to be the same; now there were many angels that fell, and many thousands that stood, why how came they to stand that did stand, more than the others that fell? it was only by free grace, they were elect angels. Now men and angels in heaven are of the same choir and sing the same song; and therefore those men that are saved, oh, who are they? why they are the elect, and they have great cause to glorify the grace, the free grace of God. God saves men in a way of free love and grace, because none shall miss of salvation. As God will punish and condemn all the proud, all the wicked, that none shall escape; so He will also save all that He hath a mind to save, by free grace because they shall not miss of salvation. God will save men in such a way as whereby He may be glorified to all eternity, and therefore He saves them in a way of free grace and love; for what have we to praise God for in heaven, but only for free grace, free grace, to glorify His name for that; therefore, I say, God will save men in this way of free love and grace, that He may be thereby glorified hereafter to all eternity. (W. Bridge.)Salvation all of grace We see a golden thread of grace running through the whole of the Christian’ s history, from his election before all worlds, even to his admission to the heaven of rest. Grace, all along, “ reigns through righteousness unto eternal life,” and “ where sin aboundeth, grace doth much more abound.” I. This doctrine should inspire every sinner with hope.1. If salvation be of mercy only, it is clear that our sin is by no means an impediment to our salvation. (1) This prevents the despair which might arise in any heart on account of some one especial sin. Undeserved mercy can pardon one sin as well as another, if the soul confess it. The great sinner is so much the fitter object for great mercy--a black foil to set forth the brilliant diamond of the Master’ s grace. (2) If the sinner’ s despair should arise from the long continuance, multitude, and great aggravation of his sins, there is no ground for it. For if salvation be of pure mercy only, why should not God forgive ten thousand sins as well as one? “ Oh,” sayest thou, “ I see why He should not.” Then thou seest more than is true; for once come to grace, you have done with bounds and limits. 2. Remember, too, that any spiritual unfitness which may exist in a man should not shut him out from a hope, since God deals with us in mercy. I hear you say, “ I believe God can save me, but I am so impenitent.” Yes, and I say it again, if thou wert to stand on terms of debt with God, thy hard heart would shut thee out of hope. How could He bless such a wretch as thou art, whose heart is a heart of stone? But if He deal with thee entirely upon another ground, namely, His mercy, why I think I hear Him say, “ Poor hard-hearted sinner, I will pity thee, and take away thy heart of stone, and give thee a heart of flesh.” Do I hear thee confess that thou canst not believe? Now, the absence of faith from thee is a great evil, yea a horrible evil; but then the Lord is dealing with thee on terms of grace, and does not say, “ I will not smite thee because thou dost net believe,” but He saith, “ I will give thee faith,” for faith is “ not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” II. This doctrine affords direction to the sinner, as to how to act before his God in seeking mercy. Clearly, O soul, if salvation he of grace alone, it would be a very wrong course of action to plead that thou art not guilty, or to extenuate thy faults before God. Take care that all your pleas with God are consistent with the fact that He saves by His grace. Never bring a legal plea, or a plea that is based upon self, for it will be an offence to God; whereas, if thine argument be based on grace, it will have a sweet savour to Him. Let me teach thee, seeking sinner, for a moment how to pray. Plead with God thy miserable and undone condition; tell Him that thou art utterly lost if He do not save thee. Show Him the imminence of thy danger. Then argue with Him the plenteousness of His grace, Say to Him, “ Lord, Thy mercy is very great, I know it is.” III. A full conviction of this truth will reconcile. Our hearts to all Divine ordinances with regard to salvation. I feel in my own heart, and I think every believer here does, that if salvation be of grace, God must do as He wills with His own. None of us can say to Him, “ What doest Thou?” If there were anything of debt, or justice, or obligation, in the matter, then we might begin to question God; but as there is none, and the thing is quite out of court as to law, and far away from rights and claims, as it is all God’ s free favour, we will henceforth stop our mouths and never question Him. As to the instrument by whom He saves, let Him save by the coarsest speaker, or by the most eloquent; let Him do what seemeth Him good. IV. A most powerful motive for future holiness. A man who feels that he is saved by grace says, “ Did God of His free favour blot out my sins? Then, oh, how I love Him. Was it nothing but His love that saved an undeserving wretch. Then my soul is knit to Him forever.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)Salvation by grace I. Definition of grace. Grace has been too often represented in forms which dishonoured the righteousness of God, and were unfriendly to the righteousness of man. In our modern religious language it occurs less frequently than in the language of our fathers. But the word is too precious to be surrendered. Among the Greeks it stood for all that is most winning in personal loveliness, for the nameless fascination of a beauty which is not cold and remote but irresistibly attractive and charming. It was also used for that warm, free handed, and spontaneous generosity which is kind where there is no claim or merit, and kind without hope of return; a disposition lovely in itself, and winning the admiration and affection of all who witness it. This beautiful word, with all its beautiful associations, has been exalted and transfigured in its Christian uses.1. Grace transcends love. Love may be nothing more than the fulfilment of the law. We love God, who deserves our love. We are required to love our neighbour, and we cannot refuse to love him without guilt. But grace is love which passes beyond all claims to love. It is love which, after fulfilling the obligations imposed by law, has an unexhausted wealth of kindness. 2. Grace transcends mercy. Mercy forgives sin, and rescues the sinner from eternal darkness and death. But grace floods with affection the sinner who has deserved anger and resentment, trusts penitent treachery with a confidence which could not have been merited by ages of incorruptible fidelity, confers on a race which had been in revolt honours which no loyalty could have purchased, on the sinful joy beyond the deserts of saintliness. 3. Grace transcends majesty. The eternal righteousness of God is that which constitutes His dignity and majesty, makes Him venerable and august; but His grace adds to His dignity an infinite loveliness, to His majesty an ineffable charm, blends with the awe and devout fear with which we worship Him a happy confidence, and with our veneration a passionate affection. II. Achievement of grace. Our salvation is the achievement of God’ s grace: this is the central thought of the Epistle to the Ephesians. God’ s free, spontaneous lave for us, resolved that we who sprang from the dust, and might have passed away and perished like the falling leaves after a frail and brief existence, should share through a glorious immortality the sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ. God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love; He blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. This was the wonderful idea of human greatness and destiny which was formed by the grace of God. The race declined from the lofty path designed for it by the Divine goodness. But as by the grace of God Christ was to be the root of our righteousness and blessedness, and as the ground and reason of our ethical and spiritual greatness were in Him, so in Christ God has revealed the root, the ground, the reason of our redemption. We have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of God’ s grace. There is nothing abnormal in the forgiveness of our sin being the result of Christ’ s death; all our possible righteousness was to be the fruit of the perfection and energy of His eternal life. The original idea of the Divine grace, according to which we were to find all things in Christ, and Christ was to be the root of a perfection and glory surpassing all hope and all thought, was tragically asserted in the death of Christ for human salvation. Our fortunes--shall I say it?--were identified with the fortunes of Christ; in the Divine thought and purpose we were inseparable from Him. Had we been true and loyal to the Divine idea, the energy of Christ’ s righteousness would have drawn us upwards to height after height of goodness and joy, until we ascended from this earthly life to the larger powers and loftier services and richer delights of other and diviner worlds; and still, through one golden age of intellectual and ethical and spiritual growth after another, we should have continued to rise towards Christ’ s transcendent and infinite perfection. But we sinned; and as the union between Christ and us could not be broken without the final and irrevocable defeat of the Divine purpose, as separation from Christ meant for us eternal death, Christ was drawn down from the serene heavens to the shame and sorrow of the confused and troubled life of our race, to pain, to temptation, to anguish, to the cross and to the grave, and so the mystery of His atonement for our sin was consummated. In His sufferings and death, through the infinite grace of God, we find forgiveness, as in the power of His righteousness and as in His great glory we find the possibilities of all perfection. Our union with Him is not dissolved. Through His death we receive forgiveness, through His death we die to the sin which brought the death upon Him; and in His resurrection and ascension we see the visible manifestation of that eternal life which we have already received, and which will some day be manifested in us as it has been manifested in Him. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)God’ s grace and man’ s salvation 1. The ground of all our salvation is the free favour of God. Much comfort for us in this; for if our salvation be of mere grace, and depend not on our own worth, endeavour, and holiness, why should we fear? If it were for anything in us to be procured, we might utterly despair; but since it is of God, we may boldly accept, and confidently trust in this free grace of God, although we are unworthy of it. It is not true humility, but a foolish pride, to put away, and judge ourselves unworthy of this salvation, whereof it has pleased God (in rich mercy) to deem us worthy. 2. To the full glorifying of us in heaven, all is from the free, mere grace of God. He does nothing by halves. What He has begun, He will complete (Philippians 1:6). 3. God’ s grace and man’ s faith ever stand together (Galatians 3:22; John 3:16). To this it may be objected that the grace of God cannot stand with anything in man. How then (you will ask) can it stand with faith? Answer: It is true, that the grace of God does not brook anything inherent in man, and of man; and yet, notwithstanding, it may well agree with faith. For (1) Faith is not of man, no, not in man by nature; but it is in man renewed, and as a gift of mere grace. (2) Faith does not justify, as it is an inherent quality in us, but as it apprehends Christ Jesus the Redeemer. (3) Faith receives only, and shows to God the righteousness and merit of Christ. (4) It is therefore the Lord’ s grace that accepts faith for the righteousness of the believer. 4. No power in man can quicken him; and no virtue, quality, or dignity, when he is quickened, can merit his salvation. (Paul Bayne.)Salvation by the sovereign love and free grace of God I. Salvation.1. We are delivered from death. So long as we continued under the impending curse, there was nothing due to us but death. Death temporal, spiritual, and eternal, were all included in the threatening. Death temporal is the separation of the soul from the body. Death spiritual is the separation of the soul from God. And death eternal is the separation of both soul and body from God forever. But from all these we are saved. Death temporal, no doubt, performs its work, but it is not now penal; in its rapacity to devour it caught Jesus, but He was too mighty for death! He overcame it, and left it vanquished in the grave; so that it is now in the hand of the Mediator, converted into a mean for bringing His saints to glory. And spiritual death shall have no dominion over us; now and then, indeed, we may experience a compunction of conscience and a pang of mind, because we carry about with us bodies of sin and death. But these shall no longer prove destructive, but are all so many incentives to bring us to Jesus, and to cause us to rely upon Him more fully. And death eternal shall have no place; whenever the soul is set free from the body, that moment shall it be in paradise, carried by the angels, and so shall it be forever with the Lord. 2. We are delivered from the love of sin. By the covenant transgression of Adam, there is a sinful bias given to our minds. Because we have broken the law, there is a deep-rooted enmity in our hearts to all that is holy; and we cannot think of returning to God, for that would be calling our sins to remembrance, and setting before our face the curse which awaits us from an offended Judge. But when we obtain salvation from the Lord, we have no more desire for sin. But now does the Lord become the supreme object of our delight. We see in Him a beauty and an all-sufficiency suited to give true comfort to the saint, something which is congenial to our celestial part, and which in life and in death continues alike calculated to give deliverance, and to present with a crown of glory. 3. We are saved from the power of sin; for whom we serve, His we are. 4. We are saved from the practice of sin. II. The source whence this salvation flows. The sovereign love and free grace of God.1. The sovereign love and free grace of God are the source of salvation; because when man had sinned, and all the clouds of wrath were thickening around him, and all the thunders of Jehovah’ s justice were ready to burst around man’ s guilty head, it remained with God to manifest whether justice should take its course, or He would stretch out His strong arm to deliver; whether He would be reconciled to man, or punish him according to his iniquities, by everlastingly secluding him from His presence. And, until the decree was declared, there must have been a solemn pause, as if the pulse of nature stood. All the angels in glory must have looked on with intense interest, and devils must have trembled in dire suspense for the declaration of the Divine will, which made fully known whether man was to be restored to the favour of his God, or eternally to expiate his guilt, by bearing the punishment due to his crimes. And, at that all-important moment, in the riches of His grace, and gave the intimation of His pleasure, “ Deliver from going down to the pit; for I will be merciful.” 2. The sovereign love and free grace of God are the source of salvation, inasmuch as, in the bowels of His compassion, God so loved the world, that He gave the Son of His bosom for the sin of man’ s soul, and thus provided a ransom. When the rebellion of man had plunged him into the depth of distress, and he was altogether helpless as an infant abandoned in the open field, then did God make known the Deliverer. This no ingenuity of man could ever have discovered, nor could the united prowess of the human race ever have procured the Mediator. 3. The sovereign love and free grace of God are the source of salvation, inasmuch as salvation can be applied to the soul only by the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit. “ Paul may plant, and Apollos may water; but God alone can give the increase.” There is both a natural and a moral inability about man to prevent him from being saved. His moral inability lies in the utter perversion of his will; he has no desire for that which is good; but his whole affections are set on things which are evil, and his natural inability lies in the utter incompetency of created capacity to change itself. III. The medium through which salvation is applied to the souls of men. Faith.1. Faith, in the case of the saint, is the same thing which is known in the world by the name of belief, and signifies the assent of the mind to the truth of some statement, so as to act upon the belief of what is said to us. 2. Salvation is by grace when applied to our souls through faith, because faith neither flows from intrinsic worth in us, nor does it beget in our hearts any principle, upon the ground of which we can merit salvation. 3. Salvation through faith is by grace; because, even when we are made to believe, faith gives no remuneration to God for what we receive. I shall now conclude this discourse with a few remarks.1. From what has been said, learn the humility with which this subject ought to inspire us. Is all by grace? Then let us come to God, humbled in heart and soul, and entreat of Him that He would make us participants of His free favour; that He would put down every high thought, and every haughty imagination, which exalteth itself; that we may be enabled to say, “ Not unto us, O God; not unto us, but to Thy name be the glory.” 2. From this subject, learn the duty of living in complete obedience to the holy will of God. In this passage there is no mention made of the world, nor of the things of the world; but salvation is the whole theme of the verse, and that is certainly calculated to direct our attention from time unto eternity. 3. From this subject learn the complete disappointment which all those shall receive who trust to the law for the salvation of their souls. 4. From this subject learn the firm footing upon which believers stand. The foundation of their hope is placed upon Christ, who is the Rock of ages, and the pillar and ground of the truth. (R. Montgomery.)Bishop Ryle’ s conversion Bishop Ryle, of Liverpool, was converted, when an undergraduate in Oxford, by the eighth verse of the second chapter of Ephesians, which was read in his hearing in church in the second lesson, with a pause between each clause by a stranger whose name he never knew. We are saved by grace only Mr. Maclaren and Mr. Gustart were both ministers at the Tolbooth Church, Edinburgh. When Mr. Maclaren was dying, Mr. Gustart paid him a visit, and put the question to him, “ What are you doing, brother?” His answer was, “ I’ ll tell you what I’ m 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.” We are saved by faith--not of ourselves It is not what I do that I trust in, but what Christ has done for me. You’ ve been down the shaft into the mine, sir. This will help me to tell you what I mean. For a long time I was trying to do what was right--to live as I ought to; and so was trusting to my own works for salvation. But all the while I felt as if I was still down at the bottom of the shaft. All I could do didn’ t get me out of the pit. Then God showed me that all my righteousness was but filthy rags, as the Bible says. But how was I to get out of the shaft? Why, at last I found that the only way out of the deep mine into which sin had brought us was to do just as I do when I want to get out of the coal mine. To do this, I have only to get into the bucket when it comes down, and trust to the men at the windlass to draw me out. And so I find it is about my soul. I can’ t draw myself out of the pit; but I trust in Jesus, and leave it all to Him. (D. L. Moody.)Saved There was, some years ago, a shipwreck on the Cornish coast. The wind was blowing an awful gale; no lifeboat was near, but a pilot boat, with a brave crew, put out to rescue the perishing. The ship was on a sand bank, and the pilot boat got alongside her, and as the waves ran higher and higher, the sailors, one after another, sprang from the ship on to the deck of the boat, till there was but one left on the sinking vessel, and just as he was in the act of springing, a tremendous billow struck the ship on her broadside; she heeled over, and the returning wave swept the pilot boat back to a considerable distance. At that moment a scream was heard from the stern of the pilot boat. A hoary-headed man, with tears starting from his eyes, and agony depicted on his countenance, was heard to cry out, “ Captain, for God’ s sake, save my boy I save my boy!” It was his only son who was in the sinking ship. And as his cry rose, there was another voice to meet it; from the sinking vessel there came back a shout clear and strong amidst the tumult of the tempest, “ Never mind, father; thank God, I am saved.” They were the last words he ever spoke. Another moment the mighty billows swept him away, and his soul was in eternity, in the very bosom of its God. Could you have said what that young man said? Could you have said, “ Thank God, I am saved” ? Perhaps you say, “ No, I could not.” Then don’ t sleep tonight until you can. What! may you have it tonight? Yes, the gift is at your door. “ How am I to have it?” Trust Jesus for it. Take that poor weary soul of yours, and lay it in His hand. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)Salvation by grace I. Set forth man’ s state by nature, and show that there could be nothing in him to move God to bestow so great a gift upon him. II. Such being man’ s stare by nature, it is manifest that salvation must be entirely of free grace. (R. Shutte, M. A.)Salvation a gift Once there was a poor woman who greatly desired a bunch of grapes from the king’ s greenhouse for her sick child; so she took half a crown, and went to the king’ s gardener, and tried to purchase the grapes, but was rudely sent away. A second effort with more money met with a similar repulse. It so happened that the king’ s daughter heard the angry words of the gardener, and the crying of the poor woman, and inquired into the matter. When she had related her story, the princess said, “ My good woman, you were mistaken. My father is not a merchant, but a king: his business is not to sell, but to give” ; whereupon she plucked a fine bunch from the vine, and gently dropped it into the woman’ s apron. So the poor woman obtained as a free gift what the labour of many days and nights had been unable to procure for her. God’ s gift As the earth engendereth not rain, nor is able, by its own strength, labour, or travail, to procure the same, but receiveth it of the mere gift of God from above, even so faith, grace, forgiveness of sins, and Christian righteousness, are given us of God without our works or deservings. (Cawdray.)How we are saved It is evident that the first intention of these words is to show what a very, very easy thing it is to be saved if we would only take it rightly. And secondly, to take away all the honour and all the desert from those who are saved, and to place it where all belongs--on God only. But now I come to a very important part. Let us be careful, very careful, here to discriminate and see clearly the distinction. Remember what we are speaking about. We are not speaking about holiness! We are not speaking about going to heaven; we are speaking only of being saved. We are speaking of the initiatory step, of the becoming a Christian; of the entrance into a life of holiness, and of safety. Remember that is what the word “ salvation” means. It means no less, and it means no more. Being safe! Still it is only safety, only safety! There is a great deal to be done after that. Conflict; love; prayer; penitence; conversion of heart; sanctification; a useful life; a brightness in death; a brightness in heaven. In all these, indeed, it is still God who “ works in you” to do it; but still you do it, you do it. You work out the grace of the salvation which God has given you; but for your pardon, for your safety, you do nothing at all, but simply accept it. You accept it. More than that--the power to accept it, the will to accept it--they are given you. The triple chain of salvation has three links, and no more--“ grace,” “ faith,” “ safety.” Then come afterwards--love, holiness, heaven. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Faith: its meaning, source, and power I. The nature of faith. Faith, in ordinary language, means the assent of the understanding to some statement as true--propounded upon the authority of another. It seems, however, in Scripture to be most commonly used in a somewhat more extensive sense, as comprehending what in strictness (metaphysical correctness) might be regarded rather as consequences of faith than as faith itself. Saving faith, according to the views of it given in Scripture, may be described as such an assent to the doctrines of the gospel as leads men to receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation, and to submit themselves entirely to His authority. II. How faith is produced. Faith implies certain objects presented to our minds--a capacity to perceive, and a disposition to attend to them, and to act under their influence. Now, in regard to the faith of the gospel, God both given us the objects, and enables us to perceive them. Faith, therefore, is His gift, not merely in the sense in which any other ordinary exercise of our faculties is His gift, but in a higher and more peculiar manner. It is God who sets before us those objects which faith embraces, and without which it could never have existence. We had known nothing of God unless He had chosen to reveal Himself to us. We have no certain knowledge of His character except what He is pleased to acquaint us with. We could have known absolutely nothing of Jesus Christ, who is the great Object of Faith--of all that He has done and suffered for us--of the whole scheme of redemption that is founded upon His work, and of the covenant of grace that is sealed with His blood--of the authority which He now exercises, and of the great and glorious purposes to which the exercise of that authority is directed--unless God had seen fit, not only to bring all these important results into existence, but to transmit them to us in His Word. We could have learned nothing of the future and unseen world, unless God had undertaken to remove the veil that conceals it, and open it up to our view. Thus there would have been no objects for our faith; and of course faith could never have existed unless God had made revelation of Himself, of His character, and ways--unless He had brought certain events to pass, and then made them known to us. But faith appears still further to be God’ s gift, from this, that men are naturally indisposed to attend to the objects set before them in the sacred Scriptures, and, according to the principles of our natural constitution, there can be no clear knowledge of anything without some degree of attention being directed towards it; whilst without clear knowledge there can be no sound and rational faith. III. The effect of faith as uniting us to Christ, and thus saving the soul. Now, when a man believes in Christ, he is, according to God’ s appointment, united to Him. There is a union formed between them. God regards him as if he were Christ, and treats him as if he had suffered the full punishment for his sins which Christ endured in his room--as if he had in his own person performed that full and perfect obedience to the Divine law which our Saviour’ s conduct exhibited. It is this imputation of Christ’ s sufferings and of His righteousness--or, as it is often called, of His active and passive obedience--it is this communion of suffering and of merit, in which the union of believers with Christ mainly consists; and this union and communion with Him is the foundation of their salvation, in all its parts and in all its aspects. Viewing them thus, as united to Christ, as one with Him--God bestows upon them the blessings which Christ purchased for all who should believe on His name; they obtain through faith the forgiveness of their sins, acceptance with God as righteous persons, the renovation and sanctification of their natures, and, finally, an inheritance among them that are sanctified. Christ is the great Head of Influence; all spiritual blessings are the fruits of His purchase; it is only by abiding in Him that we are enabled to bring forth fruits unto eternal life: as it is written (John 15:5), “ I am the Vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” You see now the great importance of faith in the salvation of sinners. It is the instrument by means of which we receive everything necessary to our peace. None can be saved without it, and every one who has it will assuredly be saved. (W. Cunningham, D. D.)Faith: what is it? how can it be obtained? Faith occupies the position of a channel or conduit pipe. Grace is the fountain and the stream: faith is the acqueduct along which the flood of mercy flows down to refresh the thirsty sons of men. It is a great pity when the acqueduct is broken. It is a sad sight to see around Rome the many noble acqueducts which no longer convey water into the city, because the arches are broken and the marvellous structures are in ruins. The acqueduct must be kept entire to convey the current; and, even so, faith must be true and sound, leading right up to God, and coming right down to ourselves, that it may become a serviceable channel of ,mercy to our souls. Still, I again remind you that faith is the channel or acqueduct, and not the fountain head, and we must not look so much to it as to exalt it above the Divine source of all blessing which lies in the grace of God. Never make a Christ out of your faith, nor think of it as if it were the independent source of your salvation. I. Faith: what is it? What is this faith concerning which it is said,” By grace are ye saved through faith” ? What is faith? It is made up of three things--knowledge, belief, and trust.1. Knowledge comes first. Know God, know His gospel, and know especially Christ Jesus, the Son of God and Saviour of men. Endeavour to know the doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ, for that is the point upon which saving faith mainly fixes itself. 2. Then the mind goes on to believe that these things are true. The soul believes that God is, and that He hears the cries of sincere hearts; that the gospel is from God; that justification by faith is the grand truth that God hath revealed in these last days by His Spirit more clearly than before. Then the heart believes that Jesus is verily and in truth our God and Saviour, the Redeemer of men, the prophet, priest, and king unto His people. 3. So far you have made an advance towards faith, and one more ingredient is needed to complete it, which is trust. Trust is the life blood of faith: there is no saving faith without it. The Puritans were accustomed to explain faith by the word “ recumbency.” You know what it means. You see me leaning upon this rail, leaning with all my weight upon it; even thus lean upon Christ. It would be a better illustration still if I were to stretch myself at full length and rest my whole person upon a rock, lying fiat upon it. Fall flat upon Christ. Cast yourself upon Him, rest in Him, commit yourself to Him. That done, you have exercised saving faith. Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation. II. Let us inquire, why faith is selected as the channel of salvation?1. There is a natural adaptation in faith to be used as the receiver. Suppose that I am about to give a poor man an alms: I put it into his hand--why? Well, it would hardly be fitting to put it into his ear, or to lay it under his foot; the hand seems made on purpose to receive. So faith in the mental body is created on purpose to be a receiver: it is the hand of the man, and there is a fitness in bestowing grace by its means. 2. Faith, again, is doubtless selected because it gives all the glory to God. It is of faith that it might be of grace, and it is of grace that there may be no boasting; for God cannot endure pride. 3. It is a sure method, linking man with God. When man confides in God there is a point of union between them, and that union guarantees blessing. Faith saves us, because it makes us cling to God, and so brings us into connection with Him. I am told that years ago, above the Falls of Niagara, a boat was upset, and two men were being carried down the current, when persons on the shore managed to float a rope out to them, which rope was seized by them both. One of them held fast to it, and was safely drawn to the bank; but the other, seeing a great log come floating by, unwisely let go the rope, and clung to the log, for it was the bigger thing of the two, and apparently better to cling to. Alas, the log, with the man on it, went right over the vast abyss, because there was no union between the log and the shore. The size of the log was no benefit to him who grasped it; it needed a connection with the shore to produce safety. So when a man trusts to his works, or to sacraments, or to anything of that sort, he will not be saved, because there is no junction between him and Christ; but faith, though it may seem to be like a slender cord, is in the hand of the great God on the shore side; Infinite Power pulls in the connecting line, and thus draws the man from destruction. Oh, the blessedness of faith, because it unites us to God! 4. Faith is chosen, again, because it touches the springs of action. I wonder whether I shall be wrong if I say that we never do anything except through faith of some sort. If I walk across this platform, it is because I believe my legs will carry me. A man eats because he believes in the necessity of food. Columbus discovered America because he believed that there was another continent beyond the ocean: many another grand deed has also been born of faith, for faith works wonders. Commoner things are done on the same principle; faith in its natural form is an all-prevailing force. God gives salvation to our faith, because He has thus touched the secret spring of all our emotions and actions. He has, so to speak, taken possession of the battery, and now He can send the sacred current to every part of our nature. 5. Faith, again, has the power of working by love; it touches the secret spring of the affections, and draws the heart towards God. Faith is an act of the understanding; but it also proceeds from the heart. “ With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;” and hence God gives salvation to faith because it resides next door to the affections, and is near akin to love, and love, you know, is that which purifies the soul. Love to God is obedience, love is holiness; to love God and to love man is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and this is salvation. 6. Moreover, faith creates peace and joy; he that hath it rests, and is tranquil, is glad, and joyous; and this is a preparation for heaven. God gives all the heavenly gifts to faith, because faith worketh in us the very life and spirit which are to be eternally manifested in the upper and better world. I have hastened over these points that I might not weary you on a day when, however willing the spirit may be, the flesh is weak. III. How can we obtain and increase our faith? A very earnest question this to many. They say they want to believe but cannot. “ What am I to do in order to believe?”1. The shortest way is to believe, and if the Holy Spirit has made you honest and candid, you will believe as soon as the truth is set before you. 2. But still, if you have a difficulty, take it before God in prayer. The Lord is willing to make Himself known; go to Him, and see if it be not so. 3. Furthermore, if faith seem difficult, it is possible that God the Holy Spirit will enable you to believe, if you hear very frequently and earnestly that which you are commanded to believe. 4. Consider the testimony of others. I believe there is a country called Japan, although I never have been there. I believe I shall die: I have never died, but a great many have done so whom I once knew, and I have a conviction that I shall die also; the testimony of many convinces me of this fact. Listen, then, to those who tell you how they were saved, how they were pardoned, how they have been changed in character: if you will but listen you will find that somebody just like yourself has been saved. As you listen to one after another of those who have tried the word of God, and proved it, the Divine Spirit will lead you to believe. Have you not heard of the African who was told by the missionary that water sometimes became so hard that a man could walk on it? He declared that he believed a great many things the missionary had told him; but he never would believe that. When he came to England it came to pass that one frosty day he saw the river frozen, but he would not venture on it. He knew that it was a river, and he was certain that he would be drowned if he ventured upon it. He could not be induced to walk on the ice till his friend went upon it; then he was persuaded, and trusted himself where others had ventured. So, mayhap, while you see others believe, and notice their joy and peace, you will yourself be gently led to believe. It is one of God’ s ways of helping us to faith. A better plan still is this--note the authority upon which you are commanded to believe, and this will greatly help you. He bids you believe in Jesus Christ, and you must not refuse to obey your Maker. The foreman of a certain works in the north had often heard the gospel, but he was troubled with the fear that he might not come to Christ. His good master one day sent a card round to the works--“ Come to my house immediately after work.” The foreman appeared at his master’ s door, and the master came out, and said somewhat roughly, “ What do you want, John, troubling me at this time? Work is done, what right have you here?” “ Sir,” said he, “ I had a card from you saying that I was to come after work.” “ Do you mean to say that merely because you had a card from me you are to come up to my house and call me out after business hours?” “ Well, sir,” replied the foreman, “ I do not understand you, but it seems to me that, as you sent for me, I had a right to come.” “ Come in, John,” said his master, “ I have another message that I want to read to you,” and he sat down and read these words--“ Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Do you think after such a message from Christ that you can be wrong in going to Him?” The poor man saw it all at once, and believed, because he saw that he had good warrant and authority for believing. So have you, poor soul; you have good authority for coming to Christ, for the Lord Himself bids you trust Him. If that does not settle you, think over what it is that you have to believe--that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered in the room and place and stead of men, and is able to save all who trust Him. Why, this is the most blessed fact that ever men were told to believe: the most suitable, the most comforting, the most Divine truth that ever was set before men. If none of these things avail, then there is something Wrong about you altogether, and my last word is, submit yourself to God. May the Spirit of God take away your enmity and make you yield. You are a rebel, a proud rebel, and that is why you do not believe your God. Give up your rebellion; throw down your weapons; yield at discretion; surrender to your King. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The clinging power of faith God gives to His people the propensity to cling. Look at the sweet pea which grows in your garden. Perhaps it has fallen down upon the gravel walk. Lift it up against the laurel or the trellis, or put a stick near it, and it catches hold directly, because there are little hooks ready prepared with which it grasps anything which comes in its way: it was meant to grow upwards, and so it is provided with tendrils. Every child of God has his tendrils about him--thoughts, and desires, and hopes with which he hooks on to Christ and the promise. Though this is a very simple sort of faith, it is a very complete and effectual form of it, and, in fact, it is the heart of all faith, and that to which we are often driven when we are in deep trouble, or when our mind is somewhat bemuddled by our being sickly or depressed in spirit. We can cling when we can do nothing else, and that is the very soul of faith. O poor heart, if thou dost not yet know as much about the gospel as we could wish thee to know, cling to what thou dost know. If as yet thou art only like a lamb that wades a little into the river of life, and not like leviathan who stirs the mighty deep to the bottom, yet drink; for it is drinking, and not diving, that will save thee. Cling, then I Cling to Jesus; for that is faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The realizing power of faith Faith also realizes the presence of the living God and Saviour, and thus it breeds in the soul a beautiful calm and quiet like that which was seen in a little child in the time of tempest. Her mother was alarmed, but the sweet girl was pleased; she clapped her hands with delight. Standing at the window when the flashes came most vividly, she cried in childish accents, “ Look, mammal How beautiful! How beautiful!” Her mother said, “ My dear, come away, the lightning is terrible;” but she begged to be allowed to look out and see the lovely light which God was making all over the sky, for she was sure God would not do His little child any harm. “ But harken to the terrible thunder,” said her mother. “ Did you not say, mamma, that God was speaking in the thunder?” “ Yes,” said her trembling parent. “ Oh,” said the darling, “ how nice it is to hear Him. He talks very loud, but I think it is because He wants the deaf people to hear Him. Is it not so, mamma Thus she went talking on; as merry as a bird was she, for God was real to her, and she trusted Him. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.Justified persons are God’ s workmanship Grace here means God’ s free gift. Our salvation is entirely God’ s gift to us; and it must be so, because we cannot make it or get it for ourselves; we have no power of our own to make it for ourselves, nothing of our own to offer in exchange for it. If our salvation does not come to us as God’ s free gift it can never come to us at all. But, though our salvation is entirely God’ s free gift to us, it is never forced upon us without our consent. Freely as it is offered to us, we must, on our parts, freely accept it when it is held out to us; we must acknowledge it thankfully; and unless we do acknowledge it and lay hold on it, it can never become curs. It may go on lying within arm’ s length of us all our lives through, and yet be of no more service to us than if it were hundreds of miles away; we must reach out our hand to take it, and this hand of ours which we have to put forth to take it with is faith. “ By grace are ye saved, through faith.” This reaching out of faith, in answer to God’ s stretching out His hand to save us, is the second step which is necessary to be taken in the matter of our salvation. But here St. Paul finds it necessary to put in a word of caution to those who are the very foremost in accepting his teaching, and the most earnest in looking to their faith as the sole instrument of their justification. He foresaw that men would come to pride themselves upon this faith of theirs as something peculiarly their own, which very few besides themselves had any share in, and which entitled them to look down upon the rest of mankind with something like a feeling of contempt. And so, after saying, “ By grace are ye saved through faith,” he goes on to say, “ and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Your salvation, yes, and your faith, too, by which you lay hold of your salvation, is all God’ s free gift to you; you did not make your faith for yourselves any more than you made your salvation; you had nothing of your own with which to make it. And how dare you, then, presume upon your faith, and pride yourselves upon it, as if it were your own creating? And now that St. Paul has secured his position against attack on one side, he turns cautiously round, like a skilful general, to secure it on the other: “ Not of works,” he proceeds to say, “ lest any man should boast.” And here, after all, is the quarter from which an attack is chiefly to be looked for. It is in man’ s nature to make as much of himself as he can; it is in his nature to seek to justify himself, to work all out by himself, to set his own account straight with God. But now, of course, if he can earn his salvation for himself, he can make a merit of what he has done, he can claim his justification as his own work. And so, in order to put a stop, once for all, to such notions and attempts on the part of man to justify himself, the apostle lays down his next great principle in the doctrine of justification: “ Not of works, lest any man should boast. For,” he proceeds to say, “ we are His workmanship.” So far from having any works of our own with which to purchase our salvation, we are ourselves nothing but a piece of work of another’ s making. God made us, and not we ourselves; He put us together, just as a workman puts a piece of machinery together, piece by piece, and we have no more ground for boasting or making a merit of what we do than a clock has ground for boasting of being able to point to the time or to strike the hours. We are simply, then, a piece of workmanship, designed and put together by God. Still, a piece of machinery is designed for some set purpose or other, and so are we; we have been made, and made over again, “ created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them.” (H. Harris, B. D.)Believers are God’ s workmanship The apostle, having shown that our salvation is only of grace, and the means by which we are made capable of all saving good in Christ, by faith, excluding all causes in man, and that from the end lest he should boast himself: he now gives a reason why God’ s grace is all in all, drawn from our redemption by Christ. As in the first creation there was no disposition in man to make himself a man, so no virtue in man now created to make him able to bring himself to eternal life; he confers nothing to the works of his new creation in Christ, no motion of man’ s will, thought, or desire, or any preparatory work; all proceeds from the infinite creating power of God, He gives all.1. All the faithful are new creatures in Christ. (1) This proves to many that they are not believers as yet. Why? Because they live in their old sins. So long as the love of any sin is retained there is no part of new creation in that person. (2) To prove we are in Christ we must approve ourselves new creatures. (a) The parts of this new creation are--holiness of the spirit, and of the body, mind, will, affections, and every member of the body. (b) Degrees--babes in Christ; young ones; old men, the perfection of stature. (c) Signs--change; spiritual motion in the heart; desire for the sincere milk of the Word; desire to draw on others to grace. 2. God is the author of our new creation. (1) This shows the dignity of the saints. They are God’ s children.(2) It teaches us to whom we are to ascribe all that we are. 3. God gives us our new creation through Christ. Let us magnify Him accordingly. 4. The new creature has new works. The two go together; there cannot be the one without the other. As is the fountain, such will be the streams which flow from it. 5. We come to have good works when we are made new in Christ. Before that we can do nothing, not only meritorious, but even good (John 15:15). If the things which are necessary conditions of a good work be considered, this will be clear. It must be done (1) From the heart.(2) In the obedience of faith.(3) To God’ s glory. 6. Good works are the very end of our new creation. As we plant our orchards, to the end that they may bring us fruit, so does the Lord plant us on purpose that we may bring Him fruit. Hence His people are called “ Trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, in whom He may be glorified.” “ Herein is My Father glorified,” said Christ, “ that ye bear much fruit.” Honour God with thy graces. It is reasonable that every one should have the honour of his own. We see plainly that other creatures glorify God in their kind, and fulfil the law of their creation; man alone, who has the greatest cause and best means, comes behind. 7. We must walk in the ways which are prepared by God. Our life must be a tracing of the commandments; we must not salute the ways of God as chapmen coming to fairs; we must walk in them. Men in the world may become so prosperous that they may give over trading, and live comfortably on what they already possess; but it is not thus with the soul, which, where it ceases to profit, waxes gross. (1) As thou wouldst have comfort that thou art a new creature in Christ, made alive by the Spirit, try it by this--how thou walkest. (2) Ever strive to be going forward, exercising the faculties we have, and looking to God for all. (Paul Bayne.)Christian men God’ s workmanship These words suggest far-reaching speculations about the Divine ideal of humanity, and about how that ideal is suppressed by human folly and sin; they suggest inquiries about the ideal relations of all men to Christ, relations which are only made real and effective by personal faith in Him. But Paul was thinking of those who by their own free consent were in Christ, of those who, as he says, had been “ saved by faith.” Of these it was actually true that they were “ God’ s workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” How are we to get at the gospel which these words contain? Let us try. Most of us, I suppose, who have any moral earnestness, are at times very dissatisfied with ourselves; yes, with ourselves. We think it hard that we should be what we are. We complain not only of the conditions of our life, which may have made us worse than there was any need that we should be, but of our native temperament, of tendencies which seem to belong to the very substance of our moral nature. We have ideals of moral excellence which are out of our reach. We see other men that have a goodness that we envy, but which is not possible to ourselves. There is something wrong in the quality of our blood. The fibre of our nature is coarse, and there is nothing to he made of it. There is a wretched fault in the marble which we are trying to shape into nobleness and beauty, and no skill or strength of ours can remove it, And ours is not an exceptional wretchedness. The special infirmities of men vary. One man finds it hard to be just, another to be generous; one man finds it hard to be quiet and patient under suffering, another to be vigorous in work; one man has to struggle with vanity, another with pride, another with covetousness, another with the grosser passions of his physical nature; one man is suspicious by temperament, another envious, another discontented; one man is so weak that he cannot hate even the worst kinds of wrong-doing, the fires of his indignation against evil never burst into flame; another is so stern that even where there is hearty sorrow for wrong-doing he can hardly force himself to forgive it frankly. The fault of our nature assumes a thousand forms, but no one is free from it. I look back to the ancient moralists, to Plato and to Seneca and to Marcus Antoninus, and I find that they are my brethren in calamity. The circumstances of man have changed, but man remains the same. How are we to escape from the general, the universal doom? We want to remain ourselves, to preserve our personal identity, and yet to live a life which seems impossible unless we can cease to be ourselves. It is a dreadful paradox, but some of us know that this is the exact expression of a dumb discontent which lies at the very heart of our moral being. Is there any solution? Paul tells us what the solution is. Christian men are “ God’ s workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” Yes, we were made for this, for something higher than is within our reach, apart from the reception of the life of God. There are vague instincts within us which are at war with the moral limitations which are born with us. Our aspirations are after a perfect righteousness and a diviner order, but we cannot fulfil them. They will die out through disappointment; they will be pronounced impossible unless we discover that they come from the fountains of a Divine inspiration, unless we have the faith and patience of the saints of old who waited, with an invincible confidence in the goodness and power of God, until the words of ancient prophecy were fulfilled, and more than fulfilled, in Christ. The prophets of the earlier centuries prophesied of the grace that was to come to later generations; their prophecies were dark and indistinct, and even to themselves almost unintelligible. They inquired and searched diligently concerning the salvation which they knew was to come, though they could not tell the time or the manner of its coming. And these aspirations of the individual soul are also prophecies; by them the Spirit of Christ is signifying to us the hopes which are our inheritance; they come from the Light which lighteth every man. But their fulfilment is not reserved for others; they may be fulfilled to ourselves. All that we have vaguely desired is now offered us in the glorious gospel of the blessed God; in Christ we become “ His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” The Divine idea is moving towards its crowning perfection. Never let us forget that the life which has come to us is an immortal life, At best we are but seedlings on this side of death. We are not yet planted out under the open heavens and in the soil which is to be our eternal home. Here in this world the life we have received in our new creation has neither time nor space to reveal the infinite wealth of its resources: you must wait for the world to come to see the noble trees of righteousness fling out their mighty branches to the sky and clothe themselves in the glorious beauty of their immortal foliage. And yet the history of Christendom contains the proof that even here a new and alien life has begun to show itself among mankind; a life not alien indeed, for it is the true life of our race, but it is unlike what had been in the world before. The saints of every Church, divided by national differences, divided by their creeds, divided by fierce ecclesiastical rivalries, are still strangely akin. Voice answers to voice across the centuries which separate them; they tell in different tongues of the same wonderful discovery of a Divine kingdom; they translate every man for himself into his own life the same Divine law. We of obscurer rank and narrower powers read their lives, and we know that we and they are akin; we listen to their words, and are thrilled by the accent of home. Their songs are on our lips; they seem to have been written for us by men who knew the secret we wanted to utter better than we knew it ourselves. Their confessions of sin are a fuller expression of our own sorrow and trouble than we ourselves had ever been able to make. Their life is our life. We and they belong to a new race. A new type of character has been created. Christ lives on in those whose life is rooted in Him. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)God’ s workmanship We have in this verse three things. I. The power that acts on the sinner to bring him into obedience to his God. The power of God alone. Man is dead; God is the quickener. II. The mode in which that power acts upon him so as to produce this effect. “ In Christ Jesus.” III. The certain security for the operation of this power, and for the effect it will produce. God has appointed it. He has ordained that His people should walk in good works. You perceive, then, why throughout the Scriptures the works of man are made the test of his salvation. He is not to he justified by them, but he is to be judged by them, and this is a difficulty that often occurs to the mind, How is man to be judged by his works if he is not to be justified by them? The answer is--because they are taken as the test of his faith, as the proof of his sincerity. A cup of cold water could not purchase salvation for the sinner; but a cup of cold water, given in the name of Jesus, shall in no wise lose its reward, because it is the test that the believer loves his Master. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)The heavenly Workman I. God works with skill and industry in elevating and refining human nature; and let us not overlook the fact that there is a great difference in the material. It is useless to say that all men are equal. We are not all born alike. From the fault or misfortune of our progenitors, we may start on the race with heavy burdens that we cannot shake off. Besides, we differ in both physical and mental constitution. We use terms which are very suggestive when we speak of a “ hard” man, or when we say, “ He is soft,” “ He is coarse,” or “ He is a fine man.” Some we describe as Nature’ s gentle men, while others are born mean. Let it be understood that the Great Workman does not expect the same results from every kind of material. There is one thing He expects from all, and something He has a right to expect, and that is what all can do: we must love God. II. It is well for us to have confidence in the workman. What a different fate awaits some of the blocks of marble which come into London as compared with others. They will all be used, but how differently. One is taken to the studio of the sculptor, to be carved into some statue to be admired for ages; another is sawn into slabs to make the counter of some gin palace! If the former block could know and feel the difference, how glad it would be to find itself in the places where statues are made. Let those of us who are lovers of God never forget that we are in the studio. It is not the purpose of the heavenly Workman to put us to any of the baser uses we might have been fit for but for His grace. III. We must not forget that the workman has a plan. Life in any of us is a very complicated affair. Things are always happening--births, deaths, and marriages. Business relations alter. Circumstances differ: there seems no order or arrangements. It is chaos to us. And yet God knows all, and knows the precise bearing of each event on our lives. It does not seem like it, and yet, if we look hack, we may often see that God has been working all along in harmony with one idea. Some time ago, when in Manchester, the writer saw the men at work pulling down whole streets of houses to make room for a new railway station. All appeared ruin and disorder. Here was a party digging out foundations; in another place the bricklayers were building walls; elsewhere some one was setting out for other walls; beyond them they were still pulling down. It seemed like chaos, and yet in the architect’ s office could be seen the elevation and picture of the complete whole. Every man was working to a plan. And so God has His elevation, but He does not show it. “ It doth not yet appear.” When Joseph was in jail, he was in the path of Providence, and the fetters of iron were as much part of the plan as the chain of gold he wore when brought to the summit of greatness. What a variety of tools! What are the so-called means of grace but tools in the hand of the Great Workman? What are preachers but God’ s chisels and hammers? Books, too, are tools. How important is the work of those who write them! But the finest work is often done by those sharp-edged chisels called Pain and Bereavement. How many of us are to be made perfect by suffering! It is not the dull tool that can cut the fine lines. Will the work ever be completed? Not in this world certainly. There is no room for self-complacence. (T. Champness.)The nature and necessity of good works That those who are God’ s workmanship are created in Christ Jesus to good works; or, in plainer terms, all those who belong to God, and are created anew by His Spirit, are enabled by virtue of that new creation to perform good works. In pursuance of this proposition, I will show--1. What good works are.2. What are the qualifications of them.3. Why they must be done.4. Apply all. I. That we may understand what is meant by good works, we must know that there are habits of grace, and there are acts and exertments of grace; and these two are different from one another, because these acts flow from those habits. These acts are two-fold, either inward or outward. The inward are such as these--a fear and reverence of the Almighty, a love of God and all goodness, and a love of our neighbours (which is called the work and labour of love, Hebrews 6:10), which, though they be not outwardly acted, yet are properly the works of the soul, for the not producing them into outward action hinders not their being works. For the mind of man may as properly be said to work as the body; yea, if we consider the true nature of things, we may rightly assert that the soul is the principal worker in man, and that all the outward exertments of virtue in the body flow from the mind of man, and take thence their denomination. These outward acts of grace which are exerted by the members of the body, and are apparent in the practices of holy men, are the good works generally spoken of in the Scripture. They are no other than visible exertments and actual discoveries of the inward graces before mentioned. Thus our reverencing of God is discovered by our solemn worshipping Him, and that in the most decent and humble manner. Our faith in Him, and love to Him, are showed by our readiness to do His will and obey all His commands. It is true good works in general comprehend all works morally good, whether they be adjusted to the law of nature or the revealed law; but I shall chiefly and principally consider good works as they are conformable to the revealed rule of the gospel. And so I proceed to the-- II. Thing I undertook, viz., to show what are the qualifications of these good works, that is, what is absolutely required in these works to make them good. I shall speak only of those qualifications which are requisite in evangelical good works, namely, such as are necessary to eternal salvation.1. In a good work it is requisite that the person who doth it be good. By which I mean not only that he be inwardly good and righteous, according to that of our Saviour, make the tree good and his fruit good (Matthew 12:33); but I understand this also, that the person who performs good works be one that is reconciled to God; for if the person be not accepted, the work cannot be good. It is said, “ The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering” (Genesis 4:4). First unto Abel, and then to his offering. The sacrificer must be accepted before the sacrifice. 2. As the works are good because of the person, so both the person and works are good because of the righteousness of Christ, in whom God is well pleased. “ He hath made us acceptable to the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). What we do is favourably received as we are considered in Christ. By virtue of our relation to Him, who is our Righteousness, our performances are accounted righteous. This qualification of a good work the devout Mr. Herbert assigns, saying, “ It is a good work if it be sprinkled with the blood of Christ.” 3. A good work in the gospel sense and meaning is a work done by the grace of God and the assistance of the Holy Spirit. 4. It must be done in faith, for the apostle tells us that “ without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6), and, consequently, as he adds in another place, “ what is not of faith is sin.” 5. In all actions that are really good there must be lawful and right means used. Acts of justice and honesty must be clone by ways that are lawful and good. We must not be just among ourselves by being unjust to others. I must not steal that I may be charitable to the poor. I must not promote the best cause either by persecution or by rebellion. Though it be God’ s cause, it ought not to be fought with the devil’ s weapons. 6. Good works must be adjusted to a right rule; they must be according to the will and commandment of God. They must not be after our own inventions, but according to this Divine command (Micah 6:8). That is good which God requires. 7. Every good work must proceed from a right principle; and by a right principle I mean these following things-- (1) That our works proceed from sufficient knowledge. No action done ignorantly is good. He that acts without knowledge cannot be said to act morally, much less Christianly. We must first know that what we do is our real duty, and we must also understand why it is so. Religion must not be blind; reason must always go first, and carry the light before all our actions, for the heart and life cannot be good if the head be not enlightened. The understanding must make way for the will. Which brings me to the next particular. (2) Good works must proceed from a free and voluntary principle. As he that acts ignorantly, so he that acts unwillingly cannot be said to act well. To the will is to be imputed whatsoever is ill or well done by us. There is nothing good or bad but what is matter of choice and consultation. (3) With the understanding and will must be joined the affections. And this includes in it these following things-- (a) Integrity of heart. As servants are bid to discharge their duty in singleness of heart (Colossians 3:22). (b) An entire love of God is required in every good work. All our actions must flew from this principle, for if we love not God, we cannot do the works of God. (c) There must be an entire love, not only of God, but of goodness itself, and the intrinsic excellency and perfection that is in it. There must be a delight and pleasure in the ways of God, and in all those good and virtuous actions which we do, and that for their own sakes. (d) Not only a love of God, but a fear of Him, must be a principle from whence all our holy actions are to proceed, a fear of acting contrary to the purity of God’ s nature, a fear of displeasing and offending Him. Joseph acted out of this excellent principle when he cried out, “ How shall I do this wickedness and sin against God?” (e) Humility is another principle from whence we must act. Every good and righteous man lays his foundation low; he begins his works with a submissive and self-denying spirit; he proceeds with lowliness of mind, and a mean opinion of himself, and of all he can do. (f) Alacrity, joy, and cheerfulness, and so likewise a due warmth, zeal, and ardency, are other principles from whence our good works should spring. We must with gladness undertake and perform them, and we must serve the Lord with a fervency of spirit (Romans 12:11). 8. This is another indispensable qualification of a good work, that it be done for a good end. As there are fountains or principles of actions, so there are ends or designs belonging to them all. You must necessarily distinguish between principles and ends if you would speak properly and significantly. Fountains and springs of actions are those from whence the actions flow; ends and aims are those to which the actions tend. There is a vast difference between these. I have told you what the former are; now I will set before you the latter. The right ends which ought to be in all evangelical actions (for of such I intend chiefly to speak) are these three--our own salvation, the good of others, and in pursuance of both God’ s glory. This was it which spoiled and blasted the most solemn and religious duties of the Pharisees. When they did their alms, they sounded a trumpet before them, that they might have glory of men (Matthew 6:2). Whey they prayed, they did it standing in the corners of the streets, that they might be seen of men (5:5). Likewise when they fasted, they disfigured their faces, that they might appear unto men to fast (5:16). Yea, all their works they did to be seen of men (Matthew 23:5). All was to gain esteem and reputation, all was for applause and vainglory. This wrong end and intention made all they did sinful. When I say all our works are to be done for the ends above named, I do not by this wholly exclude all other ends. As two of the great aims of our actions, namely, our own happiness and that of others, are subordinate to the third, God’ s glory, so there are other lesser and inferior ends which are subordinate to all these. He evidences this by such ways as these--He never lets these temporal things stand in competition with, much less in opposition to, those which are greater and higher. He never so seeks his own as not to seek the things which are Jesus Christ’ s. He doth not one with the neglect of the other. 9. To comprehend all, a good work is that which is done in a right manner. Good actions are such as have good circumstances and qualities, and evil actions are such as have undue and evil ones. III. Having instructed you in the nature of good works, I am to show you, in the next place, how reasonable a thing it is that we should take care to do these good works. I will present you with those arguments and motives which I apprehend are most powerful to incite you to this. First, I might mention the reason in the text, where first we are said to be created unto good works, that we might walk in them. This is the very design of the spiritual creation or new birth, that we should exert all these acts of piety and religion which I have before mentioned. It is the purpose of heaven in regenerating us that we should walk in the ways of holiness, and conscientiously perform all the parts of our duty towards God, towards men, and towards ourselves. Again, it is said, we are said to be created in Christ Jesus to this. This is the end of Christ’ s undertakings. “ He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14). Moreover, it is added that God hath before ordained these works. This was the good will and pleasure of the blessed Trinity in their eternal consults before man was made. Why then should we, as much as in us lieth, frustrate the purpose and decree of heaven concerning us I Further, this (as the apostle saith of sanctification) is the will of God (1 Thessalonians 4:3). This is that which is commended to us by the example of the saints; they have all been zealous practisers of good works. This is the grand evidence of the truth of our inward graces. This is that whereby you show your thankfulness to God for your election and redemption. I add, this is that which is the great ornament and lustre of our Christian profession; this will set forth and commend our religion to the world. But there are these two arguments yet behind which I will more amply insist upon--good works are necessary to salvation; good works glorify God.1. Though our good works are conditions of salvation, yet they are not conditions as to God’ s election, for He decreed from eternity out of His free will and mercy to save lost man, without any consideration of their good works. Predestination to life and glory is the result of free grace, and therefore the provision of works must be excluded. The decree runs not thus, I choose thee to life and blessedness on supposal or condition of thy believing and repenting; but thus, I freely choose thee unto eternal life, and that thou mayest attain to it, I decree that thou shalt believe and repent. 2. Though faith and obedience be conditions of happiness, yet the performance of them is by the special help and assistance of a Divine and supernatural power. God, who decrees persons to good works, enables them to exert them. 3. Nor are they conditions in this sense that they succeed in the place of perfect obedience to the law which the covenant of works required. I am convinced that no such conditions as these are consistent with the new covenant, the covenant of grace. Works, if they be considered as a way leading to eternal life, are indeed necessary to salvation; they are necessary by way of qualification, for no unclean thing shall enter into heaven. Graces and good works fit us for that place and state; they dispose us for glory. We are not capable of happiness without holiness. It may be some will not approve of saying, We are saved by good works, but this they must needs acknowledge that we cannot be saved without them; yea, we cannot be saved but with them. Some are converted and saved at the last hour, at their going out of the world; but even then good works are not wanting, for hearty confession of sin, and an entire hatred of it, sincere and earnest prayers, hope and trust in God, desire of grace, unfeigned love, and zealous purposes and resolves, all these are good works, and none can be saved without them. In the next place, good works are for God’ s glory, therefore they must be done by us. As I have showed before that it is a necessary qualification of good works that they be done out of an intention to glorify God, so now it will appear that this is one great reason why we are obliged to perform them, viz., because thereby God is glorified. “ Let your light so shine before men,” saith our Saviour, “ that others seeing your works may glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). The light of our works came from God, and it must be reflected to him again. (1) Because of the wicked, that you may stop their mouths, and take away all occasion of speaking evil against you. Again, for the sake of good men, we are obliged to be very careful how we walk; we are concerned to do all the good we can, that they may not be scandalized and hurt by our evil examples, and consequently that God’ s name may not be dishonoured thereby. By our holy and exemplary lives, we may be serviceable to stir up the hearts of the godly to praise God on our behalf. “ They glorified God in me,” saith the apostle, of those Christian Jews who took notice of his miraculous conversion, and of his extraordinary zeal in preaching the faith (Galatians 1:24). IV. By way of inference, from what hath been said of good works, we may correct the error of the Antinomians, we may confute the falsehood of the Roman Church, we may make a discovery of other false apprehensions of men concerning good works; we are hence also obliged to examine whether our works be good; and lastly, if we find them to be such, we must continue in the practice of them.1. What I have delivered on this subject is a sufficient check to the Antinomian error, viz., that because Christ hath satisfied for us, therefore there is no need of good works; Christ’ s obedience serves for ours. What need we do anything since He hath done all? And all this is conformable to the doctrine of our blessed Lord and Saviour, who tells us that He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, and make it more complete and perfect. By His doctrine and practice He taught the world that the moral law obligeth the faithful under the evangelical dispensation, and that obedience to the former is not opposite to the grace of the latter. He constantly promoted good works and holy living, and bid His disciples show their love to Him by keeping His commandments (John 14:15). You see then how fondly they discourse who say that, because Christ hath done and suffered all things for man’ s redemption, therefore there is nothing left for us to do. Indeed, we have nothing to do that can further our salvation by way of merit, but we have something to do whereby we may show our thankfulness for Christ’ s undertakings; we have a great deal to do whereby we may discover our obedience to the Divine commands and injunctions. Though good works and obedience are not conditions of justification, yet they are of salvation; they are requisite in the person who is justified, although they are wholly excluded from justification itself. Or we may say, though they do not justify meritoriously, yet they do it declaratively, they show that we are really of the number of those who God accounteth just and righteous. 2. The falsehood of the Romanists is hence confuted. They cry out against us, as those who utterly dislike, both in doctrine and practice, all good works. They brand us with the name of Solifidians, as if faith monopolized all our religion. Indeed, all that profess the reformed religion affirm that faith is the root of all graces, that Divine virtue is the basis and foundation of all good works; this they maintain, and have good reason to do so; but still they hold that good and holy works are indispensably requisite in Christianity, and that no man can be excused from performing them, and that those whose lives are utterly devoid of them have no right faith and no true religion. This is our unanimous belief, profession, and doctrine, and the Papists are maliciously reproachful when they accuse us Of the contrary. 3. From what hath been said, we may discover the wrong notions and apprehensions which most men have of good works. I will instance more particularly in charity, which is eminently called a good work, but there is a great and common mistake about it. And so as to other good works, all understanding men agree that they ought to be done, but they greatly mistake what good works are. They think if they do the outward acts of religion they do very well; if they fast and pray, and hear God’ s Word, and receive the eucharist; if they perform the external acts of justice and charity, their doings cannot but be good and acceptable, and they need look after no more. They never consider whether their fasting and praying and other exercises of devotion and piety proceed from God’ s grace and Holy Spirit in them, whether they be accompanied with faith, and be the result of good and holy principles, and be done for good ends, and in a good manner. Alas! these and the like things are not thought of. This discovers the gross mistakes in the world. 4. Then you are really concerned to examine your lives and actions, and to see whether you be not of the number of the mistaken persons. 5. When you have examined the true nature of good works, then urge upon yourselves that you are indispensably obliged to do them. Being thoroughly persuaded of the necessity of them, press the practice of them on yourselves and on others. That you may successfully do so, observe these four plain and brief directions--1. Beg the assistance of the Spirit. These are no mean and common works which I have set before you as that duty. They require great strength and power to exert them. 2. Study the Scriptures. There, and there only, you will find instructions for the performing of works acceptable to God. 3. Set before you the example of the saints, for by viewing of them you will not only learn what to do, but you will be taught not to be weary in well doing. 4. Redeem and improve the time. Fix it on your thoughts that you have a good deal of work to do, but your time to do it in is short and soon expiring. (J. Edwards, D. D.)The singular origin of a Christian man I. The singular origin of a Christian man. As many as are truly saved, and brought into union with Christ, are the workmanship of God. No Christian in the world is a chance production of nature, or the outcome of evolution, or the result of special circumstances. Of regeneration we must say once for all, “ This is the finger of God.” The spiritual life cannot come to us by development from our old nature.1. We are God’ s workmanship from the very first. The first stroke that helps to fashion us into Christians comes from the Lord’ s own hand. He marks the stone while yet in the quarry, cuts it from its natural bed, and performs the first hewing and squaring, even as it is He who afterwards exercises the sculptor’ s skill upon it. 2. We shall remain the Lord’ s workmanship to the very last. The picture must be finished by that same Master-hand which first sketched it. If any other hand should lay so much as a tint or colour thereupon, it would certainly mar it all. 3. This is very beautiful to remember, and it should stir up all that is within us to magnify the Lord. I was surprised when I was told, the other day, by a friend, who was a maker of steel-plate engravings, how much of labour had to be put into a finely executed engraving. Think of the power that has cut lines of beauty in such steel as we are! Think of the patience that lent its arm, and its eye, and its heart, and its infinite mind, to the carrying on of the supreme work of producing the image of Christ in those who were born in sin! 4. If we are God’ s workmanship, never let us be ashamed to let men see God’ s workmanship in us. Let us be very much ashamed, though, to let them see the remains of the devil’ s workmanship in us; hide it behind a veil of repentant grief. Christ has come to destroy it; let it be destroyed. II. Secondly, here in the text we see the peculiar manner of this origin. “ We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” “ Created in Christ Jesus.” Our new life is a creation. This goes further than the former expression; for workmanship is less than creation. Man may produce a picture, and say, “ This is my workmanship” : a piece of mosaic, or a vessel fresh from the wheel, may be a man’ s workmanship, but it is not his creation. The artist must procure his canvas and his colours, the maker of a mosaic must find his marbles or his wood, the potter must dig his clay, for without these materials he can do nothing; for he is not the Creator. To One only does that august name strictly belong. In this world of grace, wherever we live, we are a creation.1. Our new life is as truly created out of nothing as were the first heavens, and the first earth. This ought to be particularly noticed, for there are some who think that the grace of God improves the old nature into the new. That which is of God within us is a new birth, a Divine principle, a living seed, a quickening spirit; in fact, it is a creation: we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. 2. Creation was effected by a word. “ By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” “ He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” “ God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” Is not that again an accurate description of our entrance into spiritual light and life? Do we not confess, “ Thy word hath quickened me” ? “ Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.” “ Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” 3. In creation the Lord was alone and unaided. The prophet asks, “ Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counsellor hath taught Him?” Creation is the prerogative of Jehovah, and none can share it with Him. So it is in the regeneration of a soul; instrumentality appears, but the real work is immediately of the Spirit of God. III. We come, thirdly, to dwell upon the special object of this creation: “ Unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” When Adam was created, the Lord made him for His own glory. When the Lord creates us the second time, in the second Adam, He does not make us that we may be merely comfortable and happy. We may enjoy all that God has given us, for of every tree of this garden you may freely eat, since in the paradise into which Christ has introduced you there is no forbidden fruit. Around you is the garden of the Lord, and your call is that you may dress it, and keep it. Cultivate it within; guard it from foes without. Holy labours await you, good works are expected of you, and you were created in Christ Jesus on purpose that you might be zealous for them.1. Works of obedience. 2. Works of love. 3. Good works include the necessary acts of common life, when they are rightly performed. All our works should be “ good works” ; and we may make them so by sanctifying them with the Word of God and prayer. 4. God has not created us that we may talk about our good works, but that we may walk in them. Practical doing is better than loud boasting. 5. And they are not to be occasional merely, but habitual. God has not created us that we may execute good works as a grand performance, but that we may walk in them. IV. Fourthly, the remarkable preparation made for that object, for so the text may be rendered, “ which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.”1. The Lord has decreed everything, and He has as much decreed the holy lives of His people as He has decreed their ultimate glorification with Him in heaven. Concerning good works, “ He hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” The purpose is one and indivisible: there is no ordination to salvation apart from sanctification. 2. But, next, God has personally prepared every Christian for good works. “ Oh,” say some, “ I sometimes feel as if I was so unfit for God’ s service.” You are not unfit, so far as you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. When God creates a bird to fly, it is the best flying machine that can be manufactured; indeed, none can equal it. If God creates worms to plough the soil, and bring up the more useful ingredients to the surface, they are the best fertilizers under heaven. God’ s purpose is subserved by that which He makes, else were He an unwise worker. We are in a special degree God’ s workmanship, created to this end, that we may produce good works; and we are fitted to that end as much as a bird is fitted to fly, or a worm is fitted for its purpose in the earth. 3. Everything around you is arranged for the production of good works in you. On the whole, you are placed in the best position for your producing good works to the glory of God. “ I do not think it,” says one. Very well. Then you will worry to quit your position, and attain another footing; mind that you do not plunge into a worse. It is not the box that makes the jewel, nor the place that makes the man. A barren tree is none the better for being transplanted. A blind man may stand at many windows before he will improve his view. If it is difficult to produce good works where you are, you will find it still difficult where you wish to be. Oh, sirs, the real difficulty lies not without you, but within you. If you get more grace, and are more fully God’ s workmanship, you can glorify him in Babylon as well as in Jerusalem. Moreover, the Lord has prepared the whole system of His grace to this end--that you should abound in good works. Every part and portion of the economy of grace tends toward this result, that thou mayest be perfect even as thy Father which is in heaven is perfect. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The Christian is the noblest work of God Men can admire a statue; it is breathing with life, and the fire of genius has succeeded in imparting almost animation to the figure. You remember that once it was but an unmeaning block of marble, but the sculptor’ s imagination has succeeded in portraying a man, and the human face divine meets your enraptured eyes. You are filled with rapture and astonishment at the power of genius to call forth such a beautiful creation of art. And have you no eyes to see, nor heart to appreciate, the noble work of God in the new creation of a soul that was dead in trespasses and sins? That man was once a blank in the creation of God; he was spiritually dead, but now he has a soul instinct with the breath of heaven, which lives for its Maker, which hears and obeys His voice, and beats high with the generous sentiments of redeeming love. It is a soul that is restored to its original place in the creation, fulfilling the high purposes of its God, and glowing with ardour to live for His honour and glory. It has not, like the statue, the mock appearance of life; it is not a beautiful illusion of your fancy which vanishes at one effort of your sober reason. It has not its useless and inanimate form to reign and hold its empire only in your imagination. No! look on it, it is the living work of God; it has His own resemblance imparted to it; it is immortal, and destined to run an endless race of glory, to the everlasting praise of the infinite Jehovah--behold it--angels are enamoured with it, and yet you, who can break forth in rapture at that lifeless statue, can see no beauty here; no loveliness to draw forth your love; no admiration of this soul “ born of God” ! Professors without good works Many Christians are of a retiring disposition, and their retiring disposition is exemplified somewhat in the same way as that of the soldier who felt himself unworthy to stand in the front ranks. He felt that it would not be too presumptuous a thing for him to be in front, where the cannon balls were mowing down men on the right hand and on the left, and therefore he would rather not be in the vanguard. I always look upon those very retiring and modest people as arrant cowards, and I shall venture to call them so. I ask not every man and woman to rush into the front ranks of service, but I do ask every converted man and woman to take some place in the ranks, and to be prepared to make some sacrifice in that position they choose or think themselves fit to occupy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)A Christian Christ’ s workmanship It is told of Michael Angelo, the famous Italian sculptor and painter, that he invariably selected the marble block on which he was to operate from the quarry himself. He would allow no other hand to touch it, not even in its rudest state, lest it should be marred. After such a fashion does the Master-Sculptor of souls proceed. He performs the entire work of refashioning the human soul from beginning to end. In this work, it is true, He employs various tools--His Word, His Spirit, His Providential arrangements; but no hand save His touches them. We are His workmanship. Man’ s creation unto good works Human boasting is excluded, because human merit there is none. We are God’ s workmanship, not our own. I. The Divine workmanship.1. Characterized by truth, reality, thoroughness, Not on the surface--not merely intellectual or mental; but a deep, subterraneous power heaving from the depth of the spiritual nature, and working from the centre to the circumference. Born again. Created anew. 2. When complete it will be perfect in beauty. He who made these bodies of ours so beautiful, so kingly, so majestic, so unutterably wonderful; He who bent with such majestic grace the arch of the firmament; He who clothed the earth with its infinite variety of beautiful objects; will make His spiritual creation in harmony with the material; so that, when finished, it shall be said, “ He hath made this also beautiful in his season.” God will look upon it, and say, “ Yes, it is My workmanship, and I am pleased with it.” That is the highest thing that can be said. His heart will rest in it. II. The compass of this workmanship. “ Created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” Good works here, and good works hereafter. We are to serve God in the best way we can here, and we shall serve Him in another world in the distant future more perfectly than now.1. Good works have their origin in love. Nothing noble is done from any other motive. 2. Good works are always inspired by the Holy Ghost. He inspires the love, and the love gives existence to the good works. 3. The good works we are to do are ordained by God. God thought of you before you were; He resolved that you should be--that you should be to do good works--to do good works which belong to you alone, just as in nature the tree is created to bear a particular fruit. How shall we know what we ought to do? (1) By the predispositions of our own minds, which are themselves the creation of God. (2) From our abilities. All we can do we are bound to do. Not much is expected from a mere mountain brook. Let it flow through its narrow channel; let it make a little green on its banks; let it murmur as it goes--and that is all you can ever expect of it. It is only a mountain brook. But, of a vast river starting at one end of a continent, and flowing through the heart of it, gathering to itself volumes of water, much is expected, for is it not a great river? And so, you who have education and genius, you whom God has richly endowed, you who have noble opportunities and fine talents--God expects great things of you; you must water the continent, as it were; and the question for each one is, to what work does my heart gravitate, and what work can I do? It is a great mistake--a mistake often committed--to try to do what we cannot, and to leave undone the thing which God has ordained for us to do, and which we could do with perfect ease. (3) We are bound to pray, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” Life oftentimes seems a pathless region, and it is evening with us, and the clouds are lowering, and the dark, black forest is before us, and there is no pathway, and a kind of bewilderment comes over a man at times; he does not know what to do, or which way to go--a conscientious man, especially. If God has placed him in a position in which others are dependent upon him for all blessing whatsoever, it becomes a great question, and a bewilderment sometimes, what he is to do. Rut we are not alone in this pathless place. There is always the invisible presence, the Eternal Friend at hand, and to Him we must go in solemn prayer. This if we do, we shall not go astray, but when life ends shall find that accomplished which He desired. (Thomas Jones.)The new creation of believers The doctrine of the text is, That those who are renewed and recovered out of the apostasy of mankind, are, as it were, created anew through the power of God and grace of the Redeemer. I. Explain the text.1. Our relation to God. “ We are His workmanship.” (1) By natural creation, which gives us some kind of interest in Him, and hope of grace from Him. (2) By regeneration, or renovation, which is called a second or new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). (a) A change wrought in us, so that we are other persons than we were before, as if another kind of soul came to dwell in our bodies. (b) This change is such as must amount to a new creation. Nor merely a moral change, from profaneness and gross sins to a more sober course of life; nor a temporary change, which soon wears off; nor a change of outward form, which does not affect the heart; nor a partial change. The renewed are “ holy in all manner of conversation.” They drive a new trade for another world, and set upon another work to which they were strangers before; must have new solaces, new comforts, new motives. The new creature is entire, not half new half old; but with many the heart is like “ a cake not turned.” (c) When thus new framed and fashioned, it belongeth to God; it hath special relation to Him (James 1:18). It must needs be so; they have God’ s nature and life. (d) This workmanship on us as new creatures far surpasses that which makes us creatures only. 2. God’ s way of concurrence to establish this relation. It is a “ creation.” (1) This shows the greatness of the disease; in that so great a remedy is needed. (2) It teaches us to magnify this renewing work if you think the cure is no great matter, it will necessarily follow that it deserves no great praise, and so God will be robbed of the honour of our recovery. 3. How far the mediation of Christ is concerned in this effect. We are renewed by God’ s creating power, but through the intervening mediation of Christ. (1) This creating power is set forth with respect to His merit. The life of grace is purchased by His death, “ God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live by Him” (1 John 4:9); here spiritually, hereafter eternally; life opposite to the death incurred by sin. And how by Him? By His being a propitiation. (2) In regard of efficacy. Christ is a quickening Head, or a life-making Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). Whatever grace we have comes from God, through Christ as Mediator; and from Him we have it by virtue of our union with Him (2 Corinthians 5:17). (3) With respect to Christ: “ We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus,” who is the Head of the new world, or renewed estate. (4) With respect to the use for which this new creation serveth. One is mentioned in the text: “ Created unto good works” ; but other things must be taken in. (a) In order to our present communion with God. Till we are created anew, we are not fit to converse with a holy and invisible God earnestly, frequently, reverently, and delightfully, which is our daily work and business. (b) In order to our service and obedience to God. Man is unfit for God’ s use till he be new moulded and framed again. (c) In order to our future enjoyment of God, and that glory and blessedness which we expect in His heavenly kingdom; none but new creatures can enter into the new Jerusalem. Application: Use. 1. Of information. (1) That there is such a thing as the new nature, regeneration, or the new birth, and the new creature. It is one thing to make us men, another to make us saints or Christians. (2) That by this new nature a man is distinguished from himself as carnal; he hath somewhat which he had not before, something that may be called a new life and nature; a new heart that is created (Psalms 51:10), and may be increased (2 Peter 3:18). In the first conversion we are mere objects of grace, but afterwards instruments of grace. First God worketh upon us, then by us. (3) How little they can make out their recovery to God, and interest in Christ, who are not sensible of any change wrought in them. This is a change indeed, but in many that profess Christ, and pretend to an interest in Him, there is no such change to be sensibly seen; their old sins, and their old lusts, and the old things of ungodliness are not yet cast off. Surely so much old rubbish and rotten building should not be left standing with the new. Old leaves in autumn fall off in the spring, if they continue so long; so old things should pass away, and all become new. (4) It informeth us in what manner we should check sin, by remembering it is an old thing to be done away, and ill becoming our new estate by Christ (2 Peter 1:9). 2. To put us upon self-reflection; are we the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus? that is, are we made new creatures? It will be known by these things--a new mind, a new heart, and a new life. 3. To exhort you to look after this, that you be the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus. You will say, “ What can we do? This is God’ s work in which we are merely passive.” I answer--It is certainly an abuse of this doctrine if it lull us asleep in the lap of idleness; and we think that because God doth all in framing us for the new life, we must do nothing. The Spirit of God reasoneth otherwise, “ Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). This principle can neither be a ground of looseness nor laziness. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 2:11 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision.Remembrance of our miserable condition by nature It is good to be reminded of this, for it is(1) a ground of meekness towards others;(2) of stirring up groans;(3) of tasting the benefits of redemption;(4) of provoking to fruitfulness;(5) it is the ground of a holy blush, with which all must walk before God;(6) it is also a special furtherance of God’ s glory, which cannot be safe if His works are not had in remembrance. (Paul Bayne.)Miseries of a pagan condition, a motive to missionary zeal I. The affecting condition described.1. Upon his understanding. 2. Consider this subject as it affects the conscience. “ The whole world is guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). 3. As it affects the character. Where Christ is not, morality sheds but a dim, a feeble, and Often a delusive ray. 4. As it relates to the happiness of man in the present life. Without Christ, you leave man as a sufferer under all the unmitigated weight of trouble; you leave him to grapple, unaided and unsustained, with the fierce and uncontrollable calamities of life. 5. Trace its operation on the civil and religious institutions of human society. 6. Consider the relation of the subject to the immortal destiny of man. To live without Christ is dreadful; but oh! what must it be to die without Him? II. The duty of cherishing a distinct and constant remembrance of this condition.1. The light of reason, and the custom of mankind, are sufficient to Show that we should cherish the grateful remembrance of eminent deliverances. 2. The express direction of Holy Scripture. On the Jewish Church such recollection was frequently and solemnly inculcated (Exodus 13:3; see also Deuteronomy 5:15). 3. We may appeal to the impulse of good feeling in every mind that is rightly, by which I mean religiously, constituted. III. The practical effects which should flow from this remembrance.1. This recollection should be productive of deep humiliation and self-abasement. 2. This recollection should excite sentiments of the liveliest gratitude for the happy change which has taken place in our condition. 3. This recollection should endear to us our native land, which the religion of Jesus has hallowed and blessed. 4. This recollection should engage us to demean ourselves in a manner answerable to the great change which, through the favour of God, has taken place in our moral situation. 5. This recollection should excite in our bosoms the tenderest compassion for those nations who are yet without Christ, deeply plunged in all the miseries of which we have been hearing. 6. Finally, this recollection will supply the amplest justification of missionary efforts, and urge us forward in the prosecution of missionary labours. (J. Burns, D. D.)Remembrance of former sinful state I. Show what uncircumcision denotes.1. Rebellion (Jeremiah 9:25-26).2. Exclusion from the privileges of God’ s chosen (Ephesians 2:12).3. Pollution (Ezekiel 44:7).4. Liableness to death (Genesis 17:4). II. The ends for which believers should remember their former state of sin.1. To create shame and self-abhorrence (Ezekiel 16:60).2. To create renewed views of Christ and His salvation (1 Timothy 1:13).3. To remind us of the awful state of the ungodly (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).4. To exclude boasting (Deuteronomy 9:6-7).5. As a motive to forgive others (Ephesians 4:22).6. As a motive to relieve the distressed (1 Corinthians 8:9).7. To increase our love to God. (H. Foster, M. A.)Conversion a great change “ If I ever see a Hindoo converted to Jesus Christ,” said Henry Martyn, “ I shall see something more nearly approaching the resurrection of a dead body than anything I have ever yet seen.” The entire number of native Christians in India is now about 600,000. Then and now Can you say, “ I am not what I once was--I am better, godlier, holier” ? Happy are you! Happy although, afraid of presumption, and in the timid modesty of spiritual childhood, you can venture no further than one who was urged to say whether she had been converted. How humble, yet how satisfactory, her reply! “ That,” she answered, “ I cannot, that I dare not, say; but there is a change somewhere. I am changed, or the world is changed.”…Our little child, watching with curious eyes the apparent motion of the objects, calls out in ecstasy, and bids us see how hedge and house are flying past the carriage. You know it is not these that move; nor the firm and fixed shore, with its trees and fields, and boats at anchor, and harbours and headlands, that is gliding by the cabin windows. That is but an illusion of the eye. The motion is not in them, but in us. And if the world is growing less to your sight, it shows you are retreating from it, rising above it, and, upborne in the arms of grace, are ascending to a higher region; and if to our eye the fashion of this world seems passing away, it is because we ourselves are passing--passing and pressing on the way to heaven. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Ephesians 2:12 Without Christ.Spiritual misery 1. The head of all spiritual misery is to be without Christ. (1) Numbers are still in this miserable condition.(2) If you would have Him, you must take Him as God’ s free gift. 2. A second degree of misery, is to be barred from communion and fellowship with the Church of God. 3. Naturally, we hate the means of salvation. 4. It is a great misery to be without the doctrine of the covenant of God. 5. The Lord left the Gentiles without the means of calling them to salvation. 6. It is a great misery to be without hope. (Paul Bayne.)Life without Christ The greatest event by far in the history of our world was the visit of Christ. From that moment, everything upon this earth measures itself by its relation to the Cross. Could it be otherwise? For he was “ the Son of God.” What must that man be to God the Father, who treats that death of His dear Son as he would treat a mere matter of business? We may say of the man who is “ without Christ,” that that man stands before God just as he is in himself, and nothing else. There is nothing to better him; there is nothing to excuse him. There is nothing to palliate or extenuate a fault. There is nothing to add any righteousness to amend. There can be no heaven for him except there be fitness; and there can be no pardon except there be a claim. Now, how would the best of us like to be dealt with on that principle? To stand before God in your own real individual character! No Intercessor to plead for you! No refuge to fly to! And consider this. A man “ without Christ” has no motive, no motive sufficient to rule his life. The motive, the only secure and effective motive of life, is love. But you cannot love God unless you believe that God has pardoned you. You cannot love an angry God. But there is no pardon out of Christ. But, out of Christ, there can be no love because there is no forgiveness. So Christ makes the motive of life; and a man “ without Christ” must be motiveless. Let me add another thing. All nature looks out for sympathy. Sympathy, in a degree, God has given to every man; but perfect sympathy belongs to Christ. It is His unapproachable prerogative. Therefore, if you do not know Christ, really know Him, as a believer knows Him, you do not yet know what sympathy can mean; for the rest is all very well, but it will stand you in very little stead in some dark hour. But that sympathy is perfect. You cannot find anyone else who has been, and who can be, “ touched with the feeling of your infirmity” : always tender; always capable; always wise; true to every fibre of your being; matching all its cravings. That is not given to any creature upon earth. That is Jesus. And if you are without Jesus, you are without sympathy. And when that lonely passage comes, which is to take you out into the unknown, we must all die alone. What, if there be no arm--no companionship--no sweet voice to say, “ I am with you!” No finished work! No Jesus in the valley! What will it be to die “ without Christ?” An awful thing! And the more awful, the less you feel it! (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The Christless state I. The misery of our past estate.1. The man who is without Christ is without any of those spiritual blessings which only Christ can bestow. Christ is the life of the believer, but the man who is without Christ is dead in trespasses and sins. So, too, Christ is the light of the world. Without Christ there is no light of true spiritual knowledge, no light of true spiritual enjoyment, no light in which the brightness of truth can be seen, or the warmth of fellowship proved. Without Christ there is no peace, no rest, no safety, no hope. 2. Without Christ, beloved, remember that all the religious acts of men are vanity. What are they but mere air bags, having nothing in them whatever that God can accept? There is the semblance of worship--the altar, the victim, the wood laid in order--and the votaries bow the knee or prostrate their bodies, but Christ alone can send the fire of heaven’ s acceptance. 3. Without Christ implies, of course, that you are without the benefit of all those gracious offices of Christ, which are so necessary to the sons of men, you have no true prophet. Without Christ truth itself will prove a terror to you. Like Balaam, your eyes may be open while your life is alienated. Without Christ you have no priest to atone or to intercede on your behalf. Without Christ you are without a Saviour; how will you do? and without a friend in heaven you must needs be if you are without Christ. Without Christ, though you be rich as Croesus, and famous as Alexander, and wise as Socrates, yet are you naked and poor and miserable, for you lack Him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, and who is Himself all in all. II. The great deliverance which God has wrought for us. We are not without Christ now, but let me ask you, who are believers, where you would have been now without Christ. I think the Indian’ s picture is a very fair one of where we should have been without Christ. When asked what Christ had done for him, he picked up a worm, put it on the ground, and made a ring of straw and wood round it, which he set alight. As the wood began to glow the poor worm began to twist and wriggle in agony, whereupon he stooped down, took it gently up with his finger, and said, “ That is what Jesus did for me; I was surrounded, without power to help myself, by a ring of dreadful fire that must have been my ruin, but His pierced hand lifted me out of the burning.” Think of that, Christians, and as your hearts melt, come to His table, and praise Him that you are not now without Christ.1. Then think what His blood has done for you. Take only one thing out of a thousand. It has put away your many, many sins. 2. Bethink you, too, now that you have Christ, of the way in which He came and made you partaker of Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Without Christ I. When it can be said of a man, that he is “ without Christ.1. When he has no head knowledge of Him. The heathen, of course, who never yet heard the gospel, come first under this description. But unhappily they do not stand alone. There are thousands of people dying in England at this very day, who have hardly any clearer ideas about Christ than the very heathen. 2. When he has no heart faith in Him as his Saviour. Many know every article of the Belief, but make no practical use of their knowledge. They put their trust in something which is not “ Christ.” 3. When the Holy Spirit’ s work cannot be seen in his life. Who can avoid seeing, if he uses his eyes, that myriads of professing Christians know nothing of inward conversion of heart? II. The actual condition of a man “ without Christ.”1. To be without Christ is to be without God. St. Paul told the Ephesians as much as this in plain words. He ends the famous sentence which begins, “ Ye were without Christ,” by saying, “ Ye were without God in the world.” And who that thinks can wonder? That man can have very low ideas of God who does not conceive Him a most pure, and holy, and glorious, and spiritual Being. How then can such a worm as man draw near to God with comfort? 2. To be without Christ is to be without peace. Every man has a conscience within him, which must be satisfied before he can be truly happy. There is only one thing can give peace to the conscience, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ sprinkled on it. 3. To be without Christ is to be without hope. Hope of some sort or other almost every one thinks he possesses. There is but one hope that has roots, life, strength, and solidity, and that is the hope which is built on the great rock of Christ’ s work and office as Redeemer. 4. To be without Christ is to be without heaven. In saying this I do not merely mean that there is no entrance into heaven, but that “ without Christ” there could be no happiness in being there. A man without a Saviour and Redeemer could never feel at home in heaven. He would feel that he had no lawful fight or title to be there; boldness and confidence and ease of heart would be impossible. (Bishop Ryle.)Without Christ It is not long since that a prominent business man, when closely pressed by his pastor, who had lately come to the church, replied with a calm force which was meant to put an end to further pertinacity, “ I am interested in all religious matters; I am always glad to see the ministers when they call; but I have in the years past thought the subject over long and carefully, and I have come to the decision deliberately that I have no need of Jesus Christ as a Saviour in the sense you preach.” Only two weeks from this interview the same man was suddenly prostrated with disease; the illness was of such a character as to forbid his conversing with anyone, and the interdict from speaking was continued until he was within an hour of death, A solemn moment was that in which a question was put to him, intimating that he might talk now if he could--nothing would harm him. The last thing, the only thing, he said, was in a melancholy and frightened whisper, “ Who will carry me over the fiver?” Having no hope.--Hope abandoned Over the huge hideous iron gates of the Prison de la Roquette, in Paris, which is set apart for criminals that are condemned to death, there is an inscription, which sends a thrill of horror through those who read it--“ Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” Hopes for eternity, what they rest on When John Wesley lay on an expected death bed (though God spared him some years longer to the world and the Church) his attendants asked him what were his hopes for eternity? And something like this was his reply--“ For fifty years, amid scorn and hardship, I have been wandering up and down this world, to preach Jesus Christ; and I have done what in me lay to serve my blessed Master!” What he had done his life and works attest. They are recorded in his Church’ s history, and shine in the crown he wears so bright with a blaze of jewels--sinners saved through his agency. Yet thus he spake, “ My hope for eternity--my hopes rest only on Christ-- ‘ I the chief of sinners am But Jesus died for me.’” (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Mournful ignorance I have seen a child in ignorance of its great loss totter across the floor to its mother’ s coffin, and, caught by their glitter, seize the handles, to look round and smile as it rattled them on the hollow sides. I have seen a boy, forgetting his sorrow in his dress, survey himself with evident satisfaction as he followed the bier that bore his father to the grave. And however painful such spectacles, as jarring our feelings, and out of all harmony with such sad and sombre scenes, they excite no surprise nor indignation. We only pity those who, through ignorance of their loss or inability to appreciate it, find pleasure in what should move their grief. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Having no hope I have read of a tribe of savages that bury their dead in secret, by the hands of unconcerned officials. No grassy mound, no memorial stone guides the poor mother’ s steps to the quiet corner where her infant lies. The grave is levelled with the soil; and afterwards a herd of cattle is driven over and over the ground, till every trace of the burial has been obliterated by their hoofs. Anxious to forget death and its inconsolable griefs, these heathen resent any allusion to the dead. You may not speak of them. In a mother’ s hearing, name, however tenderly, her lost one, recall a dead father to the memory of his son, and there is no injury which they feel more deeply. From the thought of the dead their hearts recoil. How strange! How unnatural! No, not unnatural. Benighted heathen, their grief has none of the alleviations which are balm to our wounds, none of the hopes that bear us up beneath a weight of sorrows. Their dead are sweet flowers withered, never to revive; joys gone, never to return. To remember them is to keep open a rankling wound, and preserve the memory of a loss which was bitter to feel and still is bitter to think of: a loss which brought only grief to the living, and no gain to the dead. To me, says Paul, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. They know nothing of this; nothing of the hopes that associate our dead in Christ with sinless souls, and sunny skies, and shining angels, and songs seraphic, and crowns of glory, and harps of gold. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Hopefulness and steadfastness A good Methodist in a prayer meeting said that when, many years since, he crossed old ocean he was much in the habit of looking over the ship’ s side, particularly near the prow, and watching the vessel as she steadily ploughed her way through the waves. Just under the bowsprit was the image of a human face. This face to him came to be invested with a wondrous interest. Whatever the hour, whether by night or by day; whatever the weather, whether in sunshine or in storm, that face seemed ever steadfastly looking forward to port. Sometimes tempests would prevail. Great surges would rise, and for a time completely submerge the face of his friend. But as soon as the vessel recovered from its lurch, on looking again over the ship’ s side, there the placid face of his friend was to be seen, still faithfully, steadfastly looking out for port. “ And so,” he exclaimed, his countenance radiant with the light of the Christian’ s hope, “ I humbly trust it is in my own case. Yea, whatever the trials of the past, notwithstanding all the toils and disappointments of the present, by the grace of God I am still looking out for port, and not long hence I am anticipating a joyful, triumphant, abundant entrance therein.” Without God. I am told to believe that there is no God; but, before doing so, I want to look on the world in the light of this solemn denial In giving up this idea, several sacrifices are involved. Let us see what they are.1. I shall have to part with the most inspiring and ennobling books in my library. 2. I shall have to banish the earliest and tenderest memories which have gladdened my days. 3. I shall have to give up the hope that in the long run right will be vindicated and wrong be put to eternal shame. 4. I shall have to sacrifice my reason, my conscience--in a word, myself. My whole life is built upon the holy doctrine of God’ s existence. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)Practical atheism It is not speculative atheism that I lay to your charge; I am far from asserting or supposing that you are intellectually without God. But of practical atheism, of being virtually without God, I must and do accuse mankind and some of you. By practical atheism I mean the believing that there is a God, and yet thinking and feeling and acting just as if there were none.1. I adduce forgetfulness of God as a proof, or rather as one form of practical atheism. 2. As an evidence of practical atheism, a neglect to worship Him and to maintain friendly and filial intercourse with Him. 3. I state as another evidence of practical atheism, the general conduct of mankind under the various dispensations of Divine providence. Does not the rich man say in his heart, “ My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth” ? Or, if he cannot ascribe it altogether to his own industry and prudence, he divides the credit of it with fortune, and speaks of the lucky throw, the fortunate speculation, or the prosperous voyage, to the success of which many things conspired, but He whom the winds and waves obey is not supposed to have contributed anything. 4. As another proof of practical atheism, that men are in the habit of forming their plans and purposes, without respect to their dependence on God for the accomplishment of them, and without consulting Him. They resolve with themselves where they will go, what they will do, how much they will accomplish, just as if they had life in themselves, and were independent in wisdom and power. 5. The conduct of many, in seasons of affliction, evinces that they are without God in the world. 6. Finally, mankind, in their pursuit of happiness, evince their practical atheism. Whither should a creature in quest of joy go to obtain it, but straight to Him, who made, and who sustains both that which enjoys and that which is enjoyed, his Maker and Preserver, and the world’ s? Yet men fly from God for happiness. Whence have you your joys and comforts now?--from your family?--it shall be broken up; from your business?--it shall be discontinued, and you shall leave the world, and the world itself shall be consumed, and nothing will be left but the soul and God. You cannot be happy in anything else; and, if you love Him not, you cannot be happy in Him. (W. Nevins, D. D.)Without God Three ways a man may be said to be without God.1. By profane atheism.2. By false worship.3. By want of spiritual worship. Great is the misery of those who are without God. God is a fountain of life; whoso is far from Him must perish. (Paul Bayne.)The misery of being without God The misery of such as have not God for their God, in how sad a condition are they, when an hour of distress comes! This was Saul’ s case: “ I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and the Lord has departed from me.” A wicked man, in time of trouble, is like a vessel tossed on the sea without an anchor, it falls on rocks or sands; a sinner not having God to be his God, though he makes a shift while health and estate last, yet, when these crutches, which he leaned upon, are broken, his heart sinks. It is with a wicked man as with the old world, when the flood came; the waters at first came to the valleys, but then the people would get to the hills and mountains, but when the waters came to the mountains, then there might be some trees on the high hills, and they would climb up to them; ay, but then the waters did rise up to the tops of the trees; now all hopes of being saved were gone, their hearts failed them. So it is with a man that hath not God to be his God; if one comfort be taken away, he hath another; if he lose a child, he hath an estate; ay, but when the waters rise higher, death comes and takes away all; now he hath nothing to help himself with, no God to go to, he must needs die despairing. (T. Watson.)Without God in the world “ Without God in the world.” Think!--what a description!--and applicable to individuals without number! If it had been without friends, shelter, or food, that would have been a gloomy sound. But without God! without Him (that is, in no happy relation to Him), who is the very origin, support, and life of all things; without Him who can make good flow to His creatures from an infinity of sources; without Him whose favour possessed is the best, the sublimest, of all delights, all triumphs, all glories. What do those under so sad a destitution value and seek instead of Him? What will anything, or all things, be worth in His absence? It may be instructive to consider a little to what states of mind this description is applicable; and what a wrong and, calamitous thing the condition is in all of them. We need not dwell on that condition of humanity in which there is no notion of Deity at all--some outcast, savage tribes--souls destitute of the very ideal Not one idea exalted anti resplendent above the rest casting a glory sometimes across the little intellectual field! It is as if, in the outward world of nature, they had no visible heaven--the spirit nothing to go out to, beyond its clay tenement, but the immediately surrounding elements and other creatures of the same order. The adorers of false gods may just be named as coming under the description. There is, almost throughout the race, a feeling in men’ s minds that belongs to the Divinity; but think how all manner of objects, real and imaginary, have been supplicated to accept and absorb this feeling, that the true God might not take it! It is too obvious almost to be worth noting, how plainly the description applies itself to those who persuade themselves that there is no God. The Divine Spirit and all spirit abolished, he is left amidst masses and systems of matter without a first cause--ruled by chance, or by a blind mechanical impulse of what he calls fate; and, as a little composition of atoms, he is himself to take his chance for a few moments of conscious being, and then be no more forever! And yet, in this infinite prostration of all things, he feels an elation of intellectual pride! But we have to consider the text in an application much more important to us, and to men in general; for, with a most settled belief of the Divine existence, they may be “ without God in the world.” This is too truly and sadly the applicable description when this belief and its object do not maintain habitually the ascendant influence over us--over the whole system of our thoughts, feelings, purposes, and actions. Can we glance over the earth, and into the wilderness of worlds in infinite space, without the solemn thought that all this is but the sign and proof of something infinitely more glorious than itself? Are we not reminded--“ This is a production of His almighty power--that is an adjustment of His all-comprehending intelligence and foresight--there is a glimmer, a ray of His beauty, His glory--there an emanation of His benignity--but for Him all this would never have been; and if, for a moment, His pervading energy were by His will restrained or suspended, what would it all be then?” Not to have some such perceptions and thoughts, accompanied by devout sentiments, is, so far, to “ be without God in the world.” Again, the text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of God’ s all-disposing government and providence--who have no thought of the course of things but as just “ going on” --going on some way or other, just as it canto whom it appears abandoned to a strife and competition of various mortal powers; or surrendered to something they call general laws, and then blended with chance; who have, perhaps, a crude Epicurean notion of exempting the Divine Being from the infinite toil and care of such a charge. The text is a description of those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority who have not a conscience constantly looking and listening to Him, and testifying for Him; who proceed as if this world were a, province absolved from the strictness of His dominion and His laws; who will not apprehend that there is “ His” will and warning affixed to everything; who will not submissively ask, “ What dost Thou pronounce on this? To be insensible to the Divine character as Lawgiver, rightful Authority, and Judge, is truly to be “ without God in the world,” for thus every emotion of the soul and action of the life assumes that He is absent or does not exist. This insensibility of accountableness exists almost entire (a stupefaction of conscience) in very many minds. But in many others there is a disturbed yet inefficacious feeling; and might not some of these be disposed to say, “ We are not ‘ without God in the world,’ as an awful Authority and Judge; for we are followed, and harassed, and persecuted, sometimes quite to misery, by the thought of Him in this character. We cannot go on peacefully in the way our inclinations lead; a portentous sound alarms us, a formidable spectre encounters us, though we still persist.” The cause here is that men wish to be “ without God in the world” --would, in preference to any other prayer, implore Him to “ Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of His ways.” They would be willing to resume the enterprise of the rebellious angels, if there were any hope. “ Oh, that He, with His judgment and laws, were far away!” To be thus with God is in the most emphatical sense to be without Him--without Him as a friend, approver, and patron; each thought of Him tells the soul who it is that it is without, and who it is that in a very fearful sense it never can be without. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with God maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration--no devout, ennobling converse held with Him--no conscious reception of delightful impressions, sacred influences, suggested sentiments--no pouring out of the soul in fervent desires for His illuminations, His compassion, His forgiveness, His transforming operations--no earnest, penitential, hopeful pleading in the name of the gracious Intercessor--no solemn, affectionate dedication of the whole being--no animation and vigour obtained for the labours and warfare of a Christian life. But how lamentable to be without God! Consider it in one single view only--that of the loneliness of a human soul in this destitution. All other beings are necessarily (shall we express it so?) extraneous to the soul; they may communicate with it, but they are still separate and without it; an intermediate vacancy keeps them forever asunder, so that the soul must be, in a sense, in an inseparable and eternal solitude--that is, as to all creatures. But God, on the contrary, has an all-pervading power--can interfuse, as it were, His very essence through the being of His creatures--can cause Himself to be apprehended and felt as absolutely in the soul--such an inter-communion as is, by the nature of things, impossible between created beings; and thus the interior central loneliness--the solitude of the soul--is banished by a perfectly intimate presence, which imparts the most affecting sense of society--a society, a communion, which imparts life and joy, and may continue in perpetuity. To men completely immersed in the world this might appear a very abstracted and enthusiastic notion of felicity; but to those who have in any measure attained it, the idea of its loss would give the most emphatic sense of the expression, “ Without God in the world.” The terms are a true description also of the state of mind in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God--absence of the thought of being with Him in another world--of being with Him in judgment, and whither to be with Him forever; not considering that He awaits us somewhere, that the whole movement of life is absolutely towards Him, that the course of life is deciding in what manner we shall appear in His presence; not thinking what manner of fact that will be, what experience, what consciousness, what emotion; not regarding it as the grand purpose of our present state of existence that we may attain a final dwelling in His presence. One more, and the last application we would make of the description is to those who, while professing to retain God in their thoughts with a religious regard, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him according to their own speculation and fancy. Thus many rejecters of Divine revelation have professed, nevertheless, a reverential homage to the Deity; but the God of their faith was to be such as their sovereign reason chose to feign, and therefore the mode of their religion entirely arbitrary. But, if revelation be true, the simple question is, Will the Almighty acknowledge your feigned God for Himself?--and admit your religion to be equivalent to that which He has declared and defined? If He should not, you are “ without God in the world.” (John Foster.) Ephesians 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.Sin, the separator Sin has its dark offices--offices which it is always fulfilling. For sin is that dividing element, which, where it comes in, breaks up the harmony of all things, and sends them out into the distance of chaos and dismay. God, at the beginning, made the heaven to be subservient to the earth; and the earth to be subservient to the harvest; and the harvest to be subservient to His people. But sin has broken the beautiful chain of the material universe. When man fell, nature fell; and the links were severed by the fall. There is an interval, and an interruption now, between the right causes and the right effects in God’ s creation. And worse than this, man is divided from man; every one from his fellow. The very Church is broken up--Christian from Christian. And St. James traces it out: “ From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” The lust of pride, the lust of an opinionated mind--the lust of prejudice--the lust of jealousy--the lust of selfishness--the lust of a worldly ambition: these are the fabricators of all discord. These make foes out of hearts which were meant to love as brethren. And what are these, but some of sin’ s many forms which it loves to take, that it may then better work as a separator between man and man? No wonder, for sin separates a man from himself. I question whether any man is at variance with his brother, till he has first been at variance with himself. But sin takes away a man’ s consistency. A man is not one; but he is two--he is many characters. What he is one time, that is just what he is not another. Passions within him conflict with reason--passions with passions--feelings with feelings--he is “ far off” from himself. And this the separator does. But never does he do that, till he has done another act of separation--and because he has done that other--he separates man from God. If you wish to know how “ far” sin has thrown man away from God--you must measure it by the master-work which has spanned the gulf. The eternal counsel--the immensity of a Divine nature clothing Himself in manhood--love, to which all other love is as a drop to the fountain, from whence it springs--a life, spotless--sufferings, which make all other sufferings a feather’ s weight in the balance--a death, which merged all deaths--all this, and far more than this, has gone to make the return possible. And when it was possible; then the life of discipline and struggle--a work of sanctification, going on day by day--many crucifixions--the seven-fold operations of the Holy Ghost--death--resurrection--these must make the possible return a fact. By all these you must make your calculation, if you wish to measure the distance of that “ far off,” which we ewe to that great separator--sin. And this is the reason why God so hates sin, because it has put so “ far” away from Him those He so dearly loves. And now let us deal with this matter a little more practically. Since Christ died, there is no necessary separation between any man and God. Without that death, there was. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Nearness to God I. We commence, by endeavouring to explain the meaning of the two key words--“ In Christ Jesus,” and, “ by the blood of Christ.” “ We who sometimes were far off are made nigh.”1. First, because we are “ in Christ Jesus.” All the elect of God are in Christ Jesus by a federal union. He is their Head, ordained of old to be so from before the foundation of the world. This federal union leads in due time, by the grace of God, to a manifest and vital union, a union of life, and for life, even unto eternal life, of which the visible bond is faith. 2. The other key word of the text is, “ by the blood of Christ.” (1) If it he asked what power lies in the blood to bring nigh, it must be answered, first, that the blood is the symbol of covenant. Ever in Scripture, when covenants are made, victims are offered, and the victim becomes the place and ground of approach between the two covenanting parties. The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is expressly called “ the blood of the everlasting covenant,” for God comes in covenant near to us by the blood of His only begotten Son. Every man whose faith rests upon the blood of Jesus slain from before the foundation of the world, is in covenant with God, and that covenant becomes to him most sure and certain because it has been ratified by the blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore can never be changed or disannulled. (2) The blood brings us near in another sense, because it is the taking away of the sin which separated us. When we read the word “ blood” as in the text, it means mortal suffering; we are made nigh by the grief and agonies of the Redeemer. The shedding of blood indicates pain, loss of energy, health, comfort, happiness; but it goes further still--the term “ blood” signifies death. It is the death of Jesus in which we trust. We glory in His life, we triumph in His resurrection, but the ground of our nearness to God lies in His death. The term “ blood,” moreover, signifies not a mere expiring, but a painful and ignominious and penal death. It refers directly to the crucifixion of Christ. 3. Experimentally we are brought nigh by the application of the blood to our conscience. We see that sin is pardoned, and bless the God who has saved us in so admirable a manner, and then we who hated Him before come to love Him; we who had no thought towards Him desire to be like Him. The great attracting loadstone of the gospel is the doctrine of the Cross. (1) The first illustration is from our first parent, Adam. Adam dwelt in the garden, abiding with God in devout communion. The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day with Adam. As a favoured creature, the first man was permitted to know much of his Creator, and to be nigh to Him; but, alas! Adam sinned, and at once we see the first stage of our own distance from God as we perceive Adam in the garden without his God. But, ah! brethren, you and I were farther off than that--much farther off than that, when love made us nigh. (2) Let me now give you a second illustration, which may place this wonder of love in a still clearer light. It shall be taken from the children of Israel travelling through the wilderness. If an angel had poised himself in mid air, and watched awhile in the days of Moses, gazing down upon the people in the wilderness and all else that surrounded them, his eye would have rested upon the central spot, the tabernacle, over which rested the pillar of cloud and fire by day and night as the outward index of the presence of God. Now, observe yonder select persons, clad in fair white linen, who come near, very near, to that great centre; they are priests, men who are engaged from day to day sacrificing bullocks and lambs, and serving God. They are near to the Lord, and engaged in most hallowed work, but they are not the nearest of all; one man alone comes nearest; he is the high priest, who, once every year, enters into that which is within the veil. Ah, what condescension is that which gives us the selfsame access to God. The priests are servants of God, and very near to Him, but not nearest; and it would be great grace if God permitted the priests to enter into the most holy place; but, brethren, we were not by nature comparable to the priests; we were not the Lord’ s servants; we were not devoted to His fear; and the grace that has brought us nigh through the precious blood was much greater than that which admits a priest within the veil. Every priest that went within the veil entered there by blood, which he sprinkled on the mercy seat. If made nighest, even from the nearer stage, it must be by blood, and in connection with the one only High Priest. If the angel continued his gaze, he would next see lying all round the tabernacle the twelve tribes in their tents. These were a people near unto God, for what nation hath God so nigh unto them? (Deuteronomy 4:7). But they are nothing like so near as the priests, they did not abide in the holy court, nor were they always occupied in worship. Israel may fitly represent the outward Church, the members of which have not yet received all the spiritual blessing they might have, yet are they blessed and made nigh. If ever an Israelite advanced into the court of the priests, it was with blood; he came with sacrifice; there was no access without it. It was great favour which permitted the Israelite to come into the court of the priests and partake in Divine worship; but, brethren, you and I were farther off than Israel, and it needed more grace by far to bring us nigh. By blood alone are we made nigh, and by blood displayed in all the glory of its power. (3) A third illustration of our nearness to God will be found around the peaks of the mount of God, even Sinai, where the various degrees of access to God are set forth with singular beauty and preciseness of detail. The nineteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus tells us that the Lord revealed Himself on the top of Sinai with flaming fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace. Jehovah drew near unto his people Israel, coming down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai, while the tribes stood at the nether part of the mount. No, remember that our natural position was much more remote than Israel at the foot of the mount, for we were a Gentile nation to whom God did not appear in His glory, and with whom He spake not as with Israel. We were living in darkness, and in the valley of the shadow of death; but Israel was privileged to come very near as compared with us; hence the apostle in the chapter from which the text is taken, speaks of the circumcised as nigh. I take Israel to be to us this morning the type of those who live under gospel privileges, and are allowed to hear the joyful sound of salvation bought with blood. The gospel command has come to your conscience with such power that you have been compelled to promise obedience to it: but, alas, what has been the result of your fear and your vow? You have gone back farther from God, and have plunged anew into the world’ s idolatry, and are today worshipping yourselves, your pleasures, your sins, or your righteousness; and when the Lord cometh, the nearness of opportunity which you have enjoyed will prove to have been to you a most fearful responsibility, and nothing more. III. Let us note some of the displays of the realizations of this nearness to God as granted to us by blood through our union with Christ. We perceive and see manifestly our nearness to God in the very first hour of our conversion. The father fell upon the prodigal’ s neck and kissed him--no greater nearness than that; the prodigal becomes an accepted child, is and must be very near his father’ s heart; and we who sometimes were far off are as near to God as a child to his parents. We have a renewed sense of this nearness in times of restorations after backsliding, when, pleading the precious blood, we say, “ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” We come to God, and feel that He is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart. We come near to God in prayer. Our nearness to God is peculiarly evinced at the mercy seat. But, brethren, we never get to God in prayer unless it is through pleading the precious blood. IV. Brief exhortation.1. Let us live in the power of the nearness which union with Christ and the blood hath given us.2. Let us enjoy the things which this nearness was intended to bring.3. Let us exercise much faith in God.4. Let our behaviour be in accordance with our position. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The Christian’ s retrospect I. A state of nature.1. Moral darkness.2. Spiritual blindness and deafness.3. Moral and spiritual death.4. Enmity to and alienation from God. II. A state of grace.1. Light.2. Peace.3. Joy.4. Unclouded faith and hope. III. The characteristics of a natural man.1. The depravity of his heart and the sinfulness of his unholy affections are stronger than the impulses of his soul. 2. He is destitute of proper knowledge. 3. He is satisfied with this world. He has not raised his affections above temporal joys. 4. He is ignorant, blind, naked, condemned in sin, the slave of his lusts, the servant of Satan, the heir of hell. IV. The characteristics of a spiritual man.1. He is penitent. The sins of the past he hopes are forgiven, the sins of the present he daily implores God may be pardoned. 2. He is humble. He is not self-complacent over discharge of known duty. 3. He is dependent upon God. 4. He is a man of active Christianity. He locks up, and is ever moving onward and upward. 5. He is a man of love and forbearance. He wears God’ s image, looks like His Son, has the spirit of an angel, and the praise for his God of a seraph. V. The change of our condition as affected by the application of the text. It intimates that a certain time we were without Christ (verses 11 and 12). “ At that time ye were without Christ” refers to the condition of the heathen. “ They were without God and hope in the world.” The science of Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, and Rome had discovered much as to things pertaining to the present life; but in respect of a hereafter all was enveloped in gross darkness. The text intimates the mode of the great change. Having asserted that those “ who sometimes were afar off are brought nigh to God,” the apostle affirms that this is accomplished in Christ, and through the application of His blood. Therefore--1. The blood of Christ is the means, when preached, through which sinners are brought near to God. “ Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” 2. “ By the bleed of Christ, as shed upon the cross, atonement was made, sin was expiated, and a way opened for God to draw near to the sinner, and the sinner to God,” This is a proposition of Andrew Fuller. “ God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin (or by a sacrifice for sin) condemned sin in the flesh.” “ He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” This proposition and this passage are a summary of gospel truth. 3. We are brought into sacred nearness to God, and enter a state of salvation through the blood of Christ. This is applied spiritually, and is the true remission of sins. Divine grace applies spiritually the Divine Redeemer’ s blood, to cleanse from sin. (W. C. Crane, D. D.)Brought nigh through death A mother in New York whose son had got into dissipated and abandoned habits, after repeated remonstrances and threats, was turned out of doors by his father, and he left vowing he would never return unless his father asked him, which the father said would never be. Grief over her son soon laid the mother on her dying bed, and when her husband asked if there was nothing he could do for her ere she departed this life, she said, “ Yes; you can send for my boy.” The father was at first unwilling, but at length, seeing her so near her end, he sent for his son. The young man came, and as he entered the sick room his father turned his back upon him. As the mother was sinking rapidly, the two stood on opposite sides of her bed, all love and sorrow for her, but not exchanging a word with each other. She asked the father to forgive the boy; no, he wouldn’ t until the son asked it. Turning to him, she begged of him to ask his father’ s forgiveness; no, his proud heart would not let him take the first step. After repeated attempts she failed, but as she was just expiring, with one last effort she got hold of the father’ s hand in one hand, and her son’ s in the other, and exerting all her feeble strength, she joined their hands, and, with one last appealing look, she was gone. Over her dead body they were reconciled, but it took the mother’ s death to bring it about. So, has not God made a great sacrifice that we might be reconciled--even the death of His own dear Son? (D. L. Moody.)Jesus the only hope A Christian Hindoo was dying, and his heathen comrades came around him, and tried to comfort him by reading some of the pages of their theology; but he waved his hand, as much as to say, “ I don’ t want to hear it.” Then they called in a heathen priest, and he said, “ If you will only recite the Numtra it will deliver you from hell.” He waved his hand, as much as to say, “ I don’ t want to hear that.” Then they said, “ Call on Juggernaut.” He shook his head, as much as to say, “ I can’ t do that.” Then they thought perhaps he was too weary to speak, and they said, “ Now, if you can’ t say ‘ Juggernaut,’ think of that god.” He shook his head again, as much as to say, “ No, no, no.” Then they bent down to his pillow, and they said, “ In what will you trust?” His face lighted up with the very glories of the celestial sphere as he cried out, rallying all his dying energies, “ Jesus!” (Dr. Talmage.)The blood of Christ Captain Hedley Vicars, when under deep conviction of sin, one morning came to his table almost broken hearted, and bowed to the dust with a sense of his guilt. “ Oh, wretched man that I am!” he repeated to himself, at the same time glancing at his Bible, which lay open before him. His eyes suddenly rested on that beautiful verse, “ The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.” “ Then,” said he, “ it can cleanse me from mine” ; and he instantly believed with his heart unto righteousness, and was filled with peace and joy. From that time to the hour in which he lay bathed in his own blood, in the trenches before Sebastopol, he never doubted his forgiveness, or God’ s ability and willingness to pardon the chief of sinners. (S. M. Haughton.)Aliens brought nigh to God 1. We must so look on our misery as to remember our estate by mercy. The devil will labour to swallow up in sorrow, as well as to kill by carnal security. This teaches ministers how to dispense the Word in wisdom, and Christians how to carry themselves; they must not be all in one extreme, like those philosophers that are either always weeping, or else always laughing; but, if there be heaviness with them in the evening, they must look to that which may bring, joy in the morning; and as a man after hard labour delights to take the air m a garden, so must they, when they have humbled their souls, in viewing their mercy, refresh themselves in walking among those sweet flowers, even the benefits of God. 2. The Lord brings such as are furthest estranged from Him to be near unto Him. If the king pardon one whose goodwill is doubtful, and take him into his favour, it is much; but when one has lived in making attempts on his person, then to forget and to forgive were more than credible clemency. Yet this is what God has done. (1) None, then, need despair of himself.(2) No, nor of others, however bad.(3) Comfort to those already converted. 3. A wonderful change is made in those who are in Christ. (1) Nearness to God. God dwells with Christ; we, therefore, being in Him, must needs have communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit.(2) And to our fellow Christians. Christ is the head of His members; we must therefore needs be near to those who are in affinity with Christ, as in wedlock. 4. It is by the blood of Christ that we are reconciled to God. When we think of Christ crucified and shedding of His blood, there we may see-- (1) Our sins punished to the full.(2) Our sins pardoned to the full.(3) Our sins crucified and mortified by His blood.(4) The flesh crucified (Galatians 5:14).(5) Ourselves crucified to the world, and the world to us (Galatians 6:14).(6) There we behold how patient we should be in affliction, even to the death.(7) There is the picture of our whole life, which must be a continual course of mortification.(8) There is the seasoning of our death, that whenever it comes it shall be a sweet passage to a better life.(9) There we see all evils turned to our good. (10) Therein we see all good things purchased for us: grace, mercy, peace, eternal salvation, yea, a heaven of treasures and riches gathered for us, and that we are made partakers of, by a due view of meditation of Christ crucified. (Paul Bayne.)The nearness of God I. A reconciled God. We are all naturally far from God, not as being out of His reach, or out of His sight, or out of His presence, but as differing from Him, as being out of sympathy with Him--as forgetting or not thinking about Him--as disobeying Him, and disliking Him, and thus having incurred His displeasure. Such things as these create a distance between one and another. They need to he brought near, or, as our text puts it, “ made nigh” to each other. And how is that to be done? By their being in some way reconciled; by some one coming between them and making them friends--making them one. That might he done in various ways. I might appeal to them, as a friend of both of them, to lay aside their enmity for my sake, and be friends. I might put the hand of the one in that of the other, and take both in my own; and so they might be said to be “ made nigh” by me. Or if one had wronged the other, I might offer to be responsible for the wrong, and to put it right. If the one had taken money that belonged to the other, and had spent it or lost it, and could not make it good, I might offer to replace it. And so they might be “ made nigh” through me. I have heard of a devoted Christian minister, who lay on his deathbed, getting two friends who were visiting him, and who had quarrelled with each other, to shake hands over his body, as they stood at opposite sides of his bed; and so they were “ made nigh” through him. They did not need to move from where they were standing before in order to be thus “ made nigh.” Or I might illustrate it in another way. In Shetland, between the mainland and a small island rising up into a lofty rock, there is a deep and awful-looking gorge. Looking over the edge you see and hear the sea rushing and foaming below. It makes one dizzy to look down. Two people standing on each side of that gorge, though they could almost join hands across it, might be far enough apart from each other. For many years there was a kind of basket bridge. A basket was swung across by means of a rope, The people got into the basket and slid across in it. They were “ made nigh” by means of it. Two of you wish to meet each other at a canal. You stand one on each side. The drawbridge is up, and though the water is only a few yards in breadth, you cannot get to each other except by going nearly a quarter of a mile round about, which makes it all one as if the canal were a quarter of a mile broad. You may be said to be all that distance apart from each other. But the bridge comes down, and at once makes you “ nigh.” Little more than a step brings you together. Now, as I have said, the sinner and God are thus apart from each other--separated from each other, wide, wide apart. The sinner is “ without God.” His sins have hid God’ s face from him. “ God is not in all his thoughts.” How shall they be “ made nigh” ? The sinner cannot make himself nigh. He can only get farther away from God. And so the Lord Jesus comes in as the Mediator. II. God able to see us. That is implied in His being “ near” us--His being “ not far from every one of us.” When we are very far away, we cannot see things at all. If some one were holding out a book to you at a distance, you could not see the letters, you could not read them even though the print were pretty large. You would say, “ It is too far off; I must have it nearer.” And when you get near to it, you can read, without difficulty, even the smallest print. When we are at sea, the land in the distance is seen very dimly. But for being told, we should not know it to be land at all. It is more like cloud. But as we come nearer we can distinguish mountains, and fields, and houses, and as we enter into the harbour we can see everything and everybody. Our being near enables us to see. You cannot distinguish people’ s faces at a distance, you cannot tell what people are doing. But when you come near--when you are standing beside them--you see all. Now just so it is with God. He is near. He is “ a God at hand.” He sees your thoughts. He sees your acts--every one of them. He sees every letter you write--every line you write. He can see everything about you, for He is near you wherever you are. Think what it would be if a person were constantly beside you, all through the night and day, never sleeping, his wakeful eye ever upon you. What a knowledge of you he would have! When travelling in the country, I saw a policeman and another man keeping very close together. They went into the railway carriage together and came out together. They sat together, they walked on the platform together. And then I noticed that the one was chained to the other. The handcuff round the wrist of each told how it was. The prisoner could do nothing which the policeman could not see. So it was with Paul when he was chained to the soldier during his imprisonment at Rome. What a knowledge of the great apostle that soldier must have had! So near--so constantly near you is God. III. As He sees all, as we should with the microscope, so He hears all, as we should with the microphone or telephone--every sound we utter, every word we speak. I saw a very curious thing one day. An old lady whom I knew was very deaf. I could not make her hear a word. But when I was calling at her house, her daughter spoke to her, and though she did not hear a word, she was able to understand the movement of the lips so thoroughly that it was as if she had heard every word, which indeed she repeated exactly as it was spoken. In this way some people do not need to hear in order to know what is being said or done. But, as I have said, it is nearness that is the great help to hearing. People in church who cannot hear well, wish to get as near the pulpit as possible. Deaf people in a room bring their chair close to you, or draw you close to them, and so, if at all possible, they hear. If anything is certain, it is that God hears--hears every one--hears everything, for “ He is not far from every one of us.” If you knew that some one whom you stand in awe of were near, would it not influence you in all that you said? I was one day travelling in a railway carriage, when the conversation of my fellow travellers turned on a particular friend of mine. Suddenly there was silence. One of the party had recognized me, and, with a look and a shrug, indicated that they had better take care what they said. How often that might be done in a different way! If I were at your elbow, might I not often gently whisper, “ Hush! He is here!” Who? God. Or I might point upward--as much as to say, “ He is listening!--take care what you say.” IV. God able to help us. One reason why friends cannot help us, even when they would, is that they are too far away. This can never happen with God. He is always close at hand, always within reach. The doors of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh are never locked. Above the principal entrance there are two panels. On the one are inscribed the words, “ I was sick and ye visited Me” : and on the other, “ I was a stranger and ye took me in” ; and between the panels is the crest of the infirmary, “Patet omnibus,” which may be rendered, “ Open to all.” And at any hour, night or day, if any accident occurs, there is instant admittance. Might I not say, God’ s door is never locked, and it is close to every one of us. At any hour of the day or of the night, He is near--able and willing to help. (J. H. Wilson, D. D.)Sinners brought nigh by the blood of Christ I. We were sometime far off. Distance = ignorance of God, and under His displeasure. What the peculiar nature of our erroneous path, our remote situation, was, is comparatively of little consequence. Some of us were lost in the cares of the world. Some were deluded by the deceitfulness of riches. The lust of other things held some captive. While others were intoxicated by pleasure, or enchanted by worldly science, or drawn away by the meaner things which attract the attention of sordid souls. It is enough, more than enough, that we were far from God. Let us now turn our attention to our present situations. II. Now are we made nigh. These words convey to the mind ideas of Relationship, Friendship, Union, and Communion. Thus we are made nigh; and our text leads us, in the next place, to consider how this blessed, this important, change has been effected. III. In Christ Jesus--by the blood of Christ.1. In Christ Jesus. He is our Mediator--God with God; man with men (see 1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 12:24). It is here the distant parties meet. Here the Gentile meets the Jew (verse 14). Here the returning sinner meets a gracious, a merciful, a forgiving God (Ephesians 1:6-7, and Ephesians 1:18). Here persons that were distant, that were hostile, meet, cordially unite, and perfectly agree (see Galatians 3:28-29; Colossians 3:11; John 10:16). Here even Saul of Tarsus meets the followers of Jesus of Nazareth on amicable terms. Here all real Christians of every sect and name meet; and here all men may know that they are disciples of Christ, because they love one another (John 13:35). Here, too, they all ascribe their salvation to Jesus, and glory in being “ made nigh.” 2. By the blood of Christ. Under the old dispensation this blood was yearly typified by that of the paschal lamb (Exodus 12:4-5; 1 Corinthians 5:7); daily by that of the sacrificial lamb (Exodus 29:38-39; John 1:29); and frequently by that of other sacrifices (Hebrews 9:1-28; Hebrews 10:1-39). Covenants were ratified by blood (Exodus 24:8; Hebrews 9:18-20); “ and without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). “ We enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19). Almost every important circumstance connected with our salvation has reference to the blood of Christ. We are redeemed by His blood (chap. 1:7; Colossians 1:14; 1 Peter 1:19; Revelation 5:9). Justified by His blood (Romans 5:9); washed, cleansed by His blood (1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5; Revelation 7:14); we conquer through His blood (Revelation 12:11); we are made nigh by His blood. (Theological Sketchbook.)Brought nigh by Christ’ s blood I. What is meant by being “ afar off.”1. It intimates distance (Ephesians 4:14).2. Being destitute of His image (Ephesians 4:22).3. Under God’ s revealed displeasure (Ephesians 1:1-3).4. Unconnected with Christ. II. What is meant by being “ made nigh.” The renegade is reclaimed; the outlaw is captured; the rebel has Rounded his arms; the ferocious lion is now changed into a placid lamb; and the stoner is now reconciled to, and made one with, God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Hence, being “ made nigh” signifies--1. Relationship (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).2. Union--the vine and its branches (John 15:5).3. Unity or oneness (1 Corinthians 12:13).4. Stones builded on Christ (Ephesians 2:22).5. Friendship (John 15:15).6. Communion (Romans 8:14). III. The instrument of bringing us nigh: “ his blood.” That which effects such wonderful achievements must itself be astonishingly magnificent. The effect is Godlike, and the cause is with God. To accomplish an union between two opposite and repulsive bodies is beyond the reach of philosophical ingenuity, with all its power. But this is done by--1. God’ s decree in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5).2. In whom Jew and Gentile meet (Ephesians 2:14).3. By Christ’ s blood we are reconciled (Hebrews 9:28).4. Thus we enter into the holiest (Hebrews 10:19).5. Redeemed by His blood (Colossians 1:14).6. Justified by His blood (Romans 5:9).7. Washed by His blood (1 John 1:7).8. We conquer through His blood (Revelation 12:11). (T. B. Baker.)Made nigh in a new bond The one gospel of God to the whole world, is that dark and distant spirits can not only be brought nigh, but “ made nigh in the blood of Christ,” as grafts are not simply brought nigh, but “ made nigh” to the tree from which they are to derive their life. The graft is “ made nigh,” taken up into unity with the tree, by the life blood of the tree. Man is “ made nigh,” taken up into unity with God, by receiving the life blood of Jesus into his spirit. As the sun gives out of himself to the earth, and thus brings the earth into fellowship with himself, so Christ gives out of Himself to the human soul and makes man one with God. (John Pulsford.)Atonement in Christ’ s blood The Atonement is the great fact of the Bible, and Scripture and history alike bear witness to it.1. The universal practice of sacrifice points to the atonement of Christ, and shows out the moral sentiments of the nations in the dark but distinct consciousness that expiation is necessary before the sinner can approach God. 2. The whole Jewish economy is based upon the principle of sacrifice, and is to be looked upon as a providential preparation for the gospel, in which the sacrifice of the Cross holds such a conspicuous place, and both Testaments unite in declaring that without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22; Exodus 24:8; Matthew 26:28). Hence the spirit of the Old Testament is realized in the New Testament Victim, offered up upon the cross for the sin of the world. Hence the blood of Christ is presented to our faith as the vindication of Jehovah’ s love, and the refuge in which our souls may safely await the issues of eternity. (W. Graham, D. D.)Need of the blood of Jesus I once heard a very earnest minister say that he had been accosted by a man who had heard him preach, with this criticism: “ I don’ t like your theology at all--it’ s too bloody. It savours so of the shambles, it’ s all blood, blood, blood. I like a pleasanter gospel.” He replied to his objector: “ My theology is bloody, I allow; it recognizes as its foundation a very sanguinary scene--the death of Christ, with bleeding hands and feet and side. And I am quite content that it should be bloody, for God hath said, ‘ that without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.’” (C. D. Foss.)Value of Christ’ s brood I dare assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that the inspired writers attribute all the blessings of salvation to the precious blood of Jesus Christ. If we have redemption, it is through His blood; if we are justified, it is by His blood; if washed from our moral stains, it is by His blood, which cleanseth us from all sin; if we have victory over “ the last enemy,” we obtain it, not only by the word of the Divine testimony, but through the blood of the Lamb; and, if we gain admittance into heaven, it is because we have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Everything depends on the blood of Christ, who paid it as the price of cur redemption to eternal life and glory. (Dr. R. Newton.)Toplady, the writer of the hymn, “ Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” was converted through hearing a working man preach in a barn from Ephesians 2:13, “ But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Ephesians 2:14 For He is our Peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition.Christ our Peace 1. Christ Jesus is the author of all our peace. (1) In restoring the amity and friendship which we had in creation, but lost by the Fall. (2) In vanquishing those enemies which had taken us captive, and wrongfully detained us. 2. There was a separation between Jew and Gentile, before they came to be in Christ. 3. The way to obtain peace is to take away that which bars it. To make two rooms into one, you must beat down the wall which forms the partition. (Paul Bayne.)Peace from Christ alone Christ is the author of all our peace; but He applies it successively by degrees. Like Master, like man; like Prince, like people. Christ for a while endured great troubles, and so must His members.1. In all terror of conscience we must look to Christ. We keep the fire from our faces and eyes with screens; but they are wise who put between their souls and God’ s wrath the screen of Christ’ s reconciliation, lest this fire burn to the pit of destruction. This stills the conscience, and fills it with good hope. 2. This must make us cleave unto Christ, even to let our tenderest bowels love Him who has done this for us. 3. Seeing Christ alone is the author of all true peace, this should cause us to seek to be under His kingdom, yea, to give our eyelids no rest till we have enlisted in the army of Christ. Look how you would do, if the enemy had entered your gates, taken your wives and children, spoiled you of your goods. If there were a town near you, where you might prevent such danger, and find safe protection, and live peaceably and securely, who would not with all expedition betake himself thither? 4. Seek to be, like Christ, a peace maker. 5. How miserable the condition of all out of Christ. (Paul Bayne.)Christ the Peace of His people I. The substitution.1. This substitution of Christ in behalf of His mystical body is primary, original. It runs as far back as the council of peace. He became our Peace then, when He entered into the covenant of peace, met the stipulation for peace, undertook to satisfy all the demands of law and justice for peace, and pledged Himself to be that peace. 2. It is permanent--it runs through every dispensation of the Church of the living God. There was not one sort of gospel to preach to Abraham, and another to preach to the present race of sinners. The doctrine of substitution runs through the whole of the Mosaic economy, and hence it is permanent, and comes down to the present moment of the existence of the Church upon earth. II. The union. The smallest finger in my hand can move, can grasp, can unite with the other, in any effort that is put forth, because it is one with the hand, one with the body, and derives its life and strength and blood from thence; but sever my little finger from my hand, and it has no more strength--it is utterly useless. “ Apart from Me,” says Christ, “ ye can do nothing.” But in vital union with Jesus, the strength which is His flows to the feeblest and weakest member, and is put forth in the mighty actings of faith, and the holy energies of the new man. Moreover, this union is so experimental as always to produce communion. It is close, it is grasping, it is uniting, it is abiding, it is mutual in interest. Moreover, it is evident and manifest, because the world must see that the union which grace has effected between our souls and Christ, has cut asunder the tie which once existed between us and them, has cut asunder the union which made us once very fond of their fooleries. III. The participation. His justice is perfectly satisfied on my behalf, that I may look upon the bleeding Christ, the rising Christ, the exalted Christ, and the interceding Christ, and say with Paul, “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” What serenity! A satisfactory, solid, sacred, holy, serenity of soul; a heavenly calm, a believing acquiescence in the love, and power, and grace, and goodness, of my God, not only in matters relating to Providence around me, but in matters relating to my soul’ s everlasting salvation. (J. Irons.)The Prince of Peace I. He is “ our Peace,” in that He makes peace. Peace between God and man--“ reconciling both (Jew and Gentile) unto God--by the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Ephesians 2:16). II. He is “ our Peace,” in that He gives peace. “ My peace I give unto you--let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:27). Or, as it is put here, “ came and preached peace to you who were afar off” (Ephesians 2:17). III. He is “ our Peace,” in that He promotes peace. “ Who hath made both (Jews and Gentiles) one” (Ephesians 2:14). This is ever the practical outcome of the rule of “ The Prince of Peace.” He promotes peace.1. In the family, subduing the elements of strife and discord.2. In the neighbourhood, as every successful missionary at home and abroad can testify.3. In the Church.4. Among nations. Note: These senses in which Christ is “ our Peace” are progressive. He has made peace for us, for all men, by His atoning work. He may be our peace, speaking peace within, quieting the tumult of doubt and fear (Matthew 11:28-30). And, if we are His, He will promote peace through, and by means of us in every circle in which we move and in every place in which we have influence. (Joseph Ogle.)Peace already made When a poor bricklayer who had fallen from a great height was lying fatally injured he was visited by a minister in the neighbourhood. On entering the cottage he said, “ My dear man, I am afraid you are dying. I exhort you to make your peace with God.” “ Make my peace with God, sir! Why, that was made eighteen hundred years ago, when my great and glorious Lord paid all my debt upon the cruel tree. Christ is my Peace, and I am saved.” Peace and comfort through the Atonement There is no chance whatever of our finding a pillow for a head which the Holy Ghost has made to ache save in the atonement and the finished work of Christ. When Mr. Robert Hall first went to Cambridge to preach, the Cambridge folks were nearly Unitarians. So he preached upon the doctrine of the finished work of Christ, and some of them came to him in the vestry and said, “ Mr. Hall, this will never do.” “ Why not?” said he. “ Why, your sermon was only fit for old women.” “ And why only fit for old women?” said Mr. Hall. “ Because,” said they, “ they are tottering on the borders of the grave, and they want comfort, and, therefore, it will suit them, but it will not do for us.” “ Very well,” said Mr. Hall, “ you have unconsciously paid me all the compliment that I can ask for; if this is good for old women on the, borders of the grave, it must be good for you if you are in your right senses, for the borders of the grave is where we all stand.” Here, indeed, is a choice feature of the Atonement, it is comforting to us in the thought of death. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Peace in Jesus only As the needle in a compass trembles till it settles in the north point, so the heart of a sinner can get no rest but in Christ. Peace through Christ In the Pitti Palace, at Florence, there are two pictures which hang side by side. One represents a stormy sea with its wild waves, and black clouds and fierce lightnings flashing across the sky. In the waters a human face is seen, wearing an expression of the utmost agony and despair. The other picture also represents a sea, tossed by as fierce a storm, with as dark clouds; but out of the midst of the waves a rock rises, against which the waters dash in vain. In a cleft of a rock are some tufts of grass and green herbage, with sweet flowers, and amid these a dove is seen sitting on her nest, quiet and undisturbed by the wild fury of the storm. The first picture fitly represents the sorrow of the world when all is helpless and despairing; and the other, the sorrow of the Christian, no less severe,. but in which he is kept in perfect peace, because he nestles in the bosom of God’ s unchanging love. (American.)The partition wall removed 1. Every man by nature, in himself, and without Christ, is at war and enmity with God, with His Church, and chiefly those in the Church who are truly regenerate. 2. This enmity could only be removed by Christ’ s bloodshed and death. 3. The uniting of both Jew and Gentile in one Church is a branch of the peace which Christ has purchased. 4. From the apostle’ s designing the ceremonial law by a metaphor taken from houses divided by a mid-wall, or from an orchard, garden, or inclosure, separated from the outfield by a dyke or wall of rough stones, we learn several things relating to the nature, use, and duration of the ceremonial law, which are the grounds of the similitude. And first, as a wall is built by the owner of the enclosure, so the ceremonial law was by God’ s own appointment (Deuteronomy 32:8; Exodus 25:40). Secondly, as a rough wall is made up of so many hard, unpolished stones, not covered over with lime or plaster; so the ceremonial law consisted of many ordinances (Hebrews 9:10), and those very difficult to be obeyed, and an intolerable yoke (Acts 15:10). Thirdly, as a wall or hedge encloseth a piece of ground for the owner’ s special use (which therefore is more painfully manured), and separateth that enclosure from the outfield which lieth about it; so the ceremonial law did serve to enclose the people of Israel, as the Lord’ s own garden and vineyard, for bringing forth fruit unto Himself (Isaiah 5:7), and to separate them from all the world besides (Deuteronomy 4:7-8), as being a worship wholly different from and contrary unto the superstitious rites and worship used among the Gentiles (Deuteronomy 12:2), and containing strict injunctions unto the Jews to avoid all conformity with the Gentiles in their garments (Numbers 15:38), cutting of their hair (Leviticus 19:27), and such like. Fourthly, as a rough wall is but weak and ruinous, as not being built with cement or mortar to make it strong, and therefore but to endure for a season, until the owner think fit to enlarge his enclosure and take in more of the open field; so the ceremonial law was not to last forever, but only for a time, until Christ should come in the flesh, and take in the Gentiles within the enclosure of His Church, who were before an open field, not possessed nor manured by Him; after which there was no further use of the mid-wall. 5. So long as the ceremonial law did stand in force and vigour, the Jews and Gentiles could not be united into one Church: for seeing by that law the chief parts of God’ s worship were restricted to the Temple at Jerusalem; therefore, though scattered proselytes of the neighbouring nations did join themselves to the Church of the Jews, and in some measure observed the way of worship then enjoined (Acts 8:27), yet there was a physical impossibility for the generality of many nations far remote from Jerusalem to have served God according to the prescript of worship which then was: besides, there was such an habituate and as it were a natural antipathy transmitted from one generation unto another among the Gentiles against the ceremonial worship, that there was little less than a moral impossibility of bringing up the body of the Gentiles unto a cordial joining with the Jews in it: for the apostle showeth the ceremonial law behoved to be abrogated, in order to a union betwixt these two, while he saith, “ Who hath made both one, and broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” 6. Whoever would make peace betwixt God and himself, or betwixt himself and others, he ought seriously to think upon those things which stand in the way of peace, and set about the removal of them, if it be in his power, and chiefly those evils in himself, of pride, vain-glory, self-seeking, and a contentious disposition, which are great obstructions in the way of peace (Philippians 2:3-4); else, whatever, be his pretenses for peace, he is no real follower of it: for, Christ intending to make peace betwixt Jew and Gentile, did take away whatever might have impeded it; He even “ broke down the middle wall of partition between them.” (James Fergusson.)Reconciliation through Christ Themistocles having offended King Philip, and not knowing how to regain his favour, took his young son, Alexander, in his arms, and so presented himself before the king; and when he saw the boy smile on him, it very soon appeased the wrath within him. So the sinner should approach God with His Son Jesus Christ within him. The need of reconciliation Certainly a soul, sensible as to what the loss of communion with God is, counts it hath not fulfilled all its errand, when it hath bare peace given it. Should God say, “ Soul, I am friends with thee, I have ordered that thou shalt never go to hell, here is a discharge under My hand that thou shalt never be arrested for any debt more: but as for any fellowship with Me, thou canst expect none: I have done with thee forever, never to be acquainted with thee more.” Certainly the soul would find little joy with such peace. Were the fire out as to positive torments, yet a hell would be left in the dismal darkness which the soul would sit under for want of God’ s presence. A wicked heart seeks reconciliation without any longing after fellowship with God. Like the traitor, if the king will but pardon and save him from the gallows, he is ready to promise him never to trouble him at Court; ‘ tis his own life, not the king’ s favour, he desires. (W. Gurnall.) Ephesians 2:15 Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man.Christ abolishing the enmity In this difficult passage it will be well first to examine the particular expressions.1. The word rendered “ to abolish” is the word often used by St. Paul for “ to supersede by something better than itself” --translated “ to make void,” in Romans 3:31; to “ bring to nought,” in 1 Corinthians 1:28, and (in the passive) “ to fail, to vanish away,” to be done away,” in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. Now, of the relation of Christ to the Law, St. Paul says, in Romans 3:31, “ Do we make void the Law? God forbid! Yea, we establish the Law.” The Law, therefore, is abolished as a law “ in ordinances” --that is, “ in the letter” --and is established in the spirit. 2. “ The law of commandments in ordinances.” The word here rendered “ ordinance” (dogma) properly means “ a decree.” It is used only in this sense in the New Testament (see Luke 2:1; Acts 16:4; Acts 17:7; Hebrews 11:23); and it signifies expressly a law imposed and accepted, not for its intrinsic righteousness, but on authority; or, as Butler expresses it (Anal., Part 2, chap. 1), not a “ moral,” but “ a positive law.” In Colossians 2:14 (the parallel passage) the word is connected with a “ handwriting,” that is, a legal “ bond” ; and the Colossians are reproved for subjecting themselves to “ ordinances, which are but a shadow of things to come” ; while “ the body,” the true substance, “ is Christ” (see verses 16, 17, 20, 21). 3. Hence the whole expression describes explicitly what St. Paul always implies in his proper and distinctive use of the word “ law.” It signifies the will of God, as expressed in formal commandments, and enforced by penalties on disobedience. The general idea, therefore, of the passage is simply that which is so often brought out in the earlier Epistles (see Romans 3:21-31; Romans 7:1-4; Romans 8:1-4; Galatians 2:15-21, et al.), but which (as the Colossian Epistle more plainly shows) now needed to be enforced under a somewhat different form--viz., that Christ, “ the end of the law,” had superseded it by the free covenant of the Spirit; and that He has done this for us “ in His flesh,” especially by His death and resurrection. 4. But in what sense is thin Law called “ the enmity,” which (see verse 16) was “ slain” on the cross? Probably in the double sense, which runs through the passage: first, as “ an enmity,” a cause of separation and hostility, between the Gentiles and those Jews whom they called “ the enemies of the human race” ; next, as “ an enmity,” a cause of alienation and condemnation, between man and God--“ the commandment which was ordained to life, being found to be unto death” through the rebellion and sin of man. The former sense seems to be the leading sense here, where the idea is of “ making both one” ; the latter in the next verse, which speaks of “ reconciling both to God,” all the partitions are broken down, that all alike may have “ access to the Father.” Compare Colossians 1:21, “ You, who were enemies in your mind, He hath reconciled” ; and Hebrews 10:19, “ Having confidence to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated to us, through the veil, that is to say His flesh.” (A. Barry, D. D.)Abolition of the ceremonial, but not of the moral, law 1. As God’ s people, in covenant with Him, ought to be highly incensed against and averse from any voluntary entire fellowship with those who neglect and contemn the ordinances of worship prescribed by God in His Word; so those who are without the Church, yea, and all unregenerate men, do look upon the ordinances of God’ s worship as base, ridiculous, and contemptible, and carry a kind of hatred and disdain to all such as make conscience of them: for so the ancient worship, prescribed in the ceremonial law, was the occasion of hatred and enmity betwixt the Gentile, who contemned it, and the Jew, who made conscience of it. And, therefore, is here called the “ enmity” ; “ having abolished the enmity.” 2. As the moral law, contained in the Ten Commandments, was no part of that mid-wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, seeing some of the drafts and lineaments of that law are upon the hearts of all by nature (Romans 2:15); so there was no necessity to abrogate this law at Christ’ s death, in order to the uniting of Jew and Gentile, neither was it at all abolished; for the law abolished was the law, not simply, but “ the law of commandments,” and these not all, but such commandments as were “ contained in ordinances,” to wit, the ceremonial law; “ even the law of commandments contained in ordinances,” saith he. 3. As God only hath power and liberty to prescribe what manner of worship He will be served by, so He did once give a most observable evidence of this His power and liberty, by changing that external way of worship which was prescribed by Himself, under the Old Testament, unto another under the New; although the internals of His worship, to wit, the graces of faith, love, hope, joy in God, do remain the same in both (Matthew 22:37; Matthew 22:39); for He “ did abolish the law of commandments contained in ordinances,” even all the ancient worship consisting in rites and ceremonies, sensibly and fleshly observations, which God did then prescribe, not as simply delighted in them, but as accommodating Himself to the childish condition of the Church in those times; and hath now appointed a more spiritual way of worship, as more suitable to the grown age of the Church (John 4:21; John 4:23). 4. It was Christ’ s sufferings and death which put an end to the law of ceremonies, and made the binding power thereof to cease; for seeing His sufferings were the body and substance of all those shadows, they neither did nor could evanish until Christ had suffered, but then they did; it being impossible that a shadow, and the body, whereof it is a shadow, can consist in one and the same place; “ Having abolished in His flesh the law of commandments contained in ordinances.” (James Fergusson.)One new man in Christ In this clause and the following verse the two senses, hitherto united, are now distinguished from each other. Here we have the former sense simply. In the new man “ there is neither Jew nor Gentile,” but “ Christ is all and in all” Colossians 3:12). This phrase, “ the new man” (on which see Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 2:10), is peculiar to these Epistles; corresponding, however, to the “ new creature” of 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; and the “ newness of life” and “ spirit” of Romans 6:4; Romans 7:6. Christ Himself is the “ second man, the Lord from Heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:47). “ As we have borne the image of the first man, of the earth, earthy,” and so “ in Adam die,” we now “ bear the image of the heavenly,” and not only “ shall be made alive,” but already “ have our life hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). He is at once “ the seed of the woman” and the “ seed of Abraham” ; in Him, therefore, Jew and Gentile meet in a common humanity. Just in proportion to spirituality or newness of life is the sense of unity, which makes all brethren. Hence the new creation “ makes peace” --here probably peace between Jew and Gentile, rather than peace with God, which belongs to the next verse. (A. Barry, D. D.)Union in the Church 1. Union in the Church of Christ is a thing which ought to be prized by us highly, and sought after earnestly; and so much, as there is nothing in our power which we ought not to bestow upon it, and dispense with for the acquiring and maintaining of it; for so much was it prized by Christ, that He gave His own life to procure it, and did beat down all His own ordinances which stood in the way of it; “ He even abolished in His flesh the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make of twain one new man.” 2. There are no divisions more hardly curable, than those which are about the religion and worship of God, in so far as they engage not only the credit, but also the consciences of the divided parties; hence one party, so engaged, doth pursue what they maintain, as that wherein God’ s honour and their own salvation are most nearly concerned, and doth look upon the other party as an adversary, in so far at least, to both of those; for the apostle, speaking of Christ’ s uniting the Jew and Gentile in one Church and religion, maketh use of a word which showeth this was a task of no small difficulty, even such, that no less than creating power was required to it, while He saith, “ for to make in Himself of twain one new man.” 3. So strict and near is that conjunction and union which is especially among true believers in the Church, that all of them, how far soever dispersed through the world, do yet make up but one man and one body; as being all, whatever be their other differences, most strictly united, as members under one head, Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27), and animated, as to the inward man, by the same Spirit of God residing and acting in them (Romans 8:9); for the apostle showeth that all of them, whether Jew or Gentile, were made, not only one people, one nation, one family, but one new man; “ For to make of twain one new man.” 4. As the essential unity of the invisible Church, without which the Church could not be a Church, doth of necessity depend upon and flow from that union which every particular member hath with Christ, as head, seeing the grace of love (whereby they are knit one to another (Colossians 3:14) doth flow from faith (Galatians 5:6), whereby they are united to Him (Ephesians 3:17), so the more our union with Christ is improved unto the keeping of constant communion and fellowship with Him, the more will be attained unto of harmonious walking among ourselves, suitable unto that essential union which is in the Church of Christ; for the apostle maketh the conjunction of Jews and Gentiles in one Church to depend upon Christ’ s uniting of them to Himself; “ For to make in Himself of twain one new man,” saith He. 5. The peace which ought to be, and which Christ calleth for in His Church, is not a simple cessation from open strife, which may take place even when there remaineth a root of bitterness in people’ s spirit (Psalms 55:21); but it is such an harmonious walking together in all things as floweth from the nearest conjunction of hearts, and the total removal of all former bitterness of spirits; for the peace which Christ did make betwixt Jew and Gentile did follow upon His abolishing the enmity, and making them one man; “ so making peace,” saith he. (James Fergusson.)The use of the law The wife of a drunkard once found her husband in a filthy condition, with torn clothes, matted hair, bruised face, asleep in the kitchen, having come home from a drunken revel. She sent for a photographer, and had a portrait of him taken in all his wretched appearance, and placed it on the mantel beside another portrait taken at the time of his marriage, which showed him handsome and well dressed, as he had been in other days. When he became sober he saw the two pictures, and awakened to a consciousness of his condition, from which he arose to a better life. Now, the office of the law is not to save men, but to show them their true state as compared with the Divine standard. It is like a glass, in which one sooth “ what manner of man he is.” Ephesians 2:16 And that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby. Reconciliation 1. Our reconciliation itself. 2. The order of it. (1) Incorporate in Christ.(2) Concorporate with His members. 3. To whom. 4. The cause. (1) More remote--Himself crucified.(2) More immediate--the abolishing of hatred in Himself. I. By nature we are at enmity with God.1. Note and bewail thy natural condition.2. To become God’ s friend, become a new creature. II. In Christ is reconciliation made.1. The removal of that which was hateful.2. The love of God is procured.3. The fruits of His love are communicated. (1) Make sure of such reconcilement.(2) Renew it after each breach. III. We must be incorporated with Christ before we can be reconciled to God. This incorporation is in the Church, which is Christ’ s body. Let us take care that we have it. IV. Christ, by offering himself upon the cross, has made peace between God and us.1. We see what we must look to, if the wrath of God stings us. Christ crucified is the propitiatory sacrifice. 2. It confirms our faith, that the Lord Jesus will bring us to glory (Romans 5:10). 3. A ground of exhortation to all, that they seek to be reconciled. We make the blood of Christ a vain thing, when we will not be reconciled to God. It is as if a traitor, in prison for treason, should still plot and practise more villainy; and when the prince has procured his pardon, should still conspire, and not listen to the benefit, nor set his heart to return into the king’ s favour. (Paul Bayne.)The power of the gospel to dissolve the enmity of the human heart against God Let us consider from this text, how it is that the gospel of Jesus Christ suits its application to the great moral disease of man’ s enmity to God. The necessity of some singular expedient for restoring the love of God to the alienated heart of man, will appear from the utter impossibility of bringing this about by any direct application of authority whatever. For, do you think, that the delivery of the law of love in his hearing, as a positive and indispensable enactment coming forth from the legislature of heaven, will do it? You may as well pass a law making it imperative upon him to delight in pain, and to feel comfort on a bed of torture. Or, do you think, that you will ever give a practical establishment to the law of love, by surrounding it with accumulated penalties? This may irritate or it may terrify; but for the purpose of begetting anything like attachment, one may as well think of lashing another into tender regard for him. Or, do you think, that the terrors of the coming vengeance will ever incline a human being to love the God who threatens him? Powerful as these terrors are in persuading man to turn from the evil of his ways; they most assuredly do not form the artillery by which the heart of man can be carried. They draw not forth a single affection, but the affection of fear. They never can charm the human bosom into a feeling of attachment to God. And it goes to prove the necessity of some singular expedient for restoring man to fellowship with his Maker, that the only obedience on which this fellowship can be perpetuated, is an obedience which no threatenings can force; to which no warnings of displeasure can reclaim; which all the solemn proclamations of law and justice cannot carry; and all the terrors and severities of a sovereignty resting on power as its only foundation can never subdue. This, then, is a case of difficulty; and, in the Bible, God is said to have lavished all the riches of His unsearchable wisdom on the business of managing it. No wonder that to His angels it appeared a mystery, and that they desired to look into it. It appears a matter of direct and obvious facility to intimidate man; and to bring his body into a forced subordination to all their requirements. But the great matter was how to attach man; how to work in him a liking to God and a relish for His character; or, in other words, how to communicate to human obedience that principle, without which it is no obedience at all; to make him serve God because he loved Him; and to run in the way of all His commandments, because this was the thing in which he greatly delighted himself. To lay upon us the demand of satisfaction for His violated law could not do it. To press home the claims of justice upon any sense of authority within us could not do it. To bring forward, in threatening array, the terrors of His judgment and of His power against us could not do it. To unveil the glories of that throne where He sitteth in equity, and manifest to His guilty creatures the awful inflexibilities of His truth and righteousness, could not do it. To look out from the cloud of vengeance, and trouble our darkened souls as He did those of the Egyptians of old, with the aspect of a menacing Deity, could not do it. To spread the field of an undone eternity before us; and tell us of those dreary abodes where each criminal hath his bed in hell, and the centuries of despair which pass over him are not counted, because there no seasons roll, and the unhappy victims of the tribulation, and the wrath, and the anguish, know, that for the mighty burden of the sufferings which weigh upon them, there is no end and no mitigation; this prospect, appalling as it is, and coming home upon the belief, with all the characters of the most immutable certainty, could not do it. The affections of the inner man remain as unmoved as ever, under the successive and repeated influence of all these dreadful applications. How, then, is this regeneration to be wrought, if no threatenings can work it; if no terrors of judgment can soften the heart into that love of God which forms the chief feature of repentance; if all the direct applications of law and of righteous authority, and of its tremendous and immutable sanctions, so far from attaching man in tenderness to his God, have only the effect of impressing a violent recoil upon all his affections, and, by the hardening influence of despair, of stirring up in his bosom a more violent antipathy than ever? Will the high and solemn proclamations of a menacing Deity not do it? This is not the way in which the heart of man can be carried. He is so constituted, that the law of love can never, never be established within him by the engine of terror; and here is the barrier to this regeneration on the part of man. But if a threat of justice cannot do it, will an act of forgiveness do it? This, again, is not the way in which God can admit the guilty to acceptance. He is so constituted, that His truth cannot be trampled upon; and His government cannot be despoiled of its authority: and its sanctions cannot, with impunity, be defied; and every solemn utterance of the Deity cannot but find its accomplishment in such a way as may vindicate His glory, and make the whole creation He has formed stand in awe of its Almighty Sovereign. And here is another barrier on the part of God; and that economy of redemption in which a dead and undiscerning world see no skilfulness to admire, and no feature of graciousness to allure, was so planned, in the upper counsels of heaven, that it maketh known to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of Him who devised it. The men of this infidel generation, whose every faculty is so bedimmed by the grossness of sense, that they cannot lay hold of the realities of faith and cannot appreciate them; to them the barriers we have now insisted on, which lie in the way of man taking God into his love, and of God taking man into His acceptance, may appear to be so many faint and shadowy considerations, of which they feel not the significancy; but, to the pure and intellectual eye of angels, they are substantial obstacles, and One mighty to save had to travail in the greatness of His strength, in order to move them away. The Son of God descended from heaven, and He took upon Him the nature of man, and He suffered in his stead, and He consented that the whole burden of offended justice should fall upon Him, and He bore in His own body on the tree the weight of all those accomplishments by which His Father behoved to be glorified; and after having magnified the law and made it honourable, by pouring out His soul unto the death for us, He went up on high, and, by an arm of everlasting strength, levelled that wall of partition which lay across the path of acceptance; and thus it is, that the barrier on the part of God is done away, and He, with untarnished glory, can dispense forgiveness over the whole extent of a guilty creation, because He can be just, while He is the justifier of them who believe in Jesus. And if the barrier, on the part of God, is thus moved aside, why not the barrier on the part of man? Does not the wisdom of redemption show itself here also? Does it not embrace some skilful contrivance by which it penetrates those mounds that beset the human heart, and ward the entrance of the principle of love away from it, and which all the direct applications of terror and authority, have only the effect of fixing more immovably upon their basis? Yes, it does; for it changes the aspect of the Deity towards man; and were men only to have faith in the announcements of the gospel, so as to see God with the eye of his mind under this new aspect--love to God would spring up in his heart as the unfailing consequence. Let man see God as He sets Himself forth in this wonderful revelation, and let him believe the reality of what he sees, and he cannot but love the Being he is employed in contemplating. And thus it is, that the goodness of God destroyeth the enmity of the human heart. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully repel you. There is not one of you, skilled in the management of human nature, who does not perceive, that though this may be a way of working on the other principles of our constitution--of working on the fears of man, or on his sense of interest, this is not the way of gaining by a single hairbreadth on the attachments of his heart. Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never can endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as this is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of service it can extort from him, but what is all rendered in the spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now, this is not the service which prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to angels. This is not the obedience of those glorified spirits, whose every affection harmonizes with their every performance; and the very essence of whose piety consists of delight in God, and the love they bear to Him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart behoved to be approached in a peculiar way; and no such way is to be found, but within the limits of the Christian revelation. There alone you see God, without injury to His other attributes, plying the heart of man with the irresistible argument of kindness. There alone do you see the great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting Himself forth to the most worthless and the most wandering of His children; putting forth His own hand to the work of healing the breach which sin hath made between them; telling him that His word could not be set aside, and His threatenings could not be mocked, and His justice could not be defied and trampled on, and that it was not possible for His perfections to receive the slightest taint in the eyes of the creation He had thrown around Him; but that all this was provided for, and not a single creature within the compass of the universe He had formed could now say, that forgiveness to man was degrading to the authority of God; and that by the very act of atonement, which poured a glory over all the high attributes of His character, His mercy might now burst forth without limit and without control upon a guilty world, and the broad flag of invitation be unfurled in the sight of all its families. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)Reconciliation through the Cross I do not know whether there is any truth in the statement of a correspondent that whatever part of the earth the lightning once strikes it never strikes again, but whether it be so or not, it is certain that wherever the lightning of God’ s vengeance has once struck the sinner’ s substitute it will not strike the sinner. The best preservative for the Israelite’ s house was this--vengeance had struck there and could not strike again. There was the insurance mark, the blood streak. Death had been there, it had fallen upon a victim of God’ s own appointment, and in His esteem it had fallen upon Christ, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Peace at the Cross When the Mohawk Indians desired to be on friendly terms with the white man once again, they sought an interview with the Governor of New York, and their spokesman began by saying, “ Where shall I seek the chair of peace? Where shall I find it but upon our path? and whither does our path lead us but unto this house?” Is it not so that men come into the sanctuary and approach the throne of grace, desiring peace, asking peace, and feeling that peace is to be found nowhere else but there? Christ’ s Cross Krummacher describes the mysterious Cross as a rock, against which the very waves of the curse break: as a lightning conductor, by which the destroying, fluid descends, which would have otherwise destroyed the world with its fire. And Jesus, who mercifully engaged to direct the thunderbolt against Himself, does so while hanging yonder in profound darkness upon the Cross. There He is, as the connecting link between heaven and earth; His bleeding arms extending wide, stretched out to every sinner: hands pointed to the east and west, indicating the gathering in of the world of man to His fold. The Cross is directed to the sky, as the place of His final triumph of the work in redemption; and its foot fixed in the earth like a tree, from whose wondrous branches we gather the precious fruit of an eternal reconciliation to God and the Father. (Caughey.) Ephesians 2:17 And came and preached peace to you which were afar off.Christ preaching peace This refers not merely to the time Christ lived as a Man upon earth, but also to His preaching through the Spirit in all after ages.1. Christ is so absent from us, that He has not quite forsaken us. Whenever His Word is effectual, that is the entrance of Christ into the heart. 2. What Christ purchased for us on the Cross, He applies to us by the ministry of the Word. To enjoy Christ, make much of the gospel, which is news from heaven touching righteousness and life eternal. 3. Christ is present, and has a part in preaching even when men preach. 4. Christ preaches to all, whether Jew or Gentile, to the end of the world. 5. After the death of Christ all are preached to. 6. The gospel of Christ, which He and His ministers preach, is a gospel of peace. (Paul Bayne.)Peace with God When after His death on the Cross, by which He made peace between God and man, and prepared the way for peace between man and God and man and man, did our blessed Saviour come and preach peace? He came by His Holy Spirit as on the day of Pentecost. So that we have within the limits of this text, with the light shed on it by the immediate context-- I. Christ the procurer of peace with the Father. “ He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14).1. By the removal of hindrances to our salvation. His atonement breaks down the middle wall of partition between God and man, and thus also between Jew and Gentile. Christ’ s reconciliation is a scriptural fact. 2. By the removal of the enmity of the carnal mind if God is reconciled to man, man must be reconciled to God. The love of Christ effects this. 3. By the substitution of a new law for “ the law of commandments in ordinances.” This new law is the all-inclusive law of love. II. The Spirit the preacher of peace with God.1. By His own immediate action on the soul of the child and of the man. 2. By His mediate action through the truths of the gospel. “ We are witnesses of these things, and so also is the Holy Ghost.” III. Man--whether jew or gentile--the obtainer of peace with God. “ We both have our access,” etc.1. By personal trust in the merits of Christ. 2. By daily approach through Christ by one Spirit. This describes the method of prayer. (Clerical World.)The Great Preacher The peculiar force of this reference to the preaching of peace will be perceived as we mark who the Preacher was. The Preacher to whom Paul in these words referred was God. I. First of all, let us notice how the purpose of the message of the Great Preacher is here put--He “ preached peace.” The purpose of it was then what it is now, and will continue to be as long as there are ambassadors for Christ in the world. That peace which is the great need of earth is the actual possession of heaven. Yonder in the realms of bliss and order and perfection, there is, even amidst ceaseless activity, serene unbroken peace--the peace of those who have found their true centre and move in their proper orbits. It is what rests upon everlasting foundations. It stands out in contrast to all counterfeit appearances that raise men with bright expectations for a while, and then leave them in the end blasted with disappointment--as we are told was the experience of a great man, a German poet, who lived some years ago to old age, laden with honours and earthly blessings that rarely fall to the lot of men, but who confessed that, looking back on his past life, he could not remember a day in which he had found real happiness or true peace. That a mind wondrously gifted with the power of rising to some of the loftiest conceptions of what is noble and divine, should have been compelled at last to utter this terrible confession, is indeed striking evidence of the need of a Divine provision for man’ s peace. II. Observe, in the second place, where lay the special force and efficacy of the Preacher’ s message; it was in this--that He Himself embodied His own message. His own Person and work were its theme. This gave it a reality and power which characterise the preaching of no other messenger ever heard on earth. “ He came and preached.” And from whence, over what vast distance did He come? If a narrative of travel from one who has explored an unknown country brings before you the scenes through which he has passed with a vivid effect which it is impossible for any other person to convey, how much more should the testimony of one who has come from another world arrest your attention, and be in awful power and import (as the words of Jesus were) unparalleled and alone. He preached peace because He was--as He is--“ our peace.” The angels at His birth had so proclaimed Him in their song. But let us notice a little more closely that Jesus embodied His own message by being Himself “ our peace” with God. Not only was He God’ s peace with us, but from what He is, and by what He did for us, there is exactly that which can make the peace already on God’ s side available to us. III. This brings us to notice, in the third place, the prominence here given to preaching, as the channel through which God’ s peace reaches us. The Saviour has not deemed it enough for Him to do His work, and then allow it to speak for itself, and appeal in silence to the consciences of men. No. He accompanies His work with words--with a message designed to bring out His work in all His bearings; to interpret the signs, and trace the issues of it; to unfold its preciousness, and make unceasing application of it to the heart, according to the daily wants, and the endless variety of the different circumstances of man’ s lot. Preaching, therefore, is the necessary accompaniment of God’ s work. “ He came and preached peace.” IV. The urgent need of those to whom the message was addressed--“ to you which were afar off,” “ and to them that were nigh.”1. “ To you which were afar off.” And “ afar off” indeed were these Ephesians when the message reached them, even in such hopeless estrangements from God, as described in verses 11 and 12. The change was something much more than a social transformation, a mere improvement in outward aspect and manners. Even their escape from all the fascinations and enchantments of idol worship at Ephesus would have availed them nothing had they not also been brought “ nigh” to God “ by the blood of Christ.” To them the vastness of the change was m a changed eternity--a glorious futurity “ as fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God.” It was marked at the same time by such a change of heart as had turned their desires toward Him who had come near to save, and had set their affections and hopes on things above. But not merely to heathen converts do these words apply. To converted souls in every age--to you, believing Christians, this message comes with the same force now as it conveyed in the days of Paul. 2. It was preached also “ to them that were nigh” --to Israel whom the ancient psalm called “ a people near unto Him.” So nigh in virtue of external privilege, that., to them belonged “ the adoption” and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of’ God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.” And yet when He came, where were they? He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. He was “ near in their mouth, but far from their reins.” 3. Preached “ to them that were nigh,” the message must have included the true Israel of God, who were “ nigh” in the real and vital sense of the term. Is it then to be preached still to those who are now at peace with God? Is there any point in their journey at which they can afford to let this part of the gospel drop in order to “ go on unto perfection” through other truths, or by the use, it may be, of other means than those of the gospel? Never with safety or continued health to their own souls. Never, but by some subtle wile of the enemy, who, as an angel of light, would seduce them from the continuance of their faith in this one secret of their true peace in which their great strength lies. (R. S. Muir.)Mercy waiting for applicants Abraham Lincoln’ s doorkeeper had standing orders from him, that no matter how great might be the throng, if either senators or representatives had to wait, or to be turned away without an audience, he must see, before the day closed, every messenger who came to him with a petition for the saving of life. (Little’s Historical Lights.)The gospel preached A band of missionaries and native teachers spent a night on Darnley Island, when a project was formed to establish a mission on Murray Island. Some of the natives of this island seemed specially intent on intimidating the teachers, and convincing them that a mission there was perfectly hopeless. “ There are alligators there,” said they, “ and snakes and centipedes.” “ Hold!” said Tepeso, one of the teachers, “ are there men there?” “ Oh yes,” was the reply, “ there are men, but they are such dreadful savages that it is no use your thinking of living among them.” “ That will do,” responded Tepeso. “ Wherever there are men missionaries are bound to go.” (W. Baxendale.)Peace through Christ In the reign of Henry VIII there was a young student at Cambridge, named Bilney. He became deeply anxious about his soul. The priests prescribed fast, penance, and other observances, but he grew worse and worse. He ultimately became possessed of a copy of the New Testament, and shut himself up in his room to study it. As he read the book he came to the words, “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” He laid down the book, to think on what he had read. He thus states the result:--This one sentence, through God’ s inward teaching, did so rejoice my heart, being before almost in despair, that I soon found peace. “ Jesus Christ saves!” he cried; “ yes, Jesus Christ saves!” From that time he became a preacher of those “ glad tidings,” and at last he suffered martyrdom. True peace only in Christ Your peace, sinner, is that terribly prophetic calm which the traveller occasionally perceives upon the higher Alps. Everything is still. The birds suspend their notes, fly low, and cower down with fear. The hum of bees among the flowers is hushed. A horrible stillness rules the hour, as if death had silenced all things by stretching over them his awful sceptre. Perceive ye not what is surely at hand? The tempest is preparing, the lightning will soon cast abroad its flames of fire. Earth will rock with thunder blasts; granite peaks will be dissolved; all nature will tremble beneath the fury of the storm. Yours is that solemn calm today, sinner. Rejoice not in it, for the hurricane of wrath is coming, the whirlwind and the tribulation which shall sweep you away and utterly destroy you. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 2:18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.The doctrine of the Trinity The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which the apostle implies in these words, is the centre of a group of Christian doctrines which may fairly be said not to have been explicitly known antecedently to the teaching of our Saviour and His apostles. More than even other doctrines, this had hardly been guessed at by heathen speculation, hardly understood by Jewish inspiration. It stands in majestic isolation from other truths, a vision of God incomprehensible, the mystery of mysteries. We can find analogies and explanations of other doctrines in the world of nature, physical or moral, but of this we can discover none. When we pass from the work to the Agent, from the government of God to the nature of God, we are lost in mystery; speculation is well nigh hushed before the overpowering glory of the Eternal. We pass from the earth to the heaven, we enter the shrine of the Divine presence. We contemplate in spirit the mystery hidden of old, the mystery of the trinal existence of Him who is the source of all power, the first cause of all creation; Him who, in the depths of a past eternity, existed in the mysterious solitude of His Divine essence, when there was still universal silence of created life around His throne, and who will exist ever in the future of eternity, from everlasting to everlasting, God. Speculation is, on such a subject, vain; yet a reverent attention to that which has been made known to us is our fitting duty. And nothing will more completely prepare us for considering the subject in a proper temper than the reflection that this great doctrine is not revealed to us in the Scripture to gratify our curiosity, but as a practical truth deeply and nearly related to our eternal interests, not in its speculative but in its practical aspects. Our Lord and His apostles taught that the Divine nature consists of three distinct classes of attributes, or (to use our human expression) three personalities; and that each of these three distinct Persons contributes separate offices in the work of human salvation; God the Father pardoning; God the Son redeeming; God the Holy Ghost hallowing and purifying sinful men. The fact that this doctrine involves a mystery, is so far from constituting a fair ground for its rejection, that it agrees in this respect with many of the most allowed truths of human science. For the distinction is now well understood between a truth being apprehended and its being comprehended. We apprehend or recognize a fact when we know it to be established by evidence, but cannot explain it by referring it to its cause; we comprehend or understand it when we can view it in relation to its cause. A thing which is not apprehended cannot be believed, but the analogy of our knowledge shows that we believe many things which we cannot explain or resolve into a law. We know the law of attraction which regulates the motions of the visible universe; but no one can yet explain the nature of the attractive power which acts according to this law. Or, to add an example from the world of organized nature, we may see the same truth in the animal or vegetable kingdoms. We know not in what consist the common phenomena of sleep or of life; and we are equally ignorant of the final causes which have led the Creator to lavish His gifts in creating thousands of species of the lower orders of animals with few properties of enjoyment or of use; or to scatter in the unseen parts of the petals of flowers, the profusion of beautiful colours. In truth, the peculiarity of modern inductive science is, that it professes to explain nothing. It rests content with generalising phenomena into their most comprehensive statement, and there it pauses; it in no case connects them with an ultimate cause. And if truths are thus received undoubtingly in science when yet they cannot be explained, why must an antecedent determination to disbelieve mystery in religion be allowed to outweigh any amount of positive evidence which can be adduced to substantiate those mysteries? We are to believe that the Divine nature exists under three entirely distinct classes of relations, which, through poverty of language, we call existence in three persons. We must be careful, however, when we assert this, not to reduce the Divine nature to similarity with the human; not to commit, in fact, almost the very error into which men of old fell in supposing that the God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, is like to birds and beasts and creeping things. The Divine Being is three persons; but by this we only mean that the personal element in man is the analogy under which God has been pleased to convey to us ideas of His own nature and of the relations which He sustains to us. Just as we do not attribute to God a body or human passions, but merely mean that He acts to us as though He possessed them; so when we attribute to Him thought or personality, we must not narrow down the idea of His omniscient intuition by supposing it contracted within the limits of inference which govern man’ s finite intelligence, or gifted with that limited independence which appertains to human personality. The discoveries of science ought to teach us that we really can scarcely form any positive idea of God’ s nature. If we track the infinity of creation, we see that each increased power of our instruments reveals to us illimitable profusion in creation; the telescope revealing the troop of worlds stretching to an infinity of greatness, and the microscope a world of more and more minute life, stretching to an infinity of minuteness; or when we turn from the infinite in space to the infinite in time, if we look backward we see written in the rocks of the world the signs of creative life stretching through ages anterior to human history; or if we look forward, we can detect by delicate mathematical calculation, an amazing scheme of Providence providing for the conservation of harmony in the attractions of the heavenly bodies in cycles of incalculable time in the distant future. And when, having pondered all these things, we think of the Being that has arranged them by His providence and conserves them by His power, what notion can we really form of His nature? What notion of the wonderful originality evinced in the conception of creation, what of the profusion shown in the execution of it, what of the power in its conservation? His nature is not merely infinite, it is unlike anything human, and we must turn away with the feeling that when we compare that infinite Being with man, and confine our ideas of His illimitable vastness and His inscrutable existence by the notion of the narrow personality which is delegated to us finite creatures who live but for a day on this small spot of earth, lost amid the millions of worlds which glitter in creation, we may be sure that the Divine nature as really transcends the earthly description of it, as the universe exceeds this world; and though we may thankfully accept the description of God as having three personalities as the noblest to which we can attain as men, and as enough for our present wants in this world, yet let us never doubt that really the Divine nature is vastly nobler; and let us bow with adoring thankfulness in meditating on the idea which we are permitted to attain, imperfect though it be, of that mysterious essence. Yet though the idea of God in three Persons may be held to be thus speculatively imperfect, let us never forget that it is practically all-sufficient for us. For it teaches us the great truth that He acts to us as though He did literally sustain the characters of three wholly distinct persons, and that He demands from us the duties which would belong to us if He were so. If we are thus to believe of God, what is the lesson which this great doctrine that God exists and acts to us as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ought to convey to us? It is mainly the wondrous thought that this glorious Being is willing to stoop to be our Friend, that He whose happiness is complete in its own infinity, is moved by His own pure eternal love to win us to Himself. Restless (to speak after the manner of men) to secure our happiness, all these blessed Persons of the glorious Godhead are engaged to secure it. It is God the Father whom we have grieved by our sins; and yet He loves us as a Father still; and to rescue us from our misery He has designed the great scheme of salvation, and sent God the Son to dwell on this earth as a man, as a man of sorrows and of poverty, to remove by His atoning death the impediments which, secret perhaps to us, stand in the way of our salvation, and to exhibit the pattern of a faultless human being, that we may follow His steps; and lastly, after God the Son had withdrawn from the earth, God the Spirit, the ever blessed Comforter, has descended to dwell constantly in the hearts of all men that invite His presence, cheering their guilty spirits, stirring them up to the love of holiness, hallowing them for a meetness for the inheritance of heaven. Behold what manner of love God has shown to us! Behold the Triune God engaged in the salvation of each one of ourselves! And can you delay to yield to Him your hearts, your wills, your affections? If you have sinned, or are tempted to sin, either in deed, or word, or thought, remember that it is not merely sin against a law, but that you are verily grieving a loving father, even the Father, God; if you are living a careless, half-religious life, remember that you are perpetrating the ingratitude of making the sufferings of the Eternal Son void as regards your souls; if you are neglecting prayer, neglecting earnest supplications to heaven for holiness, you are declining to avail yourself of that unspeakable gift of the Spirit’ s help which is for all that ask. God the Father loves us, God the Son has redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit will, if we will ask Him, turn us from sin, and doubt, and half-heartedness, to the love of Himself, and will fit us for that heaven where, no longer trammelled by sin and darkened by ignorance, we shall enjoy the beatific vision, and find our everlasting happiness in communing with the Divine Being face to face. (Canon A. S. Farrar.)A Trinity Sunday sermon The doctrine of the Trinity is the description of what we know of God. We have no right to say that it is the description of God; for what there may be in Deity of which we have no knowledge, how can we tell? We are only sure that the Divine life is infinitely greater than our humanity can comprehend; and we are sure, too, that not even a revelation in the most perfect form, through the most perfect medium conceivable, could make known to the human intelligence anything in God save that which has relationship to human life. Man may reveal himself to the brutes, and the revelation may be clear and correct so far as it can go, but it must have its limit. Only that part of man can cross the line and show itself to the perception of that lower world which finds in brutedom some point which it can touch. Our strength may reveal itself to their fear; our kindness to their power of love; some part of our wisdom, even, to their dim capacity of education; but all the while there is a vast manhood of intellect, of taste, of spirituality, of which they never know. And so I am sure that the Divine nature is three Persons, but one God; but how much more than that I cannot know. That deep law which runs through all life, by which the higher any nature is, the more manifold and simple at once, the more full of complexity and unity at once, it grows, is easily accepted as applicable to the highest of all natures--God. In the manifoldness of His being these three personal existences, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, easily make themselves known to the human life. I tell the story of them, and that is my doctrine of the Trinity.1. The end of the human salvation is “ access to the Father.” That is the first truth of our religion--that the source of all is meant to be the end of all, that as we all came forth from a Divine Creator so it is into divinity that we are to return and to find our final rest and satisfaction, not in ourselves, nor in one another, but in the omnipotence, the omniscience, the perfectness, and the love of God. God is divine. God is God. And no doubt we do all assent in words to such a belief; but when we think what we mean by that word God; when we remember what we mean by “ Father,” namely, the first source and the final satisfaction of a dependent nature; and then when we look around and see such multitudes of people living as if there were no higher source for their being than accident, and no higher satisfaction for their being than selfishness, do we not feel that there is need of a continual and most earnest preaching by word and act, from every pulpit of influence to which we can mount, of the divinity of the Father. Why, take a man who is utterly absorbed in the business of this world. How eager he is; his hands are knocking at every door; his voice is crying out for admittance into every secret place and treasure house; he is all earnestness and restlessness. He is trying to come to something, trying to get access, and to what? To the best and richest of that earthly structure from which his life seems to himself to have issued. Counting himself the child of this world, he is giving himself up with a filial devotion to his father. He is the product in his tastes and his capacities of this social and commercial machinery which seems to be the mill out of which men’ s characters are turned. It is the society and the business of the world that have made him what he is, and so he gives up all that he is to the society or the business that created him. Now to such a man what is the first revelation that you want to make. Is it not the divinity of the Father? This is the divinity of the end. We come from God and we go to God. 2. And now pass to the divinity of the method. “ Through Jesus Christ.” Man is separated from God. That fact, testified to by broken associations, by alienated affections, by conflicting wills, stands written in the whole history of our race. Analogies, I know, are very imperfect and often very deceptive, when they try to illustrate the highest things. But is it not as if a great strong nation, too strong to be jealous, strong enough to magnanimously pity and forgive, had to deal with a colony of rebels whom it really desired to win back again to itself? They are of its own stock, but they have lost their allegiance and are suffering the sorrows and privations of being cut off from their fatherland and living in rebellion. That fatherland might send its embassy to tempt them home; and, if it did, whom would it choose to send? Would it not take of itself its messenger? The embassy that is sent is of the country that sends it. That is its value, that is its influence. The fatherland would choose its choicest son, taking him from nearest to its heart, and say, Go and show them what I am, how loving and how ready to forgive, for you are I and you can show them. Such was the mission of the Messiah. The ambassador was of the very land that sent Him, “ God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.” My friend says God sends Christ into the world, and therefore Christ is not God. I cannot see it so. It seems to me lust otherwise. God sends Christ just because Christ is God. The ambassador, the army is of the very most precious substance of the country that despatches it. This is the meaning of that constant title of our Master. He is the Son of God. The more truly we believe in the Incarnate Deity, the more devoutly we must believe in the essential glory of humanity, the more earnestly we must struggle to keep the purity and integrity and largeness of our own human life, and to help our brethren to keep theirs. It is because the Divine can dwell in us that we may have access to divinity. We and they must, through the Divine method, come to the Divine end where we belong, through God the Son to God the Father. 3. And now turn to the point that still remains. We have spoken of the end and of the method; but no true act is perfect unless the power by which it works is worthy of the method through which and the end to which it proceeds. The power of the act of man’ s salvation is the Holy Spirit. “ Through Christ Jesus we all have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” What do we mean by the Holy Spirit being the power of salvation? I think we are often deluded and misled by carrying out too far some of the figurative forms in which the Bible and the religious experience of men express the saving of the soul. For instance, salvation is described as the lifting of the soul out of a pit and putting it upon a pinnacle, or on a safe high platform of grace. The figure is strong and clear. Nothing can overstate the utter dependence of the soul on God for its deliverance; but if we let the figure leave in our minds an impression of the human soul as a dead, passive thing, to be lifted from one place to the other like a torpid log that makes no effort of its own either for cooperation or resistance, then the figure has misled us. The soul is a live thing. Everything that is done with it must be done in and through its own essential life. If a soul is saved, it must be by the salvation, the sanctification of its essential life; if a soul is lost, it must be by perdition of its life, by the degradation of its affections and desires and hopes. Conclusion: When this experience is reached then see what Godhood the soul has come to recognize in the world. First, there is the Creative Deity from which it sprang, and to which it is struggling to return--the Divine end, God the Father. Then there is the Incarnate Deity, which makes that return possible by the exhibition of God’ s love--the Divine method, God the Son; and then there in this Infused Deity, this Divine energy in the soul itself, taking its capacities and setting them homeward to the Father--the Divine power of salvation. God the Holy Spirit. To the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. If we recur a moment to the figure which we used a while ago, God is the Divine Fatherland of the human soul; Christ is like the embassy, part and parcel of that Fatherland, which comes out to win it back from its rebellion; and the Holy Spirit is the Fatherland wakened in the rebellious colony’ s own soul. He is the newly living loyalty. When the colony comes back, the power that brings it is the Fatherland in it seeking its own; So when the soul comes back to God, it is God in the soul that brings it. So we believe in the Divine power, one with the Divine method and the Divine end, in God the Spirit one with the Father and the Son. This appears to me the truth of the Deity as it relates to us. I say again, “ as it relates to us.” What it may be in itself; how Father, Son, and Spirit meet in the perfect Godhood; what infinite truth more there may, there must, be in that Godhood, no man can dare to guess. But, to us, God is the end, the method, and the power of salvation; so He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is in the perfect harmony of these sacred personalities that the precious unity of the Deity consists. Let us keep the faith of the Trinity. Let us seek to come to the highest, through the highest, by the highest. Let the end and the method and the power of our life be all Divine. If our hearts are set on that, Jesus will accept us for His disciples; all that He promised to do for those who trusted Him, He will do for us. He will show us the Father; He will send us the Comforter; nay, what can He do, or what can we ask that will outgo the strong and sweet assurance of the promise which we have been studying today: Through Him we shall have access by one Spirit unto the Father. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)The doctrine of the Trinity In this text we have a declaration of the Holy Trinity; there can be no doubt as to that. Here are all three Persons together: the Father, unto whom we have access or introduction; the Son, by or through whom we are introduced; the Holy Spirit, in whom, in whose communion, we enjoy that access. But what is remarkable about the text is not the mere declaration of the three Persons, which is often to be met with in St. Paul’ s Epistles, but the practical nature of the declaration. “ We both have access,” says the apostle, “ unto the Father” --and for this word “ both” we may substitute “ all,” since the great distinction of that day between Jew and Gentile has been obliterated, and only those numerous minor distinctions remain which race and clime and colour make within the fold of Christ. We all have access unto the Father--this is the great and blessed fact, the practical sum of our religion; and this is the answer of the gospel to all the seeking and questing of the natural man since the world began. He, who is both God and man--He, the daysman desired of Job--He, who is equally at home both on earth and in heaven, who was in heaven--He, who hath reconciled us unto God, and atoned us, making us one with God by vital union with Himself;--He shall introduce us; by Him we shall have that long sought for, long despaired of access to the Father of our souls--He shall take us (as He only can) by the hand, and lead us (as He only may) into that dread presence. But, again, there is a further questing and seeking of the natural man, when he longs and yet dreads to find his way home to the Father. For after that first difficulty, “ Who shall lead us to the Father?” there comes another question quite as hard to answer, and it is this: “ If we attain unto Him, how shall we bear ourselves in His presence? how shall we, defiled, stand in that holy place? how shall we, blear-eyed, face that uncreated light? and even if we were safe through our Saviour from any wrath of God, yet how could we escape the bitter sense of contrast, of unfitness, of intrinsic distance intensified by outward nearness?” Now, the practical answer to such questing of the natural man is the revelation of the Spirit. In Him, the Spirit of God, who is also the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who ministers the gifts and graces and perpetuates the life of Jesus within the Church--in Him, who proceedeth from the Father and receiveth of the Son; who being one with the Father and the Son yet dwelleth in us, in our inmost centre of life and thought, and influenceth the secret springs of will and action--in Him, who, dwelling in all, bindeth all into one body with the Son of God, and reproduceth the character of Jesus in the saints;--in Him, the Lord, the Giver of life, the Sanctifier, shall we have true access unto the Father. Taking these two things together, “ by the Son,” “ in one Spirit,” we see that they leave nothing unprovided. Here is afforded us both outward approach to God and inward correspondence with God; both the way to heaven and the power to traverse the way; both the joy of our Lord and the capacity of entering into that joy. I suppose that if man had never fallen, God would never have been known as the Three in One. In the ages of the past each blessed Person lay undistinguished in the brilliance of the Godhead until the eternal love moved them to come forth from that obscurity of light for man’ s salvation. We know the Son by finding Him in mortal guise in our midst, displaying even amidst the cares and sufferings of a human life the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. We know the Spirit by perceiving His presence in our own souls, by recognizing His abiding influence in the Church of God. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)The nature and beauty of gospel worship I. We obtain this privilege as a fruit, and upon account of the reconciliation made by the blood of Christ (see Hebrews 9:8; Hebrews 10:19-22). Peter also gives us the same account of the rise of this privilege (1 Peter 2:4-5). That which is ascribed unto believers is, that they offer up “ spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ.” That is the worship whereof we speak. II. The worship of God under the gospel is so excellent, beautiful, and glorious, that it may well be esteemed a privilege purchased by the blood of Christ, which no man can truly and really be made partaker of, but by virtue of an interest in the reconciliation by Him wrought. For “ by Him we have an access in one Spirit unto God.” This I shall evince two ways. First, Absolutely. Secondly, Comparatively, in reference unto any other way of worship whatever. And the first I shall do from the text. It is a principle deeply fixed in the minds of men, yea, ingrafted into them by nature, that the worship of God ought to be orderly, comely, beautiful, and glorious.1. The first thing in general observable from these words is, that in the spiritual worship of the gospel, the whole blessed Trinity, and each Person therein distinctly, do in that economy and dispensation, wherein they act severally and peculiarly in the work of our redemption, afford distinct communion with themselves unto the souls of the worshippers. 2. The same is evident from the general nature of it, that it is an access unto God. “ Through Him we have an access to God.” There are two things herein that set forth the excellency, order, and glory of it. (1) It brings an access. (2) The manner of that access, intimated in the word here used, it is προσαγωγή, a manuduction unto God, in order, and with much glory. It is such an access as men have to the presence of a king when they are handed in by some favourite or great person. This, in this worship, is done by Christ. He takes the worshippers by the hand, and leads them into the presence of God. There are two things that hence arise, evidencing the order, decency, and glory of gospel worship. 1. That we have in it a direct and immediate access unto God. 2. That we have access unto God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and ours in Him. Before I come to consider its glory comparatively, in reference to the outward solemn worship of the temple of old, I shall add but one consideration more, which is necessary for the preventing of some objections, as well as for the farther clearing of the truth insisted on; and that is taken from the place where spiritual worship is performed. Much of the beauty and glory of the old worship, according to carnal ordinances, consisted in the excellency of the place wherein it was performed: first, the tabernacle of Moses, then the temple of Solomon, of whose glory and beauty we shall speak afterward. Answerable hereunto, do some imagine, there must be a beauty in the place where men assemble for gospel worship, which they labour to paint and adorn accordingly. But they “ err, not knowing the Scriptures.” There is nothing spoken of the place and seat of gospel worship, but it is referred to one of these three heads, all which render it glorious.1. It is performed in heaven; though they who perform it are on earth, yet they do it by faith in heaven. 2. The second thing mentioned in reference to the place of this worship is the persons of the saints: these are said to be the “ temple of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 6:19). 3. The assemblies of the saints are spoken of as God’ s temple, and the seat and place of public, solemn, gospel worship (Ephesians 2:21-22). Here are many living stones framed into “ an holy house in the Lord, an habitation for God by His Spirit.” God dwells here: as He dwelt in the temple of old, by some outward carnal pledges of His presence; so in the assemblies of His saints, which are His habitation, He dwells unspeakably in a more glorious manner by His Spirit. Here, according to His promise, is His habitation. And they are a temple, a holy temple, holy with the holiness of truth, as the apostle speaks (Ephesians 4:24). Not a typical, relative, but a real holiness, and such as the Lord’ s soul delighteth in. Secondly, proceed we now in the next place to set forth the glory and beauty of this worship of the gospel comparatively, with reference to the solemn outward worship, which by God’ s own appointment was used under the Old Testament; which, as we shall show, was far more excellent on many accounts than anything of the like kind; that is, as to outward splendour and beauty, that was ever found out by men. 1. The first of these was the temple, the seat of all the solemn outward worship of the old church; the beauty and glory of it were in part spoken to before; nor shall I insist on any particular description of it; it may suffice, that it was the principal state of the beauty and order of the Judaical worship, and which rendered all exceeding glorious, so far, that the people idolized it, and put their trust in it, that upon the account of it they should be assuredly preserved, notwithstanding their presumptuous sins. But yet, notwithstanding all this, Solomon himself, in his prayer at the dedication of that house (1 Kings 8:27), seems to intimate that there was some check upon his spirit, considering the unanswerable: ness of the house to the great majesty of God. It was a house on the earth, a house that he did build with his hands, intimating that he looked farther to a more glorious house than that. And what is it, if it be compared with the temple of gospel worship? Whatever is called the temple now of the people of God, is as much beyond that of old as spiritual things are beyond carnal, as heavenly beyond earthly, as eternal beyond temporal. 2. The second spring of the beauty of the old worship, which was indeed the hinge upon which the whole turned, was the priesthood of Aaron, with all the administrations committed to his charge. The high priest under the gospel is Christ alone. Now I shall spare the pains of comparing these together, partly because it will be by all confessed that Christ is incomparably more excellent and glorious; and partly, because the apostle on set purpose handles this comparison in sundry instances in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where anyone may run and read it, it being the main subject matter of that most excellent Epistle. 3. The order, glory, number, significancy, of their sacrifices was another part of their glory. And indeed, he that shall seriously consider that one solemn anniversary sacrifice of expiation and atonement, which is instituted (Leviticus 1:1-17, will quickly see that there was very much glory and solemnity in the outward ceremony of it. But now, saith the apostle, “ we have a better sacrifice” (Hebrews 9:23). We have Him who is the high priest, and altar, and sacrifice all Himself; of worth, value, glory, beauty, upon the account of His own Person, the efficacy of His oblation, the real effect of it, more than a whole creation, if it might have been all offered up at one sacrifice. This is the standing sacrifice of the saints, offered “ once for all,” as effectual now any day as if offered every day; and other sacrifices, properly so called, they have none. (J. Owen.)The true God is to be worshipped as existing in Three Persons I. The unity of the deity. It is much easier to prove from the light of nature that there is one God than to prove the impossibility of there being any more than one. Though some plausible arguments in favour of the unity of the Deity may be drawn from the beauty, order, and harmony apparent in the creatures and objects around us, and from the nature of a self-existent, independent, and perfect Being, yet these arguments fall far short of full proof or strict demonstration. To obtain complete and satisfactory evidence that there is but one living and true God, we must have resort to the Scriptures of truth, in which the Divine unity is clearly and fully revealed. God has always been extremely jealous of His unity, which has been so often disbelieved and denied in this rebellious and idolatrous world. He has never condescended to give His glory to another, nor His praise to false and inferior deities. II. The one living and true God exists in three distinct persons. It is generally supposed that the inspired writers of the Old Testament give some plain intimations of a plurality of persons in the Godhead. But we find this, like many other great and important doctrines, more clearly revealed by Christ and the apostles, than it had been before by the prophets. Christ said a great deal about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He commanded His apostles and their successors in the ministry to baptize visible believers in the name of this sacred Trinity. After His death, His apostles strenuously maintained and propagated the same doctrine. III. This leads us to inquire why we ought to address and worship the one true God, according to this personal distinction in the Divine nature.1. The first reason which occurs is, because we ought, in our religious devotions, to acknowledge everything in God which belongs to His essential glory. Much of His essential glory consists in His existing a Trinity in Unity, which is a mode of existence infinitely superior to that of any other being in the universe. 2. We ought to address and worship God according to the personal distinction in the Divine nature, because we are deeply indebted to each Person in the Godhead for the office He sustains and the part He performs in the great work of redemption. 3. We ought to address and worship the true God according to the personal distinction in the Divine nature, because this is necessarily implied in holding communion with Him. It is owing to God’ s existing a Trinity in Unity that He can hold the most perfect and blessed communion with Himself. And it is owing to the same personal distinction in the Divine nature that Christians can hold communion with each and all the Persons in the Godhead. 4. We are not only allowed, but constrained, to address and worship the true God according to the personal distinction in the Divine nature, because there is no other way in which we can find access to the throne of Divine grace. This important idea is plainly contained in the text. As it was Christ who made atonement for sin, so it is only through Him that we can have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Sinful creatures cannot approach to the Father in the same way that innocent creatures can. The holy angels can approach to the Father directly, without the mediation or intercession of Christ.1. This discourse teaches us that the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the essential and most important articles of Christianity. 2. It appears from what has been said, that we ought to regard and acknowledge the Father as the head of the sacred Trinity, and the primary object of religious homage. The Father is the first in order, and the supreme in office; and for this cause we ought to present our prayers and praises more immediately and directly to Him than to either of the other Persons in the Godhead. 3. Since God exists in three equally Divine Persons, there appears to be good ground to pay Divine homage to each Person distinctly. Though the Father is most generally to be distinctly and directly addressed, yet sometimes there may be a great propriety in addressing the Son and Spirit according to their distinct ranks and offices. 4. If we ought to acknowledge and worship the true God according to the personal distinction in the Divine nature, then we ought to obey Him according to the same distinction. We find some commands given by the Father, some by the Son, and some by the Holy Ghost. Though we are equally bound to obey each of these Divine Persons, in point of authority, yet we ought to obey each from distinct motives, arising from the distinct relations they bear to us, and the distinct things they have done for us. We ought to obey the Father as our Creator, the Son as our Redeemer, and the Holy Ghost as our Sanctifier. This distinction is as easy to be perceived and felt, as the distinction between creating goodness, redeeming mercy, and sanctifying grace. (N. Emmons, D. D.)Access to God 1. Access to God always follows the prevailing of the Word.2. By Christ alone have we access with boldness to God.3. It is the Spirit which enables us to come to God in prayer. (Paul Bayne.)Access to God by Christ I. Nearness to God the Father is the highest and sweetest privilege which any of the human race can possibly enjoy. The word access in the text means liberty of approach, as every one acquainted with its use in Scripture will admit. Sin alienates the mind of man from Jehovah, and raises a bar in his way to blessedness. But a method has been devised for bringing back those who are banished. We have access to the Father! What a significant and endearing name! The first thing requisite for us is access to the Eternal Father. This being granted, it must, I think, be manifest that our happiness will increase just in proportion to our nearness to God. But could the veil which hides the heavenly world be removed, how would this truth blaze upon us with noontide splendour! II. We can enjoy the privileges of access to the Father only through the mediation of Christ, and by the agency and grace of the Holy Spirit.1. Here, then, are we clearly taught that the mediation of Christ is the only means of approach to and acceptance with God. This doctrine forms the grand distinguishing peculiarity of the gospel. But to enter fully into the spirit of our text, Christ must be contemplated in the character which He sustains as the great High Priest of the Church. It is not enough to own that He paid down a ransom price, and offered an atoning sacrifice of unspeakable value; but we must look to His perpetual and all-prevailing intercession. Nearly related both to the Father with whom He intercedes, and to us for whom intercession is made; the nature of each is joined in His Person. As a brother He has a lively sympathy with man, and as a prince He has power with God and prevails. 2. We enjoy this high privilege by the agency of the Holy Spirit. From the subject which has been brought before you, the following inferences may be fairly drawn.1. If nearness to God be the highest happiness, then distance from Him, or dislike to His will, is the greatest misery. 2. If it is through Christ only that we find free approach to the Father, how thankful ought we to be for such a Mediator. In Him all excellencies, human and Divine, are united. 3. If the influence of the Holy Spirit is necessary to bring us into communion with the Father, as we have shown, then this influence should be earnestly sought and highly prized. 4. If the doctrine here taught is true, Christians of every name, nation, and tribe have substantial grounds of union. In the Church there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)Christian prayer a witness of Christian fellowship The whole power and meaning of that glorious exclamation, “ Ye are no more strangers and foreigners,” depend on the truth expressed in the previous verse: “ We have access by one Spirit to the Father.” Paul has told the Gentile Ephesians that they are no longer outcasts from the grand privileges of the Jew; he has asserted that they are actually in fellowship with the prophets and apostles, and the universal Church of the holy; but all the magnificence of the assertion rises out of the principal fact that in Christ they come by one spirit to God. In short, he finds the proof end pledge of Christian citizenship in the power and freedom of Christian prayer. Our subject, then, becomes--The citizenship of the Christian: its foundation; its nature; its present lessons. I. Its foundation. In access to the Father--in the power of approaching Him in full, free, trustful prayer--lies the foundation proof that we are “ fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” We have to see how that conviction rises in the praying soul--how the very fact of Christian prayer contains the proof and pledge that we are citizens of an eternal kingdom. In doing this let us glance at two principles that are here involved.1. Christian prayer is the approach of the individual soul to God as its Father. By access to God, Paul means the approach to God in which the human spirit comes near to Him as a real Divine Presence, to worship Him in full, free, trustful love; hence it is evident that a man may often have prayed, and yet never have realized this idea of prayer. 2. That prayer of the individual soul must lead it to the united worship of God’ s Church. “ We come by one Spirit unto the Father.” Paul has been speaking of atonement and reconciliation. He knew that these were individual; but he seems to imply that until Greek and Jew were united in worship the worship was incomplete. Note one or two facts on this point which are very significant. We cannot always pray alone. God has so made us that our power of praying needs the help of our brethren. There are times when the deep emotions of our nature will not utter themselves, and we groan, being burdened. We need the help of some other soul that has the divine gift of uttering the want we cannot utter, that it may bear us upon its wings of holy sympathy towards the throne. II. The nature of our citizenship. Taking the points we have just noticed, and combining them, let us see how they point to a fellow citizenship with the Church of all ages.1. Prayer a witness to our fellowship with the Church of all time. Realizing God’ s Fatherhood in the holy converse of prayer, we are nearer men. Our selfishness--our narrow, isolating peculiarities begin to fade. In our highest prayers we realize common wants. No man ever poured out his soul to God, under the sense of His presence, who did not feel that he was nearer the family of the Father. To take the most obvious illustration, is it not when the cries of confession, of unrest, of aspiration, of hope, mingle in worship that we feel it? Are we not, then, fellow pilgrims, fellow sufferers, fellow warriors? Then our differences vanish, and we know, in some measure, how we belong to the “ household of God.” But it stays not there. The past claims kindred with us in prayer. 2. Prayer a witness to our fellowship with the Church of eternity. This is harder to be realized, because of our earthliness--we see so dimly through the material veil. But the “ household of God” implies this fellowship. III. Its lessons.1. Live as members of the kingdom. 2. Expect the signs of citizenship. The crown of thorns; the Cross. 3. Live in hope of the final ingathering. Paul’ s words point to this. From this hope our efforts and aspirations derive their greatest power; and we feel that our fellow citizenship is incomplete till we pass from the “ earthly tabernacle” into the eternal home of the Father. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)Access to God I. The great work of salvation in its process. II. The greatness of the agency employed in the work of salvation. III. The work of salvation in the universality of its law. The same course must be trodden by all. (T. J. Judkin.)Access to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit I. Access to the father. The access of the text is the access of reconciliation and peace; all enmity is removed, all differences cleared up. But it is more than this--access to the Father; He is seen. In the case of servitude, servants have access to their master; but here is access, with boldness, of those led by the Spirit of God, who are the sons of God. This is access of sons in “ whom the Father is well pleased” --of those who are made “ heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ” --of those who, as you see in the nineteenth verse, are “ fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” This access, my brethren, is more than touching the golden sceptre with the hand of faith; it is the mutual embrace with the arms of love; it is the access of a loving son to a loving father. II. But how can we obtain admission into the presence of the Father? Whence this access? Here, by nature, practice, habit, disposition, we are far from our Father’ s land. We are “ strangers and foreigners” (Ephesians 2:19). Who can tell if He is willing to receive us? And if He will receive us, who is to bring us to Him? These questions are answered by the expression in the text, “ through Him,” that is, through Christ. Without introduction, there is no admission; and he who introduces another is in general answerable for the manner and conduct of the person introduced. Now, if you look to the context, you will see how Christ introduces us to the presence of the Father. You are “ enemies,” “ rebels” ; the first thing, then, to be done is to make peace. He has made peace, as you will see in the fifteenth verse; that is, He settled the terms of peace; He abolished in effect the enmity which existed between us and God. He slew that enmity upon the Cross. But then we were afar off, in a distant country, strangers and foreigners: therefore He came, as you see in the seventeenth verse, “ to preach peace to you that were afar off.” He tells us what He has done, both in the courts of heaven and upon the heights of Calvary. III. The remaining expression in the text brings us to the work of the Holy Ghost. By the Holy Spirit we have access to the Father, through Jesus Christ. Thus you see we have the doctrine of the Trinity brought before us in this short verse. It is highly important always to bear in mind that the three Persons in the Trinity are equally concerned in the work of the sinner’ s salvation. Now, how is it we possess the privilege of access to the Father through the Son? We must recollect that would be no privilege unless there were the capacity to enjoy the same. Bring a blind man to the most attractive sight, and he is unable to behold or to enjoy it. Let heaven ring with a concert of the most angelic music, and the deaf man will not be animated by it. And give a man without the Spirit the privilege of access to the Father, and he has no part in it; he is entirely incapable of appreciating the Divine enjoyments of His presence; he would feel himself “ afar off,” although he were brought very nigh. Change of place is not enough; there must be a change of heart. Now here comes in the work of the Spirit. Secondly: The Spirit teaches us how to behave ourselves in the presence of the Father; He not only conducts, but teaches and instructs. Without the Spirit’ s teaching, we could never learn “ Abba” ; we should never frame our speech aright. (G. A. Rogers, M. A.)Bold access to the Father It is the boldness of the little child that, unabashed by anyone’ s presence, climbs his father’ s knee, and throws his arms around his neck--or, bursting into his room, breaks in on his busiest hours, to have a bleeding finger bound, or some childish tears kissed away; that says if any threaten or hurt him, I will tell my father; and, however he might tremble to sleep alone, fears neither ghosts, nor man, nor darkness, nor devils, if he lies couched at his father’ s side. Such confidence, bold as it seems, springs from trust in a father’ s love; and pleases rather than offends us. (T. Guthrie D. D.)The confidence of children I remember seeing a man in Mobile putting little boys on the fence posts, and they jumped into his arms with perfect confidence. But there was one boy nine or ten years old who would not jump. I asked the man why it was, and he said the boy was not his. Ah, that was it. The boy was not his. He had not learned to trust him. But the other boys knew him and could trust him. (D. L. Moody.) Ephesians 2:19 Fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.The communion of saints The Church at Ephesus was a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile converts. The old feuds between them had not passed away. The Jew refused to let go the claim of his nation to some religious superiority over the Gentile, and thought the latter ought to stand afar off and worship in some outer court. But the great design of Christianity, argues the apostle, is to abolish these enmities, to break down these partition walls, to bring these separated worshippers both nigh to each other, and nigh to God. Christ, he declares, is both our peace and our peacemaker. In Himself, and by Himself, He made of the twain one new man and one new society; not strangers one to another, still less enemies one to another, but one large family, joined together in the ties of spiritual brotherhood, fellow citizens with the saints, and members of the household of God. I. There is the communion of saints with the holy trinity (1 John 1:3; John 17:21-23; 2 Peter 1:4). Deity is in some sense grafted into the stock of our regenerate and renewed humanity. Between God and the souls of His elect there is as much of oneness and communion as there is between a vine and its branches, or a body and its members, or a temple and the stones of which it is composed. The tabernacle of God is with men. The incarnation of Christ has made our nature an ennobled thing; the power of the Holy Ghost makes it a spiritual and sanctified thing; and the two together make the communion perfect. There is bestowed upon us a new moral nature, and in virtue of this God may speak with man, walk with man, dwell with man, may suffer to flow towards man the rich tide of His beneficent sympathies, and conclude with man the terms of a holy and everlasting friendship. II. The communion of saints with the whole body of the Church militant here on earth.1. The communion of spiritual life. The saints of God, however scattered, have the same Word to guide, the same sacraments to refresh, the same essential doctrines as their ground of trust, and the same Holy Spirit to uphold their souls in life. Born under the same curse, inheritors of a common feebleness, and exposed to like temptations, they look forward to the same bright consummation of glory and honour and immortality (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). 2. Communion of aim and object and united interest. 3. Communion of help and sympathy and fellow feeling with one another’ s trials (Galatians 6:2). 4. Communion in prayer. Mutual intercession is the life of the Church (1 Timothy 2:1; Philippians 1:19). III. Communion of saints on earth with saints in paradise--the Church militant with the Church expectant. Death makes no difference in the mystical union which is betwixt Christ and His Church; i.e., makes no difference in the nature of that union. It will give a demonstration to its evidence, a lustre to its glory, an elevation to its bliss; but the union itself is just what it was in life--a joining of the soul to the Lord by one Spirit. Our communion with departed saints is--1. A communion of hope.2. A communion of esteem.3. A communion of imitation. We walk in the same light, we live by the same Spirit, we are looking forward to the same peaceful blessedness which they enjoy who are fallen asleep. IV. Communion with the angels that stand around the throne. They are our fellow servants, and our fellow citizens. Conclusion: What a field of high and ennobling thought does this subject open up! Into what boundless relations does the human spirit branch out; how mysterious is the tie which binds it with all being, with all intelligence, with all worlds! We say unto corruption, thou art my father; to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister; and yet, notwithstanding this, we are one with all the society of the blessed; with the martyrs, a noble army; with the prophets, a goodly fellowship; with the apostles, a glorious company; with the angels, a radiant host. Nay, this bond of saintly sympathy rests not here; it is interlinked with things divine--with the sanctities of the Spirit, with the glorified humanity of Christ, with the covenant love of God. How important the question for us all--How shall these glorious ties be preserved unbroken, and wherein lies this great strength? The strength of this union of saints lies in their separation from all sinful thoughts and sympathies. We have a name, a character, a calling, and we must be consistent therewith. The world and the Church must have an intelligible partition somewhere. The life of saintship must be saintliness of life. Communion, whether with Divine or created natures, must have its foundation in similarity of moral character. To see God we must be like Him. (Daniel Moore, M. A.)Saintly citizenship 1. Believers are fellow citizens. (1) Bound to seek each other’ s good.(2) Bound to conform to the customs of their city.(3) This teaches us our happiness when we are brought to believe, and should stimulate our faith.(4) Citizens of Bethel must not communicate with Babylon. 2. Believers are conjoined as members of one family. This is a stricter bond than the former, and should serve to increase love. We being confined within one family, a common roof under which we all live and board, we must be all of one heart, at peace and unity; and the God of love and peace will be with us. 3. It is God’ s family. (1) Therefore we must live to Him. The household is bound to obey its master.(2) How dishonouring to God are the sins of those who profess to be His!(3) The Lord will make due provision for His household.(4) Those who have servants under them, should learn from this to be kind and just to them; for they and we are all fellow servants in the family of God. (Paul Bayne.)Fellow citizens “ It is not good for man to be alone.” There are few things more terrible than to be utterly friendless and alone in the world. One of the most awful forms of punishment is solitary confinement, and many a poor prisoner has grown gray and old in a few years, or has gone mad, because he was not allowed to see, or speak to, a fellow creature. In days gone by, we read that one of these unhappy captives actually made friends with a spider, finding the company of an insect better than absolute solitude; and that another captive devoted all his thought and affection on a prison flower. Quite lately I read of a prisoner in one of our gaols who had tamed a rat as a companion, and who became almost mad when his only friend was taken from him. We have all heard of the sufferings of those who have been cast away in shipwreck upon lonely islands, with no companion to share their exile. But let Christ’ s servant be where he will, on lonely island, in solitary prison, among crowds of strangers, he is never alone, because he believes in the communion of saints. I. Fellowship with the martyrs. We need not die for Christ in order to be His martyrs. St. Paul would have been a martyr if he had died quietly in his bed, and never felt the sword of the Roman headsman. His years of patient suffering in Christ’ s service, his bold preaching in the face of persecution and death, made him the faithful martyr of Jesus. And so now, those of us who are trying to do their duty where God has put them, doing what is right at any cost, bearing loss, trouble, insult, it may be, rather than commit sin, they are Christ’ s martyrs, no matter how lowly and obscure their lives may be. II. Fellowship with the prophets. But you may say, “ How can I do the work of a preacher or prophet like Elijah, or Jonah, or Ezekiel, or the rest?” You need not be preachers as they were, yet you can be like them. They were not afraid to speak the truth, they were not too timid to rebuke vice wherever they saw it. They defended the honour of God and His Church at all times, and never thought of their own safety. Now you, my brothers, can be brave for Jesus; show that you are not ashamed of your Master, or your Christian calling. III. Fellowship with the apostles. The name apostle means one who is sent forth; the first apostles of Jesus were sent to preach the gospel to every creature. We, as Christian men and women, are all, in one sense, apostles. The pure man, the honest man, the faithful man, is an apostle of Jesus; his life is a gospel, a sermon on purity, honesty, faith. The temperate man is a preacher; his example is the best lesson on self-control. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)The relation of the members to the heed of the household The phrase now before us, “ the household of God,” is but a reflection of the ever-recurring reference in the teaching of Christ to God as the Father, both of Himself and of men. The idea of a household grows out of Christ’ s idea of God as Father, just as the idea in the word citizen in the previous part of the verse grows out of Christ’ s conception of the kingdom of God. It is to this idea of the Christian society as a household we now give our attention. In another place, regarding it, not in the light of its head, but of the spirit which binds us to this head, he calls it “ the household of faith.” Now what are the essentials of a household? A household is a society marked by diversity in unity. It is like light, which is composed of the many colours of the spectrum, each colour having a character of its own, but when all are combined forming the pure white light by which we see and work. So a household is a combination--a unity of different characters under one head. And this is the true conception of the Christian society we call the Church. Without the diversity it would be as uninteresting as the grains of wheat in the garner--which are all alike; without the unity it would not be a society at all. Let us see what each involves: I. Of the diversity.1. A household is not an institution founded on identity of thought. Each member of it may have ideas of his own. Such diversity grows naturally out of the variety of character and mind of its members. It is only another side of the same truth to say-- 2. in a household identity of experience as not essential. There is as great a variety of inward life as of mental thought in the members of a family, The differences of feeling are as great as those of intellect. II. Of the unity of the household. In what does it consist? Unmistakably in loyalty to its head. Loyalty in a home is only another name for love. The children may have different conceptions of the head of the family; they may regard him in different ways; but if they be loyal, loving, they are a real part of the household. Within this limit there is room for almost endless diversity. One child may understand one part of his father’ s character, and another may understand another part. The boys may appreciate best the business capacity of their father, and the girls may best discern the tenderer home side of that character. One may appreciate his intellectual qualities, and another his practical ability. But all belong to the household who look up to and trust him as the head. So it is in the household of God--one mind may be compelled by its very nature to grapple with the problems of the Divine Nature; another may be able to believe without attempting to prove. One may need definitions and theories, another may quietly rest in the Lord. But the central, essential thing is to be loyal to the Head. And closely connected with, yea, a part of such loyalty, is, obedience to the Head. Obedience is loyalty in action. Works are the fruit of faith. (W. G. Herder.)The relation of the members of the household to one another Sonship is one side of the home relationship, brotherhood is the other. No one can be a good son unless he be a good brother. The true parent cares as much for right feeling among his children as for right feeling to himself. It is perhaps more difficult to be loyal to our brethren than it is to be loyal to the head. Where the head is concerned the idea of authority comes in, but where the members are concerned the relationship must be even more spontaneous. The child may be afraid to offend his father, but that feeling does not arise in relation to those who are his brothers or sisters. The father will probably not put so severe a strain on the loyalty of his children as they may do one to another. Rivalry is not so likely to spring up between child and parent as between brothers and sisters. Age, which naturally wakens deference to the parent, is not present to the same degree to waken it between those whose years are more on an equality. For these, and many similar reasons, it is more difficult to keep unity in the household than between the household and its head. But the New Testament is quite as insistent on the one as on the other. There should be room for all diversities of character, that by contact and converse they may modify and balance one another, the solemn moderating the merry, the merry brightening the solemn, the poetic elevating the practical, the practical steadying the poetic, the guileless quickening faith in the calculating, the calculating preserving the guileless from being deceived. This is a part of the Divine method of education for our life. We are members one of another, so that no one may say to another: “ I have no need of thee.” The peace of a family is gone if any one member seek to dominate the rest, and always have his own way. Many a household has been ruined by self-will. And more than aught beside, this has rent asunder the household of God. Closely connected with such--indeed, lying at the root of self-will--is the idea of infallibility. Such a confidence in our own opinions that all others are regarded as erroneous. The learned Dr. Thompson, late Master of Trinity College, once said “ None of us are infallible, not even the youngest.” Nothing is more irritating--nothing is more likely to disturb the unity of the home or of the Church, than some one member who poses as an oracle. This is but the negative side of the matter. These are the things to be avoided. There is a positive side: things to be done. The true conception of a household is of a company in which the resources of each of the members are at the service of all the rest. It should be a ministering company. The joy of one should be the joy of all. The sorrow of one should be the sorrow of all. A company in which the strong bear the infirmities of the weak, and not please themselves. Those on the hilltop of faith moving down to those in the valley of doubt, to lead them to the height of vision. The glad and merry bearing some of the sunshine of their nature to the morbid and gloomy. In such ministries, prompted of love, the home consists, whether it be of man or of God. Indeed, the home is but the miniature of the greater household of God. A home is not made by those who live and eat and sleep under the same roof. It may be a hotel, it is not a home. The home does not begin to be until it is a place of mutual ministries, inspired of love. And the household of God is not constituted by men and women who hold the same creed, repeat the same prayers, join in the same sacraments--these are but the form, the letter; not until the spirit of love, reaching out to mutual help, arises, is it worthy of the name of a household of God. (W. G. Herder.)Fellow citizens with the saints In the text, St. Paul sets forth the privileges of the Gentile state, that is, of our state, by a very intelligible figure, by a figure especially understood in that day. The inhabitants, or rather I should say, the actual and acknowledged and free members, of particular cities, then enjoyed particular rights and benefits, to a greater extent than is usually found amongst us; and this was particularly the case with regard to the city of Rome, the then mistress of the world; of which city the apostle himself was a free-born citizen, and found the benefit of his birthright on several occasions. While strangers and foreigners then were disowned, and often unprotected and despised, the citizen was regarded and honoured and cherished wherever he went. And the Church of God is here compared, in this respect, to a city, of which the Israelites had formerly been the only true members, had alone enjoyed the blessings; the rest of mankind being in the situation of strangers and foreigners. But circumstances are now totally altered: the Gentile believers are no longer excluded from the privileges of the people of God; they are become fellow citizens of the spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem. Now, let us first inquire what is the nature and extent of this city, of which we are made the privileged members? what the family into which we are admitted? It is the whole body of Jehovah’ s accepted people throughout the universe: the whole family of the blest, wherever they are to be found. But it is not to the present race of mortals that our fellowship is confined: we have communion also with the saints at rest, with all that ever lived and died, from Adam to the present generation. The new dispensation is united with the old; they are both one; we may say one gospel; being parts of that same grand scheme of redemption, which was framed and declared from the beginning, for the recovery and salvation of mankind. But, indeed, we have not yet surveyed the length and breadth of that community, into which we have been received as members. The angels, the highest angels, form a part thereof; we are one with them; our city is theirs, and our Lord is theirs. Of the blessed Jesus, “ the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” (J. Slade, M. A.)The communion of saints He that walks in communion with the saints, travels in company: he dwells in a city where one house sustains another, to which Jerusalem is compared. (H. G. Salter.)The best fellowship The Rev. James Owen, of Shrewsbury, being asked on his deathbed, whether he would have some of his friends sent for to keep him company, replied, “ My fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ; and he that is not satisfied with that company doth not deserve it.” Ephesians 2:20; Ephesians 2:22 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.The Christian Church I. The apostle represents the Church under the figure of a city and a household.1. A Church must resemble a family or city, in respect of order and government; for without these a religious society can no more subsist, than a civil community or a household. 2. In a city or household all the members have a mutual relation, and partake in the common privileges; and, though they are placed in different stations and conditions, they must all contribute to the general happiness. 3. In a city, and also in a family, there is a common interest. 4. In a well-ordered city or household there will be peace and unity: so there ought to be in a Christian Church. II. The manner in which it is founded. The mediation of Christ is the foundation of our faith and hope. III. This spiritual house must be united with and framed into, the foundation. IV. As the spiritual house must rest on the foundation, so the several parts of it must be framed and inserted into each other. V. It must be continually growing. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)God’ s temple: its foundation, building, and consecration I. The foundation laid.1. The foundation is Jesus Christ--the foundation of the apostles and prophets, i.e., which they laid. It was laid in the promises, types, and prophecies of the Old Testament, and the witness of apostles and evangelists in the New (John 3:14; 1 Corinthians 10:4; Matthew 16:16). 2. The foundation of the Church must be the foundation of each member of the Church. The essence of a foundation lies in its strength. The foundation in individual character is truth. Truth is a Person--“ I am the Truth.” The foundation, therefore, is the truth concerning Jesus Christ believed, loved, and lived. The gospel thus received becomes a principle which forms the mainspring of a new life. II. The building rising.1. Look abroad upon the face of the world, and note the advances which the Church is making in all parts. The very hindrances to missionary work prove its success, for the more active the servants of God are, the more active the agents of Satan will be. 2. The building must rise in each heart. Growth is almost the only proof of life. The growth of the temple is due to the operation of the Spirit. 3. In most forms of life there is an exquisite symmetry. We see something of it in this temple: “ fitly framed together.” As there is a beautiful proportion in the doctrines of the gospel, so, though God’ s servants are many and their gifts various, their aim is one; and through their united wisdom and love and effort, all the building groweth into a holy temple in the Lord. III. The temple consecrated.1. We may refer the consecration to the end of the age, because consecration usually follows upon completion. 2. But even now there is to a certain extent a consecration of this building (1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:16). How shall I know this? (1) By self-consecration. Yield yourselves unto God (Romans 6:13), not simply your brain, pen, money, influence, but “ yourselves.” God wants the man--the whole man. (2) By God-consecration. He who gives himself to God will surely find God giving Himself to him, consecrating His temple by His presence, and indicating that presence by holy aspirations and a Christ-like disposition, by meekness and gentleness, by self-denial and zeal. He who is spirit taught and spirit wrought will be such a temple as the great God of heaven will not despise. (W. J. Chapman, M. A.)The Church, a building Like a building, the Church of God has been going on to the present day, and will do to the end of time. The honour and stability of this building.1. As built upon Christ. 2. As wrought by the Spirit. 3. As an habitation of God. “ Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in,” etc. (Psalms 68:16). “ In Salem also is His tabernacle, and His dwelling place in Zion (Psalms 76:2). This denotes-- (1) His knowledge of them.(2) His concern for them.(3) Their access to Him.(4) His readiness to help them. “ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved,” etc. (Psalms 46:5). Each member in Christ has his state and office in the Church by God’ s appointment, for promoting the good and glory of the whole. “ And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets,” etc. (Ephesians 4:11, etc.). “ But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body,” etc. (1 Corinthians 12:18). No spiritual life and salvation without being united to Christ by faith. (H. Foster, M. A.)The Church I. The unbelieving state of the Gentile Church. “ Strangers.”1. Strangers to God. To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Ephesians 2:12.2. Strangers to the Word of God (Psalms 119:158).3. Strangers to the Church of God (1 John 3:1).4. Strangers to themselves (Revelation 3:17).5. Strangers to the enjoyments, fears, duties, privileges, persecutions, and prospects of a Christian (1 Corinthians 2:11). “ Foreigners.”1. Naturally of another race (Psalms 51:5).2. Under the authority of another prince (2 Corinthians 4:4).3. Of a totally different complexion (Jeremiah 13:23).4. Speaking another language (Psalms 58:3).5. Seeking other interests than God (Philippians 2:21).6. At an infinite distance from the celestial kingdom, where only true happiness rests (Ephesians 2:13). II. Their adopted or privileged condition. “ Fellow citizens,” etc. The city they belong to is either the Church below, or the Church above.1. It is the city of God (Hebrews 12:22).2. Of God’ s building (Psalms 127:1).3. Where He dwells (Psalms 68:16).4. Which is strongly fortified (Isaiah 26:1).5. It is delightfully situated by the river of God’ s love (Psalms 46:4).6. Endowed with various privileges (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).7. Peopled with high-born inhabitants (John 1:13). The Church of God above.1. This is a city of God’ s preparing (John 14:2-3).2. There He has His more especial residence (1 Corinthians 13:12).3. The inhabitants are angels and saints (Hebrews 12:22-23).4. Of this city we are also citizens (Galatians 4:26).5. Set apart by the Father’ s grace (Jude 1:1).6. By the work of Christ in their behalf (Hebrews 10:14).7. And by the agency of the Holy Ghost (Romans 5:5).8. And having a right to a name and a place in the Church on earth; so have they their citizenship in heaven (Job 16:19).9. This they have not by birth, nor purchase, but by the free grace of God, which gives them both a right and meetness (2 Timothy 1:9). 10. And believing Gentiles are here made equal with the Jews in the blessings of salvation (Ephesians 2:14). “ And of the household of God.”1. The Church of God consisting of believers (Acts 5:14).2. This family is named after, and by Christ (Ephesians 3:14-15).3. Of this family God is the Father (John 20:17).4. Christ is the first-born (Romans 8:29).5. Ministers are stewards of this house (1 Corinthians 4:1).6. To this family all believers belong (Acts 4:32).7. Not by birth, nor merit, but by adopting grace (Ephesians 1:5).8. The members of this family are freed from all bondage (Romans 8:15).9. They can never be arrested or condemned (Romans 8:1). 10. They have liberty of access to God (Ephesians 2:18). 11. Share in the fulness of Christ’ s grace (Ephesians 3:19). 12. Are well taken care of (Psalms 145:20). 13. They are richly clothed (Isaiah 61:10). 14. They have plenty of provisions (Psalms 36:8). 15. And are heirs of a never-fading inheritance (1 Peter 1:4-5). III. The foundation and cornerstone are Christ. “ And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.”1. The Father saved them designedly in Christ (2 Timothy 1:9).2. The Son saved them positively in Himself (Hebrews 10:14).3. The Spirit saves them apprehensively in Christ (Titus 3:5).4. Christ, then, is the foundation of the Church (Matthew 16:18).5. He is the foundation of all covenant blessings (Ephesians 1:3).6. Of faith (Acts 20:21).7. Of hope (Colossians 1:27).8. Of peace (Ephesians 2:14).9. Of joy (Romans 5:11). 10. Of comfort (2 Thessalonians 2:17). 11. Of glory (Jude 1:25). 12. The stones of this building are hewn out by the Word, and the ministers of the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:7). “ Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.”1. He joins together Old and New Testament saints (Ephesians 2:14).2. Saints above and saints below (Hebrews 12:23).3. Saints in all parts of the world (John 11:52).4. This stone is refused by many (Psalms 118:22).5. Yet a durable and precious stone (Isaiah 28:16).6. It is a foundation cornerstone, reaching under the whole building to the four corners (1 Corinthians 3:11). IV. The perfection of the building. “ In whom all the building fitly framed together.”1. All the building--The universal Church of Christ (Acts 4:12).2. Fitly framed--Is of a spiritual nature (Colossians 2:19).3. It consists of various parts as a building does (Romans 12:4-5).4. Fitly or closely joined to Christ by living faith (Galatians 2:20).5. Banded to each other by Christian love (1 John 4:7).6. These are all set in the Church in exact symmetry and proportion (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). “ Groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.”1. It grows by the accession of elect souls, newly called by Divine grace (Acts 2:47).2. It is not yet openly and visibly completed, but it will be in the calling of the Jews and the fulness of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25-26). “ Holy temple” ; alluding to the temple at Jerusalem.1. Whose stones were prepared before they were brought into the building.2. Whose magnificence and beauty were very great.3. A place of holy worship (2 Corinthians 6:16). “ In the Lord.”1. There is no salvation, blessing, or holiness but in the Lord (Colossians 3:11). V. The design of this temple. “ In whom ye are builded together.” Then it appears from what has been said, that God is the builder, Christ the foundation, and believers are the materials of this temple.1. The door of entrance is faith in Christ (Hebrews 11:6).2. Ministers of the gospel are pillars (Galatians 2:9).3. The ordinances are its windows (Exodus 20:24).4. Its provisions are large and entertaining (Psalms 132:15). It denotes--(1) Agreement.(2) Combination.(3) Strength.(4) Perpetuity. “ For a habitation of God through the Spirit.”1. God dwells in the Church in the person of Christ (2 Corinthians 6:16).2. The Church dwells in God by her union to Christ (1 John 4:13).3. It is a spiritual dwelling that is here intended, both of God in us, and of us in God (Romans 8:9-10). (T. B. Baker.)The true foundation When the immense stone piers of the East River bridge were begun, three or four years ago, the builders did not attempt to manufacture a foundation. They simply dug down through the mud and sand, and found the solid bedrock which the Almighty Creator had laid there thousands of years ago. It is a wretched mistake to suppose that you need to construct a foundation. “ Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Your own merits, however, cemented by good resolutions, will no more answer for a solid base than would a cart-load of bricks as the substratum of yonder stupendous bridge. God has provided for you a cornerstone already. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)Jesus our Rock For a whole week, riot only bishop but all the priests and friars of the city (Exeter) visited Bennet night and day. But they tried in vain to prove to him that the Roman Church was the true one. “ God has given me grace to be of a better Church,” he said. “ Do you know that ours is built upon St. Peter?” “ The Church that is built upon a man,” he replied, “ is the devil’ s Church, and not God’ s.”… At the place of execution he exhorted with such unction, that the sheriff’ s clerk exclaimed, “ Truly this is a servant of God!” Two persons, going up to the martyr, exclaimed in a threatening voice, “ Say, ‘Precor sanctam Mariam et omnes sanctos Dei.’” “ I know no other advocate but Jesus Christ,” replied Bennet. (J. H. M. D’Aubigne, D. D.)A new and physical metaphor In these verses there is a sudden change from a political to a physical metaphor, possibly suggested by the word “ household.” The metaphor itself, of the Church as “ a building of God” --frequently used in the New Testament reaches its full perfection in this passage.1. It starts, of course, from the words of our Lord (Matthew 16:18), “ On this rock I will build My Church” ; but in the use of it sometimes the prominent idea is of the growth by addition of individual stones, sometimes of the complex unity of the building as a whole. 2. The former idea naturally occurs first, connecting itself, indeed, with the still more personal application of the metaphor to the “ edification” of the individual to be a temple of God (found, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 Corinthians 10:23; 1 Corinthians 14:4; 2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 10:8). Thus in 1 Corinthians 3:9, from “ ye are God’ s building,” St. Paul passes at once to the building of individual character on the one foundation; in 1 Corinthians 14:4-5; 1 Corinthians 14:12; 1 Corinthians 14:26, the edification of the Church has reference to the effect of prophecy on individual souls; in 1 Peter 2:5, the emphasis is still on the building up of “ living stones” upon “ a living stone” (Comp. Acts 20:32). 3. In this Epistle the other idea--the idea of unity--is always prominent, though not exclusive of the other (as here and in Ephesians 4:12-16). But that this conception of unity is less absolute than that conveyed by the metaphor of the body will be seen by noting that it differs from it in three respects first, that it carries with it the notion of a more distinct individuality in each stone; next, that it conveys (as in the “ grafting in” of Romans 11:17) the idea of continual growth by accretion of individual souls drawn to Christ; lastly, that it depicts the Church as having more completely a distinct, though not a separate, existence from Him who dwells in it. (On this last point compare the metaphor of the spouse of Christ in Ephesians 5:25-33.) Hence it is naturally worked out with greater completeness in an Epistle which has so especially for its object the evolution of the doctrine of “ the one Holy Catholic Church.” (A. Barry, D. D.)Living temples My brethren, it becomes of the utmost importance to inquire, Have we a place in this spiritual building? Are we daily striving, as St. Jude exhorts us, to “ pray in the Holy Ghost,” and to “ build up ourselves on our most holy faith” ? I. That we may know what our state is, what our hope towards God, let us, first, ask ourselves, Am I resting on the sure foundation? St. Paul tells us what it is: “ Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” II. Again: let us ask ourselves, Do we bear always in mind that we are called to be “ a holy temple in the Lord,” “ an habitation of God through the Spirit” ?1. A temple gives us the idea of dedication. Do we look upon ourselves as those who are set apart unto holiness, and ought not to be conformed unto this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God? 2. A temple also gives us the idea of God’ s immediate presence (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19). This is a thought full of awe, and full of comfort. God is present in the hearts of them that believe, not as He appeared of old in the Temple at Jerusalem, shining above the mercy seat in a cloud of glory such as man’ s eye could see (John 14:23). And how should we regard our mortal body, if we believed it to be the temple of the Spirit of God? 3. A temple gives us the idea of continual service. 4. That the work of grace ought to be advancing in us. For what says St. Paul? “ Growing unto an holy temple in the Lord.” (E. Blencowe, M. A.)The Christian temple Temples have always excited feelings of the deepest interest in the human race. They generally contain within themselves, and in the materials with which they are constructed, much that is beautiful and grand. They form a kind of middle step between earth and heaven, where faith and sense meet and unite to indulge in contemplations suited to their varied powers and capacities. The Greeks and the Romans were perhaps the most superstitious people in the world, they covered their land with the most bewitching forms of their idolatry; their temples were of the most costly and splendid description. Among all the temples of antiquity, none were equal to the temple at Ephesus dedicated to Diana. It was the boast of ancient Greece, and one of the wonders of the world. Upwards of two hundred years elapsed during its construction, many sovereigns assisted in its progress with no small portion of their revenues. And it was considered peculiarly sacred in consequence of the figure of Diana which it possessed; and which popular report ascribed to Jupiter as his donation. To check the enthusiasm, and in some degree to extinguish the admiration which, notwithstanding the power of Christianity, still lingered in the minds of some members of the Ephesian Church, it is supposed that the apostle used the words of our text in his Epistle to that Church. He there places in contrast to the temple of Diana another fabric in every respect infinitely superior--the Church of God: while the former temple was built upon wooden piles driven into the earth, the latter rests upon the writings of the apostles and prophets; while the materials of the former were all earthly, the materials of the latter are, by the grace of God in the regeneration of the human mind, spiritual and Divine; while the former was devoted to the rites of idolatry and superstition, the latter is sacred to the service of the true and living God; while the former could only boast of the image of its goddess, the latter has the presence, the indwelling presence of its own Maker--the Creator of the world. Other persons, however, imagine that the allusion here made is not to the temple of Diana, but to that more sacred fabric erected by Solomon upon Mount Zion. This was heavenly in its design, gorgeous in its material; it was the residence of Jehovah, and the type of the Christian Church. The Church, then, in this passage is set forth under the figure of a temple; we shall consider-- I. Its foundation. Prophets and apostles are here associated, Their theme was the same. The prophets predicted the Messiah who was to come, and the apostle recorded the history of the Messiah who had come; the one foretold the redemption to be accomplished, the other wrote of redemption finished and complete. And thus together they form a magnificent communication made from the invisible to the visible world; they resemble together the cherubim upon the ark of the covenant, turning their faces towards each other, and both together towards the mercy seat. II. The superstructure of this temple. It often happens in the history of human affairs and transactions that men lay the foundation without being able to raise the superstructure; not so, however, with God. The building will rise and it will be equal to the basis.1. We shall consider the nature of the material of which the superstructure is to be composed. The Apostle Peter has a very beautiful description of it in the second chapter of his first Epistle, at the fourth and fifth verses, “ To whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious.” “ Living stone.” The superstructure resembling the foundation, the foundation equal to the superstructure. 2. We will notice the symmetry of the building: “ fitly framed together” ; not a heap of misshapen ruins huddled together into a mass of inextricable confusion; not a clumsy fabric raised by joiners and masons without skill; everything is arrayed in beautiful order, all the parts dove-tailed into each other, everything is fitly framed in its proper place, and rightly connected. III. I come now, in the third place, to the design of the building. It was to be “ an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Now let us consider the presence of God in the Church--in this building. It is an invisible presence, there is no sound of thunder like that which indicated His dwelling upon Sinai; no cloud of glory like that which indicated His presence with Israel is here; He is spiritual. He is a Spirit and must have a spiritual house. But it is a real presence, and here is the real presence in the Church. (J. A. James.)Truth--a strong foundation You will observe that the historical order--which is the order of time--is inverted, and the “ apostles” are placed before the “ prophets.” And for this reason: because, in the sentence, we are descending the “ foundation.” The “ apostles” are laid on the “ prophets,” and the “ prophets” are laid on “ Christ.” This is the way that our faith touches God. The Bible rests on God--we rest on the Bible: so we reach God. It will not be out of place if I take occasion to say here to you what I often say to those whom I have under instruction--what are the four great proofs of inspiration?1. The presumptive proof, of which I have been speaking--that we should expect that, when God has made such a creature as man, He would give to that creature some revelation of Himself. 2. The internal evidence. The authorship of the books of the Bible spreads over a period of nearly sixteen hundred years. There is one pervading current of thought. How could that agreement be, unless it had been dictated by some one Master-mind? And what could that Master-mind be, but God? 3. The external evidence. This book--from beginning to end--is full of prophecy. Could any human mind, unassisted, have done that? Could any but God do that? Then God wrote the Bible. 4. The experimental evidence. The book exactly fits the heart. I feel it when I read it; whoever made my heart made that book. The two must have one origin, and that origin must have been God. Thus, then, I arrive at the firm conviction that “ the apostles and prophets” are a “ sure foundation” on which to build our creed and our salvation, being themselves built on “ the chief cornerstone.” We get, then, at the “ foundation” of “ truth,” “ truth” in its two-fold strength--“ prophetic truth,” “ apostolic truth” ; “ prophetic truth” representing the Old Testament,--“ apostolic truth” representing the blew Testament--and both on Christ. What is “ prophetic truth” ? Taken in its broad outline, it is this: the affairs, the destinies of this world all under the one watchful eye, and the one superintending hand, of Almighty God. To Him, all time is one unbroken now. And “ apostolic truth” is this. This world has been the scene of a great mission. Christ, the Son of God, has been here, and He hath been careful to extend and perpetuate the knowledge of His mission, and all its benefits by missionaries, whom He hath sent to all the world. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Thy spiritual building 1. Faith makes us lean on Christ, as a building on a foundation. Our faith must not be a swimming conceit, but an assurance, making us stay on our God. 2. The Church is built on Christ. The firmness of the house is according to the sureness of the foundation. How impregnable, then, is the Church! (Matthew 16:19; Psalms 125:1). (1) The standing of Christians is sure.(2) How insecure is the condition of wicked men. 3. The gospel builds us on no other foundation than that which was laid by the prophets from the beginning. The first preaching differs from the last not in substance but degree; we believe through our Lord Jesus Christ to be saved, even as they. There never was but one way of salvation. The sun rising, and at noon, differ not in substance. Christ is the kernel of both Testaments; blossom and ripe fruit. 4. Whatever is to be believed, must have prophetic and apostolic authority. (1) Be not deluded with traditions.(2) Stand not too much on the authority of men.(3) Praise God for the fulness of Scripture. 5. We must rely on Christ for a sure foundation to uphold us. As one would cling by a rock, so must we by Christ. Peter and others are builders: Christ alone is the foundation. Let there be no mistake as to this. (Paul Bayne.)The foundation of the apostles and prophets In spite of much ancient and valuable authority, it seems impossible to take “ the prophets” of this verse to be the prophets of the Old Testament. The order of the two words and the comparison of Eph 3:5; Ephesians 4:11 appear to be decisive--to say nothing of the emphasis on the present, in contrast with the past, which runs through the whole chapter. But it is more difficult to determine in what sense “ the foundation of the apostles and prophets” is used. Of the three possible senses, that(1) which makes it equivalent to “ the foundation on which apostles and prophets are built,” viz., Jesus Christ Himself, may be dismissed as taking away any special force from the passage, and as unsuitable to the next clause. The second (2), “ the foundation laid by apostles and prophets” --still, of course, Jesus Christ Himself--is rather forced, and equally fails to accord with the next clause, in which our Lord is not the foundation, but the cornerstone. The most natural interpretation (3), followed by most ancient authorities, which makes the apostles and prophets to be themselves “ the foundation,” has been put aside by modern commentators in the true feeling that ultimately there is but “ one foundation” (1 Corinthians 3:11), and in a consequent reluctance to apply that name to any but Him. But it is clear that in this passage St. Paul deliberately varies the metaphor in relation to our Lord, making Him not the foundation, or both foundation and cornerstone, but simply the cornerstone, “ binding together,” according to Chrysostom’ s instructive remark, “ both the walls and the foundations.” Hence the word “ foundation” seems to be applied in a true, although secondary sense, to the apostles and prophets; just as in the celebrated passage (Matthew 16:18) our Lord must be held at any rate to connect St. Peter with the foundation on which the Church is built; and as in Revelation 21:14, “ the foundations” bear “ the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” It is true that in this last passage we have the plural instead of the singular, and that the passage itself, is not, as this is, a dogmatic passage. But these considerations are insufficient to destroy the analogy. The genius, therefore, of this passage itself, supported by the other cognate passages, leads us to what may be granted to be an unexpected but a perfectly intelligible expression. The apostles and prophets are the foundation; yet, of course, only as setting forth in word and grace Him, who is the cornerstone. (A. Barry, D. D.)Christ the cornerstone The metaphor is drawn, of course, from Psalms 118:22 (applied by our Lord to Himself in Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17; and by St. Peter to Him in Acts 4:11), or from Isaiah 28:16 (quoted with the other passage in 1 Peter 2:6-7); in which last it may be noted that both the metaphors are united, and “ the tried cornerstone” is also “ the sure foundation.” In itself it does not convey so obvious an idea of uniqueness and importance as that suggested by the “ keystone” of an arch, or the “ apex stone” of a pyramid; but it appears to mean a massive cornerstone, in which the two lines of the wall at their foundation meet, by which they were bonded together, and on the perfect squareness of which the true direction of the whole walls depended, since the slightest imperfection in the cornerstone would be indefinitely multiplied along the course of the walls. The doctrine which, if taken alone, it would convey, is simply the acceptance of our Lord’ s perfect teaching and life, as the one determining influence both of the teaching and institutions, which are the basis of the Church, and of the superstructure in the actual life of the members of the Church itself. By such acceptance both assume symmetry and “ stand four-square to all the winds that blow.” (See Revelation 21:16.) That this is not the whole truth seems to be implied by the variation from the metaphor in the next verse. (A. Barry, D. D.)Jesus Christ Himself I. With Jesus Christ Himself we begin by saying, first, that Jesus Himself is the essence of His own work, and, therefore, how readily we ought to trust Him. Jesus Himself is the soul of His own salvation. How does the apostle describe it? “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Because of this, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the object of our faith. “ Look unto Me,” “ Come unto Me.” How very simple, easy, natural, ought faith to be henceforth! II. “ Jesus Christ Himself” is the substance of the gospel, and therefore how closely should we study Him. While He was hero He taught His disciples, and the object of His teaching was that they might know Himself, and through Him might know the Father. Whatever else they may be ignorant of, it is essential to disciples that they know their Lord. His nature, character, mind, spirit, object, power, we must know--in a word, we must know Jesus Himself.1. This, beloved, is the work of the Holy Spirit. “ He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.” The Holy Ghost reveals Christ to us and in us. 2. Because Jesus is the sum of the gospel, He must be our constant theme. Put out the sun, and light is gone, life is gone, all is gone. The more of Christ in our testimony, the more of light and life and power to save. III. Jesus Christ Himself is the object of our love, and how dear He should be. The love of a truth is all very well, but the love of a person has far more power in it. We have heard of men dying for an idea, but it is infinitely more easy to awaken enthusiasm for a person. When an idea becomes embodied in a man, it has a force which, in its abstract form, it never wielded. Jesus Christ is loved by us as the embodiment of everything that is lovely, and true, and pure, and of good report. He Himself is incarnate perfection, inspired by love. We love His offices, we love the types which describe Him, we love the ordinances by which He is set forth, but we love Himself best of all.1. Because we love Him, we love His people, and through Him we enter into union with them. We are at one with every man who is at one with Christ. So warm is the fire of our love to Jesus that all His friends may sit at it, and welcome. Our circle of affection comprehends all who in any shape or way have truly to do with Jesus Himself. 2. Because we love Himself we delight to render service to Him. Whatever service we do for His Church, and for His truth, we do for His sake; even if we can only render it to the least of His brethren we do it unto Him. IV. Jesus Christ Himself is the source of all our joy. How ought we to rejoice, when we have such a springing well of blessedness. What a joy to think that Jesus is risen--risen to die no more: the joy of resurrection is superlative. V. Jesus Christ Himself is the model of our life, and therefore how blessed it is to be like Him. As to our rule for life, we are like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration when Moses and Elias had vanished, for we see “ no man save Jesus only.” Every virtue found in other men we find in Him in greater perfection; we admire the grace of God in them, but Jesus Himself is our pattern. It was once said of Henry VIII, by a severe critic, that if the characteristics of all the tyrants that had ever lived had been forgotten, they might all have been seen to the life in that one king: we may more truly say of Jesus, if all graces, and virtues, and sweetnesses which have ever been seen in good men could all be forgotten, you might find them all in Him: for in Him dwells all that is good and great. We, therefore, desire to copy His character and put our feet into His footprints. VI. Lastly, He is the Lord of our soul. How sweet it will be to be with Him. We find today that His beloved company makes everything move pleasantly, whether we run in the way of His commands, or traverse the valley of the shadow of death. A poor girl, lying in the hospital, was told by the doctor or the nurse that she could only live another hour. She waited patiently, and when there remained only one quarter of an hour more, she exclaimed: “ One more quarter of an hour, and then.” She could not say what, and neither can I; only Jesus Himself hath said, “ Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.” And as He has prayed, so it shall be, and so let it be. Amen and Amen. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Jesus Christ Himself the proof of the gospel The religion of our Lord Jesus Christ contains in it nothing so wonderful as Himself. It is a mass of marvels, but He is the miracle of it; the wonder of wonders is “ The Wonderful” Himself. If proof be asked of the truth which He proclaimed, we point men to Jesus Christ Himself. His character is unique. We defy unbelievers to imagine another like Him. He is God and yet man, and we challenge them to compose a narrative in which the two apparently incongruous characters shall be so harmoniously blended--in which the human and Divine shall be so marvellously apparent, without the one overshading the other. They question the authenticity of the four Gospels; will they try and write a fifth? Will they even attempt to add a few incidents to the life which shall be worthy of the sacred biography, and congruous with those facts which are already described? If it be all a forgery, will they be so good as to show us how it is done? Will they find a novelist who will write another biography of a man of any century they choose, of any nationality, or of any degree of experience, or any rank or station, and let us see if they can describe in that imaginary life a devotion, a self-sacrifice, a truthfulness, a completeness of character at all comparable to that of Jesus Christ Himself? Can they invent another perfect character even if the Divine element be left out? They must of necessity fail, for there is none like unto Jesus Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Jesus Christ Himself the marrow and essence of the gospel When the Apostle Paul meant that the gospel was preached he said, “ Christ is preached,” for the gospel is Christ Himself. If you want to know what Jesus taught, know Himself. He is the incarnation of that truth which by Him and in Him is revealed to the sons of men. Did He not Himself say, “ I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” ? You have not to take down innumerable tomes, nor to pore over mysterious sentences of double meaning in order to know what our great Teacher has revealed, you have but to turn and gaze upon His countenance, behold His actions, and note His spirit, and you know His teaching. He lived what He taught. If we wish to know Him, we may hear His gentle voice saying, “ Come and see.” Study His wounds, and you understand His innermost philosophy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Home symbols Did you ever think how every part of your house can remind you of the great truths which Jesus Christ taught about Himself? The cornerstone says, “ Christ is the cornerstone” ; the door, “ I am the door” ; the burning candle, “ I am the Light of the world” ; the corridor, “ I am the Way.” Look out of the window, and the sight of the starry sky bids you turn your eyes to “ the bright and morning Star.” The rising sun speaks to you of the “ rising of the Sun of Righteousness with healing on His wings.” The loaf on your table whispers of “ the Bread of Life,” and the water that quenches your thirst, “ I am the Living Water,” “ I am the Water of Life.” When you lie down you think of Him that “ had not where to lay His head,” and when you get up, you rejoice that He is “ the Resurrection and the Life.” (Sunday Teacher’s Treasury.)Growth in holiness When I was at Mr. Spurgeon’ s house he showed me the photographs of his two sons, who were twins, and whose photographs had been taken every year since they were twelve months old until they were seventeen years old. For the first two years they did not seem to have grown much, but when we compared the first with those of the age of seventeen they seemed to have grown amazingly. So it is with the children of God--they grow in grace. (D. L. Moody.)Growth and permanence “ What is the use of thee, thou gnarled sapling?” said a young larch tree to a young oak. “ I grow three feet in a year, thou scarcely as many inches; I am straight and taper as a reed, thou straggling and twisted as a loosened withe.” “ And thy duration,” answered the oak, “ is some third part of man’ s life, and I am appointed to flourish for a thousand years. Thou art felled and sawed into palings, where thou rottest and art burnt after a single summer; of me are fashioned battle-ships, and I carry mariners and heroes into unknown seas.” The richer a nature, the harder and slower its development. (T. Carlyle.)Necessity of holiness There is no heaven for us, without fitness for heaven. As the official at the Bank of England said to me about some sovereigns I wished to change into notes, “ If we take them in here they must be tested.” (B)The spiritual temple I. The foundation.1. Prophets--the Old Testament. Apostles--the New Testament. Jesus Christ--the Divine Being in whom both dispensations are united.2. This foundation is stable, sure.3. It gives dignity to the building.4. It is the only foundation. II. The superstructure.1. It will be a united building.2. It is a progressive building.3. It is a sanctified building. III. The materials.1. Believers in every age and clime.2. Notice the stones in their natural state.3. They are derived from different sources.4. They are in different stages of preparation.5. They must all be fashioned after the manner of the chief cornerstone.6. Here is a text by which you may each know whether or not you are in the building.7. These stones are bought with a price. (A. F. Barfield.)Christ a builder Christ builds on through all the ages. For the present, there has to be much destructive as well as constructive work done. Many a wretched hovel, the abode of sorrow and want, many a den of infamy, many a palace of pride, many a temple of idols, will have to be pulled down yet, and men’ s eyes will be blinded by the dust, and their hearts will ache as they look at the ruins. Be it so. The finished structure will obliterate the remembrance of poor buildings that cumbered its site. This Emperor of ours may indeed say, that He found the city of brick and made it marble. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The temple of the faithful 1. There is a special wisdom required in those who are to dispense the doctrine of faith; they must proceed by line and order. We do not entrust a piece of work of any importance but to those who are masters of their craft. Much more does the spiritual building require workmen who labour as they need not be ashamed (2 Timothy 2:15). And this teaches people how they should submit themselves to be framed and squared according as the ministry requires. Before a rough stone can be conveniently laid, it must be hewed by the mason, polished, and planed, and so brought to the rest of the building. So it is with you: you must be smoothed and planed before you can come to lie in this building. If ye be God’ s building, ye must be squared to His model. 2. The faithful have a close union with Christ and one another. As in a house the building, all of it, “ must be fitted to the foundation, and every part of it suit one with another, so in this building, which we are, there must be a straight coupling with the foundation, and correspondence one with another. In the material temple (the type of the spiritual) the walls or rows of stone that were in it were so squared that one piece did not bulge out above the other, but being laid together a man would have thought them one entire stone. So all the other things were so contrived, that window answered to window, door to door, chamber to chamber; there was a pleasant proportionableness in everything. In like manner must the multitude of believers be all laid on one foundation, and all of them so even that they seem as one living stone, and every one answering most commodiously to another. And thus it is with the faithful in their union with Christ and with one another. Love makes the saints each seek the good of the other, and be serviceable each to other. 3. True believers grow up from day to day. Even as it is in great buildings, which are not at once begun and perfected, So do the stones of the spiritual temple go on growing till they come to perfection. Where we cease to grow, there we decline; he that wins not, loses. Leave off endeavour to be better, and you will soon cease to be good. 4. Believers are a temple for God’ s habitation. (1) A great dignity.(2) Defile not the temple of God. To do so is sacrilege.(3) Avoid all profanation of it. 5. Believers must be sanctified throughout. 6. Believers grow by the power of Christ. The Church still goes forward, in spite of heresies, persecutions, all scandals of life, all the gates of hell, because God is its builder. (1) Let us look to Him for spiritual edification.(2) It should comfort us to know that in due time we shall be finished. God will make up all the breaches and ruins of our sinful nature, and build us up a glorious temple for Himself, wherein He will dwell forever. (Paul Bayne.)The building 1. Observe the term “ groweth,” intimating that the Church is ever enlarging her borders and adding to her members, either by the admission of the children of her members to the waters of baptism, or by the conversion of the heathen, and leading them to the same. And so it will continue, growing and increasing, until the consummation of all things: and God shall have accomplished the number of His elect. 2. Observe the expression, “ fitly framed together,” showing the order and subordination of the different members. Not a confused mass of building materials, without shape and order; but set in their several stations, by the great Master of the universe. 3. Observe how the whole glory of this is ascribed not to man, but to our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him the building is framed; in Him it groweth and increaseth; the power to do so coming from Him. (A. P. Perceval, B. C. L.)The growth of the new kingdom The growth of the body, on Christ’ s part, is spontaneous, and on man’ s, consentaneous. “ In whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.” It grows from Christ, but it grows in unity with our consenting affections. Christ never violates human freedom, but works in it, with it, and by it. “ What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? Ask, and ye shall receive.” “ According to your faith be it unto you.” He would open and develop in us much more of His purity and truth, goodness and beauty; but He waits for our desire, and by processes of wondrous wisdom and gentleness He seeks to beget in us that desire. If the spirit of the flesh in us be ardent, or the spiritual affections be lukewarm, the growth of the new nature will be retarded, or suspended. If it be necessary to receive Christ, in order to salvation, it is equally necessary to walk in Him, in a spirit of watchfulness and prayer, in order to growth. Inasmuch as “ all the building is growing in the Lord,” and according to His order, it will, in the end, not only be a glorious temple of humanity, but marvellously adapted for the indwelling and manifestation of God. “ I will dwell in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” I will fill them, and they shall represent My fulness. “ The whole building,” the redeemed of every generation, growing more and more into unity with each other, and with Christ, and through Him with all the hidden powers of the Godhead, is a work which is every way worthy of all Almighty Father. To what glory, to what beauty, will the kingdom grow? to what wisdom will its members attain? what will be their powers? what their fellowship? what their individual freedom of action? what their service and end, as one empire in the Son, and in the Father? At present there is much in human souls, much in the constitution of nature, and very much in the strife of the great spirit world, to hinder the full development of God’ s purpose in Christ. But all hindrances have their appointed limit. In due time, they will all be overmastered or removed; and God and the redeemed race will come into perfect relationship. (John Pulsford.)The growth of the structure The structure is in process of growth. It is not finished--the copestone has not been put upon it. The scaffolding occasionally disfigures it; yet even in its immature state, and with so much that is undeveloped, one may admire its beauty of outline, and its graceful form and proportions. Vast augmentations may be certainly anticipated; but its increase does not mutilate its adaptations, for it grows as “ being fitly framed together.” A structure not firm and compact is in the greater danger of falling the higher it is carried; and “ if it topple on our heads, what matter is it whether we are crushed by a Corinthian or a Doric ruin?” But this fabric, with walls of more than Cyclopean or Pelasgian strength and vastness, secures its own continuous and illimitable elevation. Provision is thus made for its increase, and without breach or delapidation it rises in height. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Christian unity All the redeemed are one body--many members, but still one great incorporation. “ Ye are builded together for an habitation of God, through the Spirit.” The materials of a house form no place of abode, while they lie scattered and separated. In the ancient tabernacle, the glory of the Lord did not appear till it was compacted and set up. The Divine presence rested not upon the stones and timber of the Temple till they were framed into the edifice. We may hence infer, that if we would enjoy the promised blessing, we should avoid strifes and divisions, and follow after peace, and the things whereby one may edify the other. (Anonymous.)The tabernacle of the Most High I. The Church is a building. Not a heap of stones shot together, but a building. Of old her Architect devised her. Methinks I see Him, as I look back into old eternity, making the first outline of His Church. “ Here,” saith He, in His eternal wisdom, “ shall be the cornerstone, and there shall be the pinnacle.” I see Him ordaining her length, and her breadth, appointing her gates and her doors with matchless skill, devising every part of her, and leaving no single portion of the structure unmapped. I see Him, that mighty Architect, also choosing to Himself every stone of the building, ordaining its size and its shape; settling upon His mighty plan the position each stone shall occupy, whether it shall glitter in front, or be hidden in the back, or buried in the very centre of the wall. I see Him marking not merely the bare outline, but all the fillings up; all being ordained, decreed, and settled, in the eternal covenant, which was the Divine plan of the mighty Architect upon which the Church is to be built. Looking on, I see the Architect choosing a cornerstone. He looks to heaven, and there are the angels, those glittering stones--He looks at each one of them from Gabriel down; but, saith He, “ None of you will suffice. I must have a cornerstone that will support all the weight of the building, for on that stone every other one must lean. O Gabriel, thou wilt not suffice I Raphael, thou must lay by; I cannot build with thee.” Yet was it necessary that a stone should be found, and one too that should be taken out of the same quarry as the rest. Where was he to be discovered? Was there a man who would suffice to be the cornerstone of this mighty building? Ah, no! neither apostles, prophets, nor teachers would. Put them all together, and they would be as a foundation of quicksand, and the house would totter to its fall. Mark how the Divine mind solved the difficulty--“ God shall become man, very man, and so He shall be of the same substance as the other stones of the temple; yet shall He be God, and therefore strong enough to bear all the weight of this mighty structure, the top whereof shall reach to heaven.” I see that foundation stone laid. Is there singing at the laying of it? No. There is weeping there. The angels gathered round at the laying of this first stone; and look, ye men, and wonder, the angels weep; the harps of heaven are clothed in sackcloth, and no song is heard. They sang together and shouted for joy when the world was made; why shout they not now? Look ye here, and see the reason. That stone is imbedded in blood. The first is laid; where are the rest? Shall we go and dig into the sides of Lebanon? Shall we find these precious stones in the marble quarries of kings? No. Whither are ye flying, ye labourers of God? “ We go to dig in the quarries of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the depths of sinful Jerusalem, and in the midst of erring Samaria.” I see them clear away the rubbish. I mark them as they dig deep into the earth, and at last they come to these stones. But how rough, how hard, how unhewn. Yes, but these are the stones ordained of old in the decree, and these must be the stones, and none other. There must be a change effected. These must be brought in, and shaped and cut and polished, and put into their places. I see the workmen at their labour. The great saw of the law cuts through the stone, and then comes the polishing chisel of the gospel. I see the stones lying in their places, and the Church is rising. The ministers, like wise master builders, are there running along the wall, putting each spiritual stone in its place; each stone is leaning on that massive cornerstone, and every stone depending on the blood, and finding its security and its strength in Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, elect, and precious. Now open wide your eyes, and see what a glorious building this is--the Church of God. Men talk of the splendour of their architecture--this is architecture indeed; neither after Grecian nor Gothic models, but after the model of the sanctuary which Moses saw in the holy mountain. Do you see it? Was there ever a structure so comely as this--instinct with life in every part? There is no house like a heart for one to repose in. There a man may find peace in his fellow man; but here is the house where God delighteth to dwell--built of living hearts, all beating with holy love--built of redeemed souls, chosen of the Father, bought with the blood of Christ. The top of it is in heaven. Part of them are above the clouds. Many of the living stones are now in the pinnacle of paradise. We are here below. The building rises, the sacred masonry is heaving, and, as the cornerstone rises, so all of us must rise, until at last the entire structure, from its foundation to its pinnacle, shall be heaved up to heaven, and there shall it stand forever--the new Jerusalem, the temple of the majesty of God.1. The Divine Architect makes no mistakes. When our eyes shall have been enlightened, and our hearts instructed, each part of the building will command our admiration. The top stone is not the foundation, nor does the foundation stand at the top. Every stone is of the right shape; the whole material is as it should be, and the structure is adapted for the great end, the glory of God, the temple of the Most High. 2. Another thing may be noticed--her impregnable strength. This habitation of God, this house not made with hands, but of God’ s building, has often been attacked, but never taken. What multitudes of enemies have battered against her old ramparts! but they have battered in vain. 3. And we may add, it is glorious for beauty. There was never structure like this. One might feast his eyes upon it from dawn to eve, and then begin again. Jesus Himself takes delight in it. God joys over it with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). II. But the true glory of the Church of God consists in the fact that she is not only a building, but that she is a habitation. There may be great beauty in an uninhabited structure, but there is always a melancholy thought connected with it. Who loves to see desolate palaces? Who desireth that the land should cast out her sons, and that her houses should fail of tenants? But there is joy in a house lit up and furnished, where there is the sound of men. Beloved, the Church of God hath this for her peculiar glory, that she is a tenanted house, that she is a habitation of God through the Spirit. How many Churches there are that are houses, yet not habitations! I might picture to you a professed Church of God; it is built according to square and compass, but its model has been formed in some ancient creed, and not in the Word of God. There are too many churches that are nothing but a mass of dull, dead formality; there is no life of God there. A house is a place where a man solaces and comforts himself. Our home is the place of our solace, our comfort, and our rest. Now, God calls the Church His habitation--His home. Oh, how beautiful is the picture of the Church as God’ s house, the place in which He takes His solace! “ For the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation. This is my rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.”2. Furthermore, a man’ s home is the place where he shows his inner self. There are sweet revelations which God makes in His Church, which He never makes anywhere else. 3. A man’ s home is the centre of all he does. Yonder is a large farm. Well, there are outhouses, and hay ricks, and barns, and the like; but just in the middle of these there is the house, the centre of all husbandry. No matter how much wheat there may be, it is to the house the produce goes. It is for the maintenance of the household that the husband carries on his husbandry. Now, God’ s Church is God’ s centre. Why doth God clothe the hills with plenty? For the feeding of His people. Why is providence revolving? Why those wars and tempests, and then again this stillness and calm? It is for His Church. Not an angel divides the ether who hath not a mission for the Church. It may be indirectly, but nevertheless truly so. All things must minister and work together for good for the chosen Church of God, which is His house--His daily habitation. 4. We love our homes, and we must and will defend them. Ay, and now lift up your thoughts--the Church is God’ s home; will He not defend it? III. The Church is, by and by, to be God’ s glorious temple. It doth not yet appear what she shall be. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Believers God’ s habitation 1. Believers have the Lord to dwell with them. (1) Grieve not, but please this guest.(2) See the blessedness of all the faithful. 2. By being built on Christ, we come to be a dwelling for God. 3. The Spirit of sanctification makes us a fit habitation for God. (Paul Bayne.)The spiritual building I. The materials.1. Their nature.2. Their diversity.3. Their number.4. Their circumstances.5. Their value. II. The basis and plan.1. The foundation is Christ.2. The chief cornerstone is Christ.3. The whole building is constructed by Christ. 4. The excellencies of Christ will be the beauty of the building. III. The instruments and agency by which this building is constructed and carried on. The Holy Spirit.1. The vastness of the work requires a universal presence.2. The difficulty of the work demands infinite resources.3. The time needed to carry on the work requires a perpetual agency. IV. The design to be accomplished in this work. “ For an habitation of God.” (Isaiah Birt.)Believers are temples If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the members of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these, guided by the Spirit as its instruments, and obeying a holy will, become transfigured; so that, in his language, the body becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest appetites, the humblest organs, are ennobled by the Spirit mind which guides them. Thus he bids the Romans yield themselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and their members as instruments of righteousness unto God. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Inhabited by the Holy Spirit I am sitting, on a summer’ s day, in the shadow of a great New England elm. Its long branches hang motionless; there is not breeze enough to move them. All at once there comes a faint murmur; around my head the leaves are moved by a gentle current of air; then the branches begin to sway to and fro, the leaves are all in motion, and a soft, rushing sound fills my ear. So with every one that is born of the Spirit. I am in a state of spiritual lethargy, and scarcely know how to think any good thought. I am heart empty, and there comes, I know not where or whence, a sound of the Divine presence. I am inwardly moved with new comfort and hope; the day seems to dawn in my heart, sunshine comes around my path, and I am able to go to my duties with patience. I am walking in the Spirit, I am helped by the help of God, and comforted with the comfort of God. And yet this is all in accordance with law. There is no violation of law when the breezes come, stirring the tops of the trees; and there is no violation of law when God moves in the depths of our souls, and rouses us to the love and desire of holiness. (James Freeman Clarke.)The rival builders The story of Rowland Hill preaching against the first Surrey Theatre is very characteristic. The building of Surrey Chapel was going on simultaneously with that of the theatre. In his sermon he addressed his audience as follows:--“ You have a race to run now between God and the devil; the children of the last are making all possible haste in building him a temple, where he may receive the donations and worship of the children of vanity and sin! Now is your time, therefore, to bestir yourselves in the cause of righteousness, and never let it be said but what God can outrun the devil!” (Clerical Anecdotes.). Ephesians 2:20; Ephesians 2:22 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.The Christian Church I. The apostle represents the Church under the figure of a city and a household.1. A Church must resemble a family or city, in respect of order and government; for without these a religious society can no more subsist, than a civil community or a household. 2. In a city or household all the members have a mutual relation, and partake in the common privileges; and, though they are placed in different stations and conditions, they must all contribute to the general happiness. 3. In a city, and also in a family, there is a common interest. 4. In a well-ordered city or household there will be peace and unity: so there ought to be in a Christian Church. II. The manner in which it is founded. The mediation of Christ is the foundation of our faith and hope. III. This spiritual house must be united with and framed into, the foundation. IV. As the spiritual house must rest on the foundation, so the several parts of it must be framed and inserted into each other. V. It must be continually growing. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)God’ s temple: its foundation, building, and consecration I. The foundation laid.1. The foundation is Jesus Christ--the foundation of the apostles and prophets, i.e., which they laid. It was laid in the promises, types, and prophecies of the Old Testament, and the witness of apostles and evangelists in the New (John 3:14; 1 Corinthians 10:4; Matthew 16:16). 2. The foundation of the Church must be the foundation of each member of the Church. The essence of a foundation lies in its strength. The foundation in individual character is truth. Truth is a Person--“ I am the Truth.” The foundation, therefore, is the truth concerning Jesus Christ believed, loved, and lived. The gospel thus received becomes a principle which forms the mainspring of a new life. II. The building rising.1. Look abroad upon the face of the world, and note the advances which the Church is making in all parts. The very hindrances to missionary work prove its success, for the more active the servants of God are, the more active the agents of Satan will be. 2. The building must rise in each heart. Growth is almost the only proof of life. The growth of the temple is due to the operation of the Spirit. 3. In most forms of life there is an exquisite symmetry. We see something of it in this temple: “ fitly framed together.” As there is a beautiful proportion in the doctrines of the gospel, so, though God’ s servants are many and their gifts various, their aim is one; and through their united wisdom and love and effort, all the building groweth into a holy temple in the Lord. III. The temple consecrated.1. We may refer the consecration to the end of the age, because consecration usually follows upon completion. 2. But even now there is to a certain extent a consecration of this building (1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:16). How shall I know this? (1) By self-consecration. Yield yourselves unto God (Romans 6:13), not simply your brain, pen, money, influence, but “ yourselves.” God wants the man--the whole man. (2) By God-consecration. He who gives himself to God will surely find God giving Himself to him, consecrating His temple by His presence, and indicating that presence by holy aspirations and a Christ-like disposition, by meekness and gentleness, by self-denial and zeal. He who is spirit taught and spirit wrought will be such a temple as the great God of heaven will not despise. (W. J. Chapman, M. A.)The Church, a building Like a building, the Church of God has been going on to the present day, and will do to the end of time. The honour and stability of this building.1. As built upon Christ. 2. As wrought by the Spirit. 3. As an habitation of God. “ Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in,” etc. (Psalms 68:16). “ In Salem also is His tabernacle, and His dwelling place in Zion (Psalms 76:2). This denotes-- (1) His knowledge of them.(2) His concern for them.(3) Their access to Him.(4) His readiness to help them. “ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved,” etc. (Psalms 46:5). Each member in Christ has his state and office in the Church by God’ s appointment, for promoting the good and glory of the whole. “ And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets,” etc. (Ephesians 4:11, etc.). “ But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body,” etc. (1 Corinthians 12:18). No spiritual life and salvation without being united to Christ by faith. (H. Foster, M. A.)The Church I. The unbelieving state of the Gentile Church. “ Strangers.”1. Strangers to God. To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Ephesians 2:12.2. Strangers to the Word of God (Psalms 119:158).3. Strangers to the Church of God (1 John 3:1).4. Strangers to themselves (Revelation 3:17).5. Strangers to the enjoyments, fears, duties, privileges, persecutions, and prospects of a Christian (1 Corinthians 2:11). “ Foreigners.”1. Naturally of another race (Psalms 51:5).2. Under the authority of another prince (2 Corinthians 4:4).3. Of a totally different complexion (Jeremiah 13:23).4. Speaking another language (Psalms 58:3).5. Seeking other interests than God (Philippians 2:21).6. At an infinite distance from the celestial kingdom, where only true happiness rests (Ephesians 2:13). II. Their adopted or privileged condition. “ Fellow citizens,” etc. The city they belong to is either the Church below, or the Church above.1. It is the city of God (Hebrews 12:22).2. Of God’ s building (Psalms 127:1).3. Where He dwells (Psalms 68:16).4. Which is strongly fortified (Isaiah 26:1).5. It is delightfully situated by the river of God’ s love (Psalms 46:4).6. Endowed with various privileges (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).7. Peopled with high-born inhabitants (John 1:13). The Church of God above.1. This is a city of God’ s preparing (John 14:2-3).2. There He has His more especial residence (1 Corinthians 13:12).3. The inhabitants are angels and saints (Hebrews 12:22-23).4. Of this city we are also citizens (Galatians 4:26).5. Set apart by the Father’ s grace (Jude 1:1).6. By the work of Christ in their behalf (Hebrews 10:14).7. And by the agency of the Holy Ghost (Romans 5:5).8. And having a right to a name and a place in the Church on earth; so have they their citizenship in heaven (Job 16:19).9. This they have not by birth, nor purchase, but by the free grace of God, which gives them both a right and meetness (2 Timothy 1:9). 10. And believing Gentiles are here made equal with the Jews in the blessings of salvation (Ephesians 2:14). “ And of the household of God.”1. The Church of God consisting of believers (Acts 5:14).2. This family is named after, and by Christ (Ephesians 3:14-15).3. Of this family God is the Father (John 20:17).4. Christ is the first-born (Romans 8:29).5. Ministers are stewards of this house (1 Corinthians 4:1).6. To this family all believers belong (Acts 4:32).7. Not by birth, nor merit, but by adopting grace (Ephesians 1:5).8. The members of this family are freed from all bondage (Romans 8:15).9. They can never be arrested or condemned (Romans 8:1). 10. They have liberty of access to God (Ephesians 2:18). 11. Share in the fulness of Christ’ s grace (Ephesians 3:19). 12. Are well taken care of (Psalms 145:20). 13. They are richly clothed (Isaiah 61:10). 14. They have plenty of provisions (Psalms 36:8). 15. And are heirs of a never-fading inheritance (1 Peter 1:4-5). III. The foundation and cornerstone are Christ. “ And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.”1. The Father saved them designedly in Christ (2 Timothy 1:9).2. The Son saved them positively in Himself (Hebrews 10:14).3. The Spirit saves them apprehensively in Christ (Titus 3:5).4. Christ, then, is the foundation of the Church (Matthew 16:18).5. He is the foundation of all covenant blessings (Ephesians 1:3).6. Of faith (Acts 20:21).7. Of hope (Colossians 1:27).8. Of peace (Ephesians 2:14).9. Of joy (Romans 5:11). 10. Of comfort (2 Thessalonians 2:17). 11. Of glory (Jude 1:25). 12. The stones of this building are hewn out by the Word, and the ministers of the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:7). “ Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.”1. He joins together Old and New Testament saints (Ephesians 2:14).2. Saints above and saints below (Hebrews 12:23).3. Saints in all parts of the world (John 11:52).4. This stone is refused by many (Psalms 118:22).5. Yet a durable and precious stone (Isaiah 28:16).6. It is a foundation cornerstone, reaching under the whole building to the four corners (1 Corinthians 3:11). IV. The perfection of the building. “ In whom all the building fitly framed together.”1. All the building--The universal Church of Christ (Acts 4:12).2. Fitly framed--Is of a spiritual nature (Colossians 2:19).3. It consists of various parts as a building does (Romans 12:4-5).4. Fitly or closely joined to Christ by living faith (Galatians 2:20).5. Banded to each other by Christian love (1 John 4:7).6. These are all set in the Church in exact symmetry and proportion (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). “ Groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.”1. It grows by the accession of elect souls, newly called by Divine grace (Acts 2:47).2. It is not yet openly and visibly completed, but it will be in the calling of the Jews and the fulness of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25-26). “ Holy temple” ; alluding to the temple at Jerusalem.1. Whose stones were prepared before they were brought into the building.2. Whose magnificence and beauty were very great.3. A place of holy worship (2 Corinthians 6:16). “ In the Lord.”1. There is no salvation, blessing, or holiness but in the Lord (Colossians 3:11). V. The design of this temple. “ In whom ye are builded together.” Then it appears from what has been said, that God is the builder, Christ the foundation, and believers are the materials of this temple.1. The door of entrance is faith in Christ (Hebrews 11:6).2. Ministers of the gospel are pillars (Galatians 2:9).3. The ordinances are its windows (Exodus 20:24).4. Its provisions are large and entertaining (Psalms 132:15). It denotes--(1) Agreement.(2) Combination.(3) Strength.(4) Perpetuity. “ For a habitation of God through the Spirit.”1. God dwells in the Church in the person of Christ (2 Corinthians 6:16).2. The Church dwells in God by her union to Christ (1 John 4:13).3. It is a spiritual dwelling that is here intended, both of God in us, and of us in God (Romans 8:9-10). (T. B. Baker.)The true foundation When the immense stone piers of the East River bridge were begun, three or four years ago, the builders did not attempt to manufacture a foundation. They simply dug down through the mud and sand, and found the solid bedrock which the Almighty Creator had laid there thousands of years ago. It is a wretched mistake to suppose that you need to construct a foundation. “ Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Your own merits, however, cemented by good resolutions, will no more answer for a solid base than would a cart-load of bricks as the substratum of yonder stupendous bridge. God has provided for you a cornerstone already. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)Jesus our Rock For a whole week, riot only bishop but all the priests and friars of the city (Exeter) visited Bennet night and day. But they tried in vain to prove to him that the Roman Church was the true one. “ God has given me grace to be of a better Church,” he said. “ Do you know that ours is built upon St. Peter?” “ The Church that is built upon a man,” he replied, “ is the devil’ s Church, and not God’ s.”… At the place of execution he exhorted with such unction, that the sheriff’ s clerk exclaimed, “ Truly this is a servant of God!” Two persons, going up to the martyr, exclaimed in a threatening voice, “ Say, ‘Precor sanctam Mariam et omnes sanctos Dei.’” “ I know no other advocate but Jesus Christ,” replied Bennet. (J. H. M. D’Aubigne, D. D.)A new and physical metaphor In these verses there is a sudden change from a political to a physical metaphor, possibly suggested by the word “ household.” The metaphor itself, of the Church as “ a building of God” --frequently used in the New Testament reaches its full perfection in this passage.1. It starts, of course, from the words of our Lord (Matthew 16:18), “ On this rock I will build My Church” ; but in the use of it sometimes the prominent idea is of the growth by addition of individual stones, sometimes of the complex unity of the building as a whole. 2. The former idea naturally occurs first, connecting itself, indeed, with the still more personal application of the metaphor to the “ edification” of the individual to be a temple of God (found, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 Corinthians 10:23; 1 Corinthians 14:4; 2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 10:8). Thus in 1 Corinthians 3:9, from “ ye are God’ s building,” St. Paul passes at once to the building of individual character on the one foundation; in 1 Corinthians 14:4-5; 1 Corinthians 14:12; 1 Corinthians 14:26, the edification of the Church has reference to the effect of prophecy on individual souls; in 1 Peter 2:5, the emphasis is still on the building up of “ living stones” upon “ a living stone” (Comp. Acts 20:32). 3. In this Epistle the other idea--the idea of unity--is always prominent, though not exclusive of the other (as here and in Ephesians 4:12-16). But that this conception of unity is less absolute than that conveyed by the metaphor of the body will be seen by noting that it differs from it in three respects first, that it carries with it the notion of a more distinct individuality in each stone; next, that it conveys (as in the “ grafting in” of Romans 11:17) the idea of continual growth by accretion of individual souls drawn to Christ; lastly, that it depicts the Church as having more completely a distinct, though not a separate, existence from Him who dwells in it. (On this last point compare the metaphor of the spouse of Christ in Ephesians 5:25-33.) Hence it is naturally worked out with greater completeness in an Epistle which has so especially for its object the evolution of the doctrine of “ the one Holy Catholic Church.” (A. Barry, D. D.)Living temples My brethren, it becomes of the utmost importance to inquire, Have we a place in this spiritual building? Are we daily striving, as St. Jude exhorts us, to “ pray in the Holy Ghost,” and to “ build up ourselves on our most holy faith” ? I. That we may know what our state is, what our hope towards God, let us, first, ask ourselves, Am I resting on the sure foundation? St. Paul tells us what it is: “ Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” II. Again: let us ask ourselves, Do we bear always in mind that we are called to be “ a holy temple in the Lord,” “ an habitation of God through the Spirit” ?1. A temple gives us the idea of dedication. Do we look upon ourselves as those who are set apart unto holiness, and ought not to be conformed unto this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God? 2. A temple also gives us the idea of God’ s immediate presence (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19). This is a thought full of awe, and full of comfort. God is present in the hearts of them that believe, not as He appeared of old in the Temple at Jerusalem, shining above the mercy seat in a cloud of glory such as man’ s eye could see (John 14:23). And how should we regard our mortal body, if we believed it to be the temple of the Spirit of God? 3. A temple gives us the idea of continual service. 4. That the work of grace ought to be advancing in us. For what says St. Paul? “ Growing unto an holy temple in the Lord.” (E. Blencowe, M. A.)The Christian temple Temples have always excited feelings of the deepest interest in the human race. They generally contain within themselves, and in the materials with which they are constructed, much that is beautiful and grand. They form a kind of middle step between earth and heaven, where faith and sense meet and unite to indulge in contemplations suited to their varied powers and capacities. The Greeks and the Romans were perhaps the most superstitious people in the world, they covered their land with the most bewitching forms of their idolatry; their temples were of the most costly and splendid description. Among all the temples of antiquity, none were equal to the temple at Ephesus dedicated to Diana. It was the boast of ancient Greece, and one of the wonders of the world. Upwards of two hundred years elapsed during its construction, many sovereigns assisted in its progress with no small portion of their revenues. And it was considered peculiarly sacred in consequence of the figure of Diana which it possessed; and which popular report ascribed to Jupiter as his donation. To check the enthusiasm, and in some degree to extinguish the admiration which, notwithstanding the power of Christianity, still lingered in the minds of some members of the Ephesian Church, it is supposed that the apostle used the words of our text in his Epistle to that Church. He there places in contrast to the temple of Diana another fabric in every respect infinitely superior--the Church of God: while the former temple was built upon wooden piles driven into the earth, the latter rests upon the writings of the apostles and prophets; while the materials of the former were all earthly, the materials of the latter are, by the grace of God in the regeneration of the human mind, spiritual and Divine; while the former was devoted to the rites of idolatry and superstition, the latter is sacred to the service of the true and living God; while the former could only boast of the image of its goddess, the latter has the presence, the indwelling presence of its own Maker--the Creator of the world. Other persons, however, imagine that the allusion here made is not to the temple of Diana, but to that more sacred fabric erected by Solomon upon Mount Zion. This was heavenly in its design, gorgeous in its material; it was the residence of Jehovah, and the type of the Christian Church. The Church, then, in this passage is set forth under the figure of a temple; we shall consider-- I. Its foundation. Prophets and apostles are here associated, Their theme was the same. The prophets predicted the Messiah who was to come, and the apostle recorded the history of the Messiah who had come; the one foretold the redemption to be accomplished, the other wrote of redemption finished and complete. And thus together they form a magnificent communication made from the invisible to the visible world; they resemble together the cherubim upon the ark of the covenant, turning their faces towards each other, and both together towards the mercy seat. II. The superstructure of this temple. It often happens in the history of human affairs and transactions that men lay the foundation without being able to raise the superstructure; not so, however, with God. The building will rise and it will be equal to the basis.1. We shall consider the nature of the material of which the superstructure is to be composed. The Apostle Peter has a very beautiful description of it in the second chapter of his first Epistle, at the fourth and fifth verses, “ To whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious.” “ Living stone.” The superstructure resembling the foundation, the foundation equal to the superstructure. 2. We will notice the symmetry of the building: “ fitly framed together” ; not a heap of misshapen ruins huddled together into a mass of inextricable confusion; not a clumsy fabric raised by joiners and masons without skill; everything is arrayed in beautiful order, all the parts dove-tailed into each other, everything is fitly framed in its proper place, and rightly connected. III. I come now, in the third place, to the design of the building. It was to be “ an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Now let us consider the presence of God in the Church--in this building. It is an invisible presence, there is no sound of thunder like that which indicated His dwelling upon Sinai; no cloud of glory like that which indicated His presence with Israel is here; He is spiritual. He is a Spirit and must have a spiritual house. But it is a real presence, and here is the real presence in the Church. (J. A. James.)Truth--a strong foundation You will observe that the historical order--which is the order of time--is inverted, and the “ apostles” are placed before the “ prophets.” And for this reason: because, in the sentence, we are descending the “ foundation.” The “ apostles” are laid on the “ prophets,” and the “ prophets” are laid on “ Christ.” This is the way that our faith touches God. The Bible rests on God--we rest on the Bible: so we reach God. It will not be out of place if I take occasion to say here to you what I often say to those whom I have under instruction--what are the four great proofs of inspiration?1. The presumptive proof, of which I have been speaking--that we should expect that, when God has made such a creature as man, He would give to that creature some revelation of Himself. 2. The internal evidence. The authorship of the books of the Bible spreads over a period of nearly sixteen hundred years. There is one pervading current of thought. How could that agreement be, unless it had been dictated by some one Master-mind? And what could that Master-mind be, but God? 3. The external evidence. This book--from beginning to end--is full of prophecy. Could any human mind, unassisted, have done that? Could any but God do that? Then God wrote the Bible. 4. The experimental evidence. The book exactly fits the heart. I feel it when I read it; whoever made my heart made that book. The two must have one origin, and that origin must have been God. Thus, then, I arrive at the firm conviction that “ the apostles and prophets” are a “ sure foundation” on which to build our creed and our salvation, being themselves built on “ the chief cornerstone.” We get, then, at the “ foundation” of “ truth,” “ truth” in its two-fold strength--“ prophetic truth,” “ apostolic truth” ; “ prophetic truth” representing the Old Testament,--“ apostolic truth” representing the blew Testament--and both on Christ. What is “ prophetic truth” ? Taken in its broad outline, it is this: the affairs, the destinies of this world all under the one watchful eye, and the one superintending hand, of Almighty God. To Him, all time is one unbroken now. And “ apostolic truth” is this. This world has been the scene of a great mission. Christ, the Son of God, has been here, and He hath been careful to extend and perpetuate the knowledge of His mission, and all its benefits by missionaries, whom He hath sent to all the world. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Thy spiritual building 1. Faith makes us lean on Christ, as a building on a foundation. Our faith must not be a swimming conceit, but an assurance, making us stay on our God. 2. The Church is built on Christ. The firmness of the house is according to the sureness of the foundation. How impregnable, then, is the Church! (Matthew 16:19; Psalms 125:1). (1) The standing of Christians is sure.(2) How insecure is the condition of wicked men. 3. The gospel builds us on no other foundation than that which was laid by the prophets from the beginning. The first preaching differs from the last not in substance but degree; we believe through our Lord Jesus Christ to be saved, even as they. There never was but one way of salvation. The sun rising, and at noon, differ not in substance. Christ is the kernel of both Testaments; blossom and ripe fruit. 4. Whatever is to be believed, must have prophetic and apostolic authority. (1) Be not deluded with traditions.(2) Stand not too much on the authority of men.(3) Praise God for the fulness of Scripture. 5. We must rely on Christ for a sure foundation to uphold us. As one would cling by a rock, so must we by Christ. Peter and others are builders: Christ alone is the foundation. Let there be no mistake as to this. (Paul Bayne.)The foundation of the apostles and prophets In spite of much ancient and valuable authority, it seems impossible to take “ the prophets” of this verse to be the prophets of the Old Testament. The order of the two words and the comparison of Eph 3:5; Ephesians 4:11 appear to be decisive--to say nothing of the emphasis on the present, in contrast with the past, which runs through the whole chapter. But it is more difficult to determine in what sense “ the foundation of the apostles and prophets” is used. Of the three possible senses, that(1) which makes it equivalent to “ the foundation on which apostles and prophets are built,” viz., Jesus Christ Himself, may be dismissed as taking away any special force from the passage, and as unsuitable to the next clause. The second (2), “ the foundation laid by apostles and prophets” --still, of course, Jesus Christ Himself--is rather forced, and equally fails to accord with the next clause, in which our Lord is not the foundation, but the cornerstone. The most natural interpretation (3), followed by most ancient authorities, which makes the apostles and prophets to be themselves “ the foundation,” has been put aside by modern commentators in the true feeling that ultimately there is but “ one foundation” (1 Corinthians 3:11), and in a consequent reluctance to apply that name to any but Him. But it is clear that in this passage St. Paul deliberately varies the metaphor in relation to our Lord, making Him not the foundation, or both foundation and cornerstone, but simply the cornerstone, “ binding together,” according to Chrysostom’ s instructive remark, “ both the walls and the foundations.” Hence the word “ foundation” seems to be applied in a true, although secondary sense, to the apostles and prophets; just as in the celebrated passage (Matthew 16:18) our Lord must be held at any rate to connect St. Peter with the foundation on which the Church is built; and as in Revelation 21:14, “ the foundations” bear “ the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” It is true that in this last passage we have the plural instead of the singular, and that the passage itself, is not, as this is, a dogmatic passage. But these considerations are insufficient to destroy the analogy. The genius, therefore, of this passage itself, supported by the other cognate passages, leads us to what may be granted to be an unexpected but a perfectly intelligible expression. The apostles and prophets are the foundation; yet, of course, only as setting forth in word and grace Him, who is the cornerstone. (A. Barry, D. D.)Christ the cornerstone The metaphor is drawn, of course, from Psalms 118:22 (applied by our Lord to Himself in Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17; and by St. Peter to Him in Acts 4:11), or from Isaiah 28:16 (quoted with the other passage in 1 Peter 2:6-7); in which last it may be noted that both the metaphors are united, and “ the tried cornerstone” is also “ the sure foundation.” In itself it does not convey so obvious an idea of uniqueness and importance as that suggested by the “ keystone” of an arch, or the “ apex stone” of a pyramid; but it appears to mean a massive cornerstone, in which the two lines of the wall at their foundation meet, by which they were bonded together, and on the perfect squareness of which the true direction of the whole walls depended, since the slightest imperfection in the cornerstone would be indefinitely multiplied along the course of the walls. The doctrine which, if taken alone, it would convey, is simply the acceptance of our Lord’ s perfect teaching and life, as the one determining influence both of the teaching and institutions, which are the basis of the Church, and of the superstructure in the actual life of the members of the Church itself. By such acceptance both assume symmetry and “ stand four-square to all the winds that blow.” (See Revelation 21:16.) That this is not the whole truth seems to be implied by the variation from the metaphor in the next verse. (A. Barry, D. D.)Jesus Christ Himself I. With Jesus Christ Himself we begin by saying, first, that Jesus Himself is the essence of His own work, and, therefore, how readily we ought to trust Him. Jesus Himself is the soul of His own salvation. How does the apostle describe it? “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Because of this, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the object of our faith. “ Look unto Me,” “ Come unto Me.” How very simple, easy, natural, ought faith to be henceforth! II. “ Jesus Christ Himself” is the substance of the gospel, and therefore how closely should we study Him. While He was hero He taught His disciples, and the object of His teaching was that they might know Himself, and through Him might know the Father. Whatever else they may be ignorant of, it is essential to disciples that they know their Lord. His nature, character, mind, spirit, object, power, we must know--in a word, we must know Jesus Himself.1. This, beloved, is the work of the Holy Spirit. “ He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.” The Holy Ghost reveals Christ to us and in us. 2. Because Jesus is the sum of the gospel, He must be our constant theme. Put out the sun, and light is gone, life is gone, all is gone. The more of Christ in our testimony, the more of light and life and power to save. III. Jesus Christ Himself is the object of our love, and how dear He should be. The love of a truth is all very well, but the love of a person has far more power in it. We have heard of men dying for an idea, but it is infinitely more easy to awaken enthusiasm for a person. When an idea becomes embodied in a man, it has a force which, in its abstract form, it never wielded. Jesus Christ is loved by us as the embodiment of everything that is lovely, and true, and pure, and of good report. He Himself is incarnate perfection, inspired by love. We love His offices, we love the types which describe Him, we love the ordinances by which He is set forth, but we love Himself best of all.1. Because we love Him, we love His people, and through Him we enter into union with them. We are at one with every man who is at one with Christ. So warm is the fire of our love to Jesus that all His friends may sit at it, and welcome. Our circle of affection comprehends all who in any shape or way have truly to do with Jesus Himself. 2. Because we love Himself we delight to render service to Him. Whatever service we do for His Church, and for His truth, we do for His sake; even if we can only render it to the least of His brethren we do it unto Him. IV. Jesus Christ Himself is the source of all our joy. How ought we to rejoice, when we have such a springing well of blessedness. What a joy to think that Jesus is risen--risen to die no more: the joy of resurrection is superlative. V. Jesus Christ Himself is the model of our life, and therefore how blessed it is to be like Him. As to our rule for life, we are like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration when Moses and Elias had vanished, for we see “ no man save Jesus only.” Every virtue found in other men we find in Him in greater perfection; we admire the grace of God in them, but Jesus Himself is our pattern. It was once said of Henry VIII, by a severe critic, that if the characteristics of all the tyrants that had ever lived had been forgotten, they might all have been seen to the life in that one king: we may more truly say of Jesus, if all graces, and virtues, and sweetnesses which have ever been seen in good men could all be forgotten, you might find them all in Him: for in Him dwells all that is good and great. We, therefore, desire to copy His character and put our feet into His footprints. VI. Lastly, He is the Lord of our soul. How sweet it will be to be with Him. We find today that His beloved company makes everything move pleasantly, whether we run in the way of His commands, or traverse the valley of the shadow of death. A poor girl, lying in the hospital, was told by the doctor or the nurse that she could only live another hour. She waited patiently, and when there remained only one quarter of an hour more, she exclaimed: “ One more quarter of an hour, and then.” She could not say what, and neither can I; only Jesus Himself hath said, “ Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.” And as He has prayed, so it shall be, and so let it be. Amen and Amen. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Jesus Christ Himself the proof of the gospel The religion of our Lord Jesus Christ contains in it nothing so wonderful as Himself. It is a mass of marvels, but He is the miracle of it; the wonder of wonders is “ The Wonderful” Himself. If proof be asked of the truth which He proclaimed, we point men to Jesus Christ Himself. His character is unique. We defy unbelievers to imagine another like Him. He is God and yet man, and we challenge them to compose a narrative in which the two apparently incongruous characters shall be so harmoniously blended--in which the human and Divine shall be so marvellously apparent, without the one overshading the other. They question the authenticity of the four Gospels; will they try and write a fifth? Will they even attempt to add a few incidents to the life which shall be worthy of the sacred biography, and congruous with those facts which are already described? If it be all a forgery, will they be so good as to show us how it is done? Will they find a novelist who will write another biography of a man of any century they choose, of any nationality, or of any degree of experience, or any rank or station, and let us see if they can describe in that imaginary life a devotion, a self-sacrifice, a truthfulness, a completeness of character at all comparable to that of Jesus Christ Himself? Can they invent another perfect character even if the Divine element be left out? They must of necessity fail, for there is none like unto Jesus Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Jesus Christ Himself the marrow and essence of the gospel When the Apostle Paul meant that the gospel was preached he said, “ Christ is preached,” for the gospel is Christ Himself. If you want to know what Jesus taught, know Himself. He is the incarnation of that truth which by Him and in Him is revealed to the sons of men. Did He not Himself say, “ I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” ? You have not to take down innumerable tomes, nor to pore over mysterious sentences of double meaning in order to know what our great Teacher has revealed, you have but to turn and gaze upon His countenance, behold His actions, and note His spirit, and you know His teaching. He lived what He taught. If we wish to know Him, we may hear His gentle voice saying, “ Come and see.” Study His wounds, and you understand His innermost philosophy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Home symbols Did you ever think how every part of your house can remind you of the great truths which Jesus Christ taught about Himself? The cornerstone says, “ Christ is the cornerstone” ; the door, “ I am the door” ; the burning candle, “ I am the Light of the world” ; the corridor, “ I am the Way.” Look out of the window, and the sight of the starry sky bids you turn your eyes to “ the bright and morning Star.” The rising sun speaks to you of the “ rising of the Sun of Righteousness with healing on His wings.” The loaf on your table whispers of “ the Bread of Life,” and the water that quenches your thirst, “ I am the Living Water,” “ I am the Water of Life.” When you lie down you think of Him that “ had not where to lay His head,” and when you get up, you rejoice that He is “ the Resurrection and the Life.” (Sunday Teacher’s Treasury.)Growth in holiness When I was at Mr. Spurgeon’ s house he showed me the photographs of his two sons, who were twins, and whose photographs had been taken every year since they were twelve months old until they were seventeen years old. For the first two years they did not seem to have grown much, but when we compared the first with those of the age of seventeen they seemed to have grown amazingly. So it is with the children of God--they grow in grace. (D. L. Moody.)Growth and permanence “ What is the use of thee, thou gnarled sapling?” said a young larch tree to a young oak. “ I grow three feet in a year, thou scarcely as many inches; I am straight and taper as a reed, thou straggling and twisted as a loosened withe.” “ And thy duration,” answered the oak, “ is some third part of man’ s life, and I am appointed to flourish for a thousand years. Thou art felled and sawed into palings, where thou rottest and art burnt after a single summer; of me are fashioned battle-ships, and I carry mariners and heroes into unknown seas.” The richer a nature, the harder and slower its development. (T. Carlyle.)Necessity of holiness There is no heaven for us, without fitness for heaven. As the official at the Bank of England said to me about some sovereigns I wished to change into notes, “ If we take them in here they must be tested.” (B)The spiritual temple I. The foundation.1. Prophets--the Old Testament. Apostles--the New Testament. Jesus Christ--the Divine Being in whom both dispensations are united.2. This foundation is stable, sure.3. It gives dignity to the building.4. It is the only foundation. II. The superstructure.1. It will be a united building.2. It is a progressive building.3. It is a sanctified building. III. The materials.1. Believers in every age and clime.2. Notice the stones in their natural state.3. They are derived from different sources.4. They are in different stages of preparation.5. They must all be fashioned after the manner of the chief cornerstone.6. Here is a text by which you may each know whether or not you are in the building.7. These stones are bought with a price. (A. F. Barfield.)Christ a builder Christ builds on through all the ages. For the present, there has to be much destructive as well as constructive work done. Many a wretched hovel, the abode of sorrow and want, many a den of infamy, many a palace of pride, many a temple of idols, will have to be pulled down yet, and men’ s eyes will be blinded by the dust, and their hearts will ache as they look at the ruins. Be it so. The finished structure will obliterate the remembrance of poor buildings that cumbered its site. This Emperor of ours may indeed say, that He found the city of brick and made it marble. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The temple of the faithful 1. There is a special wisdom required in those who are to dispense the doctrine of faith; they must proceed by line and order. We do not entrust a piece of work of any importance but to those who are masters of their craft. Much more does the spiritual building require workmen who labour as they need not be ashamed (2 Timothy 2:15). And this teaches people how they should submit themselves to be framed and squared according as the ministry requires. Before a rough stone can be conveniently laid, it must be hewed by the mason, polished, and planed, and so brought to the rest of the building. So it is with you: you must be smoothed and planed before you can come to lie in this building. If ye be God’ s building, ye must be squared to His model. 2. The faithful have a close union with Christ and one another. As in a house the building, all of it, “ must be fitted to the foundation, and every part of it suit one with another, so in this building, which we are, there must be a straight coupling with the foundation, and correspondence one with another. In the material temple (the type of the spiritual) the walls or rows of stone that were in it were so squared that one piece did not bulge out above the other, but being laid together a man would have thought them one entire stone. So all the other things were so contrived, that window answered to window, door to door, chamber to chamber; there was a pleasant proportionableness in everything. In like manner must the multitude of believers be all laid on one foundation, and all of them so even that they seem as one living stone, and every one answering most commodiously to another. And thus it is with the faithful in their union with Christ and with one another. Love makes the saints each seek the good of the other, and be serviceable each to other. 3. True believers grow up from day to day. Even as it is in great buildings, which are not at once begun and perfected, So do the stones of the spiritual temple go on growing till they come to perfection. Where we cease to grow, there we decline; he that wins not, loses. Leave off endeavour to be better, and you will soon cease to be good. 4. Believers are a temple for God’ s habitation. (1) A great dignity.(2) Defile not the temple of God. To do so is sacrilege.(3) Avoid all profanation of it. 5. Believers must be sanctified throughout. 6. Believers grow by the power of Christ. The Church still goes forward, in spite of heresies, persecutions, all scandals of life, all the gates of hell, because God is its builder. (1) Let us look to Him for spiritual edification.(2) It should comfort us to know that in due time we shall be finished. God will make up all the breaches and ruins of our sinful nature, and build us up a glorious temple for Himself, wherein He will dwell forever. (Paul Bayne.)The building 1. Observe the term “ groweth,” intimating that the Church is ever enlarging her borders and adding to her members, either by the admission of the children of her members to the waters of baptism, or by the conversion of the heathen, and leading them to the same. And so it will continue, growing and increasing, until the consummation of all things: and God shall have accomplished the number of His elect. 2. Observe the expression, “ fitly framed together,” showing the order and subordination of the different members. Not a confused mass of building materials, without shape and order; but set in their several stations, by the great Master of the universe. 3. Observe how the whole glory of this is ascribed not to man, but to our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him the building is framed; in Him it groweth and increaseth; the power to do so coming from Him. (A. P. Perceval, B. C. L.)The growth of the new kingdom The growth of the body, on Christ’ s part, is spontaneous, and on man’ s, consentaneous. “ In whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.” It grows from Christ, but it grows in unity with our consenting affections. Christ never violates human freedom, but works in it, with it, and by it. “ What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? Ask, and ye shall receive.” “ According to your faith be it unto you.” He would open and develop in us much more of His purity and truth, goodness and beauty; but He waits for our desire, and by processes of wondrous wisdom and gentleness He seeks to beget in us that desire. If the spirit of the flesh in us be ardent, or the spiritual affections be lukewarm, the growth of the new nature will be retarded, or suspended. If it be necessary to receive Christ, in order to salvation, it is equally necessary to walk in Him, in a spirit of watchfulness and prayer, in order to growth. Inasmuch as “ all the building is growing in the Lord,” and according to His order, it will, in the end, not only be a glorious temple of humanity, but marvellously adapted for the indwelling and manifestation of God. “ I will dwell in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” I will fill them, and they shall represent My fulness. “ The whole building,” the redeemed of every generation, growing more and more into unity with each other, and with Christ, and through Him with all the hidden powers of the Godhead, is a work which is every way worthy of all Almighty Father. To what glory, to what beauty, will the kingdom grow? to what wisdom will its members attain? what will be their powers? what their fellowship? what their individual freedom of action? what their service and end, as one empire in the Son, and in the Father? At present there is much in human souls, much in the constitution of nature, and very much in the strife of the great spirit world, to hinder the full development of God’ s purpose in Christ. But all hindrances have their appointed limit. In due time, they will all be overmastered or removed; and God and the redeemed race will come into perfect relationship. (John Pulsford.)The growth of the structure The structure is in process of growth. It is not finished--the copestone has not been put upon it. The scaffolding occasionally disfigures it; yet even in its immature state, and with so much that is undeveloped, one may admire its beauty of outline, and its graceful form and proportions. Vast augmentations may be certainly anticipated; but its increase does not mutilate its adaptations, for it grows as “ being fitly framed together.” A structure not firm and compact is in the greater danger of falling the higher it is carried; and “ if it topple on our heads, what matter is it whether we are crushed by a Corinthian or a Doric ruin?” But this fabric, with walls of more than Cyclopean or Pelasgian strength and vastness, secures its own continuous and illimitable elevation. Provision is thus made for its increase, and without breach or delapidation it rises in height. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Christian unity All the redeemed are one body--many members, but still one great incorporation. “ Ye are builded together for an habitation of God, through the Spirit.” The materials of a house form no place of abode, while they lie scattered and separated. In the ancient tabernacle, the glory of the Lord did not appear till it was compacted and set up. The Divine presence rested not upon the stones and timber of the Temple till they were framed into the edifice. We may hence infer, that if we would enjoy the promised blessing, we should avoid strifes and divisions, and follow after peace, and the things whereby one may edify the other. (Anonymous.)The tabernacle of the Most High I. The Church is a building. Not a heap of stones shot together, but a building. Of old her Architect devised her. Methinks I see Him, as I look back into old eternity, making the first outline of His Church. “ Here,” saith He, in His eternal wisdom, “ shall be the cornerstone, and there shall be the pinnacle.” I see Him ordaining her length, and her breadth, appointing her gates and her doors with matchless skill, devising every part of her, and leaving no single portion of the structure unmapped. I see Him, that mighty Architect, also choosing to Himself every stone of the building, ordaining its size and its shape; settling upon His mighty plan the position each stone shall occupy, whether it shall glitter in front, or be hidden in the back, or buried in the very centre of the wall. I see Him marking not merely the bare outline, but all the fillings up; all being ordained, decreed, and settled, in the eternal covenant, which was the Divine plan of the mighty Architect upon which the Church is to be built. Looking on, I see the Architect choosing a cornerstone. He looks to heaven, and there are the angels, those glittering stones--He looks at each one of them from Gabriel down; but, saith He, “ None of you will suffice. I must have a cornerstone that will support all the weight of the building, for on that stone every other one must lean. O Gabriel, thou wilt not suffice I Raphael, thou must lay by; I cannot build with thee.” Yet was it necessary that a stone should be found, and one too that should be taken out of the same quarry as the rest. Where was he to be discovered? Was there a man who would suffice to be the cornerstone of this mighty building? Ah, no! neither apostles, prophets, nor teachers would. Put them all together, and they would be as a foundation of quicksand, and the house would totter to its fall. Mark how the Divine mind solved the difficulty--“ God shall become man, very man, and so He shall be of the same substance as the other stones of the temple; yet shall He be God, and therefore strong enough to bear all the weight of this mighty structure, the top whereof shall reach to heaven.” I see that foundation stone laid. Is there singing at the laying of it? No. There is weeping there. The angels gathered round at the laying of this first stone; and look, ye men, and wonder, the angels weep; the harps of heaven are clothed in sackcloth, and no song is heard. They sang together and shouted for joy when the world was made; why shout they not now? Look ye here, and see the reason. That stone is imbedded in blood. The first is laid; where are the rest? Shall we go and dig into the sides of Lebanon? Shall we find these precious stones in the marble quarries of kings? No. Whither are ye flying, ye labourers of God? “ We go to dig in the quarries of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the depths of sinful Jerusalem, and in the midst of erring Samaria.” I see them clear away the rubbish. I mark them as they dig deep into the earth, and at last they come to these stones. But how rough, how hard, how unhewn. Yes, but these are the stones ordained of old in the decree, and these must be the stones, and none other. There must be a change effected. These must be brought in, and shaped and cut and polished, and put into their places. I see the workmen at their labour. The great saw of the law cuts through the stone, and then comes the polishing chisel of the gospel. I see the stones lying in their places, and the Church is rising. The ministers, like wise master builders, are there running along the wall, putting each spiritual stone in its place; each stone is leaning on that massive cornerstone, and every stone depending on the blood, and finding its security and its strength in Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, elect, and precious. Now open wide your eyes, and see what a glorious building this is--the Church of God. Men talk of the splendour of their architecture--this is architecture indeed; neither after Grecian nor Gothic models, but after the model of the sanctuary which Moses saw in the holy mountain. Do you see it? Was there ever a structure so comely as this--instinct with life in every part? There is no house like a heart for one to repose in. There a man may find peace in his fellow man; but here is the house where God delighteth to dwell--built of living hearts, all beating with holy love--built of redeemed souls, chosen of the Father, bought with the blood of Christ. The top of it is in heaven. Part of them are above the clouds. Many of the living stones are now in the pinnacle of paradise. We are here below. The building rises, the sacred masonry is heaving, and, as the cornerstone rises, so all of us must rise, until at last the entire structure, from its foundation to its pinnacle, shall be heaved up to heaven, and there shall it stand forever--the new Jerusalem, the temple of the majesty of God.1. The Divine Architect makes no mistakes. When our eyes shall have been enlightened, and our hearts instructed, each part of the building will command our admiration. The top stone is not the foundation, nor does the foundation stand at the top. Every stone is of the right shape; the whole material is as it should be, and the structure is adapted for the great end, the glory of God, the temple of the Most High. 2. Another thing may be noticed--her impregnable strength. This habitation of God, this house not made with hands, but of God’ s building, has often been attacked, but never taken. What multitudes of enemies have battered against her old ramparts! but they have battered in vain. 3. And we may add, it is glorious for beauty. There was never structure like this. One might feast his eyes upon it from dawn to eve, and then begin again. Jesus Himself takes delight in it. God joys over it with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). II. But the true glory of the Church of God consists in the fact that she is not only a building, but that she is a habitation. There may be great beauty in an uninhabited structure, but there is always a melancholy thought connected with it. Who loves to see desolate palaces? Who desireth that the land should cast out her sons, and that her houses should fail of tenants? But there is joy in a house lit up and furnished, where there is the sound of men. Beloved, the Church of God hath this for her peculiar glory, that she is a tenanted house, that she is a habitation of God through the Spirit. How many Churches there are that are houses, yet not habitations! I might picture to you a professed Church of God; it is built according to square and compass, but its model has been formed in some ancient creed, and not in the Word of God. There are too many churches that are nothing but a mass of dull, dead formality; there is no life of God there. A house is a place where a man solaces and comforts himself. Our home is the place of our solace, our comfort, and our rest. Now, God calls the Church His habitation--His home. Oh, how beautiful is the picture of the Church as God’ s house, the place in which He takes His solace! “ For the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation. This is my rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.”2. Furthermore, a man’ s home is the place where he shows his inner self. There are sweet revelations which God makes in His Church, which He never makes anywhere else. 3. A man’ s home is the centre of all he does. Yonder is a large farm. Well, there are outhouses, and hay ricks, and barns, and the like; but just in the middle of these there is the house, the centre of all husbandry. No matter how much wheat there may be, it is to the house the produce goes. It is for the maintenance of the household that the husband carries on his husbandry. Now, God’ s Church is God’ s centre. Why doth God clothe the hills with plenty? For the feeding of His people. Why is providence revolving? Why those wars and tempests, and then again this stillness and calm? It is for His Church. Not an angel divides the ether who hath not a mission for the Church. It may be indirectly, but nevertheless truly so. All things must minister and work together for good for the chosen Church of God, which is His house--His daily habitation. 4. We love our homes, and we must and will defend them. Ay, and now lift up your thoughts--the Church is God’ s home; will He not defend it? III. The Church is, by and by, to be God’ s glorious temple. It doth not yet appear what she shall be. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Believers God’ s habitation 1. Believers have the Lord to dwell with them. (1) Grieve not, but please this guest.(2) See the blessedness of all the faithful. 2. By being built on Christ, we come to be a dwelling for God. 3. The Spirit of sanctification makes us a fit habitation for God. (Paul Bayne.)The spiritual building I. The materials.1. Their nature.2. Their diversity.3. Their number.4. Their circumstances.5. Their value. II. The basis and plan.1. The foundation is Christ.2. The chief cornerstone is Christ.3. The whole building is constructed by Christ. 4. The excellencies of Christ will be the beauty of the building. III. The instruments and agency by which this building is constructed and carried on. The Holy Spirit.1. The vastness of the work requires a universal presence.2. The difficulty of the work demands infinite resources.3. The time needed to carry on the work requires a perpetual agency. IV. The design to be accomplished in this work. “ For an habitation of God.” (Isaiah Birt.)Believers are temples If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the members of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these, guided by the Spirit as its instruments, and obeying a holy will, become transfigured; so that, in his language, the body becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest appetites, the humblest organs, are ennobled by the Spirit mind which guides them. Thus he bids the Romans yield themselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and their members as instruments of righteousness unto God. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Inhabited by the Holy Spirit I am sitting, on a summer’ s day, in the shadow of a great New England elm. Its long branches hang motionless; there is not breeze enough to move them. All at once there comes a faint murmur; around my head the leaves are moved by a gentle current of air; then the branches begin to sway to and fro, the leaves are all in motion, and a soft, rushing sound fills my ear. So with every one that is born of the Spirit. I am in a state of spiritual lethargy, and scarcely know how to think any good thought. I am heart empty, and there comes, I know not where or whence, a sound of the Divine presence. I am inwardly moved with new comfort and hope; the day seems to dawn in my heart, sunshine comes around my path, and I am able to go to my duties with patience. I am walking in the Spirit, I am helped by the help of God, and comforted with the comfort of God. And yet this is all in accordance with law. There is no violation of law when the breezes come, stirring the tops of the trees; and there is no violation of law when God moves in the depths of our souls, and rouses us to the love and desire of holiness. (James Freeman Clarke.)The rival builders The story of Rowland Hill preaching against the first Surrey Theatre is very characteristic. The building of Surrey Chapel was going on simultaneously with that of the theatre. In his sermon he addressed his audience as follows:--“ You have a race to run now between God and the devil; the children of the last are making all possible haste in building him a temple, where he may receive the donations and worship of the children of vanity and sin! Now is your time, therefore, to bestir yourselves in the cause of righteousness, and never let it be said but what God can outrun the devil!” (Clerical Anecdotes.). Ephesians 3:1 For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles.St. Paul’ s ministry to the Gentiles a Divine grace to himself If not wholly singular, there is something very characteristic, in this view which the Apostle of the Gentiles took of his vocation. So strong a hold had it taken of his imagination and feelings that he may be said positively to have revelled in it. It is alluded to again and again in his Epistles (Romans 1:5; Romans 11:13; 1 Corinthians 3:5; 1 Corinthians 3:10; Galatians 1:15-16; Colossians 1:25; and Ephesians 4:7). How did it come about that this aspect of his work should have so impressed him? I. It originated in the revelation of a Divine mystery (Ephesians 3:3-4). At Christ’ s appearance to him when he was on his way to Damascus, he had been told that he was to preach to the heathen (Acts 26:17-18). As to how far “ revelation” of the calling of the Gentiles was absolutely required we can never fully know. Prophets had foretold the universal enjoyment of the Messianic blessing and the universal sway of the Messiah. Christ Himself frequently enough disclosed the wider horizon that stretched before His vision (Matthew 8:11; Matthew 25:31-34; Matthew 28:20; John 12:32; John 4:21; John 4:24). But we know that the Jewish prejudices of the apostles were but slowly overcome. Peter required a vision to remove his (Acts 10:28). And there can be no doubt that such a mind as Paul’ s, with its antecedents of exclusiveness and caste, could only have received an adequate sense of the pressing needs of the Gentile world and of his own obligation with respect to these in some such special way. Revelation as a proof of Divine condescension to human infirmity would in this ease remove the temptation natural illuminati in all ages have felt to consider themselves of a “ finer clay” than others. II. He felt it to be a great privilege to be engaged in it (verses 8, 9). His glowing language about “ the unsearchable wealth of Christ” shows how exalted was his enthusiasm. He speaks of it as a dignified responsibility--a Divine “ economy” or “ dispensation.” And he was ever conscious of the spiritual possibilities of his work among the millions of Europe and Asia through the ages that were to follow. A vocation such as this could not but awaken emotions at once exalting and humbling to a generous, high strung nature. It was a grace to be the minister of such a grace. III. It called forth within him a larger sense of spiritual life and power (verse 7; cf. Colossians 1:29; Ephesians 1:19; Ephesians 3:20). God was consciously working through him, with a force, a directness, and a constancy never felt before. He could say, “ I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). And in all his allusions to this experience he is careful to distinguish the Divine from the human. IV. His previous conduct had given him no claim to such an honour (verse 8; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9; 1 Timothy 1:12-16). His language has seemed exaggerated to many, but it is the honest and natural outcome of a profound sense of his past wrong-doing, against which the mercy of Christ stood out in such emphatic relief. The heart knows best its own depravity, and the depths from which it has been rescued. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)St. Paul a sufferer for the Gentiles Had he been narrow and exclusive in his spirit, he would have been honoured and beloved. For his impartiality, he was hated of his countrymen. Had he shown a strong bias in their favour, and been prejudiced against men of other nations, they would have borne with him, and his Christianity too. He is writing to the Gentiles, and he reminds them that he is in prison, as their apostle. He had not only given to all men the gospel, but he had given it to them, free from Jewish associations. “ I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles.” There is too much reason to fear, that, even in our own day, the grand offence of many a noble servant of Jesus Christ, is the breadth of his Christianity. Let a man sell himself to some one Church, or party, warmly plead for his own party, exhibit the errors and defects of all other Churches, and he will live and die in the affections of his people. On the other hand, a man who declines specially to own this Church, or disown the other, who looks with an evil eye on none, but embraces all in the broad spirit of his impartial love, will certainly find that there are grave charges still against the Spirit of Christ, as distinct from the spirit of party. He may calculate on the cold suspicions and hard judgments of the self-loving Churches. Let him count the cost, and, if he can, declare himself for Christ and humanity; or, if he be not able, then for Christ and his own party. It is no small praise to say that Jesus is the King, whose subjects have always found positive pleasure in suffering for Him. To be disowned and set at nought for His sake are their honour and joy. In their esteem, no distinction could equal that of being partakers of Christ’ s sufferings. “ We glory in tribulation.” While suffering for His sake, the spirit of glory and of God rests upon them. What are the honours and rewards of party zeal compared with this? (J. Pulsford.)Suffering in God’ s cause 1. The pains of ministers with and for the Lord’ s people are so far from being at an end when people are brought to Christ and built upon Him by faith, that even their being brought this length doth lay a new tie upon their ministers, both to deal with God on their behalf, and to labour with themselves so much the more earnestly, that, not only they do not lose those things which are already wrought (2 John 1:8), but also they may make progress answerable unto their fair beginnings; lest otherwise they mar their own comfort (Psalms 51:12), make the name of God to be evil spoken of (2 Samuel 12:14). 2. Such powerful influence hath God upon hearts, that He can make those who for the time are cruel persecutors of truth, prove afterwards famous martyrs and sufferers for it; for Paul was once a bloody persecutor (Galatians 1:13), but is now a famous sufferer. 3. Sufferings for Christ and truth are so far from being cause of just reproach to those who suffer from others, or from being matter of shame and blushing to themselves, that they are rather a glory unto them, yea, and sometimes will be gloried in by them, as that wherein their chiefest honour standeth; for Paul, after the example of kings and nobles, who design themselves by their most honourable styles, doth in place of all take this one, of a prisoner for truth, unto himself; “ I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ.” 4. So far ought people to be from stumbling at truth, because of the oppressed and suffering lot of those who preach it, that even their sufferings for truth should make their pains the more acceptable, and add a weight unto the word of truth in their mouth; for Paul describeth himself from his present suffering lot, that both his person and pains might have the more weight and efficacy with them; “ I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ.” 5. The Lord doth sometimes give so far way to the rage of persecutors, as that the choicest instruments for carrying on His work may be, for a season, restrained in their liberty, and so laid aside as useless, even in a time when there is greatest need of their pains and diligence; far Paul, an eminent instrument (1 Corinthians 15:10), was at such a time cast in prison; “ I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ.” 6. No afflictions or sufferings do loose a pastor from his duty towards the Lord’ s people, over whom he is set; but when he is restrained in his liberty from preaching to them, he ought even then endeavour their edification by writing to them, and praying for them. (J. Fergusson.)Persecution for the gospel 1. The effectual working of the gospel procures persecution to the ministers of it. The devil cannot endure with patience to see himself dispossessed and dislodged out of the hearts in which he has rested, and therefore spits his venom against them. This is the true reason, though other things are often pretended. 2. God can make the persecutors of His gospel become martyrs for it (Galatians 1:13-23). (1) Pray even for persecutors.(2) Trust that God will overrule all for the best. 3. God’ s faithful servants are subject to persecution. (1) They cannot be pleasers of men.(2) Christ will not be a King after the manner of this world.(3) God would have it thus, in order to show that the power which subdues the world is of Him. 4. We must not be ashamed of our sufferings for Christ, but rather rejoice in them. Soldiers will tell of the wounds, the shot, and all hard measure they have suffered from the hand of the enemy under their colours; so must we esteem it our chief honour, when God allows us to suffer anything for His sake. 5. The sufferings of faithful ministers benefit their people. As the captain’ s resolution rescues the whole army from discomfiture, so it sometimes happens that the ministers’ casting themselves upon the pikes, is the security of the people depending on them. (1) Sufferings dispose us to be serviceable to others.(2) Pattern to others.(3) Testimony to the worth of the doctrine delivered.(4) The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Persecution is the seed of peace. (Paul Bayne.)Suffering a stimulus A certain amount of persecution rouses a man’ s defiance, stirs his blood for magnificent battle, and makes him fifty times more a man than he would have been without the persecution. So it was with the great reformer when he said, “ I will not be put down; I will be heard.” And so it was with Millard, the preacher, in the time of Louis XI. When Louis XI sent word to him that unless he stopped preaching in that style he would throw him into the river, he replied, “ Tell the king that I will reach heaven sooner by water than he will reach it by fast horses.” (Dr. Talmage.)Benefit of trial I have somewhere read the following incident in the life of a distinguished botanist. Being exiled from his native land, he obtained employment as an under gardener in the service of a nobleman. While he was in this situation, his master received a valuable plant, the nature and habits of which were unknown to him. It was given to the gardener to be taken care of, and he, fancying it to be a tropical production, put it into the hothouse (for it was winter), and dealt with it as with the others under the glass. But it began to decay,…when the strange under gardener asked permission to examine it. As soon as he looked at it he said, “ This is an arctic plant: you are killing it by the tropical heat into which you have introduced it.” So he took it outside, and exposed it to the frost, and, to the dismay of the upper gardener, heaped pieces of ice around the flower pot; but the result vindicated his wisdom, for straightway it began to recover, and was soon as strong as ever. Now, such a plant is Christian character. It is not difficulty that is dangerous to it, but ease. Put it into a hothouse, separate it from the world, surround it with luxury, hedge it in from every opposition, and you take the surest means of killing it. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)Christ’ s prisoners Guy de Brez, a French minister, was prisoner in the castle of Tournay. A lady who visited him said she wondered how he could eat, or drink, or sleep in quiet. “ Madam,” said he, “ my chains do not terrify me or break my sleep; on the contrary, I glory and take delight therein, esteeming them at a higher rate than chains and rings of gold, or jewels at any price whatever. The rattling of my chains is like the effect of an instrument of music in my ears--not that such an effect comes merely from my chains, but it is because I am bound therewith for maintaining the truth of the gospel.” Ephesians 3:2 If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward.God’ s dispensation of grace The ministerial calling is termed grace, because the designing to it is of grace, and the faculty qualifying us for it is from the free favour of God.1. This assures ministers that their sufferings are for the good of the people, if they know they have a calling from God. 2. God distributes callings for the good of His Church. 3. As God gives ministers their calling, so also their people toward whom He will bless their labours. Every minister must be (1) Separated.(2) Authorized.(3) Have his pastoral charge assigned him. When the Lord lights candles, He finds candlesticks on which to set them, and when He gives a calling, He gives a people amongst whom this function should be exercised.4. People are specially to depend on their own pastor. (Paul Bayne.)The dispensation of grace “ If” here might very well be read “ since,” as in Colossians 1:23; Galatians 3:4; 2 Corinthians 5:2, where the thing spoken of is not doubtful, but taken for granted. The connection is this: “ You know then, dear brethren, that I am the Lord’ s prisoner for your sake, since, or forasmuch as, you know the cause of it in my miraculous conversion, and my being called to the apostolic office. For your sakes, too, I have received this grace of God, that I should be the econome or steward of the heavenly house. Here it is the grace; in Colossians 1:25 it is the dispensation which is given, and the meaning is nearly the same. The office and the qualification are both from God. What is this economy or dispensation? It is the “ law of the house,” the principle and mode of housekeeping--the Haushaltung Gottes, according to the Germans. The idea is beautiful. The house, the household, the father, the family, are the holiest things on the earth. There all sorts of varieties and diversities meet in unity, rule, and obedience, rewards and punishments, hopes and fears. There are varieties of ages, sexes, characters, conditions, temperaments, etc., and the scheme of disciplining and ruling the whole is economy, the house law or dispensation, and the person to whom this is committed is the economist of the house, as Joseph was (Genesis 39:4), or the heir, as Eliezer (Genesis 15:2; Genesis 24:2). (W. Graham, D. D.) Ephesians 3:3 How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery.Revelation of God’ s mystery 1. Those whom God sends, He also teaches. 2. We have by nature a veil before our eyes, that we cannot see spiritual matters till they be revealed. (1) Wherefore we must all pray that the veil may be removed from these points of the gospel, that the spirit of liberty may be given us, which brings light and understanding wherever it comes. (2) See what we must impute our not profiting to, viz., this, that we have not got that eyesight of the Spirit, wherewith our eyes should be cleared. Many of us are like the woman who, going to bed seeing and in the night taken blind, waking in the morning, complained of the curtain; for, not discerning our spiritual blindness, we complain of the curtain--strange manner of teaching, obscure speaking, perplexed sentences, I know not what in the teacher--when the fault is nearer home; we are too much in our own light, not knowing ourselves. 3. The doctrine of salvation is a hidden thing to the world. Things are lightsome or obscure in themselves, or to us. To be made lightsome in themselves, there needs but the light of the sun to shine upon them; but to make them lightsome to us, we must have inward light in the eye whereby to discern them: thus the counsel of God is for the nature of it light itself. 4. It is made sensible or visible, the light of revelation shining on it. 5. It is so discerned where there is the supernatural eye of the Spirit, by benefit of this external light to discern it. We need to pray with David, “ Lord, open our eyes, that we may see the wonders or hidden things of Thy law.” You see, we are all of us men of clay, and living here as it were in the bottom of the ship, walking upon clay; and therefore, if we would know the will of God, concerning us men here below, either God must be revealed from heaven extraordinarily, whereof we have no warrant, or ordinarily, and that is by these books written and indited by the Spirit of God, to be seen, read, and understood. Now this must stand by great reason, for if a man were in a mineral or coal pit, infinite fathoms toward the centre of the earth, it were impossible he should know the will of us men here above, unless we either descend ourselves, or send, or at least throw in a letter of our mind, which notwithstanding will be never the nearer unless we convey light to read the same: so I say, either God must call to us in an audible voice, or send His angels, or raise up afresh some extraordinary means of revealing His will, or else send His letter of His mind to us His loving friends, redeemed by the blood of Christ, yea, and reach us light also for the perusing of the same, or surely we shall never as long as we live attain to the knowledge of His will. Now I grant that the books of Scripture contain the Divine will of God, but such is the darkness of our understanding, that we cannot conceive thereof unless the outward means of the preaching of the Word be joined with the inward working of the Spirit, as fire to enlighten the whole house. Not that the Word in itself is obscure and dark, but that it lighteth into those hands of such blind expositors, in whom is nothing but darkness, as the bright silver lying in a dark chest. (Paul Bayne.)Revelation No revelation can be adequately given by the address of man to man, whether by writing or orally, even if he be put in possession of the truth itself. For all such revelation must be made through words: and words are but counters--the coins of intellectual exchange. There is as little resemblance between the silver coin and the bread it purchases, as between the word and the thing it stands for. Looking at the coin the form of the loaf does not suggest itself. Listening to the word, you do not perceive the idea for which it stands, unless you are already in possession of it. Speak of ice to an inhabitant of the torrid zone, the word does not give him any idea, or if it does, it must be a false one. Talk of redness to one who cannot distinguish colours, what can your most eloquent description present to him resembling the truth of your sensation? Similarly in matters spiritual, no verbal revelation can give a single simple idea: for instance, what means justice to the unjust--or purity to the man whose heart is steeped in licentiousness? What does infinitude mean to a being who has never stirred from infancy beyond a cell, never seen the sky or the sea, or any of those occasions of thought, which, leaving vagueness on the mind, suggest the idea of the illimitable? It means, explain it as you will, nothing to him but a room: vastly larger than his own, but still a room terminated by four walls. Talk of God to a thousand ears, each has his own different conception of the Almighty Being who rules all. The sensual man hears of God, and conceives one idea; the pure man hears, and pictures another. Whether you speak in metaphysical or metaphorical language; in the purest words of inspiration, or the grossest images of materialism; the conceptions conveyed by the same word are essentially different, according to the soul which receives them. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Accepting the mysteries of God The decree of God is a sealed book, and the names in it are secret; therefore thy part is to look to God’ s revealed will--namely, to “ make thy calling and election sure” by making thy regeneration sure. Dost thou not know that secret things belong to God, but revealed things, to us and to our children? Oh ‘ tis dangerous to meddle with the secrets of princes! (G. Swinnock.)The gospel a revelation It is an historical fact which has not been sufficiently noticed, that human nature is always below revelation. This fact indicates the Divine origin of revelation. Great discoveries are usually the product of preceding ages of thought. One mind develops the idea; but it is the fruit of the age ripened in that mind. A pearl is found, but the location had 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. (J. B. Walker.)Few words Very wisely does an American writer say, “ There is a mighty difference between preaching the everlasting gospel and preaching the gospel everlastingly.” There is no end to the truth, but there should be an end to the sermon, or else it will answer no end but that of wearying the hearer. A friend who occasionally visits the continent always prefers the passage from Dover to Calais, for a reason which we commend to the notice of certain prosy speakers--it is short. If you speak well, you will not be long; if you speak ill, you ought not to be so. We commend to the verbose brother the counsel of a costermonger to an open-air preacher--it was rather rude, but peculiarly sensible--“ I say, old fellow, cut it short.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 3:4; Ephesians 3:6 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge In the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles.The reserve of God in relation to His grace I. Its bearing on the Divine character. We must bear in mind--1. That it was a reserve of grace. What belongs to grace can never be demanded by justice. 2. That the proper appreciation of Divine grace required a preliminary education of the race. 3. That the Author of universal salvation could alone judge of the fitting time for declaring it. 4. Although new in manifestation, God’ s saving purpose was eternal. II. Its justification by results. Religious exclusiveness, race hatred, etc., had done their work, and men were weary of the evils they entailed. A distinctly new interest and attraction was given to the gospel by this element in its proclamations. By the very contradiction and dishonour to human nature which had accrued from their rivalries and contempts, men were enabled to appreciate the grandeur and blessing of a universal religion, given, not in word merely, but in a distinctly new experience, to man as man. And to all who heard it it came with a peculiar authority from the very fact that it had not grown out of experience or speculation as a word of man, but had had to be revealed as the word of God. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The reserve of God The reserve which God used for thousand years after thousand years, should suggest to us caution in limiting the purpose of God. God has doubtless unspeakable things still in reserve. The Jewish people were made to feel that there was an awful distance and separation between them and God; but of His nearness to them, under their distance and darkness, they had little suspicion. That the condemning power of sin was the condition of their own nature, that God’ s whole heart was towards all nations, that He was resolved, by the Sun of His love, to break through the sin cloud between Himself and them, and to establish with them direct relationship, were more than they could imagine. That, before the foundation of the world, the Son of God had made the difficulty of sin His own, that in the fulness of time, He would come in human nature, to be made sin for men, purge away their sin by His death, and by His glorification become wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption unto all who should receive Him, were impossible conceptions to them. But the special conceit of their self-love was, that they, of all men, were the favourites of God. When, therefore, God disclosed the fact that He is “ no respecter of persons” --that the Gentile world is as dear to Him as the Jewish--that the gospel of His heart is equally for all nations, the Jew took offence, and refused to enter a kingdom, which gave to him no distinction above other men. (J. Pulsford.)Scripture reading Seeing that reading is so beneficial, we must be exhorted to set apart some time to spend this way. We are so affected to the writings of our friends, that if a letter come in when we are about to sit down, we will not taste anything till we have read it. These writings are the letter of God to us. If we have anything bequeathed as in some will, we will have, if not all the will, yet the clause of it perfectly in memory and at our fingers’ ends. These things written are God’ s testament, which we cannot without great indignity neglect. Again, why do you desire gold and silver, but because it is so valuable that it will purchase any earthly commodity? Yet what is that in comparison of the Word, which together with the Spirit worketh unto life everlasting? If any of you should this day, walking by himself, hear the voice of God break out of heaven, he would be astonished at the hearing, and perhaps he would easily be persuaded that he should ponder every syllable. But this Word is as great and as much. In this thou hast God speaking by Himself, by men, by angels, by all means to draw thee unto Him. Wherefore, if thou art desirous to hear God speak (as I think some curious spirits are), thou hast Moses and the prophets, the written will of God, which convey God speaking to thee daily. Again, is there any that hopes to gain lands and possessions, and will not acquaint himself with the evidences which may lead him thereunto? In the written Word lies the great grant of that blessed land promised to Abraham and his seed, and from thence how it is entailed unto us of the Gentiles. Naturally we all desire knowledge, as the blind man deprived of his sight; how from the Word flows all knowledge as the river from the seas, and enriches the mind with a quick and sharp capacity. Lastly, we desire to hear tell of strange things: what more strange than to read of that celestial palace beyond the stars, called Paradise, and of the glory thereof? What more strange than to hear tell of the Father of spirits, and all the host of heaven, angels and saints? to hear tell in like manner of the place of darkness and shadow of death, of the prince thereof and his attendants? If all this will not provoke thee to this duty, humble thyself, suspect thyself of some gross iniquity which fills thy stomach to the full. (Paul Bayne.)Deep spiritual knowledge is conditional We know not Christ aright till we are conformed to what we know of Him. The pure in heart see the pure and holy God. When the lady said to Mr. Turner (the painter), “ Sir, I have seen that spot many times, but I never saw that which you have pictured.” “ No, ma’ am,” he replied, “ I dare say you have not; but don’ t you wish you could?” The artist’ s eye sees what another eye cannot, and the pure in heart can see in God what no one else can see, because they are like to God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Spiritual insight My own experience is that the Bible is dull when I am dull. When I am really alive, and set in upon the text with a tidal pressure of living affinities, it opens, it multiplies discoveries, and reveals depths even faster than I can note them. The worldly spirit shuts the Bible; the Spirit of God makes it a fire, flaming out all meanings and glorious truths. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.)Progressive Revelation 1. God does not in all ages give the same measure of light to His Church. 2. By degrees He revealed the Messiah to His people. 3. The whole will of God is made known to us. (1) How foolish are those who will believe no more than their fathers believed.(2) How thankful should we be, that we have so much greater light than those under the law. 4. Since Christ came to declare to us the will of God, we have the mystery of salvation more fully opened; we must therefore yield the greater obedience. 5. The things of God are revealed to us by the Spirit. Let us then seek His aid-- (1) By prayer.(2) By attendance on the Word and Sacraments.(3) By a Christian course of obedience. (Paul Bayne.)Need of Divine revelation Varro, a Roman writer of the first century B.C. states, that, in his day, he had been at the pains to collect the various opinions on the question, “ What is the true object of human life?” in other words, “ What is the supreme good?” He had reckoned up as many as three hundred and twenty answers. How needful is Divine revelation l And how essential to those who are starting in life, that a heavenly guide should teach them the true end and purpose of earthly existence! (Biblical Treasury.)Christ partially revealed to the prophets I was visited by a very distinguished young Israelite who had seen me distributing the sacred volume, and I proposed that we should read a portion of Scripture together. He agreed, on the condition that it should be from the Old Testament, and I read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. “ But,” said he, “ that is in the New Testament.” “ No, no,” I replied. “ There, take the book. Read it with that true heart which I perceive in you, and you will find what you seek.” He has found his Saviour, has accepted Him, and confesses Him with joy. (Pasteur Hirsch.)The Holy Spirit and preaching Charles G. Finney used to discover that sometimes his preaching was mighty in its influence to convict and convert sinners. At other times he seemed to be firing only blank cartridges. The results depended entirely upon his own spiritual condition, upon his nearness to or his absence from God. When he was in close communion with God the currents of power were mighty and irresistible. When his connection with the Lord ceased, either through unbelief or unworthy living, his lifting power was gone. Drawing nigh to God was invariably the most effectual way to draw the impenitent. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)The gospel inheritance 1. The condition to which it is God’ s intention that the Gentiles should be brought. (1) They should be joint heirs with Christ. (2) They should be of the same body with Christ and His Church; for first we must become beloved children in Christ the Beloved, before we can be inheritors. (3) They should be partakers of the promise; for by faith in the word of promise, we come to have fellowship with Christ. 2. The means. “ By the gospel.” It is the gospel which brings us to faith, and to our heavenly inheritance. (1) We are not to be discouraged from following the Word; (a) either by the unworthiness of the preachers; (b) or by the consciousness of our own unworthiness; (c) or by our not profiting to our mind. (2) Ministers must not give over preaching; (a) either upon conceit of their ignorance; (b) or of the small good they see come of it; (c) or for want of feeling in themselves the power of what they preach; (d) or upon sense of temptations contrary to it. (Paul Bayne.)Sharing the privileges One incident gives high proof of the native generosity of Turner’ s nature. He was one of the Hanging Committee, as the phrase goes, of the Royal Academy. The walls were full when Turner’ s attention was attracted by a picture sent in by an unknown provincial artist by the name of Bird. “ A good picture!” he exclaimed; “ it must be hung up and exhibited.” “ Impossible!” responded the committee of academicians. “ The arrangement cannot be disturbed. Quite impossible!” “ A good picture,” iterated Turner; “ it must be hung up” ; and finding his colleagues to be as obstinate as himself, he hitched down one of his own pictures, and hung up Bird’ s in its place. Would to God that in far more instances the like spirit ruled among servants of the Lord Jesus. The desire to honour others and to give others a fair opportunity to rise should lead ministers of distinction to give place to less eminent men to whom it may be of essential service to become better known. We are not to look every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The union of Jews and believing Gentiles in Christ The topic of the early portion of the first chapter of this Epistle, is that good men have been the subjects of Divine thought and predestination in Christ from everlasting ages. The topic of the latter portion of the first chapter is, that their future destiny runs parallel throughout eternity with that of the Son of God, raised from the dead and glorified. The subject of the second chapter and the early portion of the third, is the close union of believing Jews and Gentiles in all this grace and glory forever. It is worth while to describe the state of things between Jews and heathen in the days of the apostles, and to show the bearing of those facts on the present and future position of the Israelites in the world.1. Let us, then, note first, that in former ages God had established a discipline of marvellous complexity for the separation of the Abrahamic people. (1) They were thus separated from the nations, in order that they might be delivered from the contamination of surrounding paganism, and might preserve in ever-increasing strength a zeal for their own religion, which was, so far as it went, the only true one on earth. (2) The object of their separation was to enable them to transmit with intensity the rays of that lighthouse of truth, placed on the heights of Zion, over the dark and troubled sea of surrounding paganism, so that the nations might more effectually learn the verities which Judaism enshrined. (3) Their separation was a necessary preliminary for a future mission as the missionaries and evangelists of the whole world. 2. The next point to notice is that the Hebrew prophets, ages before the coming of Christ, had foretold that when the Messiah appeared this “ middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles” would be broken down, so that all who served God would be brought into one church of the true worshippers (see Isaiah 2:2-3; Isaiah 43:1; Isaiah 49:6; Isaiah 51:5; Jeremiah 3:17; Zechariah 8:22). 3. But this mystery of the future worship of Jehovah to be rendered by united Jews and Gentiles was hidden from the eyes of the Jewish people until it was proclaimed and asserted by Christ (John 10:16). 4. Although the gospel of Jesus has established the spiritual union of all believing Jews and believing Gentiles in one spiritual Church, so that they form one body in Christ, still so long as the earth lasts, this spiritual union of Jew and Gentile has not abolished the nationality of the Jews, any more than it has annihilated the nationality of the Englishman, the Spaniard, the German, or the Dane. (E. White.) Ephesians 3:4; Ephesians 3:6 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge In the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles.The reserve of God in relation to His grace I. Its bearing on the Divine character. We must bear in mind--1. That it was a reserve of grace. What belongs to grace can never be demanded by justice. 2. That the proper appreciation of Divine grace required a preliminary education of the race. 3. That the Author of universal salvation could alone judge of the fitting time for declaring it. 4. Although new in manifestation, God’ s saving purpose was eternal. II. Its justification by results. Religious exclusiveness, race hatred, etc., had done their work, and men were weary of the evils they entailed. A distinctly new interest and attraction was given to the gospel by this element in its proclamations. By the very contradiction and dishonour to human nature which had accrued from their rivalries and contempts, men were enabled to appreciate the grandeur and blessing of a universal religion, given, not in word merely, but in a distinctly new experience, to man as man. And to all who heard it it came with a peculiar authority from the very fact that it had not grown out of experience or speculation as a word of man, but had had to be revealed as the word of God. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The reserve of God The reserve which God used for thousand years after thousand years, should suggest to us caution in limiting the purpose of God. God has doubtless unspeakable things still in reserve. The Jewish people were made to feel that there was an awful distance and separation between them and God; but of His nearness to them, under their distance and darkness, they had little suspicion. That the condemning power of sin was the condition of their own nature, that God’ s whole heart was towards all nations, that He was resolved, by the Sun of His love, to break through the sin cloud between Himself and them, and to establish with them direct relationship, were more than they could imagine. That, before the foundation of the world, the Son of God had made the difficulty of sin His own, that in the fulness of time, He would come in human nature, to be made sin for men, purge away their sin by His death, and by His glorification become wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption unto all who should receive Him, were impossible conceptions to them. But the special conceit of their self-love was, that they, of all men, were the favourites of God. When, therefore, God disclosed the fact that He is “ no respecter of persons” --that the Gentile world is as dear to Him as the Jewish--that the gospel of His heart is equally for all nations, the Jew took offence, and refused to enter a kingdom, which gave to him no distinction above other men. (J. Pulsford.)Scripture reading Seeing that reading is so beneficial, we must be exhorted to set apart some time to spend this way. We are so affected to the writings of our friends, that if a letter come in when we are about to sit down, we will not taste anything till we have read it. These writings are the letter of God to us. If we have anything bequeathed as in some will, we will have, if not all the will, yet the clause of it perfectly in memory and at our fingers’ ends. These things written are God’ s testament, which we cannot without great indignity neglect. Again, why do you desire gold and silver, but because it is so valuable that it will purchase any earthly commodity? Yet what is that in comparison of the Word, which together with the Spirit worketh unto life everlasting? If any of you should this day, walking by himself, hear the voice of God break out of heaven, he would be astonished at the hearing, and perhaps he would easily be persuaded that he should ponder every syllable. But this Word is as great and as much. In this thou hast God speaking by Himself, by men, by angels, by all means to draw thee unto Him. Wherefore, if thou art desirous to hear God speak (as I think some curious spirits are), thou hast Moses and the prophets, the written will of God, which convey God speaking to thee daily. Again, is there any that hopes to gain lands and possessions, and will not acquaint himself with the evidences which may lead him thereunto? In the written Word lies the great grant of that blessed land promised to Abraham and his seed, and from thence how it is entailed unto us of the Gentiles. Naturally we all desire knowledge, as the blind man deprived of his sight; how from the Word flows all knowledge as the river from the seas, and enriches the mind with a quick and sharp capacity. Lastly, we desire to hear tell of strange things: what more strange than to read of that celestial palace beyond the stars, called Paradise, and of the glory thereof? What more strange than to hear tell of the Father of spirits, and all the host of heaven, angels and saints? to hear tell in like manner of the place of darkness and shadow of death, of the prince thereof and his attendants? If all this will not provoke thee to this duty, humble thyself, suspect thyself of some gross iniquity which fills thy stomach to the full. (Paul Bayne.)Deep spiritual knowledge is conditional We know not Christ aright till we are conformed to what we know of Him. The pure in heart see the pure and holy God. When the lady said to Mr. Turner (the painter), “ Sir, I have seen that spot many times, but I never saw that which you have pictured.” “ No, ma’ am,” he replied, “ I dare say you have not; but don’ t you wish you could?” The artist’ s eye sees what another eye cannot, and the pure in heart can see in God what no one else can see, because they are like to God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Spiritual insight My own experience is that the Bible is dull when I am dull. When I am really alive, and set in upon the text with a tidal pressure of living affinities, it opens, it multiplies discoveries, and reveals depths even faster than I can note them. The worldly spirit shuts the Bible; the Spirit of God makes it a fire, flaming out all meanings and glorious truths. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.)Progressive Revelation 1. God does not in all ages give the same measure of light to His Church. 2. By degrees He revealed the Messiah to His people. 3. The whole will of God is made known to us. (1) How foolish are those who will believe no more than their fathers believed.(2) How thankful should we be, that we have so much greater light than those under the law. 4. Since Christ came to declare to us the will of God, we have the mystery of salvation more fully opened; we must therefore yield the greater obedience. 5. The things of God are revealed to us by the Spirit. Let us then seek His aid-- (1) By prayer.(2) By attendance on the Word and Sacraments.(3) By a Christian course of obedience. (Paul Bayne.)Need of Divine revelation Varro, a Roman writer of the first century B.C. states, that, in his day, he had been at the pains to collect the various opinions on the question, “ What is the true object of human life?” in other words, “ What is the supreme good?” He had reckoned up as many as three hundred and twenty answers. How needful is Divine revelation l And how essential to those who are starting in life, that a heavenly guide should teach them the true end and purpose of earthly existence! (Biblical Treasury.)Christ partially revealed to the prophets I was visited by a very distinguished young Israelite who had seen me distributing the sacred volume, and I proposed that we should read a portion of Scripture together. He agreed, on the condition that it should be from the Old Testament, and I read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. “ But,” said he, “ that is in the New Testament.” “ No, no,” I replied. “ There, take the book. Read it with that true heart which I perceive in you, and you will find what you seek.” He has found his Saviour, has accepted Him, and confesses Him with joy. (Pasteur Hirsch.)The Holy Spirit and preaching Charles G. Finney used to discover that sometimes his preaching was mighty in its influence to convict and convert sinners. At other times he seemed to be firing only blank cartridges. The results depended entirely upon his own spiritual condition, upon his nearness to or his absence from God. When he was in close communion with God the currents of power were mighty and irresistible. When his connection with the Lord ceased, either through unbelief or unworthy living, his lifting power was gone. Drawing nigh to God was invariably the most effectual way to draw the impenitent. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)The gospel inheritance 1. The condition to which it is God’ s intention that the Gentiles should be brought. (1) They should be joint heirs with Christ. (2) They should be of the same body with Christ and His Church; for first we must become beloved children in Christ the Beloved, before we can be inheritors. (3) They should be partakers of the promise; for by faith in the word of promise, we come to have fellowship with Christ. 2. The means. “ By the gospel.” It is the gospel which brings us to faith, and to our heavenly inheritance. (1) We are not to be discouraged from following the Word; (a) either by the unworthiness of the preachers; (b) or by the consciousness of our own unworthiness; (c) or by our not profiting to our mind. (2) Ministers must not give over preaching; (a) either upon conceit of their ignorance; (b) or of the small good they see come of it; (c) or for want of feeling in themselves the power of what they preach; (d) or upon sense of temptations contrary to it. (Paul Bayne.)Sharing the privileges One incident gives high proof of the native generosity of Turner’ s nature. He was one of the Hanging Committee, as the phrase goes, of the Royal Academy. The walls were full when Turner’ s attention was attracted by a picture sent in by an unknown provincial artist by the name of Bird. “ A good picture!” he exclaimed; “ it must be hung up and exhibited.” “ Impossible!” responded the committee of academicians. “ The arrangement cannot be disturbed. Quite impossible!” “ A good picture,” iterated Turner; “ it must be hung up” ; and finding his colleagues to be as obstinate as himself, he hitched down one of his own pictures, and hung up Bird’ s in its place. Would to God that in far more instances the like spirit ruled among servants of the Lord Jesus. The desire to honour others and to give others a fair opportunity to rise should lead ministers of distinction to give place to less eminent men to whom it may be of essential service to become better known. We are not to look every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The union of Jews and believing Gentiles in Christ The topic of the early portion of the first chapter of this Epistle, is that good men have been the subjects of Divine thought and predestination in Christ from everlasting ages. The topic of the latter portion of the first chapter is, that their future destiny runs parallel throughout eternity with that of the Son of God, raised from the dead and glorified. The subject of the second chapter and the early portion of the third, is the close union of believing Jews and Gentiles in all this grace and glory forever. It is worth while to describe the state of things between Jews and heathen in the days of the apostles, and to show the bearing of those facts on the present and future position of the Israelites in the world.1. Let us, then, note first, that in former ages God had established a discipline of marvellous complexity for the separation of the Abrahamic people. (1) They were thus separated from the nations, in order that they might be delivered from the contamination of surrounding paganism, and might preserve in ever-increasing strength a zeal for their own religion, which was, so far as it went, the only true one on earth. (2) The object of their separation was to enable them to transmit with intensity the rays of that lighthouse of truth, placed on the heights of Zion, over the dark and troubled sea of surrounding paganism, so that the nations might more effectually learn the verities which Judaism enshrined. (3) Their separation was a necessary preliminary for a future mission as the missionaries and evangelists of the whole world. 2. The next point to notice is that the Hebrew prophets, ages before the coming of Christ, had foretold that when the Messiah appeared this “ middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles” would be broken down, so that all who served God would be brought into one church of the true worshippers (see Isaiah 2:2-3; Isaiah 43:1; Isaiah 49:6; Isaiah 51:5; Jeremiah 3:17; Zechariah 8:22). 3. But this mystery of the future worship of Jehovah to be rendered by united Jews and Gentiles was hidden from the eyes of the Jewish people until it was proclaimed and asserted by Christ (John 10:16). 4. Although the gospel of Jesus has established the spiritual union of all believing Jews and believing Gentiles in one spiritual Church, so that they form one body in Christ, still so long as the earth lasts, this spiritual union of Jew and Gentile has not abolished the nationality of the Jews, any more than it has annihilated the nationality of the Englishman, the Spaniard, the German, or the Dane. (E. White.) Ephesians 3:7 Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of His power.The ministerial gift 1. The ministerial gift, which God of grace giveth, makes a minister.2. Ministers differ in their gifts and qualifications.3. God’ s power accompanies the gift of the ministry. (Paul Bayne.)A true minister The Rev. S. Pearce, being one week day evening in London, asked a friend where he could hear a good sermon. Two places were mentioned. “ Well,” said he, “ tell me the characters of the preachers, that I may choose.” “ Mr. D--,” said his friend, “ exhibits the orator, and is much admired for his pulpit eloquence.” “ And what is the other?” “ Why, I hardly know what to say of Mr. C--; he always throws himself in the background, and you see his Master only.” “ That’ s the man for me, then,” said the amiable Pearce; “ let us go and hear him.” (W. Baxendale.)Gifts differ A violet shed its modest beauties at the turfy foot of an old oak. It lived there many days during the kind summer in obscurity. The winds and the rains came and fell, but they did not hurt the violet. Storms often crashed among the boughs of the oak. And one day said the oak, “ Are you not ashamed of yourself when you look up at me, you little thing down there, when you see now large I am and how small you are; when you see how small a space you fill, and how widely my branches are spread?” “ No,” said the violet; “ we are both where God has placed us; and God has given us both something. He has given to you strength, to me sweetness; and I offer Him back my fragrance, and I am thankful!” “ Sweetness is all nonsense,” said the oak; “ a few days--a month at most--where and what will you be? You will die, and the place of your grave will not lift the ground higher by a blade of grass. I hope to stand some time--ages perhaps; and then, when I am cut down, I shall be a ship, to bear men over the sea, or a coffin to hold the dust of a prince. What is your lot to mine?” “ But,” cheerfully breathed the violet back, “ we are both what God made us, and we are both where He placed us. I suppose I shall die soon. I hope to die fragrantly, as I have lived fragrantly. You must be cut down at last; it does not matter, that I see, a few days or a few ages, my littleness or your largeness; it comes to the same thing at last. We are what God made us. We are where God placed us. God gave you strength; God gave me sweetness.” (W. Baxendale.)All gifts come from God In the year 1808, a grand performance of the “ Creation” took place at Vienna. Haydn was present, but he was so old and feeble that he had to be wheeled in a chair into the theatre, where a princess of the house of Esterhazy took her seat by his side. This was the last time that Haydn appeared in public, and a very impressive sight it must have been to see the aged father of music listening to the “ Creation” of his younger days, but too old to take any active share in the performance. The presence of the old man roused intense enthusiasm among the audience, which could no longer be suppressed as the chorus and orchestra burst in fall power upon the superb passage, “ And there was light.” Amid the tumult of the enraptured audience the old composer was seen striving to raise himself. Once on his feet, he mustered up all his strength, and in reply to the applause of the audience, he cried out as loud as he was able. “ No, no! not from me, but,” pointing to heaven, “ from thence--from heaven above--comes all!” saying which, he fell back in his chair, faint and exhausted, and had to be carried out of the room. (Frederick Crowest.)The Christian’ s personal duty towards the gospel Every Christian hath his talent given him, his service enjoined him. The gospel is a depositum, a public treasure, committed to the keeping of every Christian; each man having, as it were, a several key of the Church, a several trust for the honour of this kingdom delivered unto him. As, in the solemn coronation of the prince, every peer of the realm hath his station about the throne, and with touch of his hand upon the royal crown, declareth the personal duty of that honour, which he is called unto, namely, to hold on the crown on the head of his sovereign; to make it the main end of his greatness, to study, and by all means endeavour, the establishment of his prince’ s throne; so every Christian, as soon as he hath the honour to be called unto the kingdom and presence of Christ, hath immediately no meaner a depositum committed to his care than the very throne and crown of his Saviour, than the public honour, peace, victory, and stability of his Master’ s kingdom. (Bishop Reynolds.) Ephesians 3:8 Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.Unsearchable riches offered to the Gentiles It is evident from Scripture that God never intended that the privileges of adoption into His family and kingdom should be permanently confined to any particular nation. It is evident that the promise was originally given to Abraham, as the father of all them that believe, and not as a promise to be restricted to those who should be his posterity according to the flesh. And, although our Saviour’ s personal ministry was limited almost entirely to “ the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” He Himself expressly asserted that He had “ other sheep” who were “ not of that fold” --that “ them also He must bring” within the sacred enclosure--and that, after a time, there would thus be but “ one fold and one Shepherd.” I. How humble He was. He considered himself “ less than the least of all saints.” There was no affectation of humility here; the apostle felt as he wrote. Once he made his boast of the law, and relied on his own righteousness; now he felt that the law condemned him, and that the righteousness of Christ must be his only plea. Brethren, have you never persecuted Jesus in the persons of His saints? Have you never sneered at what the world calls the over strictness of His true disciples? Have you never treated individuals among them with scorn and derision? Have you never espoused the cause and followed the example of Christ’ s enemies? II. How catholic he was. “ Unto me is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles.” He rejoiced that God had given him this grace, conferred upon him this favour, distinguished him by this honour. He was, par excellence, the apostle of the Gentiles, and he gloried in the distinction. His Jewish prejudices had melted away like wreaths of night mist at the rising of the sun. His Christian sympathies now embraced the whole family of man; he was now as catholic as he had formerly been bigoted. Whether among the philosophers of Athens, or the sensualists of Corinth whether among the worshippers of Diana at Ephesus, or the worshippers of Jupiter at Lystra--whether among Jews in their synagogues, or among Gentiles in their market places--Paul preached a free and full gospel, declaring that it was the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believed, and that now God called on all men everywhere to repent. One effect of the Holy Spirit’ s teaching was, to enable him to contemplate mankind from a higher point of view, and with a wider range of vision, as all the offspring of one heavenly Father, against whom they had rebelled, and to whom now they might be reconciled. Brethren, let us beware against cherishing in the Christian Church a spirit of Jewish exclusiveness. It is begotten of ignorance and pride, and kept alive by a spurious zeal “ not according to knowledge.” III. How he valued the gospel. He calls it “ the unsearchable riches of Christ.” If men believed that the gospel could lead to “ unsearchable riches,” how anxious they would be to inquire into it, and to appropriate its benefits! See how St. Paul valued the gospel. He valued it because he had experienced the blessedness of being at peace with God through Christ; he valued it because it gave him a foretaste of heaven here, and the sure prospect of heaven hereafter; he valued it because he had found in it what a sinner ought to prize more than ten thousand worlds--“ the unsearchable riches of Christ,” a treasury of wisdom, a bank of merit, a storehouse of rewards, from which the soul may continue to draw throughout eternity, without exhausting, or even diminishing the supply; for in Christ there is infinite “ fulness,” in Him “ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead. (J. Mackay, B. D.)Paul’ s humility and zeal a pattern for Christians I. Let us observe what he says of himself. “ I am less than the least of all saints.” However high religion may rise in the superstructure, it always lays the foundation very low, in the deepest self-abasement. And those of you who have passed through the process, well know that the day of conviction is a day of self-annihilation. I believe, that if there be one word that will comprehend more than another the substance of genuine religion, it will be found to be “ humility.” For which reason, we presume, our great reformer, Luther, when he was asked, “ What is the first step in religion?” replied, “ Humility.” “ What is the second?” he replied, “ Humility.” “ What is the third?” he replied, “ Humility.” And does not the language of the Apostle Peter correspond with this, when he says, “ Be ye clothed with humility; for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.” Abraham said, “ I am but dust and ashes” ; Jacob--“ I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies” ; Job--“ Behold I am vile, what shall I answer thee?” Isaiah--“ Woe is me, for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips” ; Peter--“ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” ; John, the forerunner of the Saviour--“ Whose shoe’ s latchet I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.” A few words, however, will be here necessary, by way of elucidation, or rather qualification.1. I hope you will not consider this character of Paul, as the offspring of falsehood and affectation. Christians have often been ridiculed for depreciating themselves. The case is this: where show is a substitute for reality it is always excessive. Actors always surpass the original characters. Some people angle for praise with the bait of humility; I hope you will never be caught by it. Adams, in his “ Private Thoughts,” with that searchingness of spirit so peculiar to him, says, “ O Lord, I want more humility. And why do I want it? To be noticed and admired for it. Ah, my God, I see that my humility is very little better than pride.” Baxter observes that he had always considered Judge Hale defective with regard to experimental religion; “ But,” says he, “ the cause was, he had witnessed so much pretence and hypocrisy during the Commonwealth, that he rushed into the opposite extreme.” Remember that Paul here speaks from his real views and feelings, when he says, “ I am less than the least of all saints?” And you will observe also on what he fixes his eye in this comparative depreciation of himself. “ I am less,” says he, “ than the least of all saints.” “ Saints” means “ holy ones” ; it is therefore of holiness of which he speaks; not of his condition, not of his natural talents, not of his learning, not of his knowledge, but of holiness. “ Let each esteem other better than himself.” The maxim will not apply universally; to use it in some cases would be folly. It would be absurdity, not humility, for a strong and healthy man to esteem a weak, sick one, as more able to do many things than himself; or for a wealthy man to suppose that a poor man is richer than himself; or a scholar to suppose that an illiterate man is wiser than himself. But it is otherwise with regard to holiness: there you never should presume in your own favour; never suppose that another exercises less self-denial or conscientiousness than yourselves. He may have imperfections, but those imperfections may have extenuations which may not attach to your deficiencies. In a word, you only see the actions of another; whereas you may feed upon your own motives and principles. II. Observe what he says of his office. “ Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach.” Augustine calls Paul “ the herald of grace.” He well deserves the name; he is always magnifying it; never loses sight of it for a moment. He connects it, you see, with everything. He connects it with his conversion, “ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was exceeding abundant to me-ward.” He connects it with his conversation in the world, “ Not by fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God we have our conversation in the world.” He connects it with his unparalleled exertions: “ I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” He connects it with his functions: “ Unto me, who am less than the least; of all saints, is this grace given.” What grace is there here? What do princes when they want ministers, or masters when they want servants? They will be sure to take those who seem the most meritorious, and who already possess the qualities and excellences they require in them. Why? Because if they have them not, they cannot impart them. God can; and therefore, in calling His servants He also qualifies them; and therefore frequently takes the most unsuitable and the most inadequate, in order to show that the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man. When the apostle says, “ Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given,” he shows the estimation in which he held the work in which he was engaged. And, my brethren, though the ministry has been degraded and rendered despicable by many who have been attached to it; yet; in itself the work is honourable and glorious; and they who properly discharge it, as the apostle says, ought to be “ highly esteemed in love, for their works’ sake.” III. Let us observe what he says of his audience. “ Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles” ; not exclusively, but immediately, extensively, and peculiarly. And there is something remarkable and worthy of notice in this. And here you see in the apostle’ s case the nature of the Christian dispensation. You will observe that the Christian dispensation did not properly commence till the death of Christ. Accordingly during His abode on earth He was the Minister of the circumcision only. And when He sent forth the apostles and the seventy, He said, “ Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But upon His resurrection from the dead, when this glorious economy had actually commenced, His language and His commission was conformable to it; then said He to them, “ Go into all the world, and teach the gospel to every creature.” There is nothing, therefore, in the Christian dispensation like that of Judaism. Judaism was of Divine origin: but then it was exclusive; it was confined, and it was necessarily confined, to a particular nation. In the nature of the case it never could have become a universal religion. How could all the males in all the countries of the earth have repaired three times a your to Jerusalem, to appear before the Lord and to worship there? Christianity has no localities; our Saviour said to the woman, “ The hour cometh, yea, now is, when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem (exclusively) shall men worship the Father; but all shall worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The gospel therefore overlooks everything that is external and adventitious in men’ s condition, and regards them as men only. IV. Observe what he says of his subject. “ Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;” the model after which all ministers should be conformed; all of us should be able to make use of the same language with them. They could say, “ We preach not heathen virtues, not Jewish economies, not moral systems, not worldly politics, not Church discipline, not the difference in forms and modes of worship; we have a noble theme. We leave nature to the philosophers; our philosophy is to know ‘ God manifest in the flesh.’ We leave the planets to astronomers; our astronomy is to teach people to adore ‘ the bright and morning Star,’ to adore ‘ the Sun of Righteousness,’ rising with healing under His wings. We leave geometry to the mathematicians; our geometry is to teach people ‘ to comprehend with all saints, what is the height, and depth, and length, and breadth, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge’ ; our arithmetics to teach men ‘ so to number their days, as to apply their hearts unto wisdom.’ We leave criticism and language to the rhetoricians, concerned only to be skilled in the language of Canaan, and to speak according to the living oracles of God. ‘ We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord’ ; ‘ We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them which are called both Jew and Greek, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.’“ The world has its riches, but they are easily comprehended; and Solomon summed them all up when he said, “ Vanity of vanities; vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.” All the wealth of the world, all the world calls good and great, is infinitely inferior to mind. I say to mind. The riches of the Saviour are for the soul, and for eternity; they are therefore invisible as to the senses; and they are boundless too, so that no creature in heaven or earth can ever fully explore them. (W. Jay.)The ministry of the Apostle Paul I. Let us cursorily glance at the character of St. Paul as here described. “ Me, who am less than the least of all saints.”1. The description which the apostle here gives us of his character must not, on any account, encourage the idea that personal piety can be dispensed with in a Christian minister. 2. The description which St. Paul here gives us of his character may teach us that, even where an individual is a decided and distinguished saint, the level which he occupies as a religious man may be, in some sense, comparatively low. The circumstance which may be regarded as having mainly contributed to lower the apostle’ s place in the catalogue of the saints was this, that he spent so large and important a portion of his life in pursuits that were not only alien from the gospel of Christ, but fiercely opposed to His kingdom and His cause. But there is also another principle which determines the comparative place which a particular believer occupies in the scale of Christian saintship, namely, the amount of his actual attainments. And oh, to whatever extent St. Paul may have able to abide this searching test, what a humiliating view might it give, if fairly applied, of a multitude of saints! How many of those who obtain the character, and with sufficient reason, of enlightened and devoted Christians, are, if contemplated in the light of their religious advantages, but faint and feeble after all! 3. The description which St. Paul here gives of himself, as “ less than the least of all saints,” may serve as a model of humility. II. Let us glance at the functions which St. Paul was called to execute. “ That I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God.”1. St. Paul was called to “ preach.” The original word here rendered “ preach,” means to be the messenger of good tidings. It is a verb corresponding to the substantive translated “ gospel.” The apostle, then, was to announce the gospel--a message to which the name of good tidings may be attached, both because of its essential character as a record of God’ s pardoning and saving mercy, and because of its relative character as “ the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” O blessed and delightful view of the apostle’ s ministry! He had a gospel to declare. 2. St. Paul was called to “ preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.” The expression, “ riches of Christ,” comprehensively denotes the personal excellence and mediatorial sufficiency of Jesus. There are seven constituent elements more especially in “ the unsearchable riches of Christ,” which, in the name and by the authority of God, the apostle preached. (1) He preached the Divine supremacy of Christ. (2) St. Paul preached the prophetic excellence of Christ--disclosing the depths of celestial wisdom which, in person, and by his commissioned messengers, that infallible instructor taught, and making manifest that, in teaching thus, the Redeemer spake the words of God. (3) He preached the perfection of the Lord’ s humanity, announcing him for the vindication of the Father’ s righteousness, and the satisfaction of the sinner’ s soul, as the spotless Lamb of sacrifice. (4) He preached Christ’ s atoning sacrifice. But (5) it the apostle preached Christ as the Saviour on the cross, he also preached Him as the Saviour on the throne. (6) From heaven he descended, as it were, along with Him, to earth amidst the thunders of the day of doom. But (7) the Apostle Paul set forth not only the personal qualifications which Christ possesses, but also the benefits which He has purchased and procured for men. 3. St. Paul was called to preach these riches “ among the Gentiles.” 4. The apostle was commissioned “ to make all men see what was the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world had been hid in God.” III. Let us very briefly notice the source to which St. Paul attributes his possession of the ministerial office. “ Unto me is this grace given.”1. To his God and Saviour the apostle attributes his possession of the ministerial office; and well might he do so. From them he received his commission to preach the gospel (Acts 9:15; Acts 13:2). 2. The apostle’ s words suggest that to hold the office of the ministry is a privilege. (A. S. Patterson.)The apostle and his ministry I. consider what an humble opinion the apostle had of himself. True religion in the heart will produce self-abasing thoughts. II. The apostle expresses his admiring apprehensions of God’ s grace in calling him to the ministry. III. The apostle’ s elevated sentiments concerning the gospel which he preached.1. The blessings of the gospel, being purchased by the blood of Christ, are called “ riches.” 2. They have called “ riches” on account of their excellency, fulness, and variety. 3. They are called “ unsearchable riches,” because undiscoverable by human wisdom, and made known only by revelation. IV. Consider what grand and enlarged conceptions the apostle entertained of the design and importance of his ministry. Concluding reflections.1. This subject may serve to enlarge our views of the Divine government.2. This subject suggests to us, that heaven is a place of improvement.3. We see the humility of angels. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)The ministry and message of St. Paul I. The man. His humility! The bird that sings sweetest, and soars highest, builds upon the ground. The flower of richest fragrance is the lowly violet. So humility is the fairest of Christian graces. Notice St. Paul’ s growth in this. He calls himself successively--1. The least of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:9).2. Less than the least of all saints (Ephesians 3:8).3. The chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). II. The ministry he had received. Its excellence in contrast with his own conscious unworthiness. The treasure on the one hand--the earthen vessel on the other,1. This ministry a grace given to him. All work for Christ should be so regarded. Accepted as a privilege it ceases to be a task. 2. The grace given. St. Paul’ s special work as the apostle of the Gentiles. The gathering in of the Jews the difficulty in many minds now; the gathering in of the Gentiles the difficulty then. Duty of the Church as regards missions. III. The message. Good tidings.1. Christ: the substance and life of all true preaching.2. The riches of Christ. Favourite expression of the apostle. Riches of Christ’ s grace (Ephesians 1:7). Riches of Christ’ s glory (Ephesians 3:16).3. Unsearchable riches. Not traced out (Greek); but now revealed. (F. Dobbin, M. A.)St. Paul’ s lowly estimate of himself I am sure Paul was never guilty of mock modesty, and never pretended to be humbler than he really was. At suitable times he could vindicate himself, and claim his position among his fellow men. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Self-knowledge humiliates Was Paul really less than the least of all saints? Was not this too low an estimate of himself? Brethren, I suppose he meant that he felt this to be the case when he looked at himself from certain aspects. He was one of the late converts, many of his comrades were in Christ before him, and he yielded precedence to the older ones. He had been aforetime a persecutor and injurious, and, though God had forgiven him, he had never forgiven himself; and when he recollected his share in the sufferings and martyrdom of the saints, he felt that, though now numbered among them, he could only dare to sit in the lowliest place. Besides, any devout man, however eminent he may be in most respects, will find that there are certain other points in which he falls short; and the apostle, instead of looking at the points in which he excelled, singled out with modest eye those qualities in which he felt he failed, and in those respects he put himself down as “ less than the least of all saints.” This strikes us as being a very different mode of speech from that which is adopted by certain brethren. One friend asserts that he has ceased from known sin for some months; and then another brother, to go a little further, asserts that the very being of sin in him has been destroyed, root and branch; of which I believe in both cases not one single word. If those brethren had said that they were sixteen feet high, that their eyes were solid diamonds, and that their hair was Prussian blue, I should feel towards them very much as I do now. They simply do not know themselves, and the best article of furniture they could have in their houses would be a looking glass which would let them see their own selves; if they had once had such a sight, I warrant you they would sing another tune, pitched to a far lower key. Many who now shine in the highest places of self-estimation, will one day be glad enough to sit at the feet of the poorest of the saints, unless I am greatly mistaken; for everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The humility of St. Paul I. In what did the humility of St. Paul consist? How did it manifest itself? The slightest acquaintance with his character leaves us no room to suspect that it consisted in words only. There is such an appearance of simplicity and honesty in his writings, that they give us at once a full conviction that the humility which appears in his language, was to be found also in his heart and life.1. We cannot take even the most hasty glance at these, without at once noticing the entire submission of his mind to the gospel of Christ, the simple and full reception which he gave to every Divine truth. 2. The writings of St. Paul prove the greatness of his humility by showing us also, that the highest spiritual attainments could not make him forget his meanness and guilt. 3. The sense which the apostle had of his own sinfulness, did not however prevent him from seeing and acknowledging what Divine grace had done for his soul, and what it had enabled him to do for God. He sometimes mentions these things, but he never mentions them without affording us another proof of his lowliness of heart--a marked anxiety to give all the glory of all his labours and attainments to God. 4. His humility was manifested also in the low opinion which he had of himself, when compared with his Christian brethren. He speaks not, in the text, the unmeaning language of compliment, but the language of godly sincerity. 5. The humility of St. Paul consisted, lastly, in his simple dependence on Christ. II. By what means that spirit of self-abasement which reigned in his heart may be habitually maintained in our own. Now let us never forget that we have no power in ourselves to do anything as of ourselves. We are not able to plant a single grace within us; and when any spiritual seed has been planted there, we have no power to keep it alive, and cause it to bring forth fruit. But though we are thus impotent in ourselves, the Holy Spirit generally works His purposes of grace by the use of means, and through these means He allows, yea, He commands, us to seek His grace.1. One of these means must immediately occur to us; it is this--a frequent remembrance of our former iniquities, and an abiding sense of our present corruptions. Remember, Christian brethren, what you once were. 2. If we would habitually maintain an humble frame of mind, we must have a lively sense of the freeness and fulness of Divine mercy. Think of its beginning in the councils of eternity. Think of its freeness, its greatness, its unchangeableness. Think of that depth of misery from which it has raised you, and of that height of blessedness to which it is gradually lifting you. If such thoughts as these never humble you, write bitter things against yourselves, and deem yourselves strangers to the grace of Christ. 3. The Christian will also find his humility increased by frequently meditating on the infinite purity and majesty of the living God (see Isaiah 6:5; Job 42:6; Job 42:6). 4. A due sense of the great importance of an humble spirit will also have a tendency to keep us low in our own eyes. The grace of humility is not a merely ornamental grace, a something which it is desirable, but not absolutely necessary, to possess. It lies at the very root of all true religion. It is the source from which almost every spiritual grace must spring. Where this is wanting, everything is wanting. 5. If we would become more lowly in heart, we must, finally, look more to Christ than we have hitherto looked to Him. We must look to Him for humility. “ We must regard Him as our only Sanctifier, as well as our only Saviour. We must apply to Him to subdue the pride of our hearts, as well as to blot out their sins. (C. Bradley, M. A.)The subject and spirit of the Christian ministry This passage is an humble, grateful, and exulting recognition of the sovereign, distinguishing grace of God, which had called, commissioned, and qualified him for the ministry of the gospel, for the defence of which he was now set, and on account of which he was then in bonds; and it presents a statement of the wondrous theme, the grand design, and the appropriate character of the Christian ministry. I. The distinguishing and comprehensive theme of the Christian ministry--“ the unsearchable riches of Christ.” The phraseology is singularly expressive and affluent. The sentiment is in perfect accord with every avowal of the apostle, and with other statements of the Word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ in His person and work--His attributes and offices--His sufferings and glory--His cross and crown--what He is in Himself and what He is to us, and to the whole universe of God, is the one all-absorbing and exhaustless topic of Divine revelation and apostolic discourse. The expression “ riches of Christ” is a peculiar Pauline phrase, indicating the most exuberant and exhaustless profusion. It denotes whatever is grand and abundant, substantial and permanent, admirable and desirable; and may be applied either to the personal glories pertaining to Christ, or to official blessings bestowed by Him. All spiritual riches are His, and ours only in Him. They flow from Him as their source, and through Him as their channel. Purchased by His blood, obtained by His intercession, supplied by His Spirit, they become ours only as we are united to Him by a living faith. II. The high character and humble spirit of the Christian ministry. In view of the momentous mysterious truths, the grand comprehensive design, and the wonderful inconceivable results of the gospel of Christ, we are constrained to ask who is worthy to open the book and break the seal of such a Divine mystery. Not one of the shining seraphs before the throne would dare self-impelled to say, “ Let me fly” ; yet it has pleased the God of all wisdom and grace to entrust the Divine mission to human agency, to put the treasure into earthen vessels. It is through the sanctified agency of human sympathy, and the earnestness of human conviction, “ testifying of the gospel of the grace of God,” and proclaiming in simplicity and sincerity “ the unsearchable riches of Christ,” that the world is to be enlightened and saved. The Christian minister must be saved and sent.1. Saved. The first and indispensable qualification of a minister of the gospel is, that he be personally a subject of its saving power, a saint, though in his own estimation one of the least. 2. Sent--grace given; made a minister. The manner of the apostle’ s call was as strikingly supernatural as his work was distinctively peculiar; and no minister can expect such a personal commission, or such a Divine revelation. Yet to all, as to him, the commission and necessity to preach comes from the Lord--the authority and ability are both imparted. The man who feels he has a message from God to deliver, full of meaning as it is full of power, is fearless as a prophet, and brave as an apostle. He has comfort in his work, is confident of its success, and assured of its triumph. (W. Ormiston, D. D.)Humility of greatness On his way to Sweden the celebrated Grotius was overtaken by mortal sickness; and when the clergyman, Quinstorp, reminded him of his sins on the one hand, and on the other, not of his services and worldwide reputation, but the grace of God in Christ Jesus, with a reference to the publican--“ I am that publican,” replied Grotius, and then expired. Hooker, the author of the “ Ecclesiastical Polity,” one of the noblest books in the language, after he had been made preacher at the Temple Church, besought Archbishop Whitgift, who had given him that position, to remove him to a lowlier sphere of labour. Great saints are lowly When Mr. Morrison, the Missionary to China, needed an assistant, Mr. Milne, afterwards the celebrated Dr. Milne, offered himself. As soon as the examiners had talked with him, they saw that his heart was right enough, but he had a clownish look, and a dullness of expression; when the youth was gone out of the room, one of the examiners said, “ He is scarcely a proper person to send, we need a man of greater intellect.” At last they agreed that they had better send him as a servant, the servant of the mission, to do the work of the household, clean Dr. Morrison’ s boots, and such like things, I suppose. So Dr. Phillip was requested to communicate this to him, and he told him that the committee did not feel he was qualified to go as a missionary, would he mind going as a servant? The youth’ s eye sparkled, and he said, “ It is too much honour for me even if I am but a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for the Lord my God.” And thus he went forth, and afterwards, as you know, became one of the most useful of missionaries. How many a man would have said, “ Gentle, men, I did not come for that; this is treating me with a want of respect. Surely you do not know who I am, or else you would not suppose for a moment that I would be willing to be a mere drudge and menial servant!” They know not the Lord who only desire His service for the honour which it brings; but they have their hearts right before Him who want no honour for themselves, but only desire that His name may be extolled above the hills, that He may be made famous. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The missionary calling Few men are so great as St. Paul. Few know even the names of other men of his time. Emperors and great men, their kingdoms and languages, are all perished. But his name and his power is as fresh as ever. The science of today lowers all human power, but raises the intellect and the spirit. It raises the kings of the spirit rather than the body, and amongst these St. Paul. The more a man can grasp, the more important becomes his fate. Not the body, so small. Not the earthly life, so short. But the being which can see further than the eye, and look on, and back, and before, and beyond even the earth itself. Wisdom for this life is a goad thing, and well rewarded. Wisdom that sees through nature is a great thing, and we are proud of those who have it. There is a wisdom beyond either. Of what use is it to grow rich and die? to know all things, and be the victim of remorse, or of evil passions that will not let the soul rest? Our perfections are the reflections of God’ s perfections. He is Almighty and Omniscient, and the strong and knowing are good. He is all Good and all Merciful, and the reflection of these attributes is better than knowledge or strength. He is a benefactor to mankind who makes grass grow where it never grew before. He was, who made the first almanac. But he is much more so who first declared “ the unsearchable riches” of God. I. The highest calling is that of a missionary. St. Paul is the great pattern missionary, and, therefore, the greatest figure in history. It is necessary thus to raise our thoughts, in order to think rightly of missionary work. I do not ask your charity to give a trifle to a poor missionary or to a poor heathen. But I ask you to consider what is the greatest and noblest work in the world, and in charity to yourselves to take a part in it. It was the greatest glory of St. Paul that he was called to take a part in it. He did not condescend to it, but it to him. We know how hopelessly it tangles a work to begin at the wrong end. So it is, if we look upon missions as what we benefit, and not as what benefit us. II. Duties come to us in many shapes and with many sanctions.1. This comes to us as a “ grace.” St. Paul accepted the duty as a grace, a gift, and using it as such is great. So accepting our duties we turn them to our profit. 2. And this grace comes to us as Christians. Christ has given Himself to us, that we should share His character and His work. 3. It comes to us peculiarly as Englishmen. The nation whose rule is so wide, that other nations come to evangelize our possessions, and reap a part of our reward. The question before us is, how is the highest work of man to be done? It is God’ s work, and in His own time will be done. But, by us? or, by whom? III. Here are both honour and profit that are our own.1. The honour to work God’ s own work, who is the true fountain of honour. 2. The profit, which transcends the profit that fills men’ s minds, as heaven does earth, and eternity does a man’ s life. What is there more noble than to give one’ s whole power and life to pure benevolence? And what reward greater than the eternal company of those who owe these blessings to us? To us all is this grace given. Take your part--if you cannot in body, at least in heart; if not your life, at least offer of your gains for this greatest and holiest of callings. (Bishop E. Steere.)The grace given to Paul The enthusiasm with which the apostle speaks of preaching the gospel to the heathen is contagious. His words burn on the page, and our hearts take fire as we read them. What was the secret of this exultation in the gospel and in his commission to make the gospel known to all mankind?1. Paul had a vivid intellectual interest in the Christian gospel. To him it was a real revelation of the most wonderful and surprising truths concerning God and the relations of God to the human race. It urged his intellectual posers to their most strenuous activity. It never lost its freshness. It was never exhausted. Its boundaries were always advancing. In all the great movements of religious reform that have permanently elevated the religious life of Christendom, there has been a renewal of intellectual interest in the Christian revelation. Some forgotten aspects of the gospel have been recovered; the theological definitions which had for a generation or two been a sufficient expression of the results at which human speculation had arrived concerning the great facts of revelation have been challenged and discredited, and the mind of the Church has been brought into immediate contact with the facts themselves; the methods which had determined the construction of theological systems have become obsolete, and the work of reconstruction has tasked the genius and the learning of the leaders of Christian thought; the central principles of the gospel have received new applications to individual conduct and to the organization of social life; in all these ways a fresh and keen intellectual interest has been excited in Christian truth, and the intellectual interest has deepened moral and spiritual earnestness. 2. The heart and imagination of Paul were filled with the infinite and eternal blessings which were the inheritance of the human race in Christ. For human sin there was the Divine forgiveness. For human weakness in its baffled attempts to emancipate itself from the tyranny of evil habits and evil passions there was Divine redemption. For human uncertainty and doubt in the presence of the great problems of life and death there was the illumination of the Spirit and free access to God. For restless discontent at the limitations of human virtue there was the possibility of a transcendent righteousness through union with the life of the eternal Son of God. Paul believed in “ the unsearchable riches of Christ.” We shall never recover his enthusiasm as long as we dwell chiefly on the external and incidental benefits which follow the acceptance of the Christian gospel. As a Christian minister at home I decline to have the value of my work estimated by the extent to which it lightens the work of the police, and diminishes the cost to the ratepayers and the nation of maintaining workhouses and jails. As an advocate of Christian missions to the heathen, I decline to have the value of missionary faith and heroism measured by the annual value of the new markets in Africa and the Pacific for English hardware and cotton goods. Give to every cluster of miserable huts in Central Africa and in the islands of the South Pacific, the material wealth and splendour of the foremost cities of Europe; transform their savage chiefs into cultivated statesmen; let their people be trained to discuss the philosophy of Plato and to admire the majesty of the genius of AEschylus; let them become famous for their brilliant discoveries in science, let them create a literature with an original grace, beauty, and dignity; and all this would be as nothing compared with what you have done for them, in bringing them home to God, in assuring them of the tenderness and strength of the love of the Father whom they had forgotten, in opening to them the fountains of eternal life and eternal righteousness, in making them the heirs of eternal glory. This was Paul’ s faith, and this faith was, in fact, the source of his invincible energy and his passionate enthusiasm. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Ministerial humility and zeal How the apostle could say he was the least of all saints. Because for Christ a servant of all saints; also because of his base intreaty from men. Moreover, he saw more clearly his own corruption than that of others; and the true speech follows the true apprehension. Boughs most ]laden with fruit bow more than the empty.1. The most excellent men must think submissively of themselves.2. A great favour of God to be called to the ministry.3. To abase ourselves is the way to extol God’ s grace.4. Ministers of the gospel bring good tidings to men. (1) They are swinish who neglect the gospel.(2) We must depend on the gospel. 5. Ministers must principally preach Christ Jesus. 6. None are able to come to the full knowledge of Christ. “ Unsearchable riches.” The veins of this mine are never worked out. (Paul Bayne.)Humility of a minister Doctor Durham, of the Scottish Presbyterians, and a popular young minister, were walking together to their several places of worship, situated near to each other, into one of which multitudes crowded, while but few entered the other. “ Brother,” said the Doctor to his young friend, “ You will have a crowded church today.” The other replied, “ They are to blame who leave you and come to us.” “ Not so,” replied the Doctor, “ for a minister can receive no such honour and success in his ministry, except it be given him from heaven. I rejoice that Christ is preached, and that His kingdom is gaining ground, though my estimation in people’ s hearts should decrease; for I am content to be anything, so that Christ may be all in all.” The unsearchable riches of Christ. The unsearchable riches of Christ The Apostle Paul felt it to be a great privilege to be allowed to preach the gospel. He did not look upon his calling as a drudgery, or a servitude, but he entered upon it with intense delight. If a herald were sent to a besieged city with the tidings that no terms of capitulation would be offered, but that every rebel without exception should be put to death, methinks he would go with lingering footsteps; but if instead thereof, he were commissioned to go to the gates with the white flag to proclaim a free pardon, a general act of amnesty and oblivion, surely he would run as though he had wings to his heels, with a joyful alacrity, to tell to his fellow citizens the good pleasure of their merciful king. Heralds of salvation, ye carry the most joyful of all messages to the sons of men. I. The person mentioned--Jesus Christ. Do not many preachers make a great mistake by preaching doctrine instead of preaching the Saviour? Certainly the doctrines are to be preached, but they ought to be looked upon as the robes and vestments of the man Christ Jesus, and not as complete in themselves. The doctrines of the gospel are a golden throne upon which Jesus sits, as king. In the old romance, they tell us that at the gate of a certain noble hall there hung a horn, and none could blow that horn but the true heir to the castle and its wide domains. Many tried it. They could make sweet music on other instruments; they could wake the echoes by other bugles; but that horn was mute, let them blow as they might. At last, the true heir came, and when he set his lips to the horn, shrill was the sound and indisputable his claim. He who can preach Christ is the true minister. Brethren, the Christian minister should be like these golden spring flowers which we are so glad to see. Have you observed them when the sun is shining? How they open their golden cups, and each one whispers to the great sun, “ Fill me with thy beams!” but when the sun is hidden behind a cloud, where are they? They close their cups and droop their heads. So should the Christian feel the sweet influences of Jesus; so especially should the Christian minister be subject to his Lord. Jesus must be his sun, and he must be the flower which yields itself to the Sun of Righteousness. Happy would it be for us if our hearts and our lips could become like Anacreon’ s harp, which was wedded to one subject, and would learn no ether. He wished to sing of the sons of Atreus, and the mighty deeds of Hercules, but his harp resounded love alone; and when he would have sung of Cadmus, his harp refused it would sing of love alone. Oh! to speak of Christ alone--to be tied and bound to this one theme forever; to speak alone of Jesus, and of the amazing love of the glorious Son of God, who, “ though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor.” This is the subject which is both “ seed for the sower, and bread for the eater.” This is the live coal for the lip of the preacher, and the master key to the heart of the hearer. II. The unsearchable riches spoken of in the text. In what respects may we ascribe to our Lord Jesus the possession of unsearchable riches?1. He has unsearchable riches of love for sinners as they are. Jesus so loved the souls of men that we can only use the “so,” but we cannot find the word to match with it. In the French Revolution, there was a young man condemned to the guillotine, and shut up in one of the prisons. He was greatly loved by many, but there was one who loved him more than all put together. How know we this? It was his own father; and the love he bore his son was proved in this way: when the lists were called, the father, whose name was exactly the same as his son’ s, answered to the name, and the father rode in the gloomy tumbril out to the place of execution, and his head rolled beneath the axe instead of his son’ s, a victim to mighty love. An image of the love of Christ to sinners; thus Jesus died for the ungodly, viewed as such. 2. Jesus has riches of pardon for those who repent of their sins. No guiltiness can possibly transcend the efficacy of His precious blood. The gospel of Christ is meant for the lowest of the low. There is no den where the Saviour cannot work; there is no loathsome haunt of sin too foul for Him to cleanse. The heathen fabled of their Hercules that he cleansed the Augean stables by turning a river through them, and so washing away the filth of ages; if your heart be such a stable, Christ is greater than the mightiest Hercules--He can cause the river of His cleansing blood to flow right through your heart, and your iniquities, though they are a heap of abominations, shall be put away forever. Riches of love to sinners as such, and riches of pardon to sinners who repent, are stored up in the Lord Jesus. 3. Christ has riches of comfort for all who mourn. 4. He has riches of wisdom. The desire to know has sent men roving over all the world, but he who finds Jesus may stay at home and be wise. If you sit at His feet, you shall know what Plato could not teach you, and what Socrates never learned. When the old schoolmen could not answer and defend a proposition, they were wont to say, “ I will go to Aristotle: he shall help me out.” If you do but learn of Christ, He shall help you out of all difficulties; and that which is most useful for your soul to know, the knowledge, which will last you in eternity, Christ shall teach to you. 5. My Master has riches of happiness to bestow upon you. After all, he is the rich man who wears heart’ s ease in his button hole. The man who can say, “ I have enough,” is richer than the peer of the realm who is discontented. Believe me, my Lord can make you to lie down in green pastures, and lead you beside still waters. There is no music like the music of His pipe, when He is the Shepherd and you are the sheep, and: you lie down at His feet. There is no love like His, neither earth nor heaven can match it. 6. The unsearchable riches of Christ will be best known in eternity. III. Lastly, there must have been a royal intention in the heart of Christ in sending out Paul to preach of His unsearchable riches, because every man must have a motive for what he does, and beyond all question, Jesus Christ has a motive. Did you ever hear of a man who employed a number of persons to go about to proclaim his riches, and call hundreds of people together, and thousands, as on this occasion, simply to tell them that So-and-so was very rich? Why, the crowds would say, “ What is that to us?” But if at the conclusion, the messenger could say, “ But all these riches he presents to you, and whoever among you shall desire to be made rich, can be enriched now by him.” Ah! then you would say, “ Now we see the sense of it. Now we perceive the gracious drift of it all.” Now, my Lord Jesus Christ is very strong, but all that strength is pledged to help a poor weak sinner to enter into heaven.1. How rich must those be who have Christ for a friend! They who get Christ to be their own property are like the man who, having long eaten of fruit from a certain tree, was no longer satisfied with having the fruit, but he must needs take up the tree and plant it in his own garden. Happy those who have Christ planted as the tree of life in the soil of their hearts! You not only have His grace, and His love, and His merit, but you have Himself. 2. How transcendently foolish, on the other hand, must those be who will not have Christ when He is to be had for the asking! who prefer the baubles and the bubbles of this world, and let the solid gold of eternity go by! (C. H. Spurgeon.)The true riches I. One of the gifts which Christ bestows upon us out of the unsearchable riches of His grace and love, is the forgiveness of our sins. II. Another gift which Christ bestows, is the gift of the Holy Spirit. “ To be spiritually minded is life and peace.” “ To be spiritually minded” means to have our thoughts and affections, our hearts and minds, changed by the Holy Spirit of God. Rich, then, is he with the truest riches, in whose heart God’ s Holy Spirit dwells and is not driven away. III. Nor are these all the gifts out of Christ’ s unsearchable riches. He promises to His people enough to carry them through this world, where they are but strangers and travellers; and He plainly tells us, that if we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, other things, as far as is good for us, shall be added. IV. But Christ keeps his richest gifts to the last. It is after death that He bestows on them that love Him the full cup of salvation, the everlasting blessedness of heaven (1 John 3:2). (E. Blencowe, M. A.)The unsearchable riches of Christ I. Paul preached “riches.” This word represents three things--value, abundance, and supply. Let us look briefly at these three things.1. He exhibited to the Gentiles that which is truly and supremely valuable--valuable to a man’ s whole nature--valuable for the life which now is, and for that which is to come--that which God by everything that He has said concerning it, and by all that He has done concerning it, recognizes as supremely valuable. 2. He preached also abundance--not something valuable, but much--not competency, but wealth--as much as a man needs--more than we could ask or think--such abundance as that it does not diminish with scattering--such abundance as that it does not perish with using--water, it is true, but not water in cisterns which may become leaky, or a short supply which will soon be exhausted; but water in fountains, even living water, everlasting water, outflowing water. 3. Now you may have value without abundance; you may have abundance without value; you may have value and abundance without supply: but here, brethren, is value, abundance, and supply. The value, the precious thing existing in abundance, is abundantly supplied. Paul preached therefore not only that which he knew to be supremely valuable and fully abundant, but that which was as freely given--subjective riches--that which is wealth to the man who hath it. I do not know much about earthly wealth, and I dare say some of you, when you hear me talking about it, say that I know very little about it; and therefore should perhaps scarcely speak of wealth, but so far as I can understand this matter, there does not seem to be such a thing as subjective riches to the men who are trying to get rich in this world’ s goods. Let me just explain myself. A man is starting in business, and he says to himself, Well, I will try to make, if I can, £20,000 or £30,000, and when I have this in store I shall never need or wish to add to it a farthing. He aims after this £30,000, and he gets it; but when he has it does he feel rich? No such thing. In order to feel rich he must have £30,000 more; and he starts again for that goal. Now his aim is £60,000. He gets £60,000; but does he now feel rich? No, there is somebody else who has £120,000; and he starts for the third goal; and he reaches it. And now there is somebody else--some fellow merchant, or some neighbour--who has twice £120,000; and you find the man again striving after that twice £120,000. So that, as far as I understand it (and I admit that I know very little about it), rich men do not feel rich--they never have enough. You who have only your daily bread put upon your table think men rich when they have in store some ten thousands of pounds, and very rich if some hundreds of thousands of pounds; but the possessors do not feel rich. How often do we find them, even with these large resources, complaining of poverty; and how often do these rich men live in far more dread of dying in the workhouse than those of us have who receive from heaven day by day our daily bread! You see, therefore, that earthly riches are not in every case subjective wealth; for a man may have a very large amount of treasure upon earth, and yet not feel to be a rich man. But now, brethren, look at this. The man who has “ the unsearchable riches of Christ” feels to be enriched by those unsearchable riches. II. Unsearchable riches; that is, value not traced by inquiry and investigation. Who can set a price upon truth? Who can tell what a right idea about anything is worth? The thing is too good to have a price set upon it. You cannot tell what one right thought may be to you, or what one right thought might do for you. Now look at the thoughts that cluster around this word “ riches” as representing value, abundance, and supply. Unsearchable riches--value not fixed, not traced out by investigation--abundance inexplorable by want and by desire--supply inexhaustible by enjoyment and by use--“ the unsearchable riches of Christ;” that is, inconceivable value in Christ Himself. He is of inconceivable value as the manifestation of God. Then look at abundance in gifts which Christ has ready for men--pardon, acquittal, restoration to the position of children, regeneration, and the entire purification and spiritual elevation of our nature, the lost Paradise restored and regained--all these things in His hand, mark, ready, so that we have only to ask and to have. Marvellous is all this, but it is true. Then, mark also, Christ’ s freedom of bestowal. Everyone that asketh receiveth. Everyone. There is not an exception. I know that men try to make exceptions; and I do not wonder at it. We are such niggardly, selfish, hard-hearted, close-fisted, stingy creatures ourselves, and so unwilling to make sacrifices, that we cannot believe that Christ gives so freely. A man’ s faith is very much influenced by his own disposition. You see this continually. And our dispositions make us unbelievers in God’ s loving words. (S. Martin, D. D.)The unsearchable riches of Christ 1. Here, then, in the very outset, is unsearchable mercy; the immensity of the Divine Redeemer’ s condescension and love! Who can search, who can understand it? “ It is higher than heaven, what canst thou know” of it? Admire thou mayest, and adore and love; but it is beyond the stretch of thy created powers to conceive, beyond the capacity of any creature. 2. We may consider, in the next place, the preciousness, the value, the efficacy of the incarnation and sufferings of our Redeemer. All the attributes of the Godhead are perfect and infinite; His holiness and justice, as well as His mercy. 3. Intimately connected with this consideration is the recollection of God’ s exceeding love towards us, in that “ while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Every believing soul must be overpowered by the contemplation of such a mystery of Divine goodness; must be lost in wonder, love, and praise. 4. Nor can we learn the manner or degree in which our merciful Lord is at this moment bestowing blessings upon His Church, and upon every individual believer. 5. And what are the privileges of Christ’ s redeemed people? What their present state, what their glorious inheritance? How unsearchable both the one and the other? (J. Slade, M. A.)Unsearchable riches I. What St. Paul says of himself. Humility is one leading mark of all the most eminent saints of God in every age. The more real grace men have in their hearts, the deeper is their sense of sin. The more light the Holy Ghost pours into their souls, the more do they discern their own infirmities, defilements, and darkness. The dead soul feels and sees nothing; with life comes clear vision, a tender conscience, and spiritual sensibility. Depend on it, the nearer men draw to heaven, the more humble do they become. In the hour of death, with one foot in the grave, with something of the light of heaven shining down upon them, hundreds of great saints and Church dignitaries--such men as Selden, Bishop Butler, Archbishop Longley--have left on record their confession, that never till that hour did they see their sins so clearly, and feel so deeply their debt to mercy and grace. Heaven alone, I suppose, will fully teach us how humble we ought to be. Then only, when we stand within the veil, and look back on all the way of life by which we were led, then only shall we completely understand the need and beauty of humility. II. What St. Paul says of his ministerial office. The meaning of the sentence is plain: “ To me is granted the privilege of being a messenger of good news. I have been commissioned to be a herald of glad tidings.” Of course we cannot doubt that St. Paul’ s conception of the minister’ s office included the administration of the sacraments, and the doing all other things needful for the edifying of the body of Christ.1. The ministerial office is a ministerial institution.2. A most wise and useful provision of God.3. An honourable privilege. It is an honour to bear the tidings of a victory such as Trafalgar and Waterloo: before the invention of telegraphs it was a highly coveted distinction. But how much greater honour is it to be the ambassador of the King of kings, and to proclaim the good news of the conquest achieved on Calvary! III. What St. Paul says of the great subject of his preaching. That the converted man of Tarsus should preach “ Christ,” is no more than we might expect from his antecedents. Having found peace through the blood of the Cross himself, we may be sure he would always tell the story of the Cross to others. That he should preach Christ among “ the Gentiles,” again, is in keeping with all we know of his line of action in all places and among all people. Varying his mode of address according to his audience, as he wisely did, the pith and heart of his preaching was Christ crucified. But in the text before us, you will observe, he uses a peculiar expression, an expression which unquestionably stands alone in his writings, “ the unsearchable riches of Christ.” It is the strong burning language of one who always remembered his debt to Christ’ s mercy and grace, and loved to show how intensely he felt it by his words.1. There are unsearchable riches in Christ’ s person. That miraculous union of perfect man and perfect God in our Lord Jesus Christ is a great mystery, no doubt, which we have no line to fathom. It is a high thing; and we cannot attain to it. But, mysterious as that union may be, it is a mine of comfort and consolation to all who can rightly regard it. Infinite power and infinite sympathy are met together and combined in our Saviour. 2. There are unsearchable riches in the work which Christ accomplished for us, when He lived on earth, died, and rose again. 3. There are unsearchable riches in the offices which Christ at this moment fills, as He lives for us at the right hand of God. He is at once our Mediator, our Advocate, our Priest, our Intercessor, our Shepherd, our Bishop, our Physician, our Captain, our King, our Master, our Head, our Forerunner, our Elder Brother, the Bridegroom of our souls. 4. There are unsearchable riches in the names and titles which are applied to Christ in the Scriptures. Their number is very great, every careful Bible reader knows, and I cannot of course pretend to do more than select a few of them. Think for a moment of such titles as the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, the Fountain of Living Waters, the Light of the World, the Door, the Way, the Vine, the Rock, the Cornerstone, the Christian’ s Robe, the Christian’ s Altar. Think of all these names, I say, and consider how much they contain. 5. There are unsearchable riches in the characteristic qualities, attributes, dispositions, and intentions of Christ’ s mind towards man, as we find them revealed in the New Testament. In Him there are riches of mercy, love, and compassion for sinners; riches of power to cleanse, pardon, forgive, and to save to the uttermost; riches of willingness to receive all who come to Him repenting and believing; riches of ability to change by His Spirit the hardest hearts and worst characters; riches of tender patience to bear with the weakest believer; riches of strength to help His people to the end, notwithstanding every foe without and within; riches of sympathy for all who are cast down and bring their troubles to Him; and last, but not least, riches of glory to reward, when He comes again to raise the dead and gather His people to be with Him in His kingdom. Who can estimate these riches? The children of this world may regard them with indifference, or turn away from them with disdain; but those who feel the value of their souls know better. They will say with one voice, “ There are no riches like those which are laid up in Christ for His people.” For, best of all, these riches are unsearchable. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 3:9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.Creation not hitherto complete Whatever creatures may have thought, it is clear that God has never yet regarded the creation as in a final or completed condition. It is natural that men should look upon their heavens and earth as finished; and as a constitution of things appointed to serve for a time, they are finished; but in relation to God’ s original design, they will yet have to undergo marvellous changes. It is probable that, prior to the great angel fall, the angels looked upon their heaven as finished and perfect; but God knew otherwise. He carried in Himself a purpose which no angel knew. That purpose is at length somewhat opened, both to men and angels, but it is by no means carried out. It is both worthy of God and advantageous to His creatures, that the universe should be perfected by their cooperation, and the future processes of ages. Myriads of myriads of ages could be occupied in no better way than in enriching, maturing, and harmonizing the whole house, which God and all His children are to inhabit and enjoy forever. Indeed it is incomprehensible that a house which is composed of countless orders of creatures, each one of whom has a separate, individual will, should hastily, or soon, realize its finally balanced relationships. It is surely the praise and glory of God’ s plan, that it requires cycle after cycle, and dispensation after dispensation, for its development. In Himself, the plan was perfect, but apart from the long and manifold experiences of His creatures it could not be fulfilled. To be wrought in His Son was one thing, but to be wrought out in the wills and thoughts of His children, and in the condition of the creation, was a very different thing. He knew that only through failure, and out of failure, the finally steadfast and harmonious condition of things (the kingdom which cannot be moved) would grow. The failure and misery of self-will, and all the mistakes of creatures, will contribute both to the strength and the joy of the final house of God. The craving of infinite love will be satisfied. In the incarnation, conflict, and victory, of the Logos, the beginning of the end has come, and His reign (being the reign of all things in unity) will bring in the Father’ s first idea, namely, the absolute perfectness and enduring order of His creation. In proportion to the magnitude of a work, very considerable progress must be made, before persons who are looking on from without, are able to form any idea of the design. Till a comparatively recent date, no one on earth, nor anyone in heaven, had the slightest conjecture of the work which God has set Himself to do. “ No one in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.” Jesus, the Firstborn from the dead, is the Opener of the book. (J. Pulsford.)We must make known the gospel Huber, the great naturalist, tells us that if a single wasp discovers a deposit of honey or other food, he will return to his nest and impart the good news to his companions, who will sally forth in great numbers to partake of the fare which has been discovered for them. Shall we who have found honey in the rock Christ Jesus be less considerate of our fellow men than wasps are of their fellow insects? (C. H. Spurgeon.)Teaching is the Church’ s duty To make all men see, that is, to teach all men the fellowship of the mystery, which, from the beginning of the world, hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ. That is the duty of the Church. She is the teacher, the educator, the civilizer, the regenerator of the nations. Our text in this 9th verse reads “ fellowship,” but the better reading is “ dispensation.” Paul would teach all men to know something of the dispensation of the hidden mystery, and he asserts it was hidden in God from the beginning of the world. This 9th verse, then, teaches the following facts and truths:--1. It is a great thing to be a preacher of the gospel.2. Paul was the preacher and apostle of the Gentiles.3. The union of the Jews and Gentiles in one body is a great mystery.4. This mystery was hidden in God from the beginning of the world.5. God created the world through the agency of Jesus Christ. These things the Church is to teach. Her duty is to teach all men, to make all men see the glories of the economy of grace. (W. Graham, D. D.)God the Creator When Napoleon was returning to France from the expedition to Egypt, a group of French officers one evening entered into a discussion concerning the existence of a God; they were standing on the deck of the vessel as she was bearing them over the Mediterranean Sea. Thoroughly imbued with the infidel and atheistical spirit of the times, they were unanimous in their denial of this truth. It was at length proposed to ask the opinion of Napoleon on the subject, who was standing alone, wrapt in silent thought. On hearing the question, “ Is there a God?” he raised his hand, and pointing to the starry firmament, simply responded, “ Gentlemen, Who made all that?” Ephesians 3:10-11 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.The purpose of redemption I. Let us consider who are meant by the Church. Paul sometimes uses this appellation to denote a single society of Christians; but he more commonly uses the term to denote the whole number of the elect, or all who shall finally be sanctified and saved. This portion of mankind he considers as composing the Church universal, which is a spiritual body, of which Christ is the spiritual Head. In this comprehensive sense the apostle uses the term Church in the text. He means to signify by it the whole Church of the firstborn in heaven, or all who shall be set up as monuments to display the riches of Divine grace to the whole intelligent creation. II. When the Deity formed His purpose of redeeming the Church from among men. The text tells us it was in eternity: “ According to the eternal purpose, which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” All the elect are said to have been “ chasen in Christ before the foundation of the world.” Christ is called “ the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” And St. John tells us, he “ saw an angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth.” These are plain declarations that the gospel scheme of salvation was formed in eternity; which perfectly accords with every just idea of the Divine character. God was self existent, independent, and absolutely perfect from eternity. He was infinitely able to form His whole plan of operation before He began to operate; and no good reason could possibly exist for His neglecting, a single moment, to fix all future events. III. Why God was graciously pleased to devise and adopt, from eternity, the great scheme of man’ s redemption. To this inquiry the apostle gives a general answer in the text. He says, it was “ to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known, by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God.” Moved by infinite benevolence, the Deity determined to make Himself known through the medium of His works; and, among all possible works, He saw the work of redemption to be the best adapted to answer this glorious and important purpose. He knew that His creatures could not see the natural and moral excellency of His nature, unless He actually displayed Himself in His works.1. God chose the work of redemption, because it was the only one in which He could display all His perfections before the minds of His intelligent creatures. 2. Another reason why God devised and adopted the work of redemption, was, because there was no other way by which He could so clearly and fully manifest any of His perfections. We have just observed that there was no other way by which He could discover all His perfections; but we now farther observe, that there was no other by which He could display any of His perfections, in their highest beauty and glory. 3. There was another important reason why God determined to make: Himself known by the work of redemption. He saw it was necessary, not only to display all His perfections, and to display them all in the clearest manner, but also, to prepare the minds of all moral beings to view them with the greatest attention and sensibility. He meant not only to give them an opportunity to see Himself, but to awaken their attention, and fix it upon His great and amiable character. And nothing could be better adapted to this end than to place them in a situation which would render all the displays of His glory highly interesting to themselves. (N. Emmons, D. D.)God’ s purpose in the ultimate revelation of His grace I. To create a society in which His wisdom should be illustrated and reelected.1. By the manner in which the Church was called into existence. The self-exclusion of the Jew bringing about a universal comprehension of all who believe. The production and discovery of a motive power to which “ all sorts and conditions of men” would respond, viz., the gospel. The foolishness of preaching contrasted with the mighty results achieved (comp. the whole passage-- 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). “ By the triumph of the Divine love over the divisions, the sorrows, and the sins of mankind.” 2. By the relation of the Church to preceding ages. II. Through the Church to display His wisdom to the spiritual universe. It is a manifestation to the highest intelligences--the angels. They are represented as having a special interest in the spiritual history of mankind. That which from its complexity and the vastness of the space and time in which it realized itself might be for the most part inscrutable to men, these great beings, with clearer insight and vaster spiritual range, would be able to trace and appreciate. Their greater moral refinement would also fit them the better for this review. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Angelic studies The sublime plan of the gospel of the grace of God, which is so entirely beyond the compass of our natural faculties that we could never by searching have found it out, appears to have been equally beyond the grasp of angelic intelligence--a mystery that excited their wistful inquiry--until by the Church (that is to say, by the Divine counsel and conduct in forming and perfecting the Church) there is made known unto them the manifold wisdom of God, as they have never learned it before. They are appointed to exercise some sort of power over various parts of God’ s creation, hence they are called “ principalities and powers.” They are never represented as indifferent spectators of anything which our mortal race can do or suffer, but their sympathy with men is constant. Do they not watch over the saints? Is it not written, that they “ encamp round about them that fear the Lord” ? I. The subject of our meditation resolves itself into a question, how exclusively through the Church do angels come to see the manifold wisdom of God? Some other matters in connection with this we shall have to speak of afterwards.1. Who can doubt that the angels had seen much of the wisdom of God in creation? With faculties keener and more elevated than ours, faculties that have never been blunted by sin, they can perceive the various contrivances of God’ s skill both in the animate and the inanimate world. What a scale of survey must a seraph have! How readily can we imagine an eye that takes in at once the landscape of the world! He need not confine himself to one single spot in God’ s universe, but with rapid wings he can steer far and wide over the infinity of space. Yet with all that facility of observation, it seems that the angels have some parts of the wisdom of God to learn, and some lessons of heavenly science to study which creation cannot unfold to their view, to be ascertained and certified by them only through the transcendent work of redemption which the Lord has carried on in His Church. 2. The wisdom of God is clearly seen by angels in this, that though God was dishonoured in this world by sin, that sin has redounded to His greater honour. Satan, when he led men astray and tempted men to rebel, thought he had marred the glory of God, but he never did more palpably outwit himself. The serpent was exceeding wise, but God was wiser far. Satan’ s craft was dexterous, but God’ s wisdom was infinite in its prescience. Wisdom has outmatched craft. Is it not glorious to think that this world where God was dishonoured most, is the world where He shall be most revered? There is no such display of the attributes and perfections of Godhead in the whole universe beside as there is here. 3. This wisdom of God is to be seen in the way that our redemption was wrought. The doctrine of substitution is a marvel which, if God had never revealed, none of us could by any possibility have discovered. How could God be gracious and yet be just? How could He keep His law and yet at the same time show His mercy towards us? Angels could not have conjectured this, but when it was made known to them, how could they refrain to chant fresh songs to the praise of Him who could undertake so loving a responsibility? 4. The wisdom of God is seen through the Church in the Holy Spirit’ s work as well as in the work of Christ. It is “ manifold wisdom.” You know the children’ s toy, the kaleidoscope. Every time you turn it there is some fresh form of beauty. You seldom see the same form twice. So it is with nature, each time and season has its special beauty. There is always variety in its scenery; diversities of form and colour are strewn throughout the world. You never saw two hills moulded to the same pattern, or two rivers that wound after the same fashion from their source down to the sea; nature is full of variety. So is the work of the Holy Spirit. In calling sinners to Christ, there is singleness of purpose but no uniformity of means. God’ s wisdom is displayed equally in bringing you in that way, and in bringing me in another way. I believe there will be found evidence at the last of the wisdom of God in the very date, the very place, the very means in and by which every soul is brought to believe in Jesus; and angels will, no doubt, be able to perceive in every conversion some singular marks of beautiful originality proceeding from the inexhaustible Artist of Grace, the Holy Spirit. 5. That same wisdom will be seen in the biography of every convert--how the Lord afflicts, or how He comforts; how He upholds us, how He keeps back that which cannot yet be endured, how He gently leads us, how He makes us to lie down. We find fault sometimes with the way of Providence, because we do not understand it; when we shall get a clearer sight of it we shall see that every mark and line was dictated by His love, and ordered by His infinite counsel. 6. As each Christian shall be conformed to the likeness of Christ, angels will see in the products of grace fresh displays of the manifold wisdom of God. I could suppose that the death of a martyr must be such a spectacle as those holy watchers regard with extraordinary interest. Would they not have gathered around such a woman as Blandina, for instance, who was made to sit in a red-hot chair, after having been tossed upon the horns of a wild bull, yet constant to the last she maintained her faith in Christ while passing through the torture. II. But ask you now, do angels gain anything by the Church of god? I think they do.1. Certainly they acquire increased knowledge. With us knowledge is sometimes sorrow. Knowledge increases the joy of the angels, and I will tell you why, because it makes them take a greater delight in God when they see how wise and gracious He is. If it is possible for the angels to be happier than natural innocence and honourable service can render them, they must be happier through knowing and seeing more of God, as His attributes are reflected, and His perfections mirrored forth, in the Church. 2. Angels will be enriched by the society of the saints in heaven. Commerce always enriches, and commerce between angelic and human natures will be enriching to them both. 3. Again, to my imagining (can it he illusive?) angels are gainers by the Church because they get nearer to the throne of God than they were before. Another order of beings, our own to wit, is advanced. Surely when one creature gets near to God, all unfallen creatures are promoted. 4. Do you not think, too, that perhaps they can see God better in Christ than even they did before? Is it not possible that even they who erst did veil their faces with their wings in the presence of the Almighty, because the brightness of glory was excessive, may now stand with unveiled faces and worship God in Christ? I think it is so. They never saw much of God before until they saw God veiled in human flesh. There was too dazzling a splendour for them till the interposing medium of the manhood of Christ came in between them and the absolute Deity. It may be so. III. What is all this to us?1. Ought it not to make us prize the gospel? If the angels think so much of it, oh! what should we think? 2. How, too, should we study it, if it be the research of angelic intellects! Is the Church their schoolbook whence they learn lessons of the Divine wisdom, because no science is equal to that of the wisdom of God in Christ revealed in His Church? O do apply every faculty you have to acquire increasing knowledge of that which angels love to study. 3. And now take courage, ye feeble-minded ones, and never fear again the sneer of the man who calls the gospel folly. Account him to be the victim of folly who despises this manifold wisdom. Shall I set the judgment of a poor puny mortal against the judgment of an angel? I suppose that even Newton, and Kepler, and Locke, and those mighty master spirits, would be mere infants compared with seraphs. Ah! ye sceptics, sciolists, and scoffers, we can well afford to let you rail; but you can ill afford to rail when angels are awed into wonder, and so would you be if there were anything angelic about your temper, or anything of right wisdom in your attainments. 4. Last of all; if this be so, how we ought to love Christ who have a saving interest in it, and how they ought to tremble who have it not! (C. H. Spurgeon.)The teaching of angels by the Church Our text is one of the most remarkable of those intimations which lead to the belief, that this earth, in place of being detached from other portions of creation, is a scene for the development of God’ s attributes, and centres on itself the eager regards of the superior orders of spiritual agency. We leave it to the philosopher to use this earth as the home of material for scientific pursuit; we leave it to the poet to admire it as covered with varieties of glorious scenery; here the earth is represented as the school of angels; principalities and powers are described as clustering over its assemblies, that they may learn the wisdom of the Almighty.I. The indirect testimony which is given by the text to the superiority of the wisdom manifested in the work of redemption, as compared with the work of creation; for we may well suppose that the material fabric of the universe is subjected to the ken and the scrutiny of angels, in all the grandeur of its magnificent and in all the delicacy of its minuter portions. We may believe that when at the word of the Creator the army of worlds came forth from nothingness, angels looked admiringly on, as globe after globe took place amongst the ranks of the starry host; and ever since we may suppose they have been free to pass through the spreadings of space, to search into all that our Maker has fashioned, measuring the grandeur of His productions, and prying into the nicest contrivances of His creative skill. Yet we may conclude from the text, that all God’ s wisdom in the works of creation is, as it were, cast aside by the angelic company, and they come and sit with the docility of children at the feet of the Church, and derive their lessons from the mighty interposition of which she is the subject. Does it not, then, follow in the way of consequence, that redemption must far surpass creation in the lessons which it teaches of the wisdom of God; that in the interference of the Redeemer for the salvation of our fallen race there is the greatest manifestation of that attribute whose name is sometimes used for that of the Eternal Son Himself? A redeemed sinner must be the wonder of wonders--if indeed angels return from traversing the circuits of the universe, and congregate upon this lowly globe, and find in the transactions of which it is the scene that preeminent teaching which they have elsewhere sought in vain; and that such is the case must be concluded from the statement of our text--“ That now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” II. That the Church on earth instructs the angels in heaven with regard to “ the manifold wisdom of God.” In order to this we should observe, that God’ s purpose may be as much attained from the spirits which surround His throne, as from ourselves who sojourn in a distant corner of His empire. When Daniel had applied himself by fasting and prayer to understand the mystery of the restoration of his people, the angel Gabriel was commissioned to clear up to him the mystery. Then it is evident the angel was divinely instructed for this special occasion; that of himself he could have known little more than Daniel of God’ s counsels respecting Jerusalem. And in like manner it may fairly be questioned, whether angels were more conversant than men with God’ s plan of mercy towards this fallen creation; whether they were not left, like the Jews themselves, to read out from types and figures the scheme of human salvation. Our text seems to require us to suppose cherubim and seraphim bending over the earth, as under the Jewish law their golden emblems bent over the ark, and searching with intense earnestness into the display of the Divine wisdom there presented. The ark of the covenant was an abiding symbol of God’ s gracious presence with His people, and typified those peculiar benefits which belonged to the covenants of peace mediated by Christ on behalf of the spiritual Israel. The covering of this ark, you will remember, was of massive gold, denominated the mercy seat. At each end of this mercy seat was a golden cherubim, placed in such an attitude that it seemed to bend over the ark, as if eagerly desirous to pry into its mysteries; and as if to assure us we are not wrong in thus interpreting the emblem, St. Peter expressly says of the things of redemption, that they are the things which the angels desire to look into, The Greek is still more emphatic than the English--“ Things which the angels desire to bend over” ; thus making the reference to the cherubim on the mercy seat both undeniable and explicit. But if angels are represented as bending over the ark if they are spoken of as desiring to look, rather than as actually looking, sure]y you may suppose, that previously to the Incarnation the mysteries of redemption were no more discovered to them than to men, but that they, as well as the Jews, were required to decipher a vast assemblage of types, and to gather from Divine intimations the splendid appointments of mercy. If there be justice in this supposition, then our text opens before you with beautiful clearness; for angels must have estimated far better than men the difficulties to be overcome, ere this earth could be restored to the favour of the Lord. They knew from near inspection the uncompromising character of every attribute of God, and perceiving that mercy was yet to be extended to the children of Adam, the problem which must have engaged their attention, whilst they clustered together in shining groups, would naturally be how God could punish the guilt, and yet pardon the guilty. Now if you combine the statements advanced--the first, that up to the period of the Incarnation angels, like men, had only partial glimpses of the scheme of redemption; the second, that God’ s wisdom is extraordinarily manifested in human salvation: what conclusion can you reach, but that which is announced in our text? We think that no sooner had the High Priest in the Christian Church entered on His earthly sojourning, than the mystery which had for ages been hid in the eternal mind, of which only dim and shadowy notices had been vouchsafed to any finite intelligence--this mystery, we say, broke suddenly forth; a wave of delighted anthem went out from the thousand times ten thousand squadrons; with one accord the countless multitude of spirits swept their harp strings, and so loud was the minstrelsy and so wide the waving of the chorus, that the shepherds on Bethlehem’ s plains caught the echo of the one, and the magi in the distant East caught the reverberation of the other. The very syllables of the chant which the shepherds heard proved that it was God’ s wisdom at which the angels became suddenly enraptured. “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men,” these were the very things which it was difficult to combine. This was the problem on which angelic wisdom had been vainly expended. Glory in heaven and peace on earth--these had appeared always utterly irreconcilable; and now that it was made evident that they could be reconciled, now that God had developed His purpose, and it was found that through this purpose “ Mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace embraced each other” --oh! it must have been the display of wisdom which preeminently shone forth. It was not the love, for they knew long ago that infinite love had moved God to the planning redemption; it was not the justice, for in their debates they had always calculated on a justice which could never pass by iniquity; it was not the holiness, for it would have been to undeify Deity to suppose Him capable of admitting the unclean into communion with Himself; but it was the wisdom that amazed them--“ the manifold wisdom” --“ manifold,” for it had reconciled every opposing interest; it had provided for every possible emergency; it had left no point neglected, whether in the attributes of the Creator or the necessities of the creature. This wisdom manifested in the Church, whose foundation was just laid upon earth, we believe to have filled with ecstasy the angelic company--yea, to have made such a new epoch in the heavenly annals, that an apostle might be warranted in declaring the gospel to have been published for this very intent--“ That now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” But enough on the general scheme of redemption: let us turn to its particular and individual application, and see whether we cannot equally find the teaching of angels by the Church. If you consult the context you will find, that our text had a primary reference to the calling of the Gentiles, and their admission into privileges which had hitherto been confined to the Jews; and if you contrast the legal and Christian dispensations, you will find a great manifestation of wisdom in that process of extension which made the Gentiles fellow heirs with the Israelites. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The reciprocal duties of Church members The passage naturally leads us to consider, first, the end for which Churches are formed; and, secondly, the means by which that end may be best accomplished. In looking at the end for which Churches are formed, we shall find in this passage very full information. I. They were formed “ to the intent” that “ all men might see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” The intention, therefore, for which Churches were formed, beyond the salvation of the members of those Churches, was, you perceive, two-fold. It had reference, in the first place to men, in the second to angels. The two objects which Christ had in view were, the instruction of the world, and the instruction of angels. II. Let us, then, consider how these things were to be accomplished.1. In order to “ show the manifold wisdom of God” in the fellowship of the Church, first to men and then to angels, or we may say at once both to men and to angels, it is necessary that the Church should be instructed. If the Churches of Christ are without instruction, we cannot expect that either men or angels will learn anything of the wisdom of God from them. The darker the Churches are, the more impressive will be the indications of Divine wisdom working in them, and Divine wisdom formed in them. If the angels, who see God and are like Him--if the angels who understood the glory of His character and the splendour of His works--on turning from it to look into the Churches of Christ, find in them a vagueness of vision which would seem to indicate that the light has scarcely ever shone upon them, can they learn anything from such a spectacle? Ignorant Churches are a reproach in the earth, and ignorant Churches are a reproach among the angels in heaven. Angels know the light contained in the oracles of truth; they know its wide diffusion--they see Churches formed upon a pretended acceptance of that truth; and they do not behold the light which those Churches profess to have received. 2. But not only must there be mutual instruction, there must also be mutual charity. In carrying out the end for which God formed Churches, the members ought mutually to cultivate the spirit Of Christian charity. 3. But, in the next place, among the reciprocal duties of Church members for the purpose of carrying out the end for which Churches were formed, we must place that of mutual encouragement to appear together in every good work. Another thing which we think belongs to the mutual and reciprocal duties of Church members is a constant and ready acknowledgment of one another. Now bear in mind these duties as the reciprocal duties of Church members, so far as the exhibition of their case to the world and to angels is concerned. 4. Let us now look at the duty that devolves upon Church members to support and maintain one another’ s characters. If all were to act as they ought to do in this matter, Churches would stand out in strength; they would appear like so many families, the spirit of Christian love would bind them together and produce the outward aspect of inward unity, and both angels and men would learn the nature of Christian feeling, and see the manifold wisdom of God in the Church. But what is there, it may be asked, to oppose the exercise of these duties. We answer, generally, the depravity of the human mind. Were we to go into details we should occupy more time than we can appropriate to the subject. All we shall say is, that there is pride in the mind of man, and that the unity of the Church is injured by the indulgence of that pride; there is jealousy in the mind of man, and the unity of the Church is injured by the indulgence of that jealousy; there is selfishness in the mind of man, and the unity of the Church is injured by the indulgence of that selfishness; there is worldliness in the mind of man, and the Church is kept back by that worldliness: a variety of features of mind and character will occur to yourselves, all of which operate against the right discharge of the reciprocal duties of Church members. (J. Burnet.)The noblest exhibition What an idea does this give us of the importance of the Church! Brethren, never let us despise any more the meanest member of it, since there is more to be beheld in the Church than in creation in its utmost breadth. I. The grand object of attention in the Church to the principalities and powers, is the scheme and plan of saving the Church. It is this that they so much admire and wonder at. They understand how God so hated sin that He laid vengeance on His only begotten, and yet, “ God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” As in the crowns of Oriental princes the most precious jewels shone in clusters, so as in one wonderful corona all the infinite attributes of God shine out at once in all their combined glory around Thy cross, O Jesu, earth’ s wonder and heaven’ s prodigy! But, further, when the angels see that by this great plan all the ruin that sin brought upon mankind is removed, they again wonder at the wisdom of God. II. The wisdom of God is made known to angels and principalities in the various dispensations through which the Church has passed. Oh! brethren, the angels, when they compare the past with the present, and again, the present with the past, the choosing of the Jewish olive, and the leaving out of the rest of the trees, and anon, the grafting in of the Gentiles from the wild olive, and the casting out of the natural branches, how much they must have admired the singular variety of God’ s dispensations, when they know, as certainly they do, that His grace remains the same! In climbing or in descending a lofty mountain, one is struck with the sudden change of views. You looked on the right just now, and you saw a populous city in the plain; but you turn a corner, and looking through a break in the forest you see a broad lake; and in a moment or two your road winds again, and you will see a narrow valley and another range of mountains beyond. Every time you turn, there is a new scene presented to you. So it would seem to the angelic spirits. III. They mainly see the wisdom of God in His Church, in the Church’ s covenant head and representative. Oh! when first they heard that the Lord of life and glory was to be made flesh and to dwell among us, how they must have admired the plan of heaven’ s going down to earth that earth might come up to heaven! IV. The manifold wisdom of God is made known to principalities and powers in the conversion of every child of God. That ingenious toy called the kaleidoscope at every turn presents some new form of beauty, so the different converts who are brought to Christ by the preaching of the Word are every one unlike the other; there is something to distinguish each case; hence by them to the very letter our text is proved, the manifold wisdom, the much varied wisdom of God is displayed. I have sometimes understood the word “ manifold,” as comparing grace to a precious treasure that is wrapped up in many folds, first this, then the next, then the next must be unfolded, and as you unwrap fold after fold, you find something precious each time; but it will be long ere you and I shall have unwrapped the last fold and shall have found the wisdom of God in its pure glittering lustre, lying stored within as the angels behold it in the Church of the living God. V. The principalities and powers to this day find great opportunities for studying the wisdom of God in the trials and experience of believers, in the wisdom which subjects them to trial, in the grace which sustains them in it, in the power which brings them out of it, in the wisdom which overrules the trial for their good, in the grace which makes the trial fit the back or strengthens the back for the burden. VI. And lastly, beyond all controversy, when the last of God’ s people shall be brought in, and the bright angels shall begin to wander through the heavenly plains and converse with all the redeemed spirits, they will then see “ the manifold wisdom of God.” Two questions in conclusion: First, to the children of God. Do you think you and I have sufficiently considered that we are always looked upon by angels, and that they desire to learn by us the wisdom of God? And, lastly, what, think some of you, would angels say of your walk and conversation? (C. H. Spurgeon.)Angels--scholars of the kingdom of Christ Angels are students here, earnestly bent on learning, if possible, the notes of the ultimate chorus, not simply of heaven and earth, but of all things and God. They are more than willing to enter into the human school of Divine mysteries. Even under the old typical dispensation, the cherubim were represented with heads inclined downward,--suggesting that it was already known in the Heavenly Court, that God is preparing His chief work below. He is not redeeming men for their sakes only, but for His own sake, and for heaven’ s sake also. To all principalities and powers, the peculiar dominion of Jesus Christ, is to be the mirror of mirrors for reflecting the manifoldness of the Divine Nature. Paul says: The mystery which from the beginning hath been hid in God, is revealed unto men “ to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies might be made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” Hitherto they have known but little of the richly various (πολυποίκιλος) wisdom of God. The Son of Man draws together the elders of heaven and the children of time. His work, as the Restitutor of all things (because of its centrality and universal bearings), mightily attracts all spirits, not only the unfallen, but the fallen. From the death and ascension of Christ, the universe has been dated anew. From that great crisis of spiritual wrath, from that great triumph of eternal love, all things in heaven, and all things in earth, and all things in hell, are advancing towards a new issue. The ascension of Christ has made heaven higher and greater than it was before. The new height, as a new centre, is making a new circumference. Heaven is intensely interested in this new opening of God’ s wonders, and diligently cooperating with Christ in His work. (J. Pulsford.)Twilight ages changed to sunlight I have seen, in the early hours of the morning twilight, the Alps appear under a sky still dark, their summits livid and frozen. The lake which bathed their feet stretched out a grey, motionless surface, and the pale rays of a setting moon seemed but to light up the dread kingdom of death. Some hours have passed away, when suddenly these same peaks become resplendent with life; the glittering snow on the background of dazzling azure, the glaciers erect towards the east their bright ridges, the foaming torrents cutting with their cataracts the green mountain brows, and the dark forest trembles in the morning wind, The lake, quivering in its turn, faithfully retraces in its blue mirror the incomparable picture. Nature had not changed, but the sun had arisen. (E. Bersier, D. D.)Example of God’ s manifold wisdom and power And God said, “ Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.” There is a meaning in these sublime words which is seldom noticed. Innumerable millions of animalculae are found in water, which are never noticed by the unaided sight from their minuteness. Eminent naturalists have discovered not less than 30,000 in a single drop! How inconceivably small must each be; and yet each a perfect animal, furnished with the whole apparatus of bones, muscles, nerves, heart, arteries, veins, lungs, viscera in general, etc. What a proof is this of the manifold wisdom of God! But the fruitfulness of fishes is another point intended in the text; no creatures are so prolific as these. A tench lays 1,000 eggs, a carp 20,000, and Lewenhock counted in a middle-sized cod, 9,384,000! Thus, according to the good purpose of God, “ the waters bring forth abundantly.” And what a merciful provision is this for the necessities of man! Many hundreds of thousands of the earth’ s inhabitants live for a great part of the year on fish only. Fish afford, not only a wholesome, but a very nutritive diet: they are liable to few diseases, and generally come in vast quantities to our shores, when in their greatest perfection. In this also we may see that the kind providence of God goes hand in hand with His creative energy; while He manifests His wisdom and His power, He makes provision for the sustenance of man through all his generations. (Clarke.)God manifests Himself Alexander of Russia used often to ride in a plain carriage, incognito. A man on the road asked if he might ride with him. He got into the carriage, and after a while was inquisitive as to the name of the man with whom he was riding. He said, “ Are you a lieutenant?” “ No,” said the king. “ Are you a major?” “ No,” said the king. “ Are you a general?” “ No,” said the king; “ but I am something higher than that.” The man said, “ Then you must be the emperor,” and was overwhelmed with his company. In this world God appears to us in strange ways. He takes us up in the chariot of His providence to ride with Him, and we know Him not. At death the disguise will be gone, and for the first time it will be known to us that we have been riding with the King. (Dr. Talmage.)The pursuit of wisdom “ How shall we describe you to others?” asked a disciple of Confucius. He answered, “ Say that I am one who, in his thirst for knowledge, forbears to eat, who forgets sorrow in the joy of attainment, and who hardly has time to notice the advance of old age.” At another time he said, “ My only merit is to study wisdom without satiety, and to teach others without weariness.” “ These things trouble me, not to live virtuously enough, not to discuss questions thoroughly enough, not to conform practice to doctrine sufficiently, not to reform the bad entirely.” (H. R. Haweis, M. A.)Manifold wisdom A blind tortoise lived in a well. Another tortoise, a native of the ocean, in its inland travels happened to tumble into this well. The blind one asked of his new comrade whence he came. “ From the sea.” Hearing of the sea, he of the well swam round a little circle, and asked, “ Is the water of the ocean as large as this?” “ Larger,” replied he of the sea. The well tortoise then swam round two thirds of the well, and asked it the sea was as big as that. “ Much larger than that,” said the sea tortoise. “ Well, then,” asked the blind tortoise, “ is the sea as large as this whole well?” “ Larger,” said the sea tortoise. “ If that is so,” said the other, “ how big, then, is the sea?” The sea tortoise replied, “ You having never seen any other water than that of your well, your capability of understanding is small. As to the ocean, though you spent many years in it, you would never be able to explore the half of it, nor to reach the limit, and it is utterly impossible to compare it with this well of yours. The tortoise replied, “ It is impossible that there can be a larger water than this well; you are simply praising up your native place in vain words.” (J. Gilmour, M. A.) Ephesians 3:12-13 In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.Access to God through Christ I. We have access. Approach to God in worship. Such a state of peace with God as allows a freedom of intercourse. II. We have boldness of access. Fulness of liberty to draw near to God. The word also expresses that freedom of spirit with which we should come to God. The disposition of our hearts should correspond with the liberal and gracious dispensation under which we are placed. III. We have access with confidence (see 1 John 3:21-22; 1 John 5:14-15). To confidence of success in prayer it is necessary that we “ ask according to God’ s will” --for such things as He allows us, and in such a manner as He requires us to ask. What God has absolutely promised, He will certainly bestow. What He has promised conditionally, will follow our compliance with the conditions. IV. All our hope of success in prayer must rest upon the mediation of Jesus Christ. In His flame we are to come before God; and in the virtue of His atonement and intercession we may hope for acceptance. Concluding reflections:1. In the Apostle Paul we have a noble example of benevolence. He was joyful in his tribulation, finding that it conduced to the happiness of others. It is the glory of the religion of Jesus, that, where it comes with power, it enlarges the mind, purifies the affections, subdues the passions, sweetens the temper, softens the heart to sensibility and love, and excites to every good work. 2. We are taught that new converts should be assisted and encouraged in religion. 3. We farther learn, that our best support under the troubles of the world, is that boldness of access to God, which we enjoy in Christ Jesus. 4. How great a thing it is to pray as we ought to pray in such a manner, that we can truly say, “ We have had access to God” ! 5. Let the grace and condescension of God encourage us, unworthy as we are, to come often into His presence. He is rich in mercy to them who call upon Him. Our wants are great and numerous, and He only can supply them. Let us attend to our wants, and we shall find matter for prayer, and know what to say when we stand before Him. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Access by Christ 1. In Christ only is our conscience able to plead its righteousness before God. (1) We must therefore think on this inestimable benefit, that we whose consciences were wont to accuse us, may now have assurance through Christ. (2) Commit thyself to Christ; let Him be thy guide to walk by as the Way, to be counselled by Him as the Truth, and quickened and strengthened by Him as thy Life; and never doubt but He will bring thee safely to God, and thou shalt never miscarry. 2. In Christ we may securely come into God’ s presence. Two things which breed confidence. (1) Affinity of nature.(2) Familiarity and acquaintance. 3. Wicked men are deceived who are persuaded of their security to Godward. 4. To have benefit by Christ we must believe on Him. (1) A woeful case it is to live in unbelief.(2) Faith is not a bare assent, but a confident embracing with the heart of the thing assented to.(3) Faith only looks to Christ. (Paul Bayne.)Filial boldness, through Christ, in approaching the Father The apostle here tells us of an exalted privilege. Let us consider-- I. The matter of the privilege--“ Access.” But access to whom? The apostle does not mention this: it was needless. God was the Being necessarily implied. For, “ it is with Him we have to do” mainly and principally in the concerns of the soul and eternity. He is not only the greatest and the best of Beings, but we are most perfectly related to Him. We may view man in three states with regard to God.1. We may view him before the fall, and in his original condition. Then, he was one altogether with God. He wore His image. He lived in His presence. He enjoyed His smiles, and carried on continual intercourse with Him, and he was no more afraid to meet Him than a child was afraid to meet the tenderest of fathers, or the most endeared of mothers. But, alas! this condition was broken up by sin. We must, therefore, view him-- 2. In his fall. Alienated: far from God. Sin separates. Hence results our degradation and wretchedness. 3. We may view man, again, in his renewed state. He now feels his need of God, and returns to Him with weeping and supplication. And he not only seeks, but finds Him, and is in a state of access to God. Let us observe some of the characters under which we have access to God.1. We have access to Him as a pardoning God. Everything must begin here. 2. We have access to Him as a supplying God. We need not only forgiveness, but supplies. We are poor. I mean now spiritually poor. We are as poor as poverty itself. We have no righteousness; we have no strength; we have no wisdom of our own. 3. We have access to Him, also, as a communing God. We have access, not only to tits door, but into His house; and not only to His house but to His table, and even to His pavilion--we can come, “ even to His seat.” We have access to His ear, and can pour out our hearts before Him. We can speak familiarly with Him and hold converse with Him. We can lean upon His arm. We can rest on His bosom: we can “ rejoice in Him with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” So much for the matter of this privilege. II. Observe the manner. We have boldness and access with confidence.1. Consider it as an exclusion of that despair and that despondency which very naturally arises from conviction of sin. 2. We may view it in opposition to the bondage of Judaism. 3. As distinguished from the usual access and modes of approach among men. Now, look at earthly monarchs they cannot give you real access to them at all times, it would lower their dignity. For as they have no real greatness, they must substitute the show of it; and this is very difficult, for real meanness underneath will often break through all external greatness; and if they were easy of access, they would be, unquestionably, invaded and incommoded. They are obliged, therefore, to have modes of distance and reserve. There must be guards and established rules of etiquette, and the sovereign can only be approached at particular times, seen only on particular occasions, and heard only on things of importance. Then, too, the interview is short, and frequently is the subject full of intimidation. Such is the impression of external greatness, that Madame Guion, though accustomed to a court, tells us, she “ was always breathless when in the presence of Napoleon.” But you, brethren, are not breathless in approaching the King of kings, and the Lord of lords--“ who only hath immortality” --“ before whom all nations are nothing, yea, less than nothing, and vanity.” You can approach Him at all times; you can have access to Him on all occasions! III. The medium of all this. “ We have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.” Here we see that He is the object of faith; and that, as faith can only, as exercised upon Him, bring the relief we need; thus we see your faith is as necessary in one sense, as Christ is in another. Yes, the one is necessarily meritorious; and the other instrumental. But the faith is as necessary as the Saviour Himself. That is, here is the remedy; but the application of that remedy is necessarily to be procured as well as the remedy itself. As, for instance, eating is as necessary to our support, as the food we partake of. Now, faith takes in three views of it, each of which is perfectly encouraging: and the more we exercise faith in Christ, the more freedom shall we find in drawing near to God. First, we have “ boldness and access with confidence through the faith of Him,” as the gift of God. Then, secondly, “ We have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him,” as a sacrifice for sin. Thirdly, we have “ boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him,” as our risen and exalted Saviour. (W. Jay.)The mediation of Christ a motive to confidence in prayer I. That there is a certain boldness and confidence very well consisting with and becoming of our humblest addresses to God. This is evident; for it is the very language of prayer to treat God with the appellation of “ father” ; and surely every son may own a decent confidence before his father, without any entrenchment either upon paternal authority or filial reverence. As for the nature of this confidence, it is not so easily set forth by any positive description, as by the opposition that it bears to its extremes; which are of two sorts:(1) In defect;(2) In excess. 1. And for those of the first sort, that consist in defect. (1) This confidence is, in the first placer opposed to desperation and horror of conscience. 2. This confidence is opposed also to doubting and groundless scrupulosities. “ I will,” says Paul, “ that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting” (1 Timothy 2:8). Why? Suppose they should doubt and waver in presenting their prayers to God. “ Let not such an one,” says St. James, “ think that he shall receive anything of the Lord” (James 1:7). And the reason is plain, for no man is to pray for anything but what God both allows and commands him to pray for. Is it not clear that his suspicion upbraids either God’ s power, that He cannot, or His truth, that He will not make good the effects of His promise? But it will perhaps be pleaded in defence and excuse of such doubting, that it arises not from any unbecoming thoughts of God, but from the sense of the unworthiness of him that prays; which makes him question the success of his petition, notwithstanding all the Divine mercy and liberality. But to this I answer, that by the plea of unworthiness is meant, either an unworthiness in point of merit; and so the argument would keep a man from praying forever, forasmuch as none can ever pretend a claim of merit to the thing he prays for, as shall be more fully observed hereafter. Or, secondly, it is meant of an unworthiness in point of fitness to receive the thing prayed for; which fitness consists in that evangelical sincerity, that makes a man walk with that uprightness, as not to allow himself in any sin. 2. Having thus shown the two extremes to which the confidence spoken of in the text is opposed in point of defect, I come now to treat of those to which it is opposed in point of excess, and to show, that as it excludes despair and doubting on the one hand, so it banishes all rashness and irreverence on the other. It is indeed hard for the weak and unsteady hearts of men to carry themselves in such an equal poise between both, as not to make the shunning of one inconvenience the falling into another; but the greater the danger is, the greater must be our attention to the rule. (1) First of all, then, confidence in point of excess is opposed to rashness and precipitation. And prayer surely, of all other duties and actions, ought to be a reasonable service. It calls upon him that undertakes it to consider before he resolves, again and again to consider, into what presence he is going, what the thing is that he is about to do, what preparedness and fitness he finds in himself for it, what the advantages of a right, and what the sad consequences of an undue performance of it are like to be. I have read that it has been reported of a holy person, that he used to bestow a whole hour at least in meditation before he kneeled down to that prayer which perhaps he uttered in three minutes. There is some boldness that is the effect of blindness; and surely it is this that brings men to so sacred and so concerning an action as prayer is, with such trivial spirits, such rambling, uncollected thoughts, and such offensive, profane behaviours. (2) The confidence spoken of in the text, in point of excess is opposed to impudence or irreverence; which, the truth is, is but the natural effect and consequent of the former: for he that considers not the sacredness of a thing or action, cannot easily pay it that devotion and reverence that the dignity of it requires. There are many ways by which this irreverence may show itself in prayer, but I shall more especially mention and insist upon two. First. The using of saucy, familiar expressions to God. Secondly. This irreverence in prayer shows itself in a man’ s venting his crude, sudden, extemporary conceptions before God. Why God should be pleased with that which intelligent men laugh at, I cannot understand. II. The foundation of this confidence is laid in the mediation of Christ. III. The reason why Christ’ s mediation ought to minister such confidence to us in our access to God. He that is confident in any action grounds his confidence upon the great probability of the happy issue and success of that action; and that probability of success is grounded upon the fitness of the person entrusted with the management of it. The incomparable, singular fitness of Christ for the performance of that work; which fitness will appear by considering Him under a three-fold relation or respect.1. And first we shall consider Him in relation to God, with whom He is to mediate; who also in this business may sustain a double capacity in relation to Christ: (1) Of a Father.(2) Of a Judge. (1) And first if we consider Him as His Father, there cannot be a more promising ground of success in all his pleas for us. For who should be heard and prevail, if not a son pleading before his father? Nature itself takes the cause in hand, and declaims it with more power and insinuation than the highest and the most persuasive oratory. To have the judge’ s ear is a great matter, but his son has his heart also. (2) We have another ground of building our confidence upon Christ’ s mediation with God, though considered as a judge; because He Himself has appointed Him to this work: “ It was He that laid help upon one that is mighty,” as the psalmist says (Psalms 89:19), and “ that made the Man of His right hand, the Son of Man, strong for Himself” (Psalms 80:17). He prepared and endowed Him with qualifications fit for so great an employment. 2. In the next place we are to consider His fitness for this work in reference to men, for whom He mediates; which will appear from that fourfold relation that He bears to them. (1) And first let us look upon Him as a Friend; that is, as one that we may trust with our nearest concernments as freely as ourselves. Friendship is an active and a venturous thing, and where it is real, it will make a man bolder and more importunate for his friend than for himself. Now Christ has all the perfections of human friendship, without the flaws and weaknesses of it: and surely He will bestow a prayer for those for whom He would spend a life. (2) Let us consider Christ as a Brother, and so we have a further cause to repose a confidence in Him, in point of His mediation for us. Brotherhood unites persons by a certain tie, that is not only forcible but sacred; and to violate it by any falseness or treachery of behaviour, is to injure not only a man, but even humanity itself. And we may be sure that Christ will be as much more concerned for our affairs than an earthly brother, as such a brother would be more than an ordinary acquaintance. (3) Let us consider Christ as our Surety; and so we shall find the same, if not a greater cause, of being confident of Him as our mediator. And now, after such an experiment of His love to us, can we doubt that He will stick at the lesser and lower instances of kindness? that He will refuse to manage and enforce our petitions at the throne of grace, who did not refuse to make Himself an offering to justice? (4) And lastly, for the further confirmation of our confidence in our addresses to God, we will consider Christ under a very different relation from all the former, and that is as He is our Lord and Master. Sovereignty and love are not often found together; yet Christ has united them both in Himself: for as He is the most absolute of lords, so He is the best and the most faithful of friends, the kindest brother, and the ablest surety. Nay, and He has founded our friendship and our subjection to Him, things very different, upon the same bottom; which is, obedience to His laws (John 15:14). 3. I come now in the third and last place, to demonstrate the fitness of Christ to he a mediator for us, by considering Him in respect of Himself, and those qualifications inherent in Him, which so particularly qualify and dispose Him for this work: His acquaintance with our condition: we need not spend much time or labour to inform our advocate of our case: for His omniscience is beforehand with us: He knows all our affairs, and what is more, our hearts, better than we ourselves. And it is our happiness that He does so: for by this means He is able to supply the defects of our prayers, and to beg those things for us that our ignorance was not aware of. (2) He is heartily sensible of, and concerned about, whatsoever concerns us. Without which His knowledge would avail us but little. He that would speak earnestly and forcibly of anything, must work it into his heart by a lively and a keen sense of it, as well as into his head by a clear knowledge and apprehension. For where the heart is engaged, all the actions follow: no part or power of the soul can be inactive, when that is stirred; and being once moved itself, it moves all the rest. Now it is the heart of Christ that every believer has an interest in: and we knew that He carries that in His breast that intercedes for us with Him, as well as He with the Father. (3) His transcendent and more than human ability to express and set forth everything that may be pleaded in our behalf to the best advantage; which is the peculiar qualification of a good advocate, and that which makes the two former considerable. For admit that he knows both his client’ s cause, and is heartily and warmly concerned for it, yet if his tongue and his eloquence doth not serve him to draw forth those thoughts and those affections in a suitable defence of it, he is rather a good man and a good friend, than a good advocate or mediator. But now is there anyone that may compare with Christ in respect of this faculty? to whom God has given “ the tongue of the wise” ; a tongue speaking with authority, commanding men, and persuading God: nay, and who Himself was able to give His disciples such a tongue, as all their adversaries, though never so learned and eloquent, were not able to resist. IV. Whether there be another means to give efficacy and success to them. If there is, it must be either--(1) Something within; or,(2) something without us. As for anything within us that may thus prevail with God, it must be presumed to be the merit of our good actions, which by their intrinsic worth and value may lay claim to His acceptance. It cannot, I confess, be the direct business of this discourse to treat of the merit of good works. But for our direction, so far as may concern the present subject and occasion, I affirm, that it is impossible, not only for sinful men, but for any mere creature, though of never so excellent and exalted a nature, properly to merit anything from God, and that briefly for these two reasons.1. Because none can merit of another but by doing something of himself and absolutely by his own power, for the advantage of him from whom he merits, without that person’ s help or assistance. But what can anything that the creature can do advantage God? 2. To merit is to do something over and above what is due, no two things in the world being more directly contrary than debt and merit. But now it is impossible for any created agent to do anything above its duty, forasmuch as its duty obliges it to do the utmost that it can. It remains therefore that if there be any other ground of this confidence, it must be something without us. And if so, it must be the help and intercession either-- (1) Of the angels; or,(2) of the saints. I. And first for the angels: that they cannot be presumed to mediate for us and present our prayers before God, I suppose may be made evident by these reasons.(1) Because it is impossible for the angels to know and perfectly discern the thoughts, that being the incommunicable property of God (2 Chronicles 6:30; Jeremiah 17:10). (2) The second reason is, that it also exceeds the measure of angelical knowledge, for any angel by himself and his own natural power of knowing, to know at once all the prayers that are even uttered in words here and there throughout the world; and that because it is impossible for him to be actually present in all places. 2. I come now to see whether we have any greater ground of confidence from anything that the saints are like to do for us in this particular. Concerning which we must observe, that the foregoing arguments brought against the angels interceding for us, by reason of their unacquaintance with our spiritual affairs, proceed much more forcibly against the intercession of the saints, who are of much more limited and restrained faculties than the angels, and know fewer things, and even those that they do know in a much lesser degree of clearness than angelical knowledge rises to. But yet for the further proof of the saints’ unacquaintedness with what is done here below, these reasons may be added over and above. As first, it is clear that God sometimes takes His saints out of the world for this very cause, that they may not see and know what happens in the world. For so says God to king Josiah (2 Chronicles 34:28), “ Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and the inhabitants thereof.” Which discourse would have been hugely absurd and inconsequent, if so be the saints’ separation from the body gave them a fuller and a clearer prospect into all the particular affairs and occurrences that happen here upon earth. But secondly, we have yet further an express declaration of the saints’ ignorance of the state of things here below in those words in Isaiah 63:16, where the Church thus utters itself to God, “ Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not.” Abraham and Jacob surely were saints, and those too none of the lowest rank; yet it seems they knew nothing of the condition of their posterity, understood none of their wants and necessities. Now in order to any man’ s establishing a rational confidence upon the intercession of the saints for us, these three things are required. 1. That they be able thus to intercede for us.2. That they accordingly will.3. And lastly, that a man certainly know so much. A failure in any of which conditions renders all such hope and reliance upon them most absurd and unreasonable. For what foundation of hope can there be where there is no power to help? And what help can he afford me who knows not whether I need help or no? But suppose that he does fully know my condition, yet knowledge is not the immediate principle of action, but will; and no man goes about the doing of anything because he knows it may be done, but because in his mind he has resolved to do it. And then as for the saints’ will to pray for us, since the measure of their will is the will of God calling and commanding them to undertake such or such a work, where there is no such call or command to the thing we are speaking of, we are to presume also, that neither have they any will to it. But lastly, admitting that there is in them really both a knowledge, and an actual will fitting the saints for this office of interceding, yet unless we are sure of it by certain infallible arguments, we cannot build our practice upon it, which is itself to be built upon faith, that is a firm persuasion of both the reasonableness and the fitness of the thing we are to do. (R. South, D. D.)Confidence towards God realized in Christ I. How it displays itself.1. In boldness before the throne of grace (Comp. Hebrews 4:14-16). “ The boldness (of speech),” --it was well known and characteristic, Never had men asked for such great things, or with such conviction that they would be granted. 2. In nearness to God and intimate fellowship with Him. All “ veils,” earthly priests, etc., were discarded. Theirs was the “ perfect love” that “ casteth out fear.” II. How it is produced.1. In the person of Christ. He is the Mediator through whom they are reconciled to God, and in whose Divine-human nature the unity of men to God is perfected. 2. Through faith. “ The faith of Him,” i.e., faith that is awakened by Him, and that rests upon Him. He transfers the affection and trust of men to the Father. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Freedom of access to God One of the most distinguished privileges enjoyed under the Christian dispensation. God is willing to hold communion with us, and ready to do us all possible good. I. The important privilege here asserted.1. This blessing does not belong to (1) The natural man;(2) the hypocritical professor;(3) the self-righteous moralist. 2. It belongs to the experimentalist in religion: the man who has felt the force of Divine truth--who has sincerely repented of his sins--who has exercised faith in Christ as the only Saviour--who is adopted into the family of heaven--who can look up to God as his reconciled Father. 3. The blessing itself consists of-- (1) Access: a leading by the hand, an introduction to God. (2) Boldness: freedom of speech in expressing our requests; the freedom a child feels in the presence of its father. (3) Confidence: a well-grounded hope that we and our sacrifices of prayer and praise are acceptable to God. II. The ground on which this privilege rests. Not on any speculations of philosophy, or exercises of morality; but on ground peculiar to revelation. It is “ by the faith of Christ.” This faith has to do with--1. The dignity of Christ’ s Person.2. The greatness of His work.3. The prevalency of His intercession.4. The richness of His promises. III. The uses to which it may be applied.1. In a way of caution. (1) Take heed of a confidence in the mere mercy of God, without regard to the intervention of a Mediator. No access save by Jesus Christ. (2) Beware of presumption in the way of pertness or flippancy. While you are allowed to come with the confidence of a child, remember the authority which God maintains, and let His majesty keep you in awe. 2. In a way of exhortation. Ye who have taken refuge in Christ, cultivate this confidence; it is your privilege. Let it animate your prayers, assist you in obedience, produce sweet resignation, strengthen, invigorate, elevate you. And oh! if you have this confidence, be careful not to cast it away. 3. In a way of instruction. Let the feeble minded not despair because they have not this confidence, but labour in hope. (The Pulpit.)The Christian longs for fellowship with God I was struck with what a little girl said lately. She knocked at the door of her father’ s study, and he asked, “ What do you want, my dear?” “ Nothing, papa, but to be with you.” Does not this answer express the longing of a Christian for the presence of God, to feel His power, to know by personal experience that He is beside us? (J. Munro.)Boldness of access When a poor trembling Roman approached the Emperor Augustus, he was in some fear: “ What,” says the emperor, “ take you me for an elephant that will tear you?” So we should come with boldness to Christ. He encourages the worst of sinners. (Ralph Erskine.)Access with confidence Even in our own days great men are not readily to be come at. There are so many back stairs to be climbed before you can reach the official who might have helped you, so many subalterns to be parleyed with, and servants to be passed by, that there is no coming at your object. The good men may be affable enough themselves, but they remind us of the old Russian fable of the hospitable householder in a village, who was willing enough to help all the poor who came to his door, but he kept so many big dogs loose in his yard that nobody was able to get up to the threshold, and therefore his personal affability was of no service to the wanderers. It is not so with our Master. Though He is greater than the greatest, and higher than the highest, He has been pleased to put out of the way everything which might keep the sinner from entering into His halls of gracious entertainment. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 3:13 Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.Exhortation to steadfastness 1. We are prone, when ministers of the gospel are troubled, to forsake them and their gospel (Zechariah 13:7; Matthew 26:56). (1) By nature there is in us an immoderate declining of that which is grievous to sense. We turn our back upon the storm, and will not go so far as to put our finger in the fire at any band. (2) From childhood there grows up in us an immoderate love of a pleasant condition. Like swallows, we would always have it to be summer. (3) We are very inconstant, and inclined to change; ready to crown Christ today, and to crucify Him tomorrow. 2. We must be ready to suffer in the afflictions of the gospel with the ministers thereof. (1) The Cross and profession of Christ are almost undivided companions, by God’ s appointment. (2) We must not take offence at this, because our blessedness stands in it. (3) This not falling away in times of persecution is a testimony to us of sound hearts. (4) This is a gainful, thing (Hebrews 11:26; Mark 10:30). (Paul Bayne.)Tribulation, the Church’ s glory Leonard Keyser, a friend and disciple of Luther, having been condemned by the bishop, had his head shaved, and being dressed in a smock frock, was placed on horseback. As the executioners were cursing and swearing because they could not disentangle the ropes with which his limbs were to be tied, he said to them mildly, “ Dear friends, your bonds are not necessary; my Lord Christ has already bound me.” When he drew near the stake, Keyser looked at the crowd and exclaimed, “ Behold the harvest! O Master, send forth Thy labourers!” And then ascending the scaffold, he cried, “ O Jesus, save me!” These were his last words. “ What am I, a wordy preacher,” said Luther, when he received the news of his death, “ in comparison with this great doer of the Word?” (J. H. M. D’Aubigne, D. D.)Joy through tribulation It is related that in Germany there stood two vast towers, far apart, on the extremes of a castle; and that the old baron to whom this castle belonged stretched huge wires across from one to the other, thus constructing an AEolian harp. Ordinary winds produced no effect upon the mighty instrument; but when fierce storms and wild tempests came rushing down the sides of the mountains and through the valleys, and hurled themselves against those wires, then they began to roll out the most majestic strains of music that can be conceived. It is thus with many of the deepest and grandest emotions of the human soul. The soft and balmy zephyrs that fan the brows of ease and cheer the hours of prosperity and repose give no token of the inward strength and blessing which the tempest’ s wrath discloses. But when storms and hurricanes assault the soul, the bursting wail of anguish rises with the swells of jubilant grandeur, and sweeps upward to the throne of God as a song of triumph, victory, and praise. (Biblical Treasury.)Tribulations of the believer The very word “ tribulation” is full of significance in regard to the Christian’ s trials. Tribulatio is the Latin for the winnowing or thrashing out of the corn from the husk. The early Christians, seeing that God intended sorrow as a holy discipline, gave to the word a high and spiritual import, which was, to its original meaning, as the soul of man is to his body. When sorrow came to them they called it tribulatio, the separation of the chaff that was in them from the wheat. And the Christian will so look at afflictions. They come to him as they did before he was brought to Christ. Now, however, he has a strength to bear them which he had not before. They sometimes come like a flood; sometimes in the small worries of his daily life. As when the sculptor, working on the marble block, with heavy strokes brings off large pieces of the stone, and again with nice and delicate touches develops the folds of the robe and the beauty of the form, so does God at one time bring upon us great afflictions, at another smaller griefs, but always in him who receives them rightly is He bringing out the character of Christ. He first makes the heart plastic in the fires of tribulation, and then, as with a royal signet, imprints upon it the image of His Son. (J. G. Pilkington.) Ephesians 3:14-21 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.A pattern of prayer The worldly proverb is, “ Every man for himself and God for us all” ; the true Christian practice is, to follow Christ:--“ I have prayed for thee, that thy strength fall not” ; “ Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” And in following the Lord, to follow St. Paul’ s advice and example:--“ For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What an intercession this is which St. Paul makes for the Ephesians! It is a pattern of intercessory prayer; it is rightly grounded; it seeks the most precious gifts on behalf of his brethren; it has the highest designs in view in asking their bestowment. I. The faith on which his prayer was founded.1. The Fatherhood of God. This is the foundation thought of the Lord’ s prayer--“ Our Father.” The Father will not fail us. 2. The brotherhood of the saints in Christ. Heaven and earth are knit into one in Jesus. “ Of whom the whole family,” every race, “ in heaven and earth is named.” The sense is that all the classes and communities of heaven and earth own a common paternity. II. The great gifts St. Paul sought for others in this prayer.1. The infusion of spiritual strength--“ to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” 2. The indwelling of Christ--“ that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” 3. The establishment of their hearts in the love of God “ rooted and grounded in love.” III. The design of his prayer for the bestowment on them of these gifts. Such spiritual strength, and such an indwelling, were to lead to--1. Their comprehension of the love of Christ. This is St. Paul’ s paradox; to know the unknowable, to know the nature, if we cannot know the extent, of the love of Christ. 2. Their being “ filled with the fulness of God.” Where the Son of God dwells, there is the fulness of God. Such is a brief outline of an exposition of this most precious of prayers. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)St. Paul’ s prayer for Gentile Christians A great prayer all through. This may be seen from-- I. The ideal it presents. The loftiest possibilities of the Christian life are conceived of as open to Gentile equally with Jew. II. The petition it embodies.1. Spiritual life as a whole is besought of God as His gift. 2. It is through the continuous operation of the Divine Being that spiritual life is sustained and advanced. 3. Yet is the growth of the spiritual life conceived of as involving the activity of the subject in whom it is manifested. Faith, love, and hope, are active principles in every child of God. III. The plea it urges. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Christian prayer 1. Our prayers should be addressed to God the Father.2. Our prayers should be addressed to God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.3. Our prayers should be addressed to God with deep humility.4. Our prayers should be addressed to God for Christian eminence.5. Prayers should be addressed to God both by ministers and people. (G. Brooks.)The ladder of prayer 1. You see that the prayer begins with the gracious petition that we may be strengthened--“ strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, according to the riches of His glory” ; the object being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. Before the Lord can dwell in us we must be strengthened--mentally and spiritually strengthened. To entertain the high and holy one--to receive into our soul the indwelling Christ--it is necessary that the temple be strengthened, that there be more power put into every pillar and into every stone of the edifice. It is taken for granted that we have already been washed and cleansed, and so made fit for Christ to come and dwell within us. But we need also to be strengthened; for, unless we become stronger in all spiritual life, how is Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith? Unless we become stronger in love, and in all the graces of the Spirit, how can we worthily entertain such a guest as the Lord Jesus? Ay, and we even need that our spiritual perception should be strengthened, that we may be able to know Him when He does come and dwell in us. We must be strengthened into stability of mind, that so Christ may dwell, abide, reside in our hearts by faith. 2. Now, having stood on the first step of the ladder, Paul goes on to pray that, when we are strengthened, we may be inhabited: that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. When the house is ready to receive Him, and strong enough for such a wondrous inhabitant, may Jesus come, not to look about Him as He did when He went into the temple, but to abide with us--to “ dwell in our hearts by faith.” 3. This third step is a broad one, and it has three parts to it. (1) Its first part is establishment--“ That ye, being rooted and grounded in love.” When you are strengthened, and when Jesus dwells in your heart, then you are no longer “ carried about with every wind of doctrine,” but you are rooted, like a cedar in Lebanon which receives but recks not of the stormy wind. (2) Side by side with this very blessed establishment in the faith, for which I would bow my knee, as Paul did for the Ephesians, that you may all have it, comes a comprehension of Divine love. How anxiously do I desire your firm settlement in the truth, for this is an age which needs rooted and grounded saints. Side by side with that, however, we would have you receive this further blessing, namely, a comprehension of the love of Christ: “ that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the arithmetician makes calculations and arrives at clear ideas. As a mechanic cubes a quantity and takes its length, and depth, and height, so may the Lord Jesus Christ’ s love be to you no more an airy dream, but a substantial fact, about which you know distinctly, being taught of the living God by the Holy Spirit. (3) Acquaintance. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The top of the ladder “ To know the love of Christ.” I. What it is to know the love of Christ.1. The way in which we come by our knowledge. Personal acquaintance, by having Christ dwelling in you so that you see Him, hear Him, feel His touch, and enjoy His blessed company. 2. The certainty there is in it. “ We cannot be certain of anything,” says someone. Well, perhaps you cannot. But the man who has Christ dwelling in him says, “ There is one thing I am certain of, and that is the love of Christ to me. I am assured of the loveliness of His character and the affection of His heart. He would not cheer and encourage me; He would not rebuke and chasten me, as He does, if He did not love me. He gives me every proof of His love, and therefore I am sure of it.” 3. What a blessed knowledge this is! Talk they of science? No science can rival the science of Christ crucified. Knowledge? No knowledge can compare with the knowledge of the love that passeth knowledge. How sweet it is to know love! Who wants a better subject to exercise his mind upon? Who would not be a scholar, when the book he reads in is the heart of Christ? II. To know so as to be filled. It is not every kind of knowledge that will fill a man. Many forms of knowledge make a man more empty than he was before. But if you get a knowledge of Christ’ s love, it is a filling knowledge, for it contents the soul. Imagination itself is content with Jesus. Hope cannot conceive anything more lovely; she gives up all attempts to paint a fairer than He; and she cries, “ Yea, He is altogether lovely.” Once more, when the love of Christ comes to work upon the soul, when it brings with it all its choice treasures, then the mind of the believer is filled with the fulness of God. Christ does not long dwell in an unfurnished house. Oh, the blessedness of knowing the love of Christ! It fills the spirit to the full. III. What it is to be filled with all the fulness of God. Does it not mean that self is banished; for if the fulness of God has filled you, where is room for self? Does it not mean that the soul is perfectly charmed with all that God does for it? “ Filled with all the fulness of God.” Does it not mean that every power of the entire nature is solaced and satisfied? IV. Wherever Christ dwells in the heart by faith we receive the fulness of God into our spirit, with the design that we may overflow. If you go forth filled with God, you are provided for every emergency. Come calamity or prosperity, whatever shape the temptation may assume, if the love of Christ has filled you with the fulness of God you are ready for it. If you are full with a Divine fulness, your lips scatter gems more precious than pearls and diamonds. Filled with all the fulness of God, your paths, like God’ s paths, drop fatness. Do you not know Christian men of that sort? They are millionaire Christians who make others rich. If the Lord has brought us to His fulness, it is a very high state to be in. Oh, that the Holy Ghost would fill us also according to our capacity! If the water carts go along the road in dusty weather with nothing in them, they will not lay the dust; and if you Christians go about the world empty, you will not lay the dust of sin which blinds and defiles society. If you go to a fountain and find no water flowing, that fountain mocks your thirst; it is worse than useless: therefore do not forget that if you ever become empty of grace, you mock those who look to you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Paul’ s prayer for the Ephesian Christians I. It was his desire that they might be strong-minded men and women. There exists a prejudice against strong-minded men, and a still greater prejudice against strong-minded women. This may be attributable to the circumstance that many strong-minded men and women are also strong-willed, and somewhat disposed to domineer. There exists, also, a prejudice, for which expression has been found in the assertion, that “ ignorance is the mother of devotion.” With none of these prejudices had the apostle any sympathy. He considered nothing so likely to awaken true worship as far-reaching, clear, comprehensive, and correct views of truth; and it was his desire that they to whom he wrote might have all the intellectual vigour necessary to the full enjoying of all the blessings of Christianity. Of “ James Wait, the Pious Shepherd” --I quote from memory the title of his memoir, published many years ago, by Mr. Maclaurin of Coldingham--it is stated, that when seated at the Lord’ s table at Stitchel Brae, and subsequently at Kelso, there was vouchsafed to him an overpowering revelation of the glory of the Lord, and of His love to mankind sinners. He said, “ I was no sooner set down at the table, than I found such a flood of the Spirit’ s consolation poured in upon my soul, that I was obliged to cover myself with my plaid, to keep it from the eyes of others. I found myself obliged to plead that the Lord would strengthen the vessel or hold His hand; for I found that I could not bear up.” He felt that it was becoming more than he could stand, and that if carried further, he must expire in an agony of bliss. Thus would I illustrate what I mean. Yes I there are needed strong-minded men and women to sustain the conceptions which may be formed of infinite and eternal verities! Mark the phraseology employed by the apostle: “ That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” When the ship by which he sailed from Myra was in peril at Clauda, they undergirded the ship. The expression before us is suggestive of strengthening by bracings within, as well as by girdings without; and it is expressive of a desire, that they to whom he wrote might be strong-minded men and women. But this exhausts not the expression of the apostle’ s desire on behalf of his brethren. II. It was his desire that they might be strong-minded men and women, thoroughly imbued with a Christ-like spirit. Mark his expression! “ Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” What is it that is meant, when it is said, as sometimes it is, by persons who do not hesitate to speak profanely, “ The devil is in the man” ? Is it not this: the man acts as if the devil had taken possession of his heart, and was influencing him in his every act? Corresponding to this seems the import of the expression employed--“ that Christ may dwell in your hearts” --that you may be strong-minded men and women, thoroughly imbued with a Christ-like spirit--strengthened with all might in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. III. That they might be strong-minded men and women, thoroughly imbued with a Christ-like spirit, and understanding how comprehensive religion is. The views entertained by many in regard to what is comprehended in religion, are very narrow indeed. What is the love of Christ? Our love to Christ may be called the love of Christ: thus do we speak of the love of gold. Christ’ s love to us may be called the love of Christ: thus do we speak of a mother’ s love to her child. But there is yet another idea which may be expressed by the phrase, “ the love of Christ;” and to express this idea, does it appear to me, that the phrase is employed by the apostle here. That idea I would illustrate thus: one doctrine of the apostle was, that the whole duty of man to man was comprehended in love. “ A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.” To this love, apparently, the apostle refers--the love inculcated by Christ, and manifested by Christ--a love embracing every duty of man, to himself, to his fellowmen, and to his God. It was his desire that they might be strong-minded men and women, thoroughly imbued with a Christ-like spirit; that they, being rooted and grounded in love, might be able to comprehend how all-comprehensive religion is, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, extending, as it did, far far beyond what they knew or dreamed of. He says not, as many seem to suppose, that it cannot be known--on the contrary, he wished and prayed that it might be known by them. His wish was: Oh that they but knew how all-comprehensive religion is, and would live up to the conception which they attained! or, as I have expressed it, that they might be-- IV. Strong-minded men and women, thoroughly imbued with a Christ-like spirit, understanding how comprehensive religion is, and maintaining a corresponding God-like walk and conversation. It is to such a manifestation of godliness that we are destined and called. A captious objector, or a careless unconcerned reader, may say, How can man be filled with all the fulness of God?--how can the finite comprehend the infinite? In a volume entitled, “ The Tongue of Fire,” there was given a beautiful illustration of the import of the apostle’ s figure. The illustration was double. The phraseology employed has long since escaped me, but the effect produced upon my mind remains. In substance the illustration was as follows:--There is a dewdrop hanging suspended from a blade of grass bent and pendent with its weight. While we are yet gazing on it, there falls upon it the slanting rays of the morning sun, and it shines as if it were itself a thing of light. It contains not, nor can it contain, the whole of the rays streaming from the orb of day. These illumine the whole hemisphere, and penetrate far on all sides into the depths of space--creating a sphere of light, sustained by successive rays, which it may require thousands of years to traverse, with all the velocity for which light is famous, the radius from the centre to the circumference, so vast the sphere; but that little dewdrop is filled with that fulness of light--to the full extent of its limited capacity full! Again: There is a marble cistern, filled to overflowing with the pellucid water of a perennial spring. It contains not, nor can it contain, all the waters of the fountain; it has been overflowing for years; but it is itself full--to its limited capacity filled--filled to overflowing--filled with the fulness of the fountain! Such is the illustration employed by the apostle: “ filled with all the fulness of God.” It is an illustration or expression suggestive, at least, of two ideas, both of them calling for consideration. “ That ye might be filled,” every faculty and affection of the soul sanctified--“ filled.” “ Filled with all the fulness of God” --every Divine perfection having its counterpart in the life and spirit of the man; the justice of God having its counterpart in the justice of the man; the holiness of God its counterpart in the holiness of the man; the truthfulness of God in the truthfulness of the man; the long suffering of God its counterpart in long suffering manifested by the man. Every faculty and affection sanctified, and every perfection of God having its counterpart in the life and spirit of the man--the result of all being a God-like walk and conversation. (J. C. Brown, LL. D.)The Christian temple: its material and magnitude I. The peculiar fitness requested for them as forming the material of the spiritual temple (verses 16, 17). It is very clear that the “ building” idea pervades this passage throughout. The reference to the dwelling of Christ in the heart decides this. The apostle’ s mind was so engrossed by this figure of a temple--the knowledge that he was writing to people who were familiar with temple architecture having possibly something to do with it--that each individual Christian presents himself to his mind as a stone in a glorious temple. And all his thoughts assume a corresponding form and colouring. He asks that they “ might be strengthened with might in the inner man.” In this he shows his anxiety that they might prove true stones, possessing qualities befitting the glory and the character of the building; that they might be subjected to such a process as would impart to them the quality of soundness, a most desirable quality in a stone. Upon its soundness depends its capability of bearing strain, of carrying weight, and resisting the ravages of the elements. The quality of the stones composing a building determines the strength and stability of the building itself. Two things are declared respecting this process, namely, its manner and means.1. The manner of it--“ That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” The strengthening is secured by the indwelling of Christ. This is not a literal or physical indwelling. The nature of the indwelling is implied by the expression “ by faith.” Contact of Christians with Him by faith results in the transmission to them of His qualities. 2. The text describes the means of the indwelling--by faith” and “ by the Spirit.” Here we have both the agent and the instrument employed to secure the indwelling. There is a beautiful interblending of the human and Divine in this transaction. The Spirit promotes faith; faith receives Christ; and Christ constitutes the strengthening. The strengthening consists in the transfusion of the soul with Christ’ s characteristic traits of strength and firmness. This process is effected by the operation of faith; faith, again, is a mental act prompted by the spirit. If we adhere to the figure of a house, as the term “ dwell” seems to suggest, the whole process may be represented thus--Christ comes to “ dwell in the heart” with a view to impart strength to it, but He must be admitted into it through the door, which is “ faith” ; then, again, this door must be opened by the porter, the Spirit, as in the example of Lydia, whose heart, we are expressly told, the Lord opened to the reception of the things spoken by Paul. II. We notice the second request of this prayer, that they might have enlarged and Christ-honouring conceptions of the magnitude of the temple of which they formed a part. Most people connect the words in verse 18 with the love of Christ referred to in the following verse. The structure of the Greek seems opposed to this interpretation; also the logic of the passage. Can it be true that the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of which we are so definitely to comprehend, is beyond our knowledge? We must look, then, for some other reference to fit the words. What had the apostle uppermost in his mind? Was it not the Christian temple so beautifully described in the last words of chapter 2 as being in course of building? The purport of the thought would seem to be this temple. The apostle knew how narrow and contracted the thoughts of many Jewish Christians, especially, were respecting this glorious institution. He is, therefore, anxious to lift their minds cut of the narrow rut of their traditional exclusiveness. He wants them to rise to a truer and nobler conception of this glorious spiritual temple--“ to comprehend its breadth, and length, and depth, and height.” By its breadth and length he describes its area as covering the whole earth, as contemplating all nations within its scope. By its depth and height he measures its elevation; it includes the whole family on earth and in heaven, the Church militant and the Church triumphant. In a word, then, we have the area and elevation of the spiritual temple, the Church, in the one ease covering the earth, in the other reaching to the heavens.1. The source of it. The comprehension indicated comes as the result of being “ rooted and grounded in love.” A strange interblending of figures. Not only has the heart penetrated into the love, but the love penetrates into the heart, transfusing it with its own qualities. What is the result? It is that the heart, so affected, so wrought upon, possesses in its new instinct of love a key to all God’ s ways and operations. 2. The universality of its comprehension. It is implied that to comprehend the magnitude of the aim of the Christian Church was a matter which the Ephesian Christians were to attain to in common with all saints. It is the duty of every Christian to attain to clear views on this important matter. It is men who have comprehended this most clearly and appreciated it most fully who have succeeded best in doing great things for God. It is only by the inspiration and enthusiasm born of this great fact that such heroes of the faith as Wesley in England, Carey in India, and Livingstone in Africa, were stimulated and emboldened to attempt the mighty things they achieved in their day. 3. The use of it--“ And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” Here the apostle tells us that one of the advantages of the realization of the wide-reaching aims and benevolent purposes of the Church was the help it gives to realize the transcendent love of Christ. It sounds paradoxical to speak of knowing that which passeth knowledge. There is a sense, nevertheless, in which it is consistent. The fact of the love being Divine at once places it beyond the utmost stretch of the human mind to measure its force, to fathom its depth, or to scale its height. He to whom, both by reason of sympathy of nature and power of inspiration, was given more than to any other human being the power of fathoming its depth, and measuring its height, represents it as of the very essence of God. Yet this knowledge-defying love, the text tells us, we may know. This knowledge consists of two things.1. In being convinced of it as a fact. As Intimated, this conviction, the apostle tells us, comes of duly comprehending the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the Church. The Church, in the magnitude of its conception and comprehensive benevolence, is a standing monument of Christ’ s love, a proof indisputable of its existence and operative force. This much we know of the love of Christ. The sun far surpasses our power of comprehension. We can form no idea of its bulk, of the extent of its forces, of the influence it exerts upon myriad objects embraced by its light and heat. Nevertheless, there is nothing of the existence of which we are more convinced, or with the power of which we are more impressed. Thus it is with the love of Christ. 2. To know the love of Christ means also an assurance of a personal interest in it. It means the conviction that, however it may defy the utmost power of our imagination to measure its magnitude, we are, nevertheless, embraced by it; that it is our moral atmosphere in which we breathe inspiration and power; the spiritual light which infuses, sunlike, gladness and joy into the very core of our life, giving serene rest, and creating unflinching confidence in the midst of universal unrest, and of myriads of turbulent and conflicting elements. 3. The knowledge of Christ’ s love is a qualification for the reception of all the fulness of God. The love of Christ, apprehended in the sense explained, unlocks the soul for the entrance into it of all God’ s fulness. This is the apostle’ s climax thought. Here he describes the highest point of spiritual attainment the believing soul is capable of reaching, that is, becoming a depository for all the fulness of God. The love of Christ, apprehended in this deeper manner, brings the whole man under the complete sway of God. For this being filled with all the fulness of God means-- (1) To have an all-pervading consciousness of God; it is to have God in His fulness--in the fact of His goodness, His love, His holiness in the profoundest sense pervading our every thought and action, inspiring them, moulding them, and directing them. In a word, it is God becoming the sole motive power of the soul. (2) It also means to be endowed to the utmost possible capacity of our being with spiritual power--to be God-endowed as well as God-motived. In this fulness God lays Himself, so to speak, at the service of the soul--in the wealth of His love and the treasures of His grace. (A. J. Parry.)An ascending prayer You will see that this prayer is an ascending one. Each petition rises higher than the preceding. Meditating on this prayer is something like ascending an Alpine peak. The first hour or so is comparatively easy work. The giant flanks of the mountain are steep, but still their ascent is not over difficult; but the higher you go, the steeper it becomes, until at last there is just that one glittering pinnacle towering above your head, and it seems to say, “ Thus far, but no farther! Scale me if you can.” With the aid, though, of a trusty guide, who cuts steps in the very ice for us, and who lends us the strength of his arm, we are able to gain the summit, and drink in with our eyes the grandeur of the scene. Oh that the Spirit of God might come upon us, and, taking us by the hand, help us by His own mighty power to reach the very topmost pinnacle of the apostle’ s prayer, and understand in some measure what it is to be filled with all the fulness of God.1. There must be an inward strengthening. Spiritual power must be developed to qualify us for attaining to eminence in the knowledge and service of Christ. Not life only, but vitality. 2. There must be an ever-acting faith on your part, so that a whole Christ may be received, and a whole Christ retained within the soul. A glorious realization of the person of the Lord Jesus, and by faith a living Christ dwelling within the breast. Not a portrait merely, but Christ Himself enshrined in the soul. 3. Then, you see, how naturally comes the next petition, “ That ye may be filled with all the fulness of God.” Ah! I am certain of this, that if I am filled with a living Christ, I am not far off being filled with all the fulness of God. If I am strengthened with all might by the Holy Ghost, and have a living Jesus within the soul, only one step higher and the pinnacle of the prayer is reached. (1) What it is to be filled with God. To have as much of God within us as our nature can contain. No low level of spiritual experience should satisfy us. We must ever be on the rise--ever seeking to reach perfection. He who only aims low cannot possibly have his arrow hit high; whereas he who aims high, though he may not hit the mark at which he aims, will have his arrow fly higher than that of the other marksman. “ I would have you to be filled,” says St. Paul, “ with the Spirit of God; the Holy Ghost looking through your eyes, the Spirit of God on your lips, influencing, sweetening, savouring every word that you speak; the Holy Ghost in your hands, ennobling all the everyday actions of life; the Spirit of God guiding your feet, so that your every day walk honours Him.” (2) What it is to be filled with all the fulness of God. In Christ all fulness dwells, and it is bestowed on Him in order that He may communicate it to His people. All weakness, I may bring the vacuum of my weakness up to the fulness of His all-power, and then am I strong because I am weak. All foolishness in myself, there is all wisdom in Him to guide and direct. With utter nothingness in myself, there is all-sufficiency in Him. It is no longer a question of what I am, or what I can do, but who Christ is, and what He can do in me. To Him we may go for fulness: but, for fulness of what? (a) Fulness of joy (John 15:11; John 16:24; John 17:13). No piety in being miserable. It is no token of grace to be depressed or disconsolate. It rather shows there is something wrong somewhere, because, included in the all-fulness that Christ has to supply His saints, there is the fulness of joy. (b) Fulness of peace (Romans 15:13). Joy is peace singing; peace is joy reposing. (c) Fulness of hope. (d) The fruits of righteousness (Philippians 1:2). Not just a stray fruit here and there upon your boughs, but all your boughs filled with fruit, until through the very weight of their load they bend down and kiss the ground. The more fruitful the branch, the lower it will hang; and the more fruit there is upon a believer, the less conceit and pride there will be about him. (e) The knowledge of God’ s will (Colossians 1:9). All these are but a few items of the different things with which the Lord is willing to fill us. Would you lead a calm, restful life? Then you must know the meaning of being filled. To use a very simple illustration--take a water bottle, and if that water bottle be only half full, every time you move the bottle the water in it washes to and fro. Why? How is it that it feels every motion? Because it is not full. But if you fill that water bottle right up until it cannot hold another drop, and then cork it in, you may turn the bottle which way you like, and the water within it will not move. There is no movement, no washing about. Why? Because it is too full to be agitated. The reason why you and I live such poor restless lives is that we are not filled up with the fulness of God. Do you also want to live a life of power? Then remember that the measure of any man’ s power is in proportion to the measure with which he is filled with God. (A. G. Brown.)Prayer a self-revelation The deepest thoughts of the heart of a spiritual man are sure to come out in his prayer. Hear a man of God pray, and you hear the real man speaking. I suppose there are none of us here who have not often had cause to confess with shame that we should not like to be judged by our converse with man. How often in society and amongst friends we are led to talk and chat in a way quite sufficient to mislead those who are with us, and make them think we are very different men from what we really are. But when after such a season we have gone to our own home, and dropped down on our knees before God, and begun to speak to Him, then, perhaps with bitter tears, we have told Him that it was not the true self speaking a few hours back. If you could only overhear the talk which a saintly heart has with its God, then you would know the man himself. And you may also rest assured that that which a man prays for, for his friends, is in his estimation the choicest blessing they can receive. Only know what your dearest friend asks God to give you, and you know what, in his opinion, is your greatest need. Oh, if we could but sometimes hear those who love us best, and those who know us best, pray for us, it would be a revelation to us. We should then see what, in their judgment, was our deficiency--what, in their estimation, our greatest requirement. Now, if there be so deep an interest attaching itself to the prayers of all, surely, without fear of contradiction, we may say that when it is an apostle who bends the knee, and when it is such an apostle as Paul who prays, we may well be all attention to catch every syllable. If the deepest thoughts of the heart come out in prayer, let there be a holy hush as we hear the apostle of the Gentiles pray. What, in his mind, is the chiefest thing to be desired for a saint? What, according to his judgment, is the choicest blessing that a believer can receive? We have only to listen to his prayer, and we shall discover. (A. G. Brown.)St. Paul’ s example as to prayer 1. Ministers must pray for their people as well as teach them. (1) Whatsoever we do, yet people’ s untowardness is such, that they have no ability to entertain it fruitfully. (2) Whatsoever we do, yet it is but planting and watering, and all is nothing, if God bless not. (3) We must also pray that our own wants may be supplied. (4) As ministers are the mouth of God to the people, so they are the mouth of the people to God. (5) Ministers are co-workers with God, and it is chiefly God’ s work, and the people are God’ s husbandry and God’ s building. 2. In prayer we must compose our outward man to due reverance, for the body as well as the soul has been redeemed. (1) Outward gestures are to express inward affections. (2) And to stir them up. 3. Kneeling is the most fitting attitude. 4. Yet there are some cautions to which we must pay attention. (1) We must take heed not to rest in outward gestures and attitudes. The humiliation and prostration of the heart must go along with that of the body. (2) If, for any reason, we are prevented from kneeling or other expressions of reverence, we must not therefore neglect prayer. (Paul Bayne.)Kneeling in prayer There was an old clergyman who was much troubled because his wife would sit in church instead of kneeling. He spoke about it to her, but she gave no heed. No; she was more comfortable sitting, and she thought she could pray just as well in one position as another. “ You may pray as well,” he said, “ but I doubt you’ re being heard as well.” However, it was no good; he might just as well have spoken to a stone wall. So then he went one day to his wife’ s old servant, and said to her, “ Hannah, I will give you a crown if you will go to my wife, and sit down on the sofa at her side, and ask her to give you a holiday tomorrow, because you want to go home to your friends.” Hannah was shy. However, the prospect of the crown encouraged her, and she opened the door timidly, went in, and walking up to the sofa, where her mistress was knitting, sat down at her side. The old lady looked up in great astonishment, and asked what in the world she wanted. “ A holiday tomorrow, ma’ am.” “ Leave the room instantly, you impudent woman,” exclaimed the old lady, “ and if you want to have a request granted, learn to ask it in a proper manner.” Then the husband put his head in and said, “ My dear! is not this preaching to Hannah the lesson I have been preaching to you for years? If you want to have a request granted, learn to ask it in a proper manner.” Next Sunday, and ever after, the old lady knelt in church. She saw it would not do to treat Jesus Christ in that way in which she did not like at all to be treated herself. Kneeling Philip the Third of Spain would never be addressed but on the knees, for which he gave the excuse, that as he was of low stature everyone would have appeared too high for him. And if men claim to be approached in this way, how shall we draw near to the living God, the Maker of heaven and earth? Ephesians 3:15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.The Christian Church a family I. In the first place, let us consider the definition given by the apostle paul of the Christian Church, taken in its entirety. It is this, “ the whole family in heaven and earth.” But in order to understand this fully, it will be necessary for us to break it up into its different terms.1. First of all it is taught by this definition that the Church of Christ is a society founded upon natural affinities--a “ family.” A family is built on affinities which are natural, not artificial; it is not a combination, but a society. In ancient times an association of interest combined men in one guild or corporation for protecting the common persons in that corporation from oppression. In modern times identity of political creed or opinion has bound men together in one league, in order to establish those political principles which appeared to them of importance. Similarity of taste has united men together in what is called an association, or a society, in order by this means to attain more completely the ends of that science to which they had devoted themselves. But as these have been raised artificially, so their end is, inevitably, dissolution. Society passes on, and guilds and corporations die; principles are established, and leagues become dissolved; tastes change, and then the association or society breaks up and comes to nothing. It is upon another principle altogether that that which we call a family, or true society, is formed. It is not built upon similarity of taste, nor identity of opinion, but upon affinities of nature. You do not choose who shall be your brother; you cannot exclude your mother or your sister; it does not depend upon choice or arbitrary opinion at all, but is founded upon the eternal nature of things. And precisely in the same way is the Christian Church formed--upon natural affinity, and not upon artificial combination. 2. Another thing which is taught by this definition is this, that the Church of Christ is a whole made up of manifold diversities. We are told here it is “ the whole family,” taking into it the great and good of ages past, now in heaven; and also the struggling, the humble, and the weak now existing upon earth. Here again, the analogy holds good between the Church and the family. Never more than in the family is the true entirety of our nature seen. Observe how all the diversities of human condition and character manifest themselves in the family. First of all, there are the two opposite poles of masculine and feminine, which contain within them the entire of our humanity--which together, not separately, make up the whole of man. Then there are the diversities in the degrees and kinds of affection. And then there are diversities of character. And so it is also in the Church, In the Church of God there is a place--and that the noblest--for Dorcas making garments for the poor, and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the Apostle Paul “ compassing sea and land” by his wisdom and his heroic deeds. 3. The last thing which is taught us by this definition is, that the Church of Christ is a society which is forever shifting its locality, and altering its forms. It is the whole Church, “ the whole family in heaven and earth.” So then, those who were on earth, and are now in heaven, are yet members of the same family still. Those who had their home here, now have it there. Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in which the Apostles Paul or John, the good and great of ages past, belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which they were not understood; in which the commonplace and everyday part of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each other, mistaking each other’ s feelings, not comprehending each other’ s character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence. Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken. II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which this Church is named. “ Our Lord Jesus Christ,” the apostle says, “ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” Now, everyone familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and expression, will allow here, that “ name” is but another word to express being, actuality, and existence. When the apostle here says, “ Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,” it is but another way of saying that it is He on whom the Church depends--who has given it substantive existence--without whom it could not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed elsewhere--“ that there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we may be saved.” Let us not lose ourselves in vague generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we use. When we say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He “ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,” we mean that the very being of the Church depends on Christ--that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church of Christ depends upon these three things--first, the recognition of a common Father; secondly, of a common humanity; and thirdly, of a common sacrifice. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Saints in heaven and earth one family I invite you to consider the ties which bind us to those who have gone before, and the indissoluble kinship in Christ which holds us as much as ever in one sacred unity. I. First, let us think of the points of this great family union. In what respects are the people of our God in heaven and earth one family?1. Let us note, first, concerning those in heaven and earth whom the Lord loves that their names are all written in one family register. That mystical roll which eye hath not seen containeth all the names of His chosen. Let us gaze by faith upon that great Book of Life where all the names of the redeemed stand indelibly written by the hand of everlasting love, and as we read those beloved names let us remember that they make but one record. 2. The saints above and below are also one family in the covenant made in Christ. Fellow citizens with the glorified, but strangers and foreigners among worldlings. 3. All the saints in heaven and earth have the covenant promises secured to them by the self-same seal, viz., the sacrifice of the bleeding Lamb. 4. The family in heaven and earth, again, will be plainly seen to be one, if you remember that they are all born of the same Father, each one in process of time. 5. The nature of all regenerate powers is the same, for in all it is the living and incorruptible seed which liveth and abideth forever. The same nature is in the saints above as in the saints below. They are called the sons of God, and so are we; they delight in holiness, and so also do we; they are of the Church of the first born, and so are we; their life is the life of God, and so is ours; immortality pulses through our spirits as well as through theirs. The new life in heaven is more developed and mature; it has also shaken off its dust, and has put on its beautiful garments, yet it is the same. Oh, it needs but little alteration in the true saint below to make him a saint above. So slight the change, that in an instant it is accomplished. “ Absent from the body and present with the Lord.” 6. We are one yet further, brethren, because all saints, whether in heaven or earth, are partakers in the same Divine love. “ The Lord knoweth them that are His” not merely those in heaven, but those below. 7. Heirs of the same promises, and the same blessed inheritance. Think of this, you who are little in Israel. 8. All members of one body, and necessary to the completion of one another. We are the lower limbs, as it were, of the body, but the body must have its inferior as well as its superior members. It cannot be a perfect body should the least part of it be destroyed. The saints above with all their bliss must wait for their resurrection until we also shall have come out of great tribulation; like ourselves they are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body. II. Let us now speak upon the inseparableness of this union. “ The whole family in heaven and earth,” not the two families nor the divided family, but the whole family in heaven and earth. It appears at first sight as if we were very effectually divided by the hand of death. There was a great truth in the sentence which Wordsworth put into the mouth of the little child when she said, “ O master, we are seven.” You cannot conceive of our heavenly Father’ s being bereaved. Our Father which art in heaven, Thou hast lost none of Thy children. There is no break towards the Father, and no break towards the Elder Brother, and therefore it must be our mistake to fancy there is any break at all.1. Space makes no inroads into the wholeness of the Lord’ s family. Space is but the House of God; nay, God comprehends all space, and space, therefore, is but the bosom of the Eternal. 2. And what a mercy it is that greatest of all separators, does not now divide us, for we are “ made nigh by the blood of Christ.” 3. Neither do errors and failures of understanding divide the family of God; if, indeed, they did, who among us could be of the same family as those who know even as they are known? The little child makes a thousand mistakes, and his elder brethren smile sometimes, but they do not deny that he is their brother because he is so ignorant and childish. 4. Neither can sorrow separate us. To deny that your warring soldier is a part of the host would be a great mistake; to say that he is not of the army because he is in the midst of the conflict would be cruel and false. The saints militant are of the same host as the triumphant; those who are suffering are of the same company as the beatified. III. A topic of deep interest now comes before us--the present display of this union.1. The service of those who have departed blends with ours. They, being dead, yet speak; their service projects itself beyond this life. Do not let the living think that they are the sole champions in the holy war, for, to all intents and purposes, the spirits of the just made perfect stand side by side with them; and the battle is being carried on in no small measure by cannon which they cast, and weapons which they forged. Though the builders be absent in body, yet the gold, silver, and precious stones which they builded, their Lord will establish forever. 2. The influence of the prayers of those in heaven still abides with us. Many a mother dies with her children unsaved, but the prayers she continually offered for them will prevail after her death. 3. Further, the unity of the Church will be seen in this, that their testimony from above blends with ours. The Church is ordained to be a witness. My brethren, we try to witness as God helps us to the truth as it is in Jesus, even as those who are above once witnessed with us here in life and in death. But now that these spirits have entered within the veil do they cease their testimony? No. Hear them. They bear witness to the Lamb, saying, “ For Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood.” Ye are comrades with us, ye shining ones; ye are fellow witnesses for Jesus, and therefore ye are one with us. 4. The main employment of saints above is praise. Beloved, what is ours but praise too? Their music is sweeter than ours, freer from discord, and from all that is cold or wandering, but still the theme is the same, and the song springs from the same motive, and was wrought in the heart by the same grace. 5. Towering over all is the fact that the Well-beloved is the common joy of saints in heaven and on earth. What makes their heaven? Who is the object of all their worship? Beloved, He is as much all in all to us as He is to them. Jesus, we know Thee and they know Thee; Jesus, we love Thee and they love Thee. IV. Last of all, there is to come, before long, a future manifestation of this family union, much brighter than anything we have as yet seen. We are one family, and we shall meet again. If they cannot come to us we shall go to them by and by. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The royal family I. Let us understand the language of the text.1. The key word is “ family.” A building sets forth the unity of the builder’ s design. A flock, unity of the shepherd’ s possession. The title of citizen implies unity of privilege. The idea of an army displays unity of object and pursuit. Here we have something closer and more instructive still: “ family.” (1) The same Father, and thus unity of relationship.(2) The same life, and so unity of nature.(3) The same mutual love growing out of nature and relations.(4) The same desires, interests, joys, and cares.(5) The same home for abode, security, and enjoyment.(6) The same inheritance to be soon possessed. 2. The link-word is “ whole.” “ Whole family in heaven and earth.” There is but one family, and it is a whole. (1) On earth we find a portion of the family (a) Sinning and repenting: not yet made perfect. (b) Suffering and despised: strangers and foreigners among men. (c) Dying and groaning, because yet in the body. (2) In heaven we find another part of the family-- (a) Serving and rejoicing. Sinless and free from all infirmity. (b) Honouring God, and honoured by Him. (c) Free from sighing, and engrossed in singing. The militant and the triumphant are one undivided family. 3. The crowning word is “ named.” We are named after the first-born, even Jesus Christ. (1) Thus are we all acknowledged to be as truly sons as the Lord Jesus; for the same name is named on us. (2) Thus is He greatly honoured among us. His name is glorified by each one who truly bears it. (3) Thus are we greatly honoured in Him by bearing so august a name. (4) Thus are we taught whom to imitate. We must justify the name. (5) Thus are we forcibly reminded of His great love to us, His great gift to us, His union with us, and His value of us. II. Let us catch the spirit of the text. Let us now endeavour to feel and display a family feeling.1. As members of one family let us enjoy the things we have in common. We all have-- (1) The same occupations. It is our meat and drink to serve the Lord, to bless the brotherhood, and win souls. (2) The same delights; communion, assurance, expectation, etc. (3) The same love from the Father. (4) The same justification and acceptance with our God. (5) The same rights to the throne of grace, angelic ministration, Divine provision, spiritual illumination, etc. (6) The same anticipations. Growth in grace, perseverance to the end, and glory at the end. 2. As members of one family, let us be familiar with each other. 3. As members of one family, let us practically help each other. 4. As members of one family, let us lay aside all dividing names, aims, feelings, ambitions, and beliefs. 5. As members of one family, let us strive for the honour and kingdom of our Father who is in heaven. (1) Let us seek out the lost members of the family.(2) Let us cherish the forgotten members of the family.(3) Let us strive for the peace and unity of the family. (C. H. Spurgeon.)No part in the family Thomas Brooks mentions a woman who lived near Lewes, in Sussex, who was ill, and therefore was visited by one of her neighbours, who to cheer her, told her that if she died she would go to heaven, and be with God, and Jesus Christ, and the saints and angels. To this the sick woman in all simplicity replied, “ Ah, mistress, I have no relations there! Nay, not so much as a gossip, or acquaintance; and as I know nobody, I had a great deal sooner stop with you and the other neighbours, than go and live amongst strangers.” It is to be feared that if a good many were to speak their thoughts they would say much the same. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The Father and the family There is a connection between the word for “ Father,” and that for “ family” in the Greek which we cannot reproduce in translation, but which may be illustrated by the analogous connection which exists in English between “ Creator” and “ creature.” Every family (πατριά) derives its name from the Father (πατήρ). I. I find here a remarkable and most interesting statement of the Fatherhood of God. It is this: that the prototype of all human fatherhood is found in the Divine. God is the true and perfect Father, of whom all other fathers are but faint likenesses. As one of the old divines has it, “ Not from us did this name and the relation it expresses ascend to heaven, but from heaven it came down to us.” Let me illustrate. Far off beyond the Rocky Mountains, in the valley of the Humboldt River, the traveller sometimes sees, in certain conditions of the atmosphere, some earthly object--even an entire landscape--painted as if by an angel’ s hand upon the clouds. Not thus is this word “ Father” applied to God--an earthly image upon a heavenly ground. Ah, then, dear as it is to the ear of man, it were no better than a cruel mirage mocking poor travellers through this desert of time I But no: it is a heavenly image reflected in earthly relations; the application of the word “ father” to man is borrowed from its Divine and heavenly meaning. It is a dewdrop fallen from the skies, which mirrors in its tiny surface the whole “ scope of heaven.” II. The next thought suggested by the text, relates to the fatherhood of man. Behold the dignity and glory of the family! It is heavenly and Divine in its origin. Great reason is there, then, that men should take heed how they exercise their relationship--how they fulfil the holy office of “ father.” Let us stint neither prayer nor care, that our families here on earth may be, at least in some faint degree, a reflex of the family in heaven. There is a little sheet of water at the eastern end of the Yosemite valley, in which one may see, if we visit it before the sun has touched it, a most wonderful and entrancing sight. In the surface of that tiny lake, polished to an almost preternatural smoothness by the hand of God Himself, is mirrored the whole grand amphitheatre of gigantic walls and towering cliffs, varying from two thousand to five thousand feet in height; the entire valley of the Yosemite, some eight miles in length, and with it the over-arching sky, reflected with absolute exactness, and with such vividness that every tint of the forest, and every crevice and stain in the cliffs, and every hue of the floating clouds, is distinctly reproduced. We may not hope even to see an earthly family which shall be such a mirror as that, which shall reflect the family in heaven with any such perfectness as that. But surely our earthly families may reflect something of heaven--something of the peace and joy and love which reign there. Surely we may at least by God’ s blessing, so order our homes that they need not always be like a turbid lake, so tossed and so unquiet as never to show any reflection of heaven. III. The perpetuity of the family. Follow for a little distance the fortunes of a family. They gather, we will suppose, in a bright country home--father and mother, sons and daughters, all bright and hopeful and happy; the young full of enthusiasm for the untried voyage before them, the old full of joy in the happiness and hope of the young. A few years pass, and again we see them gathered, it may be, in the same scene; but how changed already! Lines--the well known lines of care--traced on the brow, and gray hairs here and there, tell the story of battle and bereavement in the experience of life. There is a vacant chair or more, and the tears on more than one cheek bear silent witness to the sad associations that the family reunion recalls. Years roll on; and one after the other is missed, till the number up there is greater than the number here, and the home centre must be sought beyond the river. At length only one is left, a lonely pilgrim, tottering under the weight of years, and steadily approaching the brink of the cold, dark stream. To such a one, how sweet the gospel message about the family in heaven I to know that, fast as the Christian family breaks up here, it is reforming in a better home there; and to be assured that the life there shall not be an utterly new and strange one--that this at least will remain, the family. (B. H. McKim, D. D.)The Divine family I. Of whom the Divine family is composed.1. The family in heaven embraces-- (1) An innumerable host of spiritual intelllgencies, denominated angels, seraphim, cherubim, thrones, principalities, etc., also called sons, saints, etc. (see Deuteronomy 33:2; Jude 1:14; Job 38:7). (2) The souls of all who have died in the faith. From the righteous Abel to the present hour. “ For to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” (3) All the spirits of those who have died in infancy. We feel satisfied of the happiness of these;(1) Because accountability implies trust, capacity, etc.; these never entered upon this trust, never possessed this capacity; therefore, do not fall under the penalty of the wicked. (2) Because for all original guilt, there is an ample remedy in Christ’ s all-sufficient sacrifice. (3) Because Jesus received such, and blessed them, and declared that “ of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). (4) Because the Divine mercy is over all His works; but if infants perish this declaration is not correct. 2. The Divine family on earth is composed of all true believers. They may differ materially in knowledge, talents, gracious attainments, etc.; “ but to as many as received Him, gave He power to become the sons of God,” etc. (John 1:12). II. In what respects the two branches in heaven and earth are but one family.1. They have only one head. Jesus is the Head of the body, the Church. So He is the Head of principalities and powers; He is Lord of all (Ephesians 1:22; Colossians 2:10). 2. They have one distinguishing nature. And that is holiness; with this difference, that those in heaven are made perfect, while those on earth are advancing towards it (Revelation 7:13). 3. They have one employment. To bless and adore Him who sitteth on the throne, and the Lamb forever. To obey the Divine commands, and to exhibit His spirit, whose they are and whom they serve. 4. They are one in interest and affection. III. Make some remarks on its future union and consummation. Both branches shall be joined, and in one holy place they shall spend an eternity together. Notice--1. The time of this union and consummation. After the termination of Christ’ s reign upon earth; the judgment, etc. (see whole of Rev 21:1-27; Revelation 22:1-21). 2. The great number of this family. 3. The moral and intellectual character of this family. All bright and unerring in knowledge; burning with love--without spot or wrinkle, etc. (Revelation 21:27). Notice-- 4. Its perfect happiness. Every cause of grief and misery removed--presence of all good--pleasures for evermore (Revelation 22:1-5). Notice-- 5. Its eternal permanence. (1) How desirable to be members of this Divine family. What privileges here, what glory hereafter! (2) How easy the mode! by believing on the name of the Son of God. (3) If the Church is one family, how love and peace should be promoted; the unity of the spirit kept in the bonds of peace! (4) Let us invite poor aliens to the joys and blessings of gospel adoption. (J. Burns, D. D.)The unity of heaven and earth in God Paul’ s description of God as “ the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,” is unique. Unfortunately the charm and the force of it cannot be represented in an English translation. The Greek word represented by “ family” is used to denote not only a family, but a clan, a tribe, a nation, a race--any number of men who are thought of as the descendants of one father. We have no analogous word in our own language, and therefore the felicity of Paul’ s expression cannot be transferred into English. What he means is this:--You have a name for those who belong to the same family, the same tribe, the same nation, the same race, by which you describe them as the descendants of a common ancestor; a name which implies that their unity is not the artificial creation of human law, but consists in their relationship to a common father; this name bears witness to the relationship of all the families and tribes of men, and of all ranks and orders of angels, to the eternal Fountain of all created life. God is the true Father of all races in heaven and on earth; and the unity of a family, a tribe, a nation, in its common ancestor, has its original and archetype in the unity of angels and men in Him. This great and noble conception of the unity of heaven and earth in God is characteristic of that form of Christian theology which is illustrated in this Epistle and in the Epistle to the Colossians. As yet, according to Paul’ s conception, the Divine idea is unfulfilled. Its orderly development has been troubled, thwarted, and delayed by sin, by sin in this world and in other worlds. But it will be fulfilled at last (Colossians 1:16). In union with Christ, the Eternal Son, heaven and earth will be restored to the Eternal Father. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The family in heaven and earth It may be useful to contemplate the relation between believers on earth, and saints and angels in heaven.1. They all spring from the same common parent. 2. They are all governed by the same general laws. 3. As children of the same family, they share in the same pleasures and enjoyments. 4. They have all the same general temper; the same distinguishing complexion. 5. They have all one common interest. 6. The members of a family, however diversified in age, condition, abilities, and improvements, agree in this, that they look to, rely upon, and are guided by the same head. It is so in God’ s great family. 7. They are all objects of God’ s love. 8. At the last day, all the saints, those who are now on earth, and those who are in heaven, will meet in God’ s presence, be openly acknowledged as His children, and admitted to dwell together in His house forever. Concluding reflections:1. If we estimate the dignity of men from the families with which they are connected, how honourable is the believer! He belongs to the family in heaven. He is a son of the Most High God. 2. We see our obligations to mutual condescension, peaceableness, and love. The family in heaven are all of one heart and one soul. They are united in the worship and service of God, and in the designs of benevolence toward one another. If we profess to belong to that noble family, let us learn to imitate their temper and manners. 3. If we are God’ s family, how careful should we be to attend on the orders of His house! 4. Let those who are not of this family be solicitous to obtain a place in it. 5. Let such as profess to be of God’ s family, walk as becomes so honourable a relation. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)One family in heaven and earth The word rendered “ family” is from the same root as the word rendered “ Father.” The Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Father of all who by Him attain sonship. His Father is our Father. His God is our God. The “ whole family” or kindred. It is a collective term for the descendants of the same father, nearer or more remote; as in the second chapter of Luke’ s Gospel we read of the “ house and family of David.” What, now, is the extent of its meaning here? Is it confined to those who are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ? to the redeemed from among men both on earth and in heaven? Or is it to be understood as comprehending the celestial and angelic worlds, and all the ranks of heavenly creatures? I prefer this latter interpretation. The meaning is, that the whole circle of holy and intelligent creatures take the name of a family, after God as their Father. “ Of Him” --the Universal Father--“ the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” He is Father to them all. They all feel the comfort of His love. He is not only the fountain of law, and preserver of order, but also fountain of tenderness and grace. And we may be sure that whatever needs to be done in those heavenly worlds, in sustaining weakness, in guiding inexperience, in admonishing what would be waywardness if not corrected in time, in the leading of younger spirits, or in the comforting of those that are discouraged by the mysteries of the universe--all will be done by the Universal Father, who cannot be one Being here and another there, one Being today and another tomorrow, but who, like the Eternal Son, who manifests and represents Him, is “ the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Having thus drawn out the meaning of the text, and having found it be a very large and a very tender one, let us now see what uses we ought to make of it. I. These views ought somewhat to overcome the depressing effect naturally produced on us by the vastness and grandeur of the material universe. II. This passage will do us good if it confirms our faith (a faith which is sometimes wavering enough) in the actual objective existence of heaven as a place--a chosen, favoured place, where God and His children meet and dwell. It is spoken of in such a way in the Scriptures that we might call it the paternal house and home; we might almost say the old ancestral home, although of course these earthly analogies may easily mislead us, and at the best are very meagre and poor. But clearly, if this passage is to have any honest and practical meaning for us at all, it must be regarded as telling us that there is a real heaven, as there is a real earth, and that if there be God’ s children, named and nourished in the earth, there are also God’ s children named and nourished in heaven. Heaven is assuredly a place, with sure foundations, somewhere in space. It is often necessary to insist on the complemental or correlative truth, that heaven is a state even more than a place. We can, without difficulty, conceive the place being changed, if there were need: God could build a city anywhere in space. But we cannot conceive the state being essentially changed and heaven left. There is but one moral condition that can make heaven. It may be anywhere as to locality, but it must always consist of knowledge, sanctity, and love. All this granted, it yet is true that we shall suffer a most depressing loss if we cease to think of it as a local habitation--a world, or worlds; as real--probably far more real and permanent than any of the worlds we see. We cannot afford to lose anything of the definiteness and firmness of the Scriptural language. Our faith holds fast to the “ place” which Jesus has prepared for His people; where He shows forth His own glory. III. Heaven has great priority and preeminence over earth. Heaven stands first, not only in the order of the phrase, but as being intrinsically and immensely superior. Earth, too, is a mansion of the Father’ s house, or a room of it, or an outlying field connected with it; but how far inferior to heaven! The children go from earth into heaven. They don’ t come from heaven into the earth. Angels do, for brief moments, when they come to minister to the heirs of salvation. The ministration rendered, they go up again like flames of fire or beams of light, to renew their strength by “ beholding the face of their Father who is in heaven.” Not an angel, of high or low degree, is ever born into this world. But men are being continually born into heaven--into heaven as a moral kingdom here, by regeneration; into heaven as a place, by death. Thus at every deathbed of one of the family, and at every grave, the less is bowing down to the greater. Earth is worshipping heaven: yielding up her best fruits to that high garnerage; consenting (ah! sometimes only with a struggle) that her deepest questions and dearest hopes shall have solution and fruition only there. If, in traversing a country, you saw many rills and brooks flowing down many hillsides and along many valleys, and evidently converging towards some distant point, you might be sure that beyond that point you would find the deep river, and that beyond the river you would come to the sea. Well, the children of the family in this world are all going one way. They make a ceaseless procession. None of them turn back. They all disappear through the death gate. Some are feeble through very age, and some are helpless in their infancy--carried in their mothers’ arms along the heavenward road; while now and again one in the prime of life and in the flush of untried strength will head the procession and enter in at the gate. And what does it all signify to the Christian thought but this, that Heaven is far greater and in every way better than earth, and that we may well yield up our best and dearest to swell its numbers and enhance its glories and felicities? IV. If we thus regard heaven as greater and better than earth, we shall certainly find it by so much easier to bear some of our heaviest sorrows, and to understand some of the deepest mysteries of life. Death is but a momentary shadow. Life has unbroken continuity. Loss, in the long reckoning, is impossible. Gain is necessary and certain. When to live in Christ, then to die must be gain. V. It surely ought, with each one of us, to be the great ambition of our life, and the very chief of all our cares, to belong, heart and soul, to this great family of God. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)The Christian brotherhood of man The brotherhood of man has been the dream of old philosophers, and its attainment the endeavour of modern reformers. Like a memory of some lost Paradise it has floated down the ages, and, failing in one generation, it has ever been revived by its successors. And if we inquire into the meaning of this deep conviction, we shall find that, like all such beliefs, it is founded on a great truth--the truth that man can only reach his highest life when he forms part of a society bound together by common sympathies and common aims; for, by a great law of our nature, it is true that he who lives utterly apart from his fellows must lose all true nobleness in selfish degradation. There is no real progress for the individual but through social sympathy. There is no strong and enduring aspiration but in the fellowship of aspiring souls. Thus the belief in brotherhood, and the yearning after its attainment, spring from the image of God in which humanity was made. But strong as that conviction has been, all human endeavours to reach it have failed. It can be found only in Christ. I. The brotherhood of man in Christ. You can scarcely fail to observe that Paul speaks of this as an actually existing fact. He does not say that there shall be, he asserts that there is a family named in the one name of the Father and the Son. It is the unity of spirit and life underneath the external differences which constitutes the brotherhood of man. Paul’ s words imply a three-fold unity: the Fatherhood of God: the Brotherhood of Christ: the union between the seen and the unseen worlds.1. The fellowship of devotion to a common Father. This, at first sight, may seem to be a very feeble bond of union between men. We all join in this devotion; we all join in saying “ Our Father, which art it heaven” ; and yet are we any nearer our fellows? But in reality it destroys the grandest source of disunion, for the absence of fellowship with God is the great cause of separation between man and man. If you consider it, you will find that all the strong bars of disunion have here the secret of their power. All forms of selfishness rise from separation from God. On the other hand, by devotion to a common Father all separating walls are broken down, and a real brotherhood arises. Through the earnest consecration to our Father in heaven, pride and selfishness dissolve, for we are our own gods no more. No man can live in the love of God, because God first loved him, and then yield to bigotry, for bigotry is the love of an opinion, not the love of the Father. Here, then, is a real and actual ground of unity. 2. The fellowship with Christ, our common Brother. In the words, “ the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul implies this second ground of unity as an existing fact. What does he mean by it? What power is there in that? Evidently, in one broad and true sense, the humanity of Christ makes all men brethren. The fellowship of the Saviour’ s obedience and conflict is the great bond of unity. Distinctions vanish here. Varieties of creed and culture become of little consequence. The poor man in his ignorance, and the rich man in his temptations; the preacher and the hearer; the student and the man engaged in the toils of commerce--are all one. Again I say, this unity is real and actual. Men are nearer to each other than they seem to be; and the more they realize this life, the more they struggle to reach the Christ-like life, the more will they feel this essential unity amid all diversities. 3. That fellowship unbroken by the change of worlds. “ In heaven and earth.” In conclusion, glance at the results of realizing this fact of brotherhood. (1) Earnestness of life. If we are isolated, it seems sometimes as if it were impossible to live always earnestly. We say we have to bear the responsibility of our own acts. We shall bear the penalty and suffering of failure. Realize the fact of brotherhood--and an awful fact it is. If one member suffers, others suffer with it; for we are linked by chains of influence to each other--we are one body. Complain not that your task is low and poor; it is as needful in its place as the task of the great thinker. (2) Power and grandeur of hope. Some men complain that their ideas of heaven are vague and ineffective. Only realize the brotherhood of man, and then the hope of the future will become a power in life. Realize that you are come to the “ general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven,” and hope will glow with the radiance of reality. You will feel that the veil is rent, and that the family is one. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)The whole family in heaven I. The first characteristic of the celestial family is holiness. Now, we would not insinuate the absence of genuine uprightness from the hearts and the homes of men on earth. But we would broadly assert the infinite inferiority of the holiness which even here commands the homage of the sinful to the holiness which shall reign in glory--its superiority in respect of beauty and perfection. For, no worldly temptations, no fleshly lusts, no wiles of the seducer shall mar the purity of the Paradise of God. II. The second characteristic of the celestial family is love. Now love is of two kinds, general and special. General love extends to every member of the household of God. Special love is limited to certain individuals in the same.1. With regard to the former, it is evident that where there is true love to God, there will be true love to all His children. For (1) the Divine image recognized on the soul, will excite love. (2) The objects of faith and hope are alike to all, and therefore mutual affection must spring up and flourish. (3) The perils of the present evil world, and the daily trials of the Christian life are common to the faithful--and these will generate a common sympathy and love. (4) Regard to the new commandment of the Lord Jesus, will necessarily be the predominant feeling in the breast of every disciple. 2. But the love of the heavenly world will be special and individual. The happy company of the saints at rest is described as a “ family.” Surely then, there will be mutual recognition among the several members, especially among those who were known and endeared on earth. Let us endeavour to make good this thought--so full of consolation to the sorrowing. (1) First of all, then, we appeal to the testimony of Holy Scripture. When our Lord was transfigured on Tabor, “ Peter and they that were with Him saw His glory, and the two men that were with Him. And it came to pass, as they departed from Him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles, one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias.” Now we regard this vision of glory as a specimen of that which is to be revealed at the second coming of the Lord. Further, the future and final home gathering of the scattered family of God. St. Paul continually regards and represents as the reward of all his sufferings and toils. “ What,” saith he, writing to the Thessalonians, “ What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For ye are our glory and joy.” Words vain and meaningless if they who know Him now in the flesh, shall know Him no more forever. (2) The theory of recognition accords with the whole constitution of our nature--mental and emotional. You cannot utterly destroy a single molecule of matter. In the history of the physical world we have no ascertained instance of annihilation. In like manner it is impossible to destroy a single principle of the human mind. And therefore it is against the whole constitution and course of nature, to suppose that in a future state, any power of our mental being shall be lost. (J. C. Innes, Ph. D.)The Christian family The Church of Christ is a family. No analogy better sets forth the connection which one believer sustains to his fellow.1. All the members of the family have one Father. 2. In this family there is one name. 3. There is the family resemblance. (1) We all feel alike with reference to sin.(2) We all feel penitent because of our transgressions.(3) We all agree in loving the Saviour.(4) We agree in self-renunciation.(5) There is also an agreement in reference to holiness. 4. There is also diversity of character in this family. God has not made us all alike, but differently, because we have different works to do. 5. There is one home for this family. (E. Henderson.)The whole family in heaven and earth I. Notice the head of this family. He is the great and everlasting God. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the family is named, after whom it is named--the great originator of it, the great compactor together of it. In various passages of Scripture, as I need scarcely remind you, God presents Himself in the character of a parent--the head of a numerous offspring, all entirely dependent upon Him. II. Let us next proceed to observe its members. They are numerous and varied. The language of our text speaks of a “ family in heaven and in earth.” Here are comprehended the inhabitants of regions visible and invisible; and they must now, as each is presented here, briefly pass under our review. There are those, who compose the family in heaven--for we take the term “ heaven” without debate or controversy, as signifying really and truly the celestial world. And these, my brethren, are the holy angels--those lofty and dignified spirits, who were the first handiwork of the glorious Creator, possessing vast capacities, sustained in perfect holiness, and endowed with deathless existence. According to the language of inspiration, we find that they reside constantly in the celestial regions, in hosts bright and innumerable, all depending on God, and all owning God as being their Father. There are also other beings, who were once the inhabitants of our own world, but who reside with the angels in those celestial mansions--“ the spirits of just men that are made perfect” ; men whose spirits rose at death to that higher state, and men who in that higher state are made perfect in holiness and in felicity. By these, “ the family in heaven” has been constantly multiplied and augmented, from the commencement of time until now; and these must be regarded as the most precious trophies which the infinite love of the Father has made, or can make, His own. As to the members of this “ family on earth,” the persons who compose this department are men now living, who have been redeemed from their original corruption and depravity, and who have been brought into a state of reconciliation and acceptance before God. They are constituted the children of God by a direct operation of the Holy Spirit on their hearts. III. From noticing the head of this family, and its members, we proceed now to notice its duties. We can form no idea of a family, without an associated idea of duties: one is indispensable in its connection with the other. These duties are owing to God, and they are owing to each other. As to the duties which are owing to God: the great Head of the household has demanded a certain tribute from His children, which it is their obligation cheerfully and unreservedly to pay. They are to adore His majesty; they are to be grateful for their goodness; they are to obey and perform His will: these are His unchanging and eternal obligations. As to the duties which are owing to each other: there are reciprocal obligations, extending throughout the whole of the family; and these obligations may be regarded as comprehended and summed up under the one noble impulse of love. IV. From this notice of the duties belonging to the family, let us proceed now to notice their privileges--the privileges of this family. We have already, from the statements we have made, indicated those privileges as numerous and eminent: and we now must enumerate them more distinctly. We do not now direct your attention to those privileges which are enjoyed by the “ family in heaven” --these will be noticed subsequently; we merely remark now, that they are made partakers of perfect and inviolable felicity; our attention is to be pointed towards the privileges possessed by the “ family” of God yet dwelling “ on the earth.”1. And we observe there is the privilege of instruction. As a wise parent administers instruction to his household in all matters which are right and important for the welfare of those who compose it, so is it in the family, of which God Himself is the Head. He administers instruction to His children upon all the great matters on which it is essential for them to be informed. 2. Again, there is also the privilege of communion--we mean, that the children have intercourse, fellowship, or communion with God. They see not His glory, and they hear not His voice; but through His written word, and through the ordinances and means of grace He has been pleased to appoint, there is an interchange of mind--their minds go forth and ascend to Him, and His mind comes forth and descends to them. There is a special intercourse of mind between the children and the Parent. 3. And there is the privilege of discipline. God has placed in action a certain order of administration, which is intended for the subjugation of what in the character of His children is impure and unholy, and also for the growing assimilation of their attributes and state to the moral purity and grandeur of His own likeness. Here, brethren, of course we refer to that order of administration which is comprehended under the title of afflictions--events which transpire in the course of our earthly probation, from time to time, and which, in themselves, are painful and distressing to endure. But how, it may be asked, can such an order of dispensations as these be numbered among our privileges? Is it not a solecism, a contradiction in fact, as well as in terms? No, brethren, when we consider the design of our Father, in imposing this order of administration, and when we consider the results which invariably follow under His grace, it must be secure. 4. And yet, once more, there is the privilege of protection. Many, ingenious, and malignant are the enemies with which we are surrounded; constantly at work, in order to retard our progress, and to prevent out attainment of happiness. Against these God has been pleased to provide an ample protection. He stands as by our side in time of conflict and peril, and says, “ Fear not, for I am with you!” He protects us against sin; He permits not the “ law in the members” to gain the victory over the “ law of the mind.” Sin “ has no dominion over us.” He makes us “ free from sin, and servants unto righteousness, bringing forth fruit unto holiness, that the end may be everlasting life.” He protects us against the world. The world in its blandishments and attractions is emasculated and paralyzed--for “ greater is He that is for us than he that is in the world.” He protects us against Satan--his wiles and his fiery darts are alike impotent and harmless, and “ the very God of peace shall bruise Satan under our feet shortly.” He protects us against death. Death to us is no more the king of terrors. 5. And then, and more especially, the whole family will be united in the enjoyment of final and imperishable happiness. It will he the happiness arising from holiness, from mutual recognition and intercourse, from the vision of God, from pure and dignified employments, and from the consciousness of security and immortality.1. Let us be grateful for having been introduced into this family. There is no position like that, brethren, which is occupied by us. From what evils are we relieved, to what blessings are we entitled, by being rendered “ the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” ! Nothing in the honours of earth can be compared to it. 2. Let us rejoice over those, who from “ the family on earth,” have gone to unite with the “ family in heaven.” Multitudes of men have already been transferred from the probationary to the permanent state; and not a few of those who are present now, have had friends once dear to them in the flesh and in the Lord, who have also made the step of transit, and are now before the throne on high. 3. And then, finally, let us anticipate the various events, through which we are to unite with the “ family in heaven” ourselves. We are all brethren and sisters in Christ. We are all tending towards our home. Our march is constantly in rapid progress. And when the last enemy rears himself before us, we shall find that, though he may come in harsh costume, and with a rugged accent, he can but administer to us one message--“ Child of God, I am sent by thy Parent to summon thee to His home.” How, then, shall we not welcome him and tell him to strike, knowing, that “ when the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” ? It will be but the sigh, or, it may be, the convulsion and agony of a moment, and then all is past, and the child of God has gone from the “ family on earth,” and is numbered with the “ family in heaven.” (J. Parsons.)Home relations--What is home St. Paul tells us that it is a society which has God for its founder, and we have only to add to this that it is a society of which each individual father is the human centre. The parental presence is the home. Place is no part of it. We may speak of the home of our childhood, or the home of our youth, and mean by this the particular house in which days full of delightful memories were spent, and from which to have been uprooted by circumstances adverse or prosperous, was a trouble and a sorrow never to be compensated--but, after all, the home itself moves with the parents, and the essence of it is still, amidst all change, the parental presence. Now the home, thus defined, may be of various, even of opposite characters. There are good homes and bad homes--homes of beautiful example, tender affection, and entirely beneficent influence. There are homes of mere self-indulgence, teaching no better lesson than that of the utter unsatisfactoriness of a life lived to itself. There are homes of pitiable discord, where the best hope of the best of sons is that he may be the gentle and persuasive mediator, determined to veil what he cannot honour, and to do his difficult duty alike and equally towards two incongruous characters whose one chance of harmony lies in him. We have seen such instances--we have seen the painful task nobly accomplished, whatever the final issue in success or failure. These last words show us that home does not cease to be home because its characteristics are not home-like. Home is the parental presence, and neither unworthiness, nor ungodliness, nor open evil can either abrogate its rights or destroy its responsibilities. “ Home” has its “ relations” still, even where pain and grief are the sum of them. Most true and certain it is, that the state of the homes is the state of the population. If you would know what society is, you must examine the family. The terrible thing is, when you find in the lower classes of the national life an early abandonment of the home, or a stay within it on the footing of an absolute and avowed independence. In many of our great towns the daughter, as well as the son, is a lodger: the contribution, which is her bounden duty, to the family resources, takes the form of a rent for board and lodging, which, on the first word of rebuke or restraint, she can, with or without notice, simply carry elsewhere. The religion of the family, such as it is, is not a family religion: each member of the family goes his or her own way, on the day of rest, to the church or chapel, to this or that church, to this or that chapel, in absolute disregard of the wish of the parent or of the companionship of brother or sister. The family life is a rope of sand, without recognition and without cohesion. Is not that a true word, a divine insight, which traces all the faults, and all the sins, and all the crimes of that nation, to its root and source here? Is it not the estrangement of fathers from sons, and of children from parents, which makes the world, our world, the wilderness it is? Is it not at this point that the Elijah must begin his restoring, that the Elisha must throw in his healing salt, if the restoration is to be thorough, if the cure is to be vital? But now we must say a word or two as to what home is--in God’ s intention, and in the experience of His children.1. Home is our haven. In early years it is a place of safe keeping. What should we have been without that safeguard? Have we ever stopped to commiserate and to feel for the homeless? Those poor children, baptized in tears, who never had a home--what must it be for them? No sweet memories--of gentle nurture, of kind smiles and loving words, of the presence of all good and the absence of all evil--can we wonder that they fell into bad ways and vile habits? What was there to warn them off from them? What was there to win them another way? What was there so much as to distinguish for them between good and evil? God’ s holy ordinance, above and before all services or sacraments, of a tender and loving home, this was wanting to them--and, with it, all that “ preventing with the blessings of goodness” of which a Psalmist tells, and of which we, the worst of us, have all had experience! 2. Home is our confessional. Yes; before there was altar or shrine, ministry or priesthood, home was. The father of the household was its priest. God modelled upon that exemplar all priesthood that was ever His institution. Priesthood itself replaced not the home, still less that Christian ministry which leaves all Christians priests. How many soever be the presbyters of the Church of England, still the confessional, as God ordained it, is the home. Thither carry your secrets--there unbosom, and there leave them. 3. Yet one word more. Home is our friend. Very delightful is other friendship--ask not of me any depreciation of it. “ There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” The mere fact that I have chosen Him partly proves and partly ensures the congeniality and the sympathy. But yet, I say it--home is the friend. It is the dear ones of birth and nature who will go through life with us. Friends may he severed beyond the reach of voice or sign--friends may form their own new ties, or their own life tie, and be partially lost to us. The home and its belongings change not. We go back to them, as to our own, after the longest separations, after the widest wanderings. Hold fast by your home. Even its relics and fragments are precious. Even upon the “ broken pieces of that ship” we can “ escape safe to land” ! Nothing is like it. Cling to it. It is your life. (Dean Vaughan.)The source of fatherhood The stream of fatherhood leads up your thoughts to the source of fatherhood. You cannot think of a flowing stream, without also thinking of its origin and source. You cannot think of a branch without thinking of its root. You cannot think of an eternal nature, as separate from His own procession, or Only Begotten Son. And how could the Son of the Infinitely prolific Ground, or Father, be anything but the Beginning and Fountain of innumerable fathers of families? (J. Pulsford.)Paternal government Monarchical-paternal government is universal. No other form of government would represent God, nor would any other be concentric and harmonic with His government. That which is central to all, namely, the Fatherhood of God, repeats itself throughout all orderly creations. If this were not the law of God’ s whole creation, the generations of heaven and earth could with no propriety be called “ every paternity in heaven and earth.” The Eternal Father is represented by innumerable fathers; and every kingdom of every governmental father derives its name from a distinction which he inherits from the Father of all. Every race, whether in heaven or on earth, brings into manifestation some new principle, affection, or aspect of the Divine nature. Families are not isolated individuals, but the descendants of their fathers, and therefore essentially members one of another: God Himself being the Father of all the families of the universe. What can be more interesting than to contemplate the intelligent universe, as consisting of endlessly multiplied bonds of fatherhood and childhood; and all these held in the strong unity of one Divine Father and one Divine Sonship? (J. Pulsford.)Family relationship Family relationship is therefore a very sacred thing. Its root being not in the creation, but in God. And though we shall not find on earth any development worthy of its holy root, nevertheless, the flower which fills the world with choicest fragrance is family affection. It is capable of becoming most heavenly, since the Eternal Father is Himself the spring of parental; as His Eternal Son is of filial love. Therefore, also, family affections are capable of ceaseless cultivation. There is nothing to hinder family love from becoming evermore deeper, stronger, and lovelier. If it be so strong and so precious among fallen creatures, what must it be among the perfect? If family life on the earth gives rise, as it often does, to a very paradise of courtesies and tender sanctities, what must family life be in the immediate presence, and under the direct influence, of the infinite Father and His only begotten Son? (J. Pulsford.)The family bond Immediately before the battle of Verona he (Theodoric) visited the tent of his mother and sister, and requested them on a day, the most illustrious festival of his life, they would adorn him with the rich garments they had worked with their own hands. “ Our glory,” said he, “ is mutual and inseparable. You are known to the world as the mother of Theodoric; and it becomes me to prove that I am the genuine offspring of those heroes from whom I claim my descent.” (Gibbon.)The Christian family 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 in the same shop, between whose minds there is scarcely a point of contact, whose souls are as far asunder as the poles. Whilst, contrariwise, there are those separated by oceans and continents, aye, by the mysterious gulf that divides time from eternity, between whom there is a constant intercourse, a delightful fellowship. In truth we have often more communion with the distant than the near. (Dr. Thomas.)The communion of saints Sometimes the Church is called God’ s family. St. Paul says, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, “ I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” Now, you know that in an earthly family there are several members, but they all form one body--the family. And there must be a head to the family. Well, the Church is God’ s family, and Jesus Christ is “ the Head of the body, the Church.” Yes, Jesus is the Head of the family of God, and we are the members. In your baptism each one of you was made a member of Christ. Now a member is part of a body. Your legs and arms are members, your eyes, your ears, your feet, and your hands are members, and you call all those members together your body. So each one of us in holy baptism becomes a member, a part, of a body which, because it belongs to Christ, is called Christ’ s Body, that is the Church. Every living body must have a head, so the Church, which is a living body, has Jesus for its Head. When we speak of the Universal Church we do not mean only the Church on earth. St. Paul speaks of the whole family in heaven and earth. Some of you have relations abroad, in New Zealand and Australia. But if I ask you how many you are in family you will always include those who are thousands of miles beyond the sea: you are one family, although so widely divided. Some of you have seen brothers and sisters die, some of you wear mourning for father or mother, whom you remember as worshipping God in church. Well, do you suppose that the brothers and sisters and parents are no longer members of God’ s Church, that they dropped out of His family when they died? Surely not. We are baptized into a faith which tells us to believe in the resurrection of the dead and everlasting life after death. You have read in your Bible what holy men and women did in the Church on earth: how St. Paul and the other apostles preached the gospel, and many of them died for Christ’ s sake. Well, St. Paul and the other holy people are still in the Church, still worshipping God, only in another place. If you were to watch a long procession of people climbing up a mountain by a winding path, part of the procession would be in sight, and another part would be out of sight high up on the mountain. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 3:16 That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.The measure of God’ s power The man of the world is full of what he can do; the Christian of what he cannot do. Here, we have the inward power for which we may ask to supply our deficiency. I. The measure of this power.1. Measured by Himself. His perfection, His excellence. Man measures by his imperfection and poverty. 2. Measured by the extent of Himself. Man measures by his own ideas of his own need. God, who forgives “ according to the riches of His grace,” makes known upon the forgiven the “ riches of His glory.” II. The nature of the supply, culminating in the indwelling of Christ.1. The character of the indwelling (Colossians 2:7). (1) Christ, the essence of love, dwelling in us, and so filling our hearts with true love. (2) Faith working by love. 2. The effects of the indwelling. Able to comprehend or grasp (see Philippians 3:12-13)-- (1) Breadth of promise and blessing. Length--reaching to the end. Depth--going down to the lowest. Height--raising up to heavenly places. (2) To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. Known only by those taught by the Spirit. Known only by those in whom it dwells. (3) Filled with all the fulness of God. God gives Himself to us all, according to our size. Here meet man’ s measure and God’ s. (J. H. Rogers, M. A.)Spiritual strength There are five significant terms here--keys by which we may partly unlock this divine casket, so that its precious contents, the riches of the Father’ s glory, may be set free and shed abroad. I. Faith. You are to be strengthened with might. The seat of the strength imparted is the inner man; it is the strength, not of outward propping, but of inward peace and power. The agency by which it is imparted is that of the Holy Spirit; for He alone has access directly and immediately into the inner man; He alone, the Spirit of God, can deal effectually with spirits of men. The essence of it is Christ dwelling in your hearts; Christ living in you; Christ in you, the Lord your righteousness, the Lord your strength; Christ in you, the hope of glory. And the means or instrument of your receiving it is your simple heart’ s faith. II. To faith succeeds love. “ You are to be rooted and grounded in love. These images or figures suggest the ideas of a grove and a building. You are to be rooted as the trees that constitute a grove, and grounded as the stones and pillars of a building. Love is the soil, rich, deep, and generous, and withal, homogeneous all through, in which all the trees are rooted. It is also the soft and tender lime or mortar, the close-drawing and close-fixing cement, in which, through successive layers, the stones are deposited or imbedded. III. Faith and love lead on to comprehension, or taking in; a comprehensive survey of something very vast; and vast in all directions. I find myself mow, first strengthened as a believer, so as to be fit for standing alone; but at the same time, secondly, having all over me, and all through me, love; love being my soil and cement. I find myself thus introduced into a grand hall; a glorious amphitheatre, a temple of immeasurable dimensions; thronged and crowded with all the saints, all the holy ones, angels and men, into whose society I am strangely and of grace admitted. In company with them, and in full sympathy with them, I look behind, before, below, above; and see nought but one well-nigh boundless room and home for all the elect, all the saved. I comprehend its breadth and length and depth and height. IV. Through this process of faith, love, and comprehension, we reach a marvellous knowledge; the knowledge of the unknowable--“ to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” V. There remains one other great and final consummation which the apostle’ s prayer would fain have you to reach: “ that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)The Spirit’ s gift of strength I. The Christian’ s need of strength.1. The region where strength is required: “ the inner man.” It is in the moral and spiritual nature that reinforcement is required--to do the duty, to withstand the temptation, to stand steadfast although outwardly alone. To this end he wants stronger convictions and motives, clearer principles of action, and confirmed habits of well-doing. 2. Why does the inward man require this? (1) It is new born, and requires to grow.(2) It is an opposition principle.(3) It has a great work to accomplish. II. The source whence this strength is derived. It is the gift of God: not by growth and development within itself, or adaptation to its circumstances merely, but through the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. III. The law of its bestowment. “ Through faith,” i.e., the exercise of faith.1. Directly towards God.2. Indirectly through the believer obeying the impulses and directions of the Holy Spirit. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)Christian strength 1. The Christian needs to be strengthened with might in the inner man.2. The might which the Christian needs is conveyed through the agency of the Holy Spirit.3. This might is obtained in answer to prayer.4. This might should be sought as from an inexhaustible source. (G. Brooks.)Spiritual weakness prejudicial It was an amusing distortion of a good hymn, but there was not a little sound philosophy in it, when the old negro preacher said-- “ Judge not the Lord by feeble saints.” And yet this is precisely what the great majority of unconverted men are doing all the time. They will not go to the Bible and give heed to what God Himself says. They have no ear for His voice of mercy that offers them salvation for the taking. They do not pay any attention to the solemn warnings that the Scriptures utter. They judge the Lord by “ feeble saints.” They attempt to feed their starving souls on the imperfections of Christians--poor feed enough they find it! Because God’ s people are not all they ought to be, therefore these cavillers will keep aloof from the religion which they confess. (American.)Strength by feeding upon Christ Now this lamb they were to eat, and the whole of it. Oh! that you and I would never cut and divide Christ so as to choose one part of Him and leave another. Let not a bone of Him be broken, but let us take in a whole Christ, up to the full measure of our capacity. Prophet, Priest, and King, Christ Divine and Christ Human. Christ loving and living, Christ dying, Christ risen, Christ ascended, Christ coming again, Christ triumphant over all His foes--the whole Lord Jesus Christ is ours. We must not reject a single particle of what is revealed concerning Him, but must feed upon it all as we are able. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Strength through the Spirit When I was a student at Princeton, Professor Henry had so constructed a huge bar of iron, bent into the form of a horseshoe, that it used to hang suspended from another iron bar above it. Not only did it hang there, but it upheld four thousand pounds’ weight attached to it! That horseshoe magnet was not welded or glued to the metal above it; but through the iron wire coiled round it there ran a subtle current of electricity from a galvanic battery. Stop the flow of the current for one instant, and the huge horseshoe dropped. So does all the lifting power of a Christian come from the currents of spiritual influence which flow into his heart from the Living Jesus. The strength of the Almighty One enters into the believer. If his connection with Christ is cut off, in an instant he becomes as weak as any other man. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)Vigorous spiritual life By the “ inward man” Paul means our central and highest life; and he prays that the life itself--not any particular portion of it--may be strengthened. Life is a mystery in its lowest as well as in its loftiest forms; but I suppose that we all attach a more or less definite conception to words which describe life as vigorous or feeble. When we say that a man’ s physical life is energetic we do not mean to say that any particular organ is strong, that he has great muscular force, can lift heavy weights and walk long distances; we mean to describe something which appears to us to lie within and beneath the physical organization, and which inspires the whole. When we speak of a man’ s intellectual life as strong or weak, we do not mean that some particular faculty is admirable or the reverse of admirable; a particular faculty may be singularly vigorous, and yet the man may give us the impression of intellectual feebleness; a particular faculty may be very deficient in vigour, and yet he may give us the impression of intellectual strength. If we say that a man is remarkable for his intellectual energy, we think of him as having in the very centre of his intellectual life a free and inexhaustible fountain of force and activity. It is the same in the spiritual life. There is a certain imperfection in many of us which I do not know how to describe except by saying that, though at times particular spiritual faculties may appear to be vigorous, the central life is weak. There are men whose zeal for the evangelization of the world is often very real and very fervent, but who give us no impression of spiritual strength. There are others who are often inspired with a passion for Christian perfection, but in them, too, there appears to be no real vigour. There are others who seem spiritually weak, though their vision of spiritual truth is very keen and penetrating. There are others who seem capable of very lofty devotion of awe, of vehement religious emotion, of rapture in the Divine love, and in the hope, of glory, honour, and immortality--and who yet give us the impression that they are wanting in those elements of life which constitute spiritual energy. In every one of these cases, to use language which suggests rather than expresses the truth, the vigour is not derived from the central fountains of life, but from springs that are more or less distant from the centre. The man himself is wanting in force, though there are spiritual forces at work in him. Those of us who are conscious that this is our condition should pray to God that we “ may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Strength of character To those who have the misery of weakness--who never keep their better resolves, whose hearts are so divided, who are not really happy, because they have no concentration--to such it may be of immense comfort to know that real religion always gives strength--strength of character. It embraces, it unites, it consolidates, it makes real, it makes a man a man, it makes a Christian a Christian. How comforting, how apposite, how true, how deep, how full the words to those who feel their weakness--“ strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” Let us look at them a little more accurately. I. Notice, first, that it is all “ in the inner man.” You have been trying often to change the outer man, your conduct, your way of speaking, your appearance in people’ s eyes! some sin you endeavour to overcome, some outward inconsistency, some habit that you contracted. That won’ t do. You must go deeper, much deeper. It must be “ the inner man.” And what is “ the inner man” ? I look first to conscience. You must take care that your conscience is a true conscience, an active conscience, and a conscience rooted. Next, motives. These must be pure. Then, thoughts--those little springs that swell into oceans, those germs of everything. Think reasonably, accurately, scripturally, thoughtfully. And affections--the likes and dislikes; those excellent servants, but horridly bad masters. And, above all, the inner working of the Holy Spirit, which goes on low down in the innermost chambers secret communion with God, intercourse with the Invisible. These make “ the inner man,” the real essence of a man’ s being; and all the rest--all we do and all we say, all we suffer and all we enjoy--these are only the outsides, only the reflections of that “ inner man.” In that “ inner man” the “ strength,” then, must be found--conscience, motives, thoughts, affections, silent teachings, spiritual converse, and the trafficking of the soul with God. In secret, there the “ strength” must be found. II. And how? By the Spirit; by the Holy Spirit. Nothing more we need, nothing less can do it. It must be a supernatural power. The Holy Ghost must enter, and He will do it. Everything will go to give “ strength.” III. And what will be the result? “ Might,” true might, ever increasing might; might in prayer; commanding prayers; might in the spiritual battle, might in the battle with that wicked heart; might with the devil; might over daily self, might, might in work. Do your work, whatever your work may be, patiently, thoroughly, trustfully, effectually. Might in power, that great power, holiness; that silent witness, that most eloquent of all things, holiness. And, in union the hidden mystic union of God, which is the secret of it all; in which He is, who makes life, the essence of all which is worth the living; a real life, the life of your being. Oh that we might all know the strength that gives that might. How is it to be attained? What must I do? Begin at the centre, not at the circumference; not with outsides. Do not begin by trying to change the life outside; change the motive spring. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The wealth of God--rich in glory In the very title of such a subject it is already proclaimed to be inexhaustible. Other topics may be compassed and disposed of in a certain way, but who shall grasp and estimate this? It is a sea of glory, and we have no line to fathom it. It is a mountain of gold, and we have no arithmetic to compute its value. It is a domain of beauty, and we have no adequate language in which to speak of it. It is a field of truth, and the end of all our searching is to discover that it is unsearchable. Happy are they who receive a few crumbs from this rich table, or a few glimpses of this glory! The riches of His glory. The glory of God is the forthshining of His being, the necessary splendour of His revelation of Himself. The glory of an object is that bright medium in which it stands revealed. The glory of the sun is the effulgence of light which it pours forth from its golden urn, revealing itself and all the worlds around. Painters seek to represent the glory of a saint by drawing a circle of light around the head. The glory of a king is seen when he sits upon his throne, crowned and sceptred, surrounded by his nobles, and canopied with banners, that speak of his victories. God is revealed in nature, and therefore the heavens declare the glory of God. God is revealed in providence, and therefore He is said to lead His people with His glorious arm. God is revealed in redemption, and therefore Jesus Christ is the brightness of His Father’ s glory, and the express image of His person. The riches of His glory. How rich the expression! Language labours to utter all that is implied here. God is not only glorious, He is rich in glory. Notwithstanding all that He has revealed of Himself in the past, there still remain in Him for evermore depths of splendour unrevealed. All that we know of God, as compares with that which lies hid, is but as the first yellow streak of dawn which breaks the darkness of night to the full brightness of noonday. We may speak of the riches of God under three aspects--first, the riches of His power; second, the riches of His wisdom: and, third, the riches of His goodness; and, as it is the blended and harmonious attributes of God that make up His highest glory, the view of His riches under these three aspects may enable us to see something of the riches of His glory. I. The riches of his power.1. This is seen in the power to create. If a man could create in the highest sense of the word, how rich he would soon become! For his own wants he would have an immediate supply. When he was hungry he would create bread. When he wanted money he could turn everything he touched into gold. It is in the ability to produce that the source of wealth is found. The rich gift lies in the possession of the faculty to invent or make. Now, God has the power to create. He alone has that mysterious energy which called everything we see out of nothing. From all eternity God was sufficient for Himself, full of life and joy, and under no obligation, either from without or from within, to create a single world. His great and inconceivable act of creation, then, was a demonstration of His perfect freedom and His boundless power. It was the overflowing of the riches of His power. 2. But the riches of God are seen in the preservation of all things in existence as well as in their creation. The sublime act of creation did not exhaust or weary God. From day to day, from year to year, and from century to century, the whole universe is upheld in its primeval freshness and power. 3. The riches of the Divine power are seen not only in creation and preservation, but in recreation. We are taught in Scripture that a wondrous transformation must pass over the present world--that forms of being now around us will be dissolved in a deluge of fire, and that from this second deluge will emerge a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. We are also taught that the bodies of men will be raised from the dust of the ground in a new and higher form. What marvellous exhibitions, then, has the future still in store of the riches of the power of God! II. The riches of his wisdom. Wisdom is commonly said to lie in the use of the best means in order to the best ends; and many things might be said as to the adaptation of means to ends in nature. We can scarcely look at any work of God with an intelligent eye, but we begin to discover uses and harmonies and proofs of design in it. From what we already know in this direction we may conclude that the whole of nature is one vast and intricate design manifesting the wisdom and goodness of God; and we are expressly told that all things are working together for good. How manifest the traces of His wisdom in the way in which the earth has been fitted to develop and support man, and in the manifold provision made for man’ s education and comfort. But what we have to notice more particularly here is, not merely the wisdom of God, but the riches of His wisdom; and these are seen, not only in the original adaptation of means to ends, but in the way by which God can bring good out of evil. The machinist would be wise who could invent and construct a machine which, by the simplest movements, could produce mighty results; but he would be rich in wisdom, who, out of that same machine, when marred and broken, could produce still mightier results. A general is wise who can conduct a great campaign to a successful issue; but he is rich in wisdom who has always in his mind a plan beyond the last stratagem of the enemy, and can therefore turn the tide of battle when all seems to be lost, and pluck from the heart of widespread disaster a glorious victory. It is from this point of view that the riches of the Divine wisdom are seen--not merely in producing good, but in bringing good out of evil; not merely in producing beauty, but in bringing beauty out of deformity; not merely in producing harmony, but in bringing harmony out of discord; not merely in producing life, but in bringing life out of death. If the power of God is seen in the creation and preservation of all things, His wisdom is seen in making all things work together for good; and what a wealth of wisdom is implied in bringing out of the most contradictory and deleterious elements a vast, harmonious, and unspeakably valuable result! In a machine, a great variety of movements and powers contribute to one result. Wheels of different sizes revolve in different directions. There are perpendicular movements and horizontal movements; zig-zag movements and elliptical movements;--a swift and bewildering involution and evolution of forces, and a warring multitude of sounds--hissing and hammering, grinding and thumping; and yet there is the utmost harmony, and the most delicate and precise balance of action throughout the whole. III. The riches of his goodness. We use the term goodness as a general expression to embrace the mercy, the compassion, the benignity, and the love of God. All the attributes of God culminate in love. God is first and last a God of love. The whole universe and the plan of redemption is summed up in love. It is the want of love, it is the selfishness and hatred, that is the curse and woe of the world. God comes to fill up the sorrowful void with His own rich heart. Think of the love of God in creation. He needed not to create anything in order to consummate His own happiness; but, if we may so speak, the joy and love of God’ s being were so great that He could not keep them to Himself. He was rich in love; and His goodness overflowed. He created other beings that He might lavish upon them the grandeurs of His mind and the felicities of His heart. He created them, too, although He foresaw their fall, rebellion, and ingratitude. He created them, because He saw beyond the dark sin of man, and knew that His love could snatch from sorrow and the grave a new creation still. It is to the riches of the love of God, therefore, that we owe our very existence. Think of God’ s love in providence. God would have been rich in love had He done nothing more than created man, and after that, when man had sinned, displayed the glory of His justice in crushing him forever. But God has not only created us; He has also preserved us, even in the midst of our deep depravity and alienation. But preeminently in the work of redemption do we see the riches of His goodness. There we behold God not only working and waiting, but making a great sacrifice for the salvation of man. How little do we know of the greatness of that gift, and of the depth of that sacrifice! How little do we know of that mystery of sorrow that seems to enter into the very Godhead, and all to save such a creature as man! Rich as is the power of God, man could not be saved by mere power. Rich as is the patience of God, man could not be saved by the mere lapse of time. God might have given away everything He had made; He might have emptied the exchequer of heaven; but the price would not have purchased the redemption of a single soul. He might have waited and pleaded with man for ages, explaining to man his sin and ingratitude; and yet man might not have relented. Something more had to be given, something more had to be done, and God gave that--God did that. He delivered up His only begotten Son, the Son of His love, that eternal One in comparison with whom the universe itself is worthless. Measure, then, God’ s love to man by His regard for His own Son! By all that is beautiful and holy, by all that is deep and rapturous in the relation of Father and Son, measure the sacrifice involved in the death of Christi1. God alone is rich. He alone is absolutely self-sufficient. He alone is the true possessor of everything. He alone can create. He alone can hold forever that which He now possesses. He alone has enough and to spare. 2. Every man in himself is poor. Sin reduces the soul to utter destitution, and all have sinned. It matters not that many say, “ We are rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing” ; not knowing that they are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. Let a man labour ever so hard, let him pile his earthly treasures ever so high, he can never with his own puny hand fill the dark and sad abyss within himself. 3. He who was rich became poor for us (2 Corinthians 8:9). 4. It is a blessed thing to know that we are poor (Matthew 5:3). The discovery of our own poverty implies some apprehension of the wealth of God, and hence its blessedness. We have, then, an ear for the word which says, “ I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich.” So great is the capacity of the soul, that if a man had the whole universe he would still be poor, being destitute of God. But with God he has all, and abounds; for the earth is the Lord’ s and the fulness thereof. 5. Beware of despising the riches of God (Romans 2:5). (F. Ferguson, D. D.)Strengthened with might Let us consider that great thought of the Divine strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul. I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might. I do not know what Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and supernatural life granted to us by the Spirit of God. It is all well that we should enter into the vestibule; there is no other path unto the Throne but through the vestibule; but do not let us forget that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and perpetually repeated, is but the introduction to, and porch of the Temple, and that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier, yet I may say a further gift, even the gift of a Divine life like His, from whom it comes, and of which it is in reality an effluence and a spark. The true characteristic gift of the gospel is the gift of a new power to a sinful weak world; a power which makes the feeble strong, and the strongest as an angel of God. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern conceptions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is bestowed upon every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is that as distinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle is the gift that flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage between God and my spirit. It lies open to His touch; all the paths of its deep things can be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another from without, He acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings; He gives the blessings. II. Now notice, next, that this Divine strength has its seat in, and is intended to influence the whole of the inner life. As my text puts it, “ Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” That, I suppose, does not mean the new creation through faith in Jesus Christ; what the apostle calls “ the new man,” but it means simply what another apostle calls the “ hidden man of the heart,” and only refers to the distinction which we all draw between the outward, visible, material frame, and the unseen self that animates and informs it. It is this inner self, then, in which the Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which He is to breathe strength. The leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It is not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened, but it is the whole intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, combination, memory, will. The whole inner man in all its corners is to be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, “ until there be no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth thee light.” So for this Divine Indweller there is no part of my life that is not patent to His tread. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which He is not to go. Let Him come with the master key in His hand into all the dim chambers of your feeble nature; and as life is light in the eye, and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength in the arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come and strengthen your understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of reason, than you can face in your unaided strength; and He will dwell in your affections and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holier things that are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that “ their reach shall not be beyond their grasp,” as alas! it so often is in the sadness and disappointments of human loves. And He will come into that feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in its adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one may try to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by that, He will lift your will and make it fix upon the good and abominate the evil, and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of strength which shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle elixir which, taken into the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye and a swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant, drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect itself, so this Divine Spirit will go searching every corner of the inner man illuminating and invigorating all. III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of this power. It is limitless with the boundlessness of God Himself. “ That He would grant you,” is the daring petition of the apostle, “ according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened.” There is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of His own self-manifestation, the flashing light of a revealed Divinity. Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power there, in these and in nothing this side of them, lies the limit of the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course there is a working limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive, but that capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be made more and more capable of God; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they shall be filled by Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)The strengthening of the inner man We are beings of a complex nature. We testify this fact in our common talk. We speak of body, soul, and spirit belonging to us. We describe our body by its various limbs and organs. We describe our mind as possessing emotional parts, intellectual parts, volitional parts. Each of these parts we describe in various ways, according to the numerous feelings and motions our inward nature is accustomed to. So complex is our nature that it is hardly possible to give an account of it sufficiently simplified to be plain to an unobservant man. I. The text speaks of “ the inner man.” It gives no definition of what the term includes. Does it mean by “ the inner man” all the parts of our being which are not bodily? Or does it mean especially the part which we call the spirit, by which, when it is made active within us, we discern hidden and eternal realities? Or are both these meanings embraced by the term? Probably, I should say, both. The thinking and feeling faculties, the marvellous soul which perceives, searches, imagines, desires, loves, hates, resolves, and so forth--is not to be omitted from “ the inner man,” which the Spirit of God visits and renews, inhabits and ennobles. Yet “ the spirit” has a special place in “ the inner man,” for it is the crown and glory of our being. Having our spirit “ born from above,” endowed by the Spirit of God with its proper life and power, and applying ourselves to its exalted exercises, we live in connection with two worlds--the world of sense, and the world of spirit. This, then, is the first care for us--not only that our body be living in health, however congenial and helpful this may be; not only that our mind be alive to all our earthly concerns, and strong to attend to them, however lofty and important they may be: but that our spirit be alive, active, and enthroned in the world within us, having some conception of, and some participation in, the share which God would give us with Himself, in His own thoughts and purposes, His own joys and griefs, His own ways and works. This is our prime concern. This ought to be our prime passion. This is, for us, “ the glory that excelleth.” This is our way to the priesthood and princeliness which the redeeming God bids us come up to and exercise. Be it our first care that we are born of the Spirit, and living in the Spirit. II. The life of our spirit, however, being begun, may be in the feebleness of infancy. It may be enfeebled when it ought to be maturing through disorders preying upon it from our inferior desires. Indeed, we cannot be “ strong in spirit” if we divide the supremacy between higher, and lower interests. All wilful sin injures our spiritual life, enfeebles its conceptions of God, dulls its sense of His presence. The confusion of soul into which we may fall by having received the vivifying and enlightening of the Holy Ghost, and having afterwards overruled the spiritual life within us by the lower life it was beginning to reduce and subject, is indescribable. We say, “ What shall we do?” We are tempted to doubt God’ s power to restore us with the imagination that He has cast us off. We may even come to look down tremblingly into the horrible abyss of despair. And all this misery and confusion of soul is often aggravated by a misinterpretation of those dark words of Scripture which are written concerning backsliders who have utterly fallen away, and have eschewed the blessing of the life they once entered. And I ask anyone who has ever fallen into such misery and confusion of inward strife after he had tasted the peace of Christ’ s salvation, whether he did not learn in it his powerlessness to recover himself, and did not perceive that the best resolve and effort he could make would be no more than the galvanising of a dead limb unless another strength should be given him, and given him by the same Divine Spirit who before quickened him into a spiritual birth, unless God would hear the prayer which is no more than a broken wail of wretchedness and a struggling desire for healing? If the apostle wrote for any hearts thus fallen he might well write that he prayed for them. The text is a prayer. What else could it be to be sufficient? It is an intercessory prayer we should pray for one another in the gloomy hours of our brother’ s fall. It is a prayer to “ the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,” who is the only Father who has riches enough in His glory to be able to strengthen us with might in our inner man when we have sapped its power by infidelity to His gift of the Spirit. If in any of us the spiritual power has ebbed and fallen, let this prayer be ours. And let us humbly believe that it is the prayer Christ prays with us, moved by a consistency in love, and hope, and saving energy which we so sorely lack. III. Having dwelt thus far on the supreme importance of spiritual life, and of the extreme need of its Divine strengthening which is occasioned and evinced by falls, let us in the next place seize a truth which we have barely touched yet. Let it be certain to us that this gift of strength to our spirits by the Spirit of God is our perpetual need. It is our need not only in that extremity of which we have spoken, but it is a need inherent in our nature, which was in us at birth, which will abide with us through death. Our inner man, our innermost man, wants a life and a strength which is not human but Divine. It wants a strength which is not ethereal but real. It wants a strength which will not lie idle, but will be diffused through our whole man, and be available for our whole life. It wants power of spiritual thought, spiritual perception, spiritual emotion, spiritual control, spiritual activity, spiritual endurance, spiritual influence, such as we see pervading and flowing from the whole character and conduct of Christ. The prayer of the text must be our prayer, because it asks for the power which is our perpetual need, which is the perpetual need of our children and brethren. IV. Let our attention dwell next on this--the apostle’ s prayer for his fellow Christians at Ephesus is a prayer for a gift of power from the Spirit of God to the spirit of man. It supposes a communication with us when we are spiritual which is no less than God’ s own communion with us. There is a spiritual Divine touch, which is such as Christ’ s touch that healed leprosy and raised the dead. There is a supernatural influence, and energy of the Divine Spirit in our spirits, which may become so real and manifest within us that the physical miracles of Christ rank beneath it. (J. E. Gibbert.)The inner man Everyone has an inner man, a better self, a potential perfection within him, which will awake and begin to flower when he feels in his soul the touch of God. There is laid down in the being of each man, or deposited there in germ, an ideal, a Divine ideal, which ought to become, under the nourishing powers of redemption and providence, the real. But there are so many outer men put on by some--one, another, and another yet--that the real inner man might seem to be hopelessly buried. I. Let us look, now, at some of these outer men put on, worn from year to year, so as effectually to enclose, imprison, bury out of sight, the inner man which God and angels wait for, and would bring to the light with rejoicing.1. Dress. The first thing one human being sees of another, when they are approaching each other, is the dress. A man is known--a woman is known--by the dress. But the sad thing is that in some instances that is all that you will see, even when you meet, nothing but the dress. All the active powers of the man, the woman, are concerned chiefly about that--the dress of life--what to wear on the person, in the house as furniture, in the garden as adornment, on the road as equipage. Exterior show is with them life, and they are always dressing. They are never away from the glass. The whole surrounding world is to them a mirror in which they see only themselves. 2. Manners. The manners are beneath the dress, come through the dress, make the dress more or less expressive, impressive, and beautiful. Nothing of an exterior nature can be more charming than graceful, polished, easy manners. Now, the Christian teaching nowhere leads us to despise manners. Quite the contrary. But we are regarding manners just now not as an expression of the Christian principle of feeling, but as a substitute for it. Not as a beautiful clothing by which the inner man speaks and makes itself known, but as one complete outer man, which muffles, hides, and sometimes buries out of sight, the glorious inner man of God. Just as life is to some all dress, so it is to some all manners. 3. Mind. Go deeper still, and you will find another outer man, which may go by this denomination--mind; indicating strong intellectual life, love of truth, i.e., natural truth; which presents itself to us in the form of fact and law--the scientific spirit. All this may be with a slumbering inner man. Knowledge is power. But it is not in the deepest sense life. 4. Morals. We are still going inwards in search of that great something of which our text is the name. Now we come into the great ethical region of human nature. Now we look at a moral man--a man who distinctly recognizes the great moral law of God, that stretches over the world and runs through and through it. He recognizes it distinctly, but of course very imperfectly, if yet the inner man, under all this moral action going on above it, lies in the main asleep. Asleep; by fits and starts perhaps awaking, and then falling into slumber again. This, too, as in the other cases, is the sad possibility. II. The inner man. How is this to be discovered? How does a man reach the centre and fountain of his own being? find himself? recover himself? bring himself home again to God? There are great varieties of experience. But perhaps these things, or something like them, will be found in all.1. First--what may be called a soul consciousness--a consciousness of having, or being, a soul. Not merely an animated something, to be covered with dress and beautified with manners. Not merely a thinking something, to be informed by knowledge and guided by morals. But a something spiritual, vast, deep, related to eternity, related to God. 2. The next thing is, the conscious relation to God. In that beautiful parable of the prodigal, touching as it does at so many points the actual experience of sinful men, we find that the wandering son no sooner comes to himself than he begins to think of his Father, and to talk of Him there, in those barren fields among the swine; and of His house, the beautiful home of his youth, and of His hired servants, and of the bread loading His tables--until his soul and his eyes are so full of the beauty and the peacefulness of other days, that the wilderness becomes more dark and dreary and horrible, and he says, “ I will arise, and leave all this, and go home again to my Father.” 3. The next thing, or the thing which goes along with this very often, is the consciousness of sin. When the inner man is found, sin is found in it, or cleaving to it very closely. 4. Then, further, he becomes conscious of goodness as well as of sin. Not the old formal goodness; but goodness that is fresh and new and living: with love in the heart of it, gratitude lending it a glow and a lustre, faith building it up. This new life of goodness begins just with the other things we have named. Not after them, but with and in them. We are too apt to conceive the religious life as consisting in a series of consecutive exercises, the beginning of the one waiting for the completion of the other. First repentance, then cleansing and forgiveness, then gratitude, then filial love, then active goodness. Not so. The moment a man comes to himself, all these things begin together, and go on together. Some trees in early spring are yet covered with last year’ s leaves; all withered now and begrimed. What says the new vegetation to these? “ I must wait until God sends winds strong enough to sweep them away; rains heavy enough to wash the tree clean in every branch” ? Not at all. That new vegetation, that fresh leafage, comes out and pushes them off, and clothes the tree with virgin green, drawing food and beauty from the mould of the earth, from the wandering wind, from the passing cloud. So goodness throws off sin, and dresses and adorns the soul in the beauties of God’ s holiness. Then what becomes of all the outer men, such as those we named? They all fall in, and, so to speak, become parts of the found and ransomed inner man, which now needs them, which now uses them, for its own development, outcome, manifestation. They cease to have a separate and independent existence. They are controlled, in a measure absorbed, by that central grand something which now becomes the ruling power. It is as when a number of substances lie together in a chemist’ s vessel, each separate from the others, each refusing to enter into combination with the rest, until some final element--with affinities for them all, with a power to blend them all into something else--is added. Then each yields, is altered, combines, and makes the one grand product that is sought. So a regenerate inner man will not throw aside these outer men altogether, but transform them, mould them to its own uses, make them speak its meanings and flash out all its lights. (A. Raleigh, D. D.) Ephesians 3:17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love.The substance of Christianity Here is the sum and substance of Christianity: “ That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” It is the whole of Christianity; that is to say, it is the whole of it in the same way that an acorn is the whole of a tree. “ That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know” --what? The whole nature of God? The whole science of human government? The whole moral theory of the world?--“ and to know the love of Christ,” which passeth knowledge. That is, no intellection can ever follow the outgush of experience, and reproduce it in the form of ideas. While the intellect may interpret the experience of the heart, it after all stands afar off from it, and never can partake of the experience itself. It passes knowledge. “ And to know the love of Christ, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” This is the very supreme of philosophy. It touches the lines and foundation elements of Christianity. Christianity differs from all other religions, not in the fact that it commands a worship--for all do; not simply in the superior view which it gives of God; but by demanding a peculiar condition of heart toward Christ. Other religions demand reverence, and worship, and obedience, and uprightness--that is all. Christ is said to be “ the end of the law.” In other words, that which the whole law means is comprised in Him. Christ in a man--that is the Christian religion. It is Christ dwelling by love in his heart--dwelling in his heart by faith. Out of this will grow many doctrines, and many inferences; but it is the seminal form, the germinent element, in Christianity. It is the personal relationship of the individual heart to the Lord Jesus Christ as its supreme Head and Lover. That not only makes a man a Christian, but brings him into the central point of the Christian system. Everywhere in the New Testament this one element stands forth--the personal identification of the human heart with the Lord Jesus Christ. There are three ways by which Christ can be presented to us:--1. By the senses. That we shall not have again on earth. 2. By the intellect. That is the presentation of Christ doctrinally or theologically. 3. By the heart. That is the reception of Christ by the form of an actual experience; by such a cooperation of the reason with the imagination that we are able to bring the invisible person near to us, and so bountifully reproduce Him, and so beautifully set Him forth, that He becomes to us the “ chiefest among ten thousand,” and the one “ altogether lovely” ; so that every sweet thing in us goes out to Him as every dewdrop in the sunshine evaporates and goes up towards the sun. This is receiving Christ by faith. It is not the rejecting of the senses; it is the non-using of them, rather. It is not the despising of the reason; it is an auxiliary use of the reason. But it is the manly way of taking hold of the Lord Jesus Christ by the enthusiasm of love, and making Him the supreme object of our desire, and of our allegiance. This is receiving Christ by faith; and if we continue so to receive Him, then He dwells in our hearts by faith--that is, by heart-sanctifying love. This I understand to be the distinctive peculiarity of Christianity, not only, but that without which there cannot be any Christianity. There can be no Christianity to the man who does not personally take Christ by faith. There is no substitute for this personal experience, and there can be no system of Christianity which does not provide for this personal experience, towards the Lord Jesus Christ. I remark, then, in view of this exposition, that--1. Any system which leaves out the central figure is not Christian, and has no right to wear that name. For Christianity consists in such an enthusiastic love of the individual human heart for Christ, that they are unified, that there is a substantial, indissoluble oneness between them as there is between the child and the parent; and that it is the cause of all the after life and action of the individual person. If that is denied, Christianity is denied. If Christ is so expounded that such an experience is impossible, Christianity is destroyed in the destruction of the very fundamental idea of Christ. 2. As the Christian system is not held by those who leave out the central figure, so every Christian system is imperfectly held by those who only hold it in a philosophical form. This latter mode is far in advance of the former, which I have just been criticising; but still the holding of the Lord Jesus Christ speculatively and philosophically, the teaching of Him only technically and psychologically in this way, is so imperfect a holding of Him that it cannot for a moment compare with the full-orbed glory of Christianity as it is set forth in the earliest narratives and teachings of the New Testament. I would not underrate the value of an intellectual conception of Christ; but I would hold it as an auxiliary, and as a guide. The intellect cannot fulfil the conditions of Christianity. It is the heart by which a man must believe unto salvation. It is not Christ as analyzed, as stated in technical terms, that ever will affect a man. Every man must by the inflammation of his own heart feeling find his Christ. A creed is just like a philosopher’ s telescope. He sweeps the heavens to see if he can find the star for which he is searching; and by and by the glass brings it to his eye. The glass helps him, but it is not the glass that sees the star. It is the eye that does that. The glass is a mere instrument by which to identify the star, and magnify it, and bring it near, and shut off other things. A blind man could net see a heavenly body with a telescope, no matter how powerful it might be. A creed is a philosopher’ s telescope by which we identify philosophical truths, and magnify them, and bring them near; but it is the heart that is to apprehend them. It is the heart that is to interpret the things that are marked out by our creed or philosophy. 3. The heart may embrace Christ with an enthusiasm of love, though the intellectual perception is imperfect and vague. It is better that the intellectual perception should be full and clear; nevertheless, a man can embrace Christ by the heart without the help of the understanding, far better than he can embrace Christ by the understanding without the aid of the heart. Thousands and thousands there have been, I believe, who have loved Christ, and have lived on their love to Him, and have died by the power of that love, and have been translated to glory, though they could not have defined the Divine nature, nor reduced their faith to any intellectual expression. They would have been larger and happier Christians, doubtless, if they had added to the heart element the intellectual element also; but it is possible for one to take hold of Christ with the heart. It is possible for one who has but slender endowments of reason to take hold of Christ. (H. W. Beecher.)True knowledge of God We come to a knowledge of Christ by shaping ourselves into His nature. We do not come to know Christ by gathering together arguments from physical science, nor by grouping texts out of the written Word of God: we come to a knowledge of Christ by a personal experience of those qualities which inhere in Him, and which, in power, constitute His divinity. He who has in himself a moral quality which corresponds to that which is in Jesus Christ, and has great sensibility in it, will have a knowledge of Jesus Christ, of God in Christ, or of the Eternal Father, as the case may be. He will have in himself a knowledge which he cannot have by any external process of reasoning. The sensibility of a corresponding nature is a true interpretation, and is the highest argument possible, under such circumstances. It is so much of us as is godlike that gives us the evidence of God. A moral state carried up to a certain degree of intensity will develop evidence and power in the direction of truths of its own kind. And he who is, like Christ, built up in love--built vertically, built laterally, built all round; he whose nature it is to dwell centrally in this great, enriching, all-controlling element and power of love, will have brought into his mind a realization of the existence of God, and of the power of God’ s nature as a Being of love, which will be overwhelming and all-satisfying; which you cannot get from science, because science does not touch it; and which you cannot get from mere reasoning, because reasoning does not reach to it. We may help ourselves by reasoning, and we may gain analogies by science; if we turn to the natural world we may find there evidence of the existence of God, so far as Divine quality is represented by power and matter; but when we rise to the moral and personal elements of the Divine character, nature has nothing in it which can explain them to us--unless we be nature; and we are. There is nothing in nature, aside from man, out of which we can develop these attributes of the Divine Being. We can apprehend them only by having in us moral qualities which correspond to them, and by having them as sensitive to the Divine presence as the thermometer is to the presence of heat, or as the barometer is to the pressure of the atmosphere, or to the presence of moisture in it. These qualities--heat and moisture--are indicated to us by certain instruments; and here is an instrument, the soul of man, existing in the power of a true regenerated love; and this is that which detects the presence, and is inspired by the touch, of the Divine nature, and bears witness to it. It is said that God bears witness in us; but not a whit more than we bear witness to His presence. I sat last summer sometimes for hours in the dreamy air of the mountains, and saw, over against the Twin Mountain House, the American aspen, of which the forests there are full. I saw all the coquetries and blinkings of that wonderful little tree--the witch, the fairy tree, of the forest. As I sat there, when there was not a cloud moving, when there was not a ripple on the glassy surface of the river, when there was not a grain of dust lifted, when everything was still--dead still--right over against me was that aspen tree; and there was one little leaf quivering and dancing on it. It was so nicely poised on its long, slender stem that it knew when the air moved. Though I did not know it, though the dust did not know it, and though the clouds did not know it, that leaf knew it; and it quivered and danced, as much as to say: “ O wind! you can’ t fool me.” It detected the motion of the air when nothing else could. Now, it only requires sensibility in us to detect physical qualities, if we have the corresponding qualities; or social elements, if we have the corresponding elements; or moral attributes, if we have the corresponding attributes. We detect all qualities by the sensibility in us of corresponding qualities which reveal them to us. And he who has largely the Divine element will be able to recognize the Divine existence. That element in him is the power by which he is brought to a knowledge of God. In view of this exposition, I remark-- I. That the attempt to prove a God by scientific tests, applying physics strictly, can only reach a small way up. There is an argument that can be constructed that will satisfy--those that it will satisfy; but it is only a little way that it can go. And as I do not think that men can, by scientific observation, test and determine that which lies outside of all physics, so neither do I think this failure need lead to the scepticisms which some men make, but which, thank God, the most eminent scientific men do not make, who are many of them reverent, and who are all of them, I believe, seekers after the truth. The greatest physicists of the day are men who want to know the truth, not only as it is related to matter and to men, but as it is related to Divinity. But that makes no difference. You cannot prove nor disprove by matter that which lies beyond matter; and if, through all the material universe, there is no sign nor hint of God, it does not make any difference in the truth of His spiritual existence. II. The difficulties which beset the existence of God as a personal Being, of intellect, of emotion, and of will--a transcendent and glorified man (for that is as near as we can come to it)--these difficulties are not alleviated when we turn in other directions. I am speaking in an age which runs strongly in the line of scepticism as to the existence of God. Because men have not seen Him, and cannot apply to Him the same tests that they apply to matter, there is a strong drifting towards atheism. I see no alleviation in that direction. That we exist, that nature exists, that there is an infinite chain of cause and effect, that it has had a past history, and that it is to have a future history, we cannot deny. We cannot deny that the vast universe is a fact, except by shutting our eyes. You meet the same difficulties in the realm of sense. When you say that matter is eternal, you do not help anything. It is useless to attempt to stop the thought by a word. You do not stop the thought at all. We go back on it. It is more difficult for me, a thousand times, to conceive that there is in the universe a self-ordering nature, than it is to conceive of a personal God who takes care of the universe, as we take care of an estate, or of a kingdom. Neither do I find any relief in turning to the poets. There is no relief for me in atheism, or pantheism, or in the idea that the sum total of the universe, and that all causes and effects, are God; that the whole physical creation is the body of God; that all the intelligence diffused through all creatures is the intelligence of God; that matter and mind, as they exist distributed through the universe, are only another name for God. By adopting this theory we may run away from some grievous difficulties; but we run into as many others that are no less grievous. I would rather shut my eyes and give up trying to understand my God, than undertake to trace Him partly in myself, partly in you, partly in the laws of matter, and partly in the laws of mind. In such a diffused thought of God there is no relief to me from the difficulties which inhere in this subject. The prime trouble is, that we are not large enough to understand God on any theory. (H. W. Beecher.)Christ inhabiting the moral nature of man The effect of a reverie is to create a mental presence, thus we see in “ image of the mind” those from whom we are separated. Faith in Christ brings Him down in spiritual presence to perform His saving offices. I. The firm heart is figurative to denote the highest and purest part of man. It may be compared to a house divided into apartments. Christ must dwell in every room or division. He must dwell in our thought, affection, reason, understanding, judgment, conversation, action, whole life; He must dwell in motive, desire, purpose, will; must have more than the tongue, or to flit through the brain: the heart, the whole of man, He wants. And no transient stay, but constant residence. II. Christ brings to the heart many rich treasures. Knowledge of the future, all the promises and blessings of new covenant. III. Faith is the key to unlock the door of the heart for Christ to dwell with us. (J. A. Fullerton.)Christ in the heart I. When Christ enters the human heart to dwell in it, evil tenants must go out. II. When Christ comes into a heart to dwell, casting out evil tenants, he does not come alone; He brings with Him all those things that accompany salvation.1. When Christ dwells in the human heart, He dwells there as a living power, not merely attracting all our other affections, but moving, renewing, sanctifying, moulding us according to His own idea, working His own pleasure in us, making men faithful in their daily business, true, righteous, strong for their daily service, for labour, for suffering, for sorrow, for waiting, for whatever Providence may appoint. 2. When Christ enters a human heart to dwell there, He enters it and abides as an undying joy. 3. When Christ abides in a human heart, He is in it as an immortal hope. (James Culross, D. D.)The indwelling of Christ in His people I. What it is not.1. It is not personal.2. It is not visionary.3. It is not merely emotional. II. What it is.1. It is the result of faith as realizing His presence.2. It is the result of the communication of the Holy Spirit, by which He is graciously present.3. It is the result of His love. (G. Brooks.)Christ dwelling in the heart “ In your hearts” ; in the central region of your moral life--that region in which thought springs up, the region of affection and desire, the region in which purposes are formed, in which future actions have their birth; may Christ dwell there. The conception is not a difficult one to lay hold of. Take a case from ordinary life. A widowed mother lives in a cottage by the sea; her only boy is a sailor; she has not seen him for years; for years he has been far away, sailing from land to land; but her heart is full of him; she thinks of him by day, she dreams of him by night; how tenderly she handles every relic that he left behind him when he went away; how the glass in her spectacles grows dim as she reads his letters; his name is never missed out from her prayers; and many and many a time, when she is busy about her daily work, the thought of her boy will flash into her heart like a beam of golden sunlight; the stars speak about him, and so does every white-sailed ship away out on the sea. Nobody has any difficulty in understanding what is meant when it is said that her boy dwells in her heart. So may Christ dwell in your hearts, the object of trust, of affection, of allegiance. (James Culross, D. D.)The three Advents The Advent of Christ may be considered as a three-fold fact--or, perhaps, we may more properly speak of three Advents. The first of these was the coming of Christ upon the earth, the entrance into the sphere of visible and material things of a Divine and spiritual revelation. But not only do we recognize the Advent of Christ in the material world--in the world of nature. We also discern His Advent in history--in the world of social facts and movements. Explain it as we may, it cannot be denied that since the coming of Jesus there has been a vast and progressive change in society. It has been truly said that “ the world can never be the same after” that Advent “ as it was before it, as it would be without it.” The distinctive boundary lines of ancient and modern history meet just at that point of time on which Jesus stands. There is a life, a spirit, an expression in the world since that time that it did not show before that time. But there is still another Advent of Christ in which these that I have now referred to are, so to speak, realized and completed. And that is the Advent of Christ in the individual soul. Here is a peculiar characteristic of Christianity. The Author and Finisher of our faith is not like the founders of other systems--merely an objective teacher or lawgiver, or a leader in external and material conquests, carrying the kingdom of God with the sharp edge of the sword. He is an inward Saviour--the indwelling source of spiritual life. The profoundest result of Christ’ s Advent is marked by an intimate connection between Jesus and the soul of the believer. I. The conditions of the advent. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith requires an earnest belief in Christ. I observe that this belief must be as specific as the Advent, not a mere historic belief; not a languid acknowledgment of the fact that Christ has come into the world. Again, a mere conventional or traditional acquiescence is not the kind of faith that is required, an acquiescence by which men are called Christians in the sense in which we are a Christian community. True faith is an earnest, original action of the individual soul, moved by strong conviction. That faith is good for nothing which you take and adopt from another. You cannot receive a faith from your fathers. There is a time when we can indicate to our children the landmarks of fight. But even the minds of children should not be cast into a fixed mould. We should not say, “ Search no more; here is the image of our fathers, and the image and superscription must be stamped upon the waxen substance of your minds; let it harden there!” We say, there is the old Bible; let your minds become developed, and your own experience will shed light upon it. So learn for yourselves an original, active, earnest faith that comes out of every man’ s soul, Which he struggles and wrestles for as Jacob wrestled in the night with the angel. We should feel as the Samaritans did: “ Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we … ourselves … know that this is the Christ.” But they themselves saw Him and knew Him, and from an earnest and original conviction of their own souls they believed in Him. Conviction is a personal exercise of trust. It is a spontaneous, complete yielding of the whole soul to that in which we trust. II. The manner of the advent. What is meant when we say that Christ dwells in the hearts of men? We do not mean that an actual Christ dwells there; we mean that the spirit of Christ dwells in the hearts of men. And the spirit is really the man. The man is not in his outward or physical form. The real man is the soul, the spirit, and character. The moral standard of Christianity is not a verbal rule, but a character. The rule of Christian life is not an outward law; it is a character. When our characters are assimilated to Christ’ s character, or when Christ’ s character permeates and controls us, then Christ dwells in our hearts. There is no mysticism in that--nothing unreal, nor anything we cannot grasp. Christ dwells in the heart as a character--as a spirit of life. It is by the spirit, and not the outward form that Christ dwells in us. One man may today show the spirit of Christ in the disposition of his wealth; another man may do likewise in his poverty. The man who uses his wealth in a humble, lowly spirit--with the spirit of the loving Jesus; who makes it not merely the instrument of selfish aggrandizement and outward development--he feels that wealth is the gift of God. The outward condition does not make a man like Christ; but the inward spirit. Thus Christianity is adapted to all conditions. The spirit of love is fitted for all conditions. Be you rich or poor--do you stand in a prominent or obscure and lowly place before men--have the spirit of Christ! Let it dwell in your heart! Be truly Christ-like in your home and business relations, fulfilling the duties that rest upon you, as did those who went about Palestine of old preaching the gospel to the poor. Does God take note of the actual size and description of your goodness? Who can tell what shall be God’ s minister--the little bird in the air, the snow in the field, the lilies that are dressed better than Solomon! All are agents of God’ s instruction. Use your instruments to minister good to man, to make the best use of the little you have. Drop the pebble in the water, and who can tell how wide its ripples will extend in the stream? Do your little acts of goodness and live a true life, and God will see to the rest, and make, perhaps, your small practical action to result higher and deeper than you can calculate. III. Sphere and result of the advent. We are brought to consider the sphere and result of the Advent. Christ’ s Advent is in and through individual souls. To be sure we contemplate Christianity as the grandest scheme of social regeneration, and the only true scheme that the world has ever known. It came and Unbarred partitions that divided man from man. It aimed at a new and better social state; it aims at it now. And men have looked forward to a New Jerusalem, and that Christ would come with a shout and gather together His elect. Christianity speaks to individuals. It did not call upon communities at first. It did not call nations, but individuals--Peter, James, and John and Nathaniel, and in due time Paul. And if the world is to be made better, it is to be made better through individual souls. Christ’ s kingdom is essentially an inward kingdom. Its power is silent and hidden. It is the progress of a conviction. Sometimes when yon look upon the shore, the sea extends before you smooth and glassy, and the shore is covered with slimy weeds, and by and by you walk that way again, and the great sea has come up, and the shore you looked upon is no more to be seen. So silent and hidden forces are pouring into the world, and all at once we discover the world is made better; but not by a sharp shock or outward convulsion. The geologist tells us the earth has never been made by any sudden formation, but by one thing being added to another. So social changes have been made--not by quick shocks, but by silent action. How strange are the revolutions taking place in society; and how different from what they were a few years ago. We see men holding to opinions unpopular some few years ago, when they would be called fanatics, fools, and madmen. But lo! that opinion becomes the adopted law of the land; it is the ruling force; it is the recognized idea. What has come about? It is the silent work of the Divine kingdom in the individual heart. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.)Christ dwelling in the heart Show the privilege of having Christ to dwell in the heart, by considering what He does there. In general: He brings with Him all the promises and blessings of the new covenant (1 Corinthians 1:1, etc.; 2 Corinthians 1:20; Ephesians 1:3).1. He rebukes the heart (Revelation 2:4-5; Revelation 3:19).2. He humbles the heart (Acts 9:5-6; Ephesians 3:8).3. He sets it at liberty from sin and Satan (Luke 11:1, etc).4. He reveals His love to it (Ephesians 3:17-19).5. He weans it from other things (Philippians 3:7-8).6. He strengthens it (Isaiah 57:15; Psalms 33:26).7. He satisfies it in the want of outward blessings.8. He reconciles it--God and man (2 Corinthians 5:19-21).9. He fills it with the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). 10. He sups with it, and it with Him (Revelation 3:20). (H. Foster, M. A.)The indwelling Christ Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause to the preceding. It might appear at first sight to be simply parallel with it, expressing substantially the same ideas under a somewhat different aspect. The operation of the strength-giving Spirit in the inner man might very naturally be supposed to be equivalent to the dwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith. So many commentators do, in fact, take it; but I think that the two ideas may be distinguished, and that we are to see in the words of my text the second step in this prayer, which is in some sense a result of the “ strengthening with might by the Spirit in the inner man.” I need not enter in detail into the reasons for taking this view of the connection of the clause which is obviously in accordance with the climbing-up structure of the whole verse. It is enough to point it out as the basis of my further remarks. And now the second observation with which I will trouble you before I come to deal with the thoughts of the verse is as to the connection of the last words of it. You may observe that in reading the words of my text I omitted the “ that” which stands in the centre of the verse. I did so, because the words, “ Ye being rooted and grounded in love” in the original do stand before the “ that,” and are distinctly separated by it from the subsequent clause. They ought not therefore to be shifted forward into it, as our translators and the Revised Version have, I think, unfortunately done, unless there were some absolute necessity either from meaning or from construction. I do not think that that is the case; but on the contrary, being carried forward into the next clause, which describes the result of Christ’ s dwelling in our hearts by faith, they break the logical flow of the sentence by mixing together result and occasion. And so I attach them to the first part of this verse, and take them to express at once the consequence of Christ’ s dwelling in the heart by faith, and the preparation or occasion for our being able to comprehend and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Now that is all with which I need trouble you in the way of explanation of the meaning of the words. Let us come now to deal with their substance. I. Mark, then, the apostle’ s desire here that all Christian people may possess the indwelling Christ, To begin with, let me say in the plainest, simplest, strongest way that I can, that that dwelling of Christ in the believing heart is to be regarded as being a plain literal fact. It is not to be weakened down into any notion of participation in His likeness, sympathy with His character, submission to His influence, following His example, listening to His instruction, or the like. A dead Plato may so influence his followers, but that is not how a living Christ influences His disciples. It is no mere influence, derived and separable from Him, however blessed and gracious that influence might he, but it is the presence of His own self, exercising influences which are inseparable from His presence, and only to be realized when He dwells in us. I preach, and rejoice that I have to preach, a “ Christ that died, yea! rather, that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Nor do I stop there, but I preach a Christ that is in us, dwelling in our hearts if we be His at all. Well, then, further observe that the special emphasis of the prayer here is that this “ indwelling” may be an unbroken and permanent one. Any of you who can consult the original for yourselves will see that the apostle here uses a compound word which conveys the idea of intensity and of continuity. What he desires, then, is not merely that these Ephesian Christians may have occasional visits of the indwelling Lord, or that at some lofty moments of spiritual enthusiasm they may be conscious that He is with them, but that always, in an unbroken line of deep, calm receptiveness, they may possess, and know that they possess, an indwelling Saviour. God means and wishes that Christ may continuously dwell in our hearts; does He to your own consciousness dwell in yours? And then the last thought connected with this first part of my subject is that the heart strengthened by the Spirit is fitted to be the temple of the indwelling Christ. How shall we prepare the chamber for such a guest? How shall some poor occupant of some poor but by the wayside, fit it up for the abode of a prince? The answer lies in these words that precede my text. You cannot strengthen the rafters and lift the roof and adorn the halls and furnish the floor in a manner befitting the coming of the King; but you can turn to that Divine Spirit who will expand and embellish and invigorate your whole spirit, and make it capable of receiving the indwelling Christ. That these two things which are here considered as cause and effect may, in another aspect, be considered as but varying phases of the same truth is only part of the depth and felicity of the teaching that is here. For if you come to look more deeply into it the Spirit that strengtheneth with might is the Spirit of Christ; and He dwells in men’ s hearts by His own Spirit. So that the apparent confusion, arising from what in other places are regarded as identical, being here conceived as cause and effect, is no confusion at all, but is explained and vindicated by the deep truth that nothing but the indwelling of the Christ can fit for the indwelling of the Christ. The lesser gift of His presence prepares for the greater measure of it; the transitory inhabitation fits for the more permanent. Where He comes in smaller measure He opens the door and fits the heart for His own more entire indwelling. “ Unto him that hath shall be given.” It is Christ in the heart that makes the heart fit for Christ to dwell in the heart. You cannot do it by your own power; turn to Him and let Him make you temples meet for Himself. II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the Christ comes in to dwell--“ that He may dwell in your hearts by faith.” More accurately we may render “ through faith,” and might even venture to suppose that the thought of faith as an open door through which Christ passes into the heart floated half distinctly before the apostle’ s mind. Be that as it may, at all events faith is here represented as the means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. You have but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from heaven, floating down on a sunbeam, as it were, and enters into the heart and abides there. But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit must be a faith which works by love if it is to keep Christ in the spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you do. The man that cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God. And in the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to the seven to come back again and fill it. And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet songbirds and the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighbourhood before a pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similarly quick to feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith, without any work at all; you keep Him there by a faith which produces holiness. III. And the last point is the consequence of this indwelling of Christ, “ ye being,” or as the words might more accurately be translated, “ Ye, having been rooted and grounded in love.” Where He comes He comes not empty handed. He brings His own love, and that consciously received produces a corresponding and answering love in our hearts to Him. So there is no need to ask the question here whether “ love” means Christ’ s love to me or my love to Christ. From the nature of the case both are included--the recognition of His and the response by mine are the result of His entering into the heart. This love, the recognition of His and the response by mine, is represented in a lovely double metaphor in these words as being at once the soil in which our lives are rooted and grow, and the foundation on which our lives are built and are steadfast. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Christ in the heart A soldier of Napoleon’ s great army was wounded one day by a bullet which entered his breast above his heart; he was carried to the rear, and the surgeon was probing the wound with his knife, when at length the guardsman exclaimed, “ An inch deeper, and you will find the emperor.” And the Christian soldier, even when most sorely pressed and pierced by his foes, is conscious that were his heart laid open by their wounds, it would only discover the name of his great Captain deeply engraven there. The heart a temple It is related in ecclesiastical history that the parents of Origen used to uncover his breast as he slumbered and print their kisses over his heart; for they said, “ This is a temple of the Holy Ghost!” (Chas. S. Robinson, D. D.)Inward religion Liturgies, although a great lawmaker, would allow none of his laws to be written. He would have the principles of government interwoven in the lives and manners of the people as most conducive to their happiness. The multiplication of Bibles that stand upon bookshelves or lie upon tables is an easy matter, but to multiply copies of walking scriptures, in the form of holy men who can say, “ Thy Word have I hid in my heart,” is much more difficult. (New Handbook of Illustration.)Root religion The being of a grace must go before the increase of it; for there is no growth without life, no building without a foundation. Put a dry stick into the ground, and dress and water it as much as you will, it will continue the same until it rot; but set a living plant by the side of it, and though much less at first, yet it soon begins to shoot, and in time becomes a wide-spreading tree. (J. Stoughton.)Rooted in Christ Paul Jeanne ascribes amazing fertility to the soil of Mentone, and backs his assertions by a story which reads like a legend. He says that a stranger coming to pay a visit to his Mentonese friends stuck his walking stick into the ground and forgot it. Coming back some days afterwards to seek his cane, he was surprised to find it putting forth leaves and young branches. He declares that the little tree has grown vastly, and is still to be seen in the Rue Saint Michel. We have not seen it, and are afraid that to inquire for it in the aforesaid Rue would raise a laugh at our expense. We may believe the story or not as we please; but it may serve as an emblem of the way in which those grow who are by grace planted in Christ. All dry and withered like a rod we are thrust into the sacred soil, and life comes to us at once, with bud and branch and speedy fruit. Aaron’ s rod that budded was not only a fair type of our Lord, but a cheering prophecy of ourselves. Whenever we feel dead and barren let us ask to be buried in Christ afresh, and straightway we shall glorify His name by bearing much fruit. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christ dwelling in the heart A wounded soldier boy was dying in a hospital, the lady who watched by his bedside said to him, “ My dear boy, if this should be death that is coming upon you, are you ready to meet your God?” He answered, “ I am ready, dear lady; for this has long been His dwelling place” ; and as he spoke, he placed his hand upon his heart. “ Do you mean,” questioned the lady, gently, “ that God dwells and rules in your heart?” “ Yes,” he answered, but his voice sounded far off, sweet, and low, as if it came from a soul already well on its way “ through the dark valley of the shadow of death.” Love to Christ To be in the heart of anyone is to be the object of cordial affection; to dwell in His heart is to be the object of that affection constantly and habitually; and to dwell in the heart by faith is to be the object of an intelligent and enlightened affection. I. In the first place, then, this is not the desire that Christ must be in their mind and understanding, as the object of simple, abstract, uninfluential knowledge. Many may be the persons and opinions in our minds that are not objects of attachment, but, on the contrary, of indifference, or even of aversion. We know merely that they are there, and what they are. Some of them we would rather have absent from our minds, and some of them we would banish from them altogether; but to be in the heart is to be admired, esteemed, loved--loved with cordiality and ardour. We cannot express fervent attachment in more energetic terms than in the language of the apostle, “ I would that Christ might dwell in your hearts.” And what is expressed here, that we are in our hearts to do? Can anything be stronger than the attachment which shares life and death with its object? “ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” The love, then, that Christ demands of His people is fervent love; not a lifeless indifference, a mere negation of hatred, a lukewarm, spiritless neutrality. No. He must be in the heart, and must have the chief place there. II. Rooted and grounded in love are meant to express in another form the same idea, firmly fixed in the experience and manifestation of this sacred affection. The figure is double, and is taken from a tree and a building. To the stability of the former a root is necessary, proportioned to the expansion of the branches; to the stability of the latter a foundation is necessary, corresponding to the magnitude of the superstructure. Great profession of attachment, without real firmness of inward principle, is like a wide-spreading tree with short roots, with little hold of the soil, that may stand for a little and be admired, but is in danger of falling from every blast that assails it; or like a house with little foundation, built on the sand or on soft ground, presenting a very imposing appearance to the eye, but when the rain descends, and the winds blow and beat violently against it, immediately it comes to the ground, and involves its inmates in ruin. And what is the love that promises that stability? It is love that is rooted and grounded in knowledge--that has not been the product of a hasty examination or of a superficial observation. III. And this leads me to the third feature of love, that it be intelligent and enlightened, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. It is very obvious that there must be knowledge in order to faith, and faith in order to love. That cannot be loved which is not known, and that person cannot be loved, the qualities of whose character, fitted to attract affection, are not believed. It is only by faith that Christ can enter the heart; it is only as the object of faith that He can be the object of love, and faith will be in proportion to spiritual intelligence, and spiritual intelligence in proportion to faith. It is an enlightened attachment that can show good cause for its ardour and its glow. Connected inseparably with love to Christ for what He is, is love to Christ for what He has done; and this, too, is founded in knowledge: “ Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.” It is when this grace is known that love takes possession of the heart, and it is by the faith of it that He continues to dwell there; and as knowledge grows, and faith is strengthened, love is invigorated. That love to Christ, as one of the great principles of all active obedience, is founded in knowledge and rooted in faith. “ The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again.” Thus have I endeavoured to show what the nature of the principle is which the apostle prays for in behalf of the believing Ephesians--that it is a fervent, constant, intelligent, and enlightened attachment to the Lord Jesus, that Christ might dwell in their hearts. In conclusion, allow me to remark.1. That the prayer implies, that this state of heart must come from above--from the Spirit of the living God. 2. The heart in which Christ dwells must be a purified heart. Jesus Christ is the brightness of His Father’ s glory, and the express image of His person; He is the holy one and the just. An unrenewed and unholy heart would be no fit residence for Him. When the Holy Spirit introduces Himself into any heart, He purifies that heart from dross and corruption. Christ has said, “ Blessed are the pure in heart.” If any heart remains impure and shows itself so by what proceeds from it, it is quite evident that Christ has no hold there. 3. I would just notice, that the heart in which Christ dwells must be an undivided heart. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)Rooted in love I seem to see that grand old oak that I have known, and you may have known such an one from your childhood. What a massive, enormous column of a stem; it is girt with a mass of branches holding up a forest of verdure. You remember it when you were a child, and now you are a man it does not seem to be any older! What generations have rested under its shadows, and what generations have been carried past it to yonder churchyard! How often the storm has visited it! and the violent tempest has shaken its branches and wrestled with it! But still, while many a similar tree has been torn up by the roots, this old oak has shaken its fists at the storm! The storms of wind and rain have done it no harm! There it remains, and there it will remain, unmoved; and while other trees have been uprooted, and the grass has been burnt, and the flowers are hanging their heads, how is it that that old oak remains, so grand and bright in its verdure? Because it is feeding at the reservoirs and secret streams deep down in the earth; and so, while this oak is first strengthened to resist the hurricane, and then receiving nourishment from the deep hidden springs and streams, it can stand firmer and firmer. Oh, that we may be so rooted in love, and grounded in love! Look at yonder castle, built upon the spur of the mountain. How grey it is! It looks like the colour of the mountain itself; it bears the tints of the neighbouring rocks. How often have the rains descended upon it, and the storms beaten upon its walls! But it still stands, because it is firmly fixed upon its rocky foundation. It is established there, and held to its rocky holding by strong clamps, so that the storm and the torrent cannot shake it. So may we be rooted and grounded in level (Newman Hall, LL. B.)Rooted and grounded The apostle supplies us with two figures to show the force and necessity of religious affection. It is as the root to the tree, that which holds it in the earth, conveys to it the nourishment of the soil, enables it to live, to grow, to thrive, to blossom, and bear fruit, and also to stand upright against the wind and storms. It is the foundation of the building, that on which all the rest depends, that without which all the rest must fall. Nay, it is the ground under the foundation, the solid earth, which supports building, foundation, and all. A building with no foundation, a tree without a root, these give us some notion of a Christian without love. This explains to those of you who love not Christ, who love Him not through faith in His redemption, this explains why your purposes fall headlong to the ground, why your thoughts of heaven, and intentions to be holy, show fair for no other end, than to wither in the bud. Be you then, my brethren, rooted and grounded in love. Be persuaded that Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the express image of the Father’ s glory, died for sinners, died for you. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.)The relation of love to knowledge We must have love to be the root and to be the ground. And the tree will be abundant understanding, and the fruit thereof the fulness of God. And this is no more than we find often to be the case in worldly briefness, and in human learning. They make most progress who most love their work. They, who like what they are employed in, do better, prosper more, advance far the most rapidly, understand far the most thoroughly. How then can we reasonably expect to make progress in Christian knowledge, if we make not first progress in Christian love? How can we wonder that so many are wandering in error, when so few are united in the bond of peace? How can we help being ourselves dark in our understandings, as long as we continue cold in our hearts? Let us begin at the right beginning. Let us pray this day, and this day forth forever, that God may move us to the love of all that He reveals, and so bring us to a right knowledge of the truth. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.)Rooted and grounded in love The “ root” is taken from the field of nature--the “ grounding,” or founding, from the world of art. The “ root” is laid in the soil to imbibe its virtues--the “ foundation” is placed on its base to sustain the edifice. The “ root” grows, and produces fruit--the “ foundation” stands, and gives strength. The “ root” needs continual supply--the “ foundation” rests in its completeness, and is alway. Now see how well the two blend together to make one whole. The grand foundation or “ ground” of everything is “ love” --God’ s love. Because “ God is love,” therefore His love goes forth to sinners. Because His love went forth to sinners, He provided a way by which He could restore sinners back again to happiness and to Himself--and so Jesus died for them. And since Jesus died for sinners, therefore God chose me, drew me, pardoned me, spoke peace to me. And having loved us enough to do this, what will not the same love do?--what prayer will He not hear?--what good thing can He withhold? That is a foundation. It wilt support anything--any comfort, any work, any hope I ever choose to build upon it. It is like some mathematical proposition, which cannot be assailed, and the whole problem is actually contained within it, and only wants to be worked out. It stands to the soul like solid adamant to the whole temple--a foundation. Now the “ root.” I cast my affections down into the character and the being of God; I wind them about His attributes; I strike them into His promises; I drive them deep into His faithfulness. There, the “ roots” of my affection lie. They take up, they drink in, the nature of the love they live in;--they are always assimilating themselves to it, and they send up its sweet savour by little, silent threads, which are always running to the fountain of life. My words, my actions, my whole outer being, cannot choose but mould itself to them, and take that love. Because of those secret processes of the “ roots” which are in Christ, I love. I love simply because I am “ rooted in love.” So the “ foundation” supplied the strong argument, and then the “ root” gave the essence of the necessity for the new nature. My intellect rests upon its “ foundation” ; and my heart draws its tenderness from its “ root.” I can edify myself in my “ grounding,” and I am sanctified in my “ rooting.” I grow by resting, and by double processes my inner life is made and assured. And yet both owe themselves to one simple thing, and that one simple thing is “ love,” and that love is of Christ:--“ Rooted and grounded in love.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Rooted in love Two cognate conceptions--one borrowed from the processes of nature, and the other from human art--are employed to indicate at once the life, the growth, the strength, and the stability of a Christian’ s hope. A tree and a tower are the material objects which are used here as alphabetic letters to express a spiritual thought. More particularly, as a tree depends for life and growth upon its roots being embedded in a genial soil, and a tower depends for strength and stability upon its foundation, the apostle desires, by aid of these conceptions, to express and illustrate the corresponding features of the Christian life. If disciples are compared to living trees, love is the soil they grow in; if they ate compared to a building, love is the foundation on which it stands secure. Let us, at present, confine our attention to the first of these associated conceptions. I. The soil in which the living tree is planted: it is love. A question rises here at the outset which must be settled ere we can advance a step with the exposition--What is the love in which the trees of righteousness are rooted? Whether is it God’ s love to man, or man’ s love to God and to his brother? The question admits of an answer at once easily intelligible and demonstrably true. The love in which the roots of faith strike down for nourishment is not human but Divine. It is not even that grace which is sovereign and Divine in its origin, but residing and acting in a renewed human heart: it is the attribute, and even the nature, of Deity, for “ God is love.” The soil which bears and nourishes the new life of man is the love of God in the gift of His Son. Having determined the first point--that the soil in which faith’ s roots can freely grow is found in God, not in man--we must now weigh well what attribute or manifestation of God it is that permits and invites the confidence of the fallen. The justice of God does not afford a soil on which the hope of sinners can thrive. As well might you expect the tender roots of a living plant to strike kindly down into hot ashes, as expect the trust of a guilty soul to go into the righteousness of God for support. No; there is nothing on this side but a fearful looking for of judgment to devour. Neither can human hopes grow in a mixture of mercy and justice such as men, in ignorance of the gospel, when conscience is uneasy, may mingle for themselves. There is only one place in which righteousness and peace can meet without mutually destroying each other, and that is in the Cross of Christ the Substitute. In Christ, but not elsewhere, God is at once just, and the justifier of the sinful who believe. II. The plant that is rooted in the ground represents a believer getting all his support and all his sustenance from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our lord. Under this head, the first point that occurs is the very obvious one, that before any measure of growth can be obtained there must be life. Of what avail would richness of soil be to rows of dead branches? A withered branch draws no sap from the most fertile ground. Faith fastens on God’ s revealed love in the covenant, and satisfies itself from this inexhaustible treasury; but who and what first creates faith? The living will, by the instincts of nature, seek convenient food; but how shall the dead be restored to life? Let it be granted that faith, appropriating God’ s love, sustains the living, the question remains, Who quickens the dead? In the last resource, an answer to this question must be sought in the sovereignty of God and the ministry of the Spirit; but we must beware of so regarding God’ s part in it as to miss or neglect our own. “ Live” is the first thing in the Spirit’ s ministry but “ believe” is the first thing in the duty of man. To God’ s eye, looking downward from His own eternity, the order of events is, Live, that you may believe; but to our eye, as we stand on earth and look upwards, the order of events is, Believe, that you may live. Our part is not to produce life, but to exercise trust. Honour God by referring the origin of life to His sovereign grace and power; but obey God by believing in Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Let us neither intrude into His province nor neglect our own. But even when the plant is living, many obstacles may intervene to prevent it from freely pushing down its roots and drinking up the richness of the soil. Stones of stumbling lie in the way of the living root, and hinder its growth. Sometimes the history of vegetable life, concealed for generations, is afterwards thrown open. When a forest tree, that has outlived several generations of its owners, is at last thrown down by a tempest, and its roots all exposed to the inspection of the passer-by, many secret passages of its early history are at length revealed. Each bend of those gnarled roots has a tale to tell--of various offers and disappointments, and conflicts and victories. Here, in the centre of the circular mass, the main stem was pointing perpendicularly downward when the tree was young, perhaps a century ago; but ere it had gone far in that direction, it had struck against a stone. The fibre, then young and pliable, had sensitively turned as soon as it felt the obstacle, and grew for a little upward, as if retracing its steps. Then it had bent to one side and crept along the surface of the stone, intending, so to speak, to turn its flank and plunge into the deep earth beyond its outmost edge. Once or twice in its horizontal course it came to hollows in the stone, and ever instinctively seeking downward, penetrated to the bottom of each; but finding no opening, it came always up again, and pursued its course on the horizontal line. But, long ere it reached the margin of the great rock, it found a rent, narrow, indeed, but thorough. Into this minute opening it thrust a needle-like point. It succeeded in pushing that pioneer through. Tasting thereby of the rich soil below, it thence drew new strength for itself. Strong now in that acquired strength, it increased its bulk and rent the rock asunder. You may now see the two halves of the cleaved rock hanging on the mighty root that rent them. Now the victor has overcome its adversaries, and makes a show of them openly. It holds the remnants of its ancient enemy aloft as trophies of its victory. It is thus that a living soul struggles against all obstructions, and either round them or through them, penetrates into the unlimited love of God as it is in Christ. There the life satisfies itself and becomes strong. This man is more than conqueror through Him that loved him. When the saved are drawn at length from the ground in which the new life secretly grew, and all the history of their redemption revealed in the better land, themselves and others will read with interest the record of the struggle, and the final victory. It will then be seen that every hindrance which the tempter threw in faith’ s way only exercised and so strengthened faith. They who have had the hardest conflict in throwing obstacles aside that they might freely draw from redeeming love in Christ, draw most freely from that love when they reach it: as that woman who had pined many years in disease, and spent all her means on other physicians, drew proportionally a larger draught from the fountain when she touched its lip at last. (W. Arnot, D. D.)Rooted and grounded in love I. The grace implored.1. The love of God includes admiration of His character.2. The love of God includes gratitude for His benefits.3. The love of God includes delight in His communion. II. Its specified importance.1. The love of God is the essence of religion.2. The love of God is the germ of holiness.3. The love of God is the source of happiness.4. The love of God is the test of meetness for heaven. III. The characteristics of it implied.1. Sincere, and not sentimental.2. Permanent, and not temporary. (G. Brooks.)Rooted and grounded in love Observe, again, it is not “ rooted and grounded” in any other perfection of God. I am satisfied that the “ love” here spoken of, as you will see in a moment, is God’ s love to us in the first instance; and the apostle does not say. and this is very remarkable--“ being rooted and grounded in wisdom, or truth, or even faithfulness.” And why? Because you will notice that all those perfections, invaluable as they are in their application to ourselves and the whole scheme of redemption, still do not touch the heart: they never would draw the “ roots” of man to God. I can look at God, and behold Him in all His beauty, as a faithful, holy, just, and true God, but my heart remains perfectly unmoved; there is not one of God’ s perfections, except love, that can draw forth the roots of my heart unto Himself; there is not one of God’ s other perfections that could, if brought into exercise, have knit my soul to Him; I should have stood aloof from God, apart from this one attribute. I say again, I could have looked at Him and admired Him, in a cold and abstract sense, on account of His other perfections, as mere moral attributes; but His love, His own love, and nothing else, could ever touch the heart of poor lost, fallen man. It is there, observe--in the manifestation of that love--that union is again effected between God and man. And therefore I need not say to you, that the very essence of the gospel economy is the manifestation of that love. See, then, the propriety of this expression--“ rooted and grounded in love.” You know perfectly well, in regard of any of your fellow creatures, that you may admire their qualities and attainments, and everything else of that character; still, these do not touch your heart; but when there is a strong expression of love towards yourself on the part of that fellow creature, if anything conceivable could draw forth your affections, and induce what is here implied by “ being rooted and grounded” in the affection of that person, it is the very fact of his love drawing you to him. Hence this expression here--“ being rooted and grounded in love:” that is, knowing His love, appreciating it, entering thoroughly into it, having such an understanding of it and such a belief of its personal adaption to yourself, if appropriated in all its fulness, that there is a manifest return--that the roots of your heart are drawn and infixed into God, and you come back into that fellowship with Him which never can and which never could result from anything whatever but the manifestation of God’ s own love to you. Brethren, I would say, do you not feel from your inmost souls day by day that religion is an absolute nonentity, that it is pure vanity, excepting as it lays hold of a man’ s heart and affections? Do you not feel that it is utterly uninfluential, independent of that? But now let us look at two or three particulars connected with my more immediate text, which I want to be fixed upon your minds. “ Rooted and grounded in love” ! I have explained to you briefly, as well as I could, what is implied in that: it is such a perception of God’ s love--its length, and breadth, and depth, and height--that our affections are placed firmly upon it; all their roots are fixed deeply into it. Now, then, I want to know particularly some of the results that will follow from it in our own experience.1. There will be a necessary enlargement of our own hearts’ affections. My brethren, do believe this, that like every other faculty or feeling or quality belonging to man, his affections have become straitened. This is part and parcel of man’ s miserable and sinful condition. He has not the love he ought to have for any object; he is narrowed up into his own selfishness. Now, when we get a right view of God’ s love, and that love comes into our hearts, what follows? The expansion of our own affections. It is a common saying, and a perfectly true one, that small things will satisfy small minds; but I tell you that the converse or another view of that proposition is true: small things will make small minds. If you exercise your mind upon small matters, your mind becomes diminished in its powers and capabilities--if you exercise your mind upon great matters, your mind expands; if the heart is fixed on a small object of affection, its affections become small--if on a comprehensive one, the affections are enlarged. Now look at God. God becomes the object of a man’ s affection when he enters into this text. What follows? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 3:18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.Spiritual perception From Divine love, as the root and ground of the soul’ s life, comes all spiritual perception. I say spiritual, as distinct from intellectual, perception. Paul says: You will net be able to comprehend the love of Christ, unless you are first rooted and grounded in it. A spiritual understanding is the opened flower of the Divine love root. Light is love’ s first-born child. Before one can enjoy the light of the world, he must be born of the world’ s love. And before we can be “ light in the Lord,” we must be “ in the Lord,” having a root and ground in us derived from Himself. Any such knowledge as the natural understanding is capable of deriving from the words of Scripture is by no means spiritual knowledge. In order to spiritual knowledge, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, must as really shine into our hearts, as, in order to behold objects of nature, the light of the sun must shine into our eyes. If “ Christ dwell in your hearts by faith,” you will be “ rooted and grounded in love,” and as a consequence, you will be able to comprehend spiritual things. Love, then, according to our apostle, is the ground and mother of the perceptive faculty. Without fire there can be no effulgence, or radiance. As is the fire, will be the radiance. The source of mental illumination is the Son of God in the heart. (J. Pulsford.)Comprehending Christ’ s love I. The dimensions of this love.1. The breadth is seen in reaching out Divine mercy to sinners who are far off from God (Isaiah 65:1; Isaiah 45:22). 2. The length of this love reaches from eternity to eternity (Jeremiah 31:3; Jeremiah 32:40). 3. The depth of this love is seen in raising sinners from condemnation and hell (Psalms 40:2-3; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11). 4. The height of this love consists in making sinners heirs of God, and bringing them finally to glory (2 Timothy 4:6-8). II. What the apostle meant, desiring the Ephesians might comprehend it. “ May be able to comprehend with all saints.”1. That they might form correct views of the freeness of God’ s love (2 Timothy 1:9). 2. That they might comprehend the perpetuity of it (John 13:1; Psalms 89:33). 3. That they might exhibit the effects of it in its constraining influence and constant peace (Romans 5:1-5). III. For what purpose he expresses this desire. “ That ye might be filled,” etc.1. That they might be able rightly to value it (Philippians 3:8-9).2. That they might depend upon it (James 1:17).3. That they might honour it (Galatians 6:14).4. It is inexpressible love. (T. B. Baker.)The vastness of the Divine love These terms were not, perhaps, intended to convey each of them a distinct idea, but generally to represent the vastness of the Divine love; yet we may make use of these various expressions to classify what we have to say on the matter.1. The “ breadth” suggests to us the extent of that love, the vastness of the field for which it is designed and for which it provides. God loves all His creatures--not one is excluded. 2. The “ length” may suggest the duration of His love. It is not a thing of today, suddenly conceived, and that may be suddenly laid aside; it is from eternity, and had its birth before the foundations of the earth were laid. Look back, and back, and back, and you shall not see its commencement! Look forward, and forward, and forward, and you shall never see the termination of it, for it is also “ to everlasting.” Through the whole of your journey, however long continued it may be, you shall find His love with you. 3. And the “ depth.” Oh, how low has God come with that wondrous love of His! How He stooped to our low estate. From what depths has He sought to rescue His wayward, erring children. 4. And the “ height.” “ He who ascended is the same also who descended; therefore, God hath highly exalted Him.” He is high upon the throne of universal empire; and He says, “ Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.” In the same height of glory to which He Himself has gone; to the same height as that throne on which He reigns; to that height of glory He purposes to bring us--a height to which no weapon can reach--a height at which there can be no sin--a height from which every step may be a stepping stone to higher glories. As the lark soars and sings, and soars and sings, so shall we; but not as the lark, which soars aloft, but ever comes back to earth. (Newman Halt, LL. B.)Comprehension of God’ s immeasurable love Well may St. Paul add, “ to comprehend with all saints.” No single mind is equal to this study. One mighty intellect of Newton may sketch the plan of the solar system; one Laplace may demonstrate its permanent equilibrium; one Herschel map out the nebulae of the southern sky; one Dalton unfold the laws of atomic combination; one Darwin assign the clue to the partial unfolding of the mystery of successive lives in nature. But no single soul is capable of comprehending the love of Christ, for the vision and experience of each is limited, and in morals we are members one of another. God has gifts which He bestows on the solitary students of Divine truth, and gifts which He bestows on His solitary petitioners in the closet or under, the fig tree. But, in general, the law of understanding the love of Christ is united study, united work, united conference, united prayer. In our spiritual being we are wonderfully dependent on each other, so that the gifted thinker freezes in solitude while companies of earnest and humble supplicants attain by their communion the vision and the faculty Divine. “ Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is,” for “ where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” The whole Church is a spiritual organism which is requisite for the comprehension of love Divine in its fulness. A few rays may fall on the individual eye: still more, when Churches meet to praise and pray even in a splintered and divided Christendom: but when the relics of eighteen hundred years of conflict, and ecclesiastical pride and sectarian contention, are cast aside and forgotten, and the one Church of God becomes visibly one on earth and consciously one in every place, then there will break upon the countless millions of eyes which will gaze upward every morning on the Sun of Righteousness, “ with one heart and one soul,” a flood of sunshine, an effulgence of answering glory, which will consecrate the earth, and prove it to be the gate of heaven. (E. White.)The paradox of love’ s measure Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our text, and it runs: “ and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless bounds and dimensions of the love of Christ which fires the apostle’ s thoughts here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each of these measures of magnitude, but he gathered them all together simply to express the one thought of the greatness of Christ’ s love. Depth and height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. The one begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom and goes up, but the surface is the same in either case. So we have the three dimensions of a solid here--breadth, length, and depth. And I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a somewhat different purpose from that for which the apostle employs them: and to see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. I. What, then, is the breadth of that love? It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the same relation to the love, the Divine love, which lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in His great family, and none of them receive a more grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every other. Broad as the race, and curtaining it over as some great tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christ’ s love is the breadth of humanity. And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is broad. Our human affections are too often like the estuary of some great stream which runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as soon as it widens becomes slow, and powerless, and shallow. The intensity of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ’ s love is deep though it be wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared amongst a multitude. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ, both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We have a right to say, “ He loves all, therefore He loves me.” And we have a right to say, “ He loves me, therefore He loves all.” For surely the love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul. What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is narrow as myself. II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ? If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When He was here on earth it may have been sent down the generations in some vague, pale way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which he dimly sees will be affected by his sacrifice and service. But we do not call that love. Such a poor, pale; Shadowy thing has no right to the warm, throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of affection; and unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love can be stretched to touch you. And if we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe, rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the Divine that dwelt in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man’ s heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals that should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I, looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the length of the love of Christ, can say, “ It stretches over all the years, and it reached then as it reaches now to touch me, upon whom the ends of the earth have come.” Its length is conterminous with the duration of humanity here or yonder. There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. “ Master! How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” So said the Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice--two sevens and a ten--in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it, howsoever long drawn out my sin may be, it stretches beyond this; and the while line of His love runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethren’ s. But the pitying Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. The length of the love of Christ is the length of eternity, and out-measures all human sin. III. Then again, what is the depth of that love? Depth and height, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, are but two ways of expressing the same dimension; the one we begin at the top and measure down, the other we begin at the bottom and measure up. The top is the Throne; and the downward measure, how is it to be stated? In what terms of distance are we to express it? How far is it from the Throne of the Universe to the manger at Bethlehem, and the Cross at Calvary, and the sepulchre in the garden? That is the depth of the love of Christ. Howsoever far may be the distance from that loftiness of co-equal Divinity in the bosom of the Father, and radiant with glory, to the lowliness of the form of a servant, and the sorrows, limitations, rejections, pains and final death--that is the measure of the depth of Christ’ s love. As if some planet were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the mists and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere, so we can estimate the depth of the love of Christ by saying “ He came from above, He tabernacled with us.” A well known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the fragment of a meteor or an aerolite, from some other system, with a speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever may be the case in regard of the physical life, that is absolutely true in the case of spiritual life. It all comes because this heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation, and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart of the race, there to spread forever. That is the measure of the depth of the love of Christ. And there is another way to measure it. My sins are deep, my helpless miseries are deep, but they are shallow as compared with the love that goes down beneath all sin, that is deeper than all sorrow, that is deeper than all necessity, that shrinks from no degradation, that turns away from no squalor, that abhors no wickedness so as to avert its face from it. The purest passion of human benevolence cannot but sometimes be aware of disgust mingling with its pity and its efforts, but Christ’ s love comes down, howsoever far in the abyss of degradation any human soul has descended, beneath it are the everlasting arms, and beneath it is Christ’ s love. When a coal pit gets blocked up by some explosion no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the lowest depths of the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has come there. But this loving Christ goes down, down, down into the thickest, most pestilential atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption, and stretches out a rescuing hand to the most abject and undermost of all the victims. How deep is the love of Christ? The deep mines of sin and of alienation are all undermined and countermined by His love. Sin is an abyss, a mystery, how deep only they know who have fought against it; but-- “ O Love! thou bottomless abyss, My sins are swallowed up in thee.” “ I will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” The depths of Christ’ s love go down beneath all human necessity, sorrow, suffering, and sin.IV. And, lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ? We found that the way to measure the depth was to begin at the Throne, and go down to the Cross, and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of evil, and go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in the universe, the shining apex and summit, glittering away up there in the radiant unsetting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. The other conceptions of that Divine nature spring high above us and tower beyond our thoughts, but the summit of them all, the very topmost as it is the very bottommost, outside of everything, and therefore high above everything, is the love of God which has been revealed to us all, and bought for us sinful men in the passion and manhood of our dear Christ. And that love which thus towers above us, and gleams the summit and the apex of the universe, like the shining cross on the top of same lofty cathedral spire, does not gleam there above us inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, that heaven of love which is “ higher than our thoughts,” bends down, as by a kind of optical delusion the physical heaven seems to do, towards each of us, only with this blessed difference, that in the natural world the place where heaven touches earth is always the furthest point of distance from us; and in the spiritual world, the place where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and the nearest possible point to me. He’ has come to lift us to Himself. And this is the height of His love, that it bears us up, if we will, up and up to sit upon that throne where He Himself is enthroned. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Heavenly geometry This Divine mensuration is an art of the most desirable kind, as appears from its being the object of most earnest apostolic prayers. I. Like a wise and enlightened teacher, Paul desires for the saints that they should receive that previous education which is necessary before they will be able to enter upon such a science as the measurement of Christ’ s love. When lads go to school they are not at first put to study algebra, nor are they sent out to make a trigonometrical survey of a county. The schoolmaster knows that they must have a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic, or else to teach them algebra would be waste of time, and that they must have some acquaintance with common geometry, or it would be absurd to instruct them in surveying. He therefore begins with the elementary information, and when they have learned simpler matters they are ready for the more difficult studies. They climb the steps of the door of science, and then they are introduced to her temple. The Apostle Paul does not propose that the new convert should at once be able to measure the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ; he knows that this is not within the range of his infant mind; for the newborn spirit has a time of growth to go through before it can enter into the deep things of God. If you will kindly refer to the text you will see what this previous education is which the apostle desired for the saints. It is very fully described in three parts.1. He desired that their spiritual faculties might be strengthened, for he prays that they might be “ strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man.” The schoolmaster knows that the boy’ s mind must be strengthened, that his understanding must be exercised, his discernment must be developed, and his memory must be rendered capacious before he may enter upon superior studies; and the apostle knows that our spiritual faculties must undergo the same kind of development; that our faith, for instance, must be unwavering, that our love must become fervent, that our hope must be bright, that our joy must be increased, and then, but not till then, we shall be able to comprehend the length and breadth of love Divine. We are to be strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of God; and who can strengthen as He strengthens? 2. He desired that the object of study may be evermore before them: “ that Christ may dwell,” etc. A good tutor not only wishes his scholar may have a disciplined mind able to grapple with the subject, but he endeavours to keep the subject always before him; for in order to attain to any proficiency in a science the mind must be abstracted from all other thoughts, and continually exercised with the chosen theme. You will never find a man preeminent in astronomy unless astronomy has become the lord of mind, and holds a sway over his mind even in his dreams. The anatomist must be bound to nerves, and bones, and blood vessels, as the galley slave is bound to the oar, or he will never master his subject, The botanist must be enamoured of every flower, and wedded to every plant, or the fields will utterly bake him. “ Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.” Solomon knew what he wrote when he said, “ Separated himself,” for without separation or abstraction there can be no progress. Now, the apostle desires that we who are believers, our faculties being strengthened, may have the person of Jesus constantly before us to inflame our love, and so increase our knowledge. See how near he would have Jesus to be! “ That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” You cannot get a subject closer to you than to have it on the inner side of the eyes; that is to say, in the heart itself. The astronomer cannot always see the stars because they are far away, and outside of him; but our star shines in the heaven of our hearts evermore. The botanist must find his flowers in their seasons, but our plant of renown blooms in our souls all the year round. We carry the instruments of our saintly art, and the object of our devout contemplation within ourselves. As a scholar carries in his pocket a small edition of his favourite classic, so do we carry Christ in our hearts; what if I say we bear about with us a heart edition of the Liber Crucis, the Book of the Cross. If we knew more fully by experience the meaning of “ Christ in you the hope of glory,” our heaven-taught affections, which are the best part of our inner man, might be continually exercised upon the person, the work, and the love of our dear Redeemer. 3. The apostle prays further that they may have practical exercise in the art of holy love; “ that ye being rooted and grounded in love.” Every experienced tutor knows that it is greatly helpful to the student to exercise him in his chosen pursuit upon some lower and inferior branch of it, so as to lead him gradually to the higher points of it. If, for instance, he means him to understand the surveying of estates, he bids him measure a field containing an acre or two. If he means him to map out a country, he sets him first to make a plan of a neighbouring field or a farm. The apostle acts upon the same method. “ That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend the breadth and length of the love of Christ.” Having the love of Jesus in you, possessed with love to Christ, you will be practised in the exercise of love, and so will understand the love which filled the Saviour. You will learn to do business upon the greater waters of the Redeemer’ s infinite love to His people, as you sail upon the stream of your love to Him. Two expressions are used:--“ rooted,” like a living tree which lays hold upon the soil, twists itself round the rocks, and cannot be upturned--“ grounded,” like a building which has been settled, as a whole, and will never show any cracks or flaws in the future through failures in the foundation. The apostle wishes us to be rooted and grounded in love, a vital union being established between our souls and Jesus, so that we love Him because He first loved us; and also a fiducial union, or a union of trust, by which we rest upon Jesus as the stones of a wall are settled upon the foundation. II. We now come to consider more closely the science of heavenly mensuration itself. According to the text, we have a solid body to deal with, for we are to measure its breadth and length, and depth, and height. This cubical measurement--for it lieth foursquare, like the new Jerusalem--proves the reality of the body to be measured. Alas, to a great many religious people the love of Jesus is not a solid substantial thing at all--it is a beautiful fiction, a sentimental belief, a formal theory; but to Paul it was a real, substantial, measurable fact. No one knows the love of Christ at all if he does not know it to be real, and no one has felt it in his soul at all unless it becomes so real as to constrain him and move him into actual activity. The apostle desires that when the love of Christ becomes to us a solid reality we may have close communion with it. You may measure the breadth and length of a thing at a great distance, but you cannot very well measure its depth without drawing near to it. What a holy familiarity with Jesus do the words imply when we come to measurements of all kinds! What condescension is this which allows the sacred heart to be fathomed like a sea, and to be measured as a field! Shall the infinite thus bow itself to man? Shall man refuse to commune with such condescending love? Let me come to the very words of our text, and point out to you their order.1. The first object of the Christian’ s knowledge should be the breadth of the Saviour’ s love. I know a certain school of Christians who have need to study this point, for they have a very narrow idea of the Lord’ s loving kindness. They conceive of Divine love as a very narrow stream, they have never seen it to be a mighty, flowing, abounding, and rejoicing river, such as it really is. The love of Jesus Christ does not surround our favoured island alone, but, like the ocean, it washes every shore. The love of Jesus Christ has been extended to kings upon their thrones, but with equal and more frequent bounty to the slaves in their dungeons. 2. The next object of study is the length of Christ’ s love. “ I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Coeval then with Deity itself is the love of Deity towards its chosen ones. God did love us in His Son long before the world began. If an angel were to start from today with the design of finding out when God’ s love began he would doubtless fly on till he lingered at the Cross. “ Here,” he would say, “ here is the fountain, here is the source of it all.” But he would be reminded that “ God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Then there was a love before the giving of His Son. He would fly onward till he paused at Isaiah’ s day and heard of God’ s love in the prophecy that the Son of man should bear the iniquity of His people. He would say, “ Surely it begins here!” But saints would remind him of yet older words of comfort, and he would fly on till he stopped outside of the garden of Eden and heard the Lord say, “ The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’ s head.” “ Surely,” saith he, “ it began here.” But, divinely instructed, he would go back yet further, even to the eternal councils where first of all salvation was planned and contrived in the cabinets of wisdom before the world was. He would have to go back, back, back, till creation had vanished, till there remained not a shred of existence except the absolute self-existent Deity, and then in the Eternal Mind he would see thoughts of love toward a people to be formed for himself. This knowledge of the length of love does not always come to Christians early in their history. This love is not only without beginning, but it is without pause. There is never a moment when Jesus ceases to love His people. The love of Jesus knows nothing of suspended animation. There are some rivers in Australia which lose themselves, and for miles along their bed you find nothing but dry stones at certain seasons of the year. It is never so with the love of Christ: it is tong, and without a break from beginning to end; it is a chain without a single broken or feeble link. 3. The depth of the love of Jesus! Consider it as stooping to look upon such an insignificant creature as man! View the depth of that love in receiving such sinful creatures into His embrace! O sinner! you cannot have gone too deep for Christ’ s love to reach you. O backslider! you cannot have sinned too foully for forgiveness. 4. Think next of the height of the Master’ s love. You see it is put last, as the highest point of learning, There are some who have advanced as far as to understand somewhat of the depths, who do not know the full dignity and glory of an heir of heaven, and have felt but little of the power of His ascension. Why, the love of Jesus, even in this present life, is a height unspeakable, for has it not lifted us up to become sons of God? Yet, brethren, the height of this love will be best seen in a future state. You shall be borne up to dwell with Christ in the clouds when the world is in a blaze, and when the judgment is passed you shall be carried by angels’ wings up to the seventh heaven where God dwelleth. Oh the breadth, the length, the depth, the height! To sum up what we have said in four words. For breadth the love of Jesus is immensity, for length it is eternity, for depth it is immeasurability, and for height it is infinity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Measuring the immeasurable I. The previous training required for this measurement.1. He would have their spiritual faculties vigorous. 2. He would have the subject always before them. 3. He would have them exercised in the art of measurement. (1) We must love Him ourselves, if we would measure Christ’ s love. (2) We must, by experience of His love, be confirmed in our own love to Him, or we cannot measure His love. (3) We must also have a vital grip of Christ. We must be rooted as a tree, which takes many a hold upon the soil. (4) We must settle down on His love as our foundation, on which we are grounded, as a building. (5) We must also show fixedness, certainty, and perseverance in our character, belief, and aim; for thus only shall we learn. II. The mensuration itself.1. This implies a sense of the reality of the matter.2. It includes a coming near to the object of our study.3. It indicates an intimate study, and a careful survey.4. It necessitates a view from all sides of the subject.5. The order of the measurement is the usual order of our own growth in grace. Breadth and length before depth and height. (1) The breadth. Immense. (a) Comprehending all nations. “ Preach the gospel to every creature.” (b) Covering hosts of iniquities. “ All manner of sin.” (c) Compassing all needs, cares, etc. (d) Conferring boundless boons for this life and worlds to come. It were well to sail across this river and survey its broad surface. (2) The length. Eternal. We wonder that God should love us at all. Let us meditate upon-- (a) Eternal love in the fountain. Election and the covenant. (b) Ceaseless love in the flow. Redemption, calling, perseverance. (c) Endless love in endurance. Long suffering, forgiveness, faithfulness, patience, immutability. (d) Boundless love, in length exceeding our length of sin, suffering, backsliding, age, or temptation. (3) The depth. Incomprehensible. (a) Stoop of Divine love, condescending to consider us, to commune with us, to receive us in love, to bear with our faults, and to take us up from our low estate. (b) Stoop of love personified in Christ. He stoops, and becomes incarnate; endures our sorrows; bears our sins; and suffers our shame and death. (c) Where is the measure for all this? Our weakness, meanness, sinfulness, despair, make one factor of the measurement. His glory, holiness, greatness, Deity, make up the other. (4) The height. Infinite. (a) As developed in present privilege, as one with Jesus. (b) As to be revealed in future glory. (c) As never to be fully comprehended throughout the ages. III. The practical result of this mensuration. “ That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Here are words full of mystery, worthy to be pondered.1. Be filled. What great things man can hold!2. Filled with God. What exaltation!3. Filled with the fulness of God. What must this be?4. Filled with all the fulness of God. What more can be imagined? (C. H. Spurgeon.)The knowledge of our ignorance The more we know the more are we conscious of our ignorance of that which is unknown, or, as Dr. Chalmers used to put it in his class--borrowing an illustration from his favourite mathematics--“ The wider the diameter of light, the greater is the circumference of darkness.” The more a man knows, he comes at more points into contact with the unknown. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Among the heights of Divine love As I was riding along in the South of France one day I saw a fine pair of birds overhead. The driver called out in the French tongue, “ Eagles.” Yes, and there was a man below with a gun, wishful to get a nearer acquaintance with the eagles, but they did not come down to oblige him. He pointed his rifle at them, but his shots did not reach half way, for the royal birds kept above. The higher air is the fit dominion for eagles, up above the smoke and clouds. Keep there, eagles. Keep there! If men can get you within range they mean no good to you. Keep up, Christian. Keep up in the higher element, resting in Jesus Christ, and do not come down to find a perch for yourself among the trees of philosophy. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 3:19 And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.The love of Christ I. This representation must be justified, this lofty notice must be warranted and confirmed.1. The love of Christ is the love of Deity. It follows that, as all Divine perfections confirm “ the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge,” this low is consequently absolute. 2. This love, then, must be eternal. It knew no antecedent act, no previous event. As we infer the Father’ s eternal love to Christ, so we may infer Christ’ s eternal love to us. “ For Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.” 3. Infinite intelligence must have directed this love. “ This cometh forth (said the prophet) from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.” “ God hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.” 4. But this love, being the love of the Deity, must be perfectly consistent with immutable holiness. Jesus is the “ Holy One.” He is the Righteous One, and He loveth righteousness. 5. This love, then, must be efficient. ‘ Tis the love of omnipotence, and cannot be effeminate. Our Redeemer is the “ Mighty One” ; He travelled in the greatness of His strength: He has shown Himself strong on our behalf. There were no obstacles to Him! His love was stronger than death! 6. This love, then, must be immutable. Jesus is “ a friend that sticketh closer than a brother” ; in Him “ there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” “ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” 7. It is, therefore, infinitely ample; “ the grace of our Lord is exceeding abundant.” This love, then, rests in the Infinite. It is never to be fathomed or explored. “ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.” “ The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.” II. This love will further be found by us to deserve and justify all this loftiness and sublimity of metaphor, when we remember the objects which it embraced. There is a repellent power in sin. III. But there seems to be a great peculiarity in this case, because this love was as little sought as it was deserved. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then, was as unmerited as it was unsolicited. There is, so to speak, another peculiarity in this love: it seems to elect the chief of sinners. It has a grandeur of provision in it. It goes after that which has most widely spread until it brings it home. It prefers the sinful woman’ s tears to the Pharisee’ s prayers. It acquits as with greater pleasure the debtor of five hundred pence than of fifty. Now, if we would perceive that this love exceeds all estimate, we must bear two ideas in mind. The first is the demerit of sin; the second the elevation and estrangement of the Saviour’ s mind from it. There is a demerit in sin on its own account. God only knows the desperate wickedness of the human heart. IV. It is time that we should justify this high representation by a reference to those means by which such love was manifested towards us. The Incarnation is a proof that His love passeth knowledge. “ My God! My God! why forsakest Thou Me.” “ He was cut off, but not for Himself.” “ He bore our iniquity.” Now the following questions arise.1. May this be considered as a personal act? As the mighty God manifested in the flesh He has alone “ bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” 2. Did this dissimilarity of natures relieve or aggravate His sufferings? 3. The blessings which it secures. V. Bear with me while I briefly endeavour to show the perception which may be acquired of the love of Christ, notwithstanding its immense, its infinite greatness. Now, in what follows, we may be said to know the love of Christ. Most rapidly will we glance over this.1. We know the love of Christ to be the great principle of all that is most stupendous and mysterious in our religion. 2. We know the love of Christ as it is the great element of all pious sentiment and feeling. 3. This love is known by us if it become the great model of our Christian zeal and benevolence. What He was, we are to be in the world. VI. Several reflections press themselves upon our minds, which shall be noticed briefly.1. We must expect a transcendent character in Christianity. 2. The best test for Christianity is the character and views which it forms concerning Christ, and the nature of the affection it embraces. The whole genius of Christianity is to sublimate our views of, and our affections to, the Saviour. 3. How much of implicit as well as declaratory evidence there is of the Saviour’ s Godhead! 4. The necessity of habitually yielding ourselves to the influence of the love of Christ. The Saviour asks a return. (R. W. Hamilton.)The unsearchable study 1. The love of Christ may be said to “ pass knowledge,” inasmuch as, in its measure and its intensity, occupying and influencing the heart of a Being, whose nature is infinite, it can only be comprehended by His equals. It also “ passeth knowledge,” as I have said, as connecting, associating our rescue with the Divine complacency, blessedness, and glory. It “ passeth knowledge” in the invisible transmission of its benefits, and in the hidden power of its operations. It “ passeth knowledge” in the extent of its provisions, and in the necessity of its sacrifices--the whole doctrine of the Atonement being one profound mystery. Again, this love “ passeth knowledge” in its imputations of Christ’ s righteousness, and in its gifts of the Holy Spirit. It “ passeth knowledge” in the constant wonder, the daily miracle of its forbearance. 2. The love of Christ, in a general sense, “ passes the knowledge” of the worldly-minded. They may hear of it, but in no wise comprehend it. They know nothing truly of its source; they know nothing truly of its agency; they know nothing truly of its doctrines; they know nothing truly of its covenants; they know nothing experimentally of its promises. They know nothing of the variety of its offices, or the suitableness of its provisions, as applying to themselves. They know nothing of its indwelling power. 3. But, even with believers themselves, the love of Christ “ passeth knowledge.” 4. But the love of Christ, I would observe, transcends even the very knowledge of angels. 5. There is an inducement to the acquisition of this knowledge in its surpassing excellency. What is all knowledge compared with it? What but the mere “ dust in the balances” ? 6. Another inducement is supplied in our own interests. “ To know the love of Christ” is to know what He has done for our souls. 7. Another inducement presents itself in the suggestion of gratitude. What! hath God made such mighty sacrifices for me? hath He wrought such marvels of deliverance for me?--and shall not I, as the object of His love, respond to it? 8. Another inducement prompts in the facility, the ease, with which we may possess this knowledge. (T. J. Judkin, M. A.)The love of Christ, how known by Christians First, we may offer a few considerations tending to illustrate the “ love of Christ” ; and, in the second place, we may consider what is the nature of that experimental knowledge of this love for which the apostle prays. I. With respect to “ the love of Christ,” it is exhibited in actions in what Christ has done for those who are the objects of His love; for those who believe in His name. It may be seen--1. In the impediments which it overcame; it was a love victorious over all that opposed it. 2. Besides the impediments to be overcome, there were sacrifices to be made. 3. The greatness of “ the love of Christ” appears also in the benefits which He bestows. These are such as would never have entered into the conception of created minds. 4. This love, in its duration, extends from eternity to eternity. “ I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.” 5. This love, further, exists in spite of many things on our part calculated to alienate it from us. II. What is it so to know the love of God in Christ as the saints know it? Were it to be known merely as a theory, merely as a doctrine of revelation, it might soon be apprehended; and this, it is to be feared, is the only way in which many are content to know it. The world will be overcome by this love; the Cross of Christ will crucify the world to us, and us to the world. And hence, if we “ know the love of Christ,” we shall glorify Him in these two principal ways--1. We shall obey Him; we shall bind His laws to our hearts. 2. We shall show forth His praise, desire that His true servants may increase, that His kingdom may come, and His will be done, in all the world. (R. Hall, M. A.)The unfathomable love of Christ I. The glorious fact that Christ has loved us.1. Christ loved His Church in eternity before time began. 2. Christ manifested His love to His people in assuming our nature and taking it in union with the Divine. 3. Christ manifested His love to His Church in the great humiliation which attended His appearance. 4. Christ now manifests His love in heaven. He is there before the eternal throne in the nature of His people. He is ascended to His God and their God, to His Father and their Father. He is not ashamed to own them now in glory. II. The magnitude of Christ’ s love. It is love “ that passeth knowledge.” No conception can be formed adequate to its greatness.1. The origin of Christ’ s love passeth knowledge. To say when He began to love would be as impossible as to say when He began to live. “ Canst thou by searching find out the Almighty?” 2. The depths of misery from which the objects of His love are delivered passeth knowledge. 3. The depth of Christ’ s condescension, by which He exhibited His love, passeth knowledge. “ And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” “ He, who was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty may be made rich.” 4. The glory and bliss to which Christ will raise the objects of His love passeth knowledge. “ Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath laid up for those who love Him.” 5. The duration of Christ’ s love passeth knowledge. It is immutable, and therefore it will ever endure. III. And now let us very briefly notice the manner in which we need know this love to our salvation. This does not imply that we can know it so as to comprehend it. Such a thing is impossible.1. Know it doctrinally. “ Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Hearing is necessary to faith. “ How can they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” 2. Know it thankfully. The man who knows the love of Christ will feel thankful for the development of it to his soul. 3. Know it confidingly. We need know the love of Christ so as to rest upon Him for life and salvation. 4. Know it influentially. We must know something about its constraining influence on our hearts--to love one another, the service of God, and the ways of religion. What has not the influence of this love on the soul enabled its possessor to endure and perform? (D. V. Phillips.)The knowledge of Christ’ s love It is the distinguishing mark of God’ s people that they know the love of Christ. All the children of God do not know this love to the same extent. Indeed, an increase of love, a more perfect apprehension of Christ’ s love, is one of the best and most infallible gauges whereby we may test ourselves whether we have grown in grace or not. I. Well then, to come first of all to the bottom of the ladder. One of the lowest ways of knowing the love of Christ may be described as the doctrinal method--a very useful one, but nothing to be compared to those that we shall have to mention afterwards. If a man would know the love of Christ, he should endeavour to study the Word of God with care, attention, constancy, and with dependence upon the Spirit’ s illumination that he may be enabled to understand aright. It is well for a Christian man to be thoroughly established in the faith once delivered to the saints. Doctrines are but as the shovel and the tongs of the altar, while Christ is the sacrifice smoking thereon. Doctrines are Christ’ s garments; verily they all smell of myrrh, and cassia, and aloes out of the ivory palaces, whereby they make us glad, but it is not the garments we care for so much as for the person, the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, while I entreat you (and I hope not to be misunderstood here), while I entreat you to be very jealous and earnest in attaining unto a clear doctrinal knowledge of the love of Christ to His people, yet when you have got it, say not--“ I am the man! I have attained to eminence! I may now sit still and be content.” Sirs, this is but the threshold. II. And what next? Let us lift our feet and take another step. True saints know Christ’ s love gratefully and thankfully, having experienced it. Day after day He cometh to us. Night after night He draweth the curtains of our bed. He is ever with us, and all that He has is ours. He talketh sweetly to us by the way, and He sitteth down by us in our afflictions, and comforteth us, and maketh our hearts to burn within us; and as we think of all that He has done for us, we feel we do know something of Him, for gratitude has been our schoolmaster. III. Let us pass on to the third step, we have not got far yet. We are only as schoolboys at our first school, and we have now to go on to something higher. The true children of God know Christ’ s love in a way which I can only describe by the word practically. If any man would know His doctrine, let him keep His commandments. When soldiers are wanted, the best place to make them is, doubtless, the battlefield. If we would have veterans, there must be the smoke and the smell of powder, for great commanders are not to be manufactured in Hyde Park. And we cannot expect to have men who shall win victories, drawn out from mere loungers at the clubs; they must attend the drill, and by practice become qualified for their duties. A young man cannot learn farming by the study of books. To read books may be useful, if he take them as companions to the great book of nature. But he must be put apprentice to some farmer, who sends him out into the fields to see how they plough, how they sow, how they mow, how they reap, and how they house their corn. By entering practically into the various toils and duties, he becomes skilled therein. Just so, if we would learn Christ, we must be practically engaged in His service. We must learn His love by keeping His commandments. IV. There is a fourth and higher stage by far than these. There is a way, not known to many moderns, but much practised by the ancients, of knowing the love of Christ by contemplation. Do you know that in the early ages of the Church they spoke more of Christ and of His person, and thought more of Him than we do. And in those times, whether or not it was that men had not so much to do as they have now, I cannot tell, but they found time to have long seasons of contemplation, and they would sit alone and worship, and draw near to Christ, and steadily fix their gaze upon His person; for to them He was a real person, whom the eye of their faith could see as clearly as the eye of sense can see outward objects, and they looked, and looked, and looked again, till the love of Christ grew brighter to them than the sun at his meridian, and for very dimness of mortal sight they veiled their faces and paused their speech--while their souls were bathed in inward joy and peace unspeakable. There have been some such in these, later times, but not many. There was Isaac Ambrose, author of that book, “ Looking unto Jesus.” He was pastor of a church at Preston, in Lancashire, and “ it was his usual custom once a year,” says Dr. Calumy, “ for the space of a month to retire into a little hut in a wood, and avoiding all human converse, to devote himself to contemplation.” It was true he then only had eleven months in the year to preach in, but those eleven were a great deal better than the twelve would otherwise have been, for there, alone with his Master, he received such riches from Him, that when he came back, he threw about jewels with both his hands, and scattered glorious thoughts and words broadcast in his ministry. That book, “ Looking unto Jesus,” is a blessed memorial of his quiet hours and his secret communion with Jesus. Then there was Rutherford, the man who has expounded the whole of Solomon’ s Song of Solomon without knowing it, in his celebrated letters. When he was in the dungeon at Aberdeen, he exclaimed first of all, “ I had only one eye and they put that out.” It was the preaching of the gospel, and before long he has got both his eyes back again. Hear him writing in his letters, “ My foes thought to punish me by casting me into a prison, but lo! they have blessed me by taking me into Christ’ s withdrawing room, where I sit with Him and am with Him both by night and day without disturbance.” V. Well now, we have taken you up some height, but we must prepare for a flight which is higher still. To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge by contemplation is very high, but there is a higher stage than this. There are times when I almost fear to speak of these things, but there are some here, surely, who will comprehend me, some here who have passed through the same state and will not think that I am dreaming. There are times when the soul has long contemplated Christ, and there are some who know not only to contemplate, but to enjoy. Even on earth faith sometimes gives place to a present and conscious enjoyment. There are times with the believer when whether he is in the body or out of the body he can scarce tell: God knoweth; and though not caught up to the third heaven he is brought to the very gates, and if not permitted to see Christ on His throne, he does so see Him on His cross, that if an infidel should say to him, “ There is no Christ,” he could say, “ I have seen Him; my eyes have looked upon Him, and my hands have touched Him after a spiritual sort.” There are many such rapturous seasons as this on record in the biographies of good men. I shall quote but one or two, and I hope there are some here who have known them in their own experience. In the life of Mr. Flavel, who was one of the most temperate of the Puritans, and one not at all given to anything like fanaticism, there is an event mentioned which once occurred to him, He said that being once on a journey alone on horseback, the thought of the love of Christ came upon him with great power, and as he rode gently along the road, the thought seemed to increase in force and strength, till at last he forgot all about earth and even where he was. Somehow or other his horse stood still, but he did not notice it; and when he came to himself, through some passer-by observing him, he found that he had bled very copiously during the time, and getting off his horse he washed his face at the brook, and he said, “ I did verily think as I stood there, that if I was not in heaven I could hardly hope to be more blessed in heaven than I was then.” He mounted his horse and rode on to a place of entertainment where he was to pass the night. Supper was brought in, but left untasted on the table. He sat all night long without sleep, enjoying the presence of Christ, and he says, “ I was more rested that night than with any sleep I ever had, and I heard and saw in my soul, by faith, such things as I had never known before.” The like occurred to Mr. Tennant, who was a man who spent many hours in private, and sometimes when it was time to preach he was quite unable to stand unless first carried into his pulpit, when he would put his hands out and lean there, and say such glorious things of Christ, that those who looked upon him verily thought that they looked upon the face of an angel. Rutherford, too, is another specimen. When he used to preach about Christ, he preached so wonderfully, that on any other subject he was not at all like himself; and the Duke of Argyle was once so warmed when Rutherford got upon that subject, that he cried out in church--“ Now, man, ye are on the right strain; keep to it;” and he did keep to it, and the little man’ s thin voice seemed to swell with supernatural grandeur when he began to talk of his precious, precious Lord Jesus, and to extol and exalt him who was the Bridegroom of his soul, his Brother and his blessed Companion. “ Oh, these are flights,” you say. Yes, they are flights indeed, beloved; but if you could get them sometimes, you would come back to the world’ s cares and troubles like giants refreshed with new wine, caring nothing for anything that might happen. Christ would be so sweetly and blessedly within you, that you could bear the burden and think nothing of it, and though the grasshopper was a burden before, you could now carry it right readily. VI. But I want to take you higher than this; not higher in some senses, but higher really, for these raptures are, of course, only like angels’ visits, few and far between; but here is something which may be more lasting, and which, certainly, is a higher state of mind as to the knowledge of Christ. To know Christ sympathetically, is a yet higher stage than any to which we have attained before. It is related of a certain monk, who, having been long in his cell alone, thought whilst in his devotions that he saw the Lord Jesus. Of course the tale is fabulous, but I relate it for the sake of its moral. He thought he saw the Lord before him as crucified, and he heard His voice, speaking sweet and comfortable words to him. Just at that moment, when his soul was in a very flood of delight, he heard the convent bell ring, and it was his turn to go out to the gate and give away bread to the beggars who stood there. Oh, he had never heard that bell ring so dolefully before! It seemed to him the knell of all his joys. The impulse of duty, however, was stronger than that of delight, and he went his way with a heavy heart to distribute the bread. As he came back to his cell, he thought, “ Ah, I shall never see that again! Christ is gone from me, and I shall never know these enjoyments again!” When, to his surprise, there was the vision still, and as he bowed before it with delight, he heard a voice which said, “ If thou hadst stayed I would have gone; but since thou didst my work I tarried to give thee thy reward.” Now, there is a tendency when we have been alone and in private, and have had sweet fellowship with Christ, for us to feel--“ I do not want to go out from this; I do not want to be disturbed just now; I would rather not do anything just now.” I do not suppose there are very many of you who get into this state, but there may be some who think at such times, “ I do not want to preach today; I would rather not do anything; it is best that I should be alone.” Ah, it is a strong temptation, and you must strive against it, and say, “ No, I have enjoyment in my religion, but I did not seek my religion for the enjoyment it would give me. I must look higher than that, to the God I serve, and to the Lord and Master whose I am and whom I serve. I love the jewels He gives me to wear upon my fingers, but I love His person better, and I am not to look upon these rings, and forget to look into His eyes; I love the sweet couch that He makes for me at night, but I am not to lie there and forget the fields that are to be ploughed and the battles that are to be fought. I must be up and doing. The contemplative life must lead me to duty, and then shall I know Christ even as I am known. VII. And now, the last and highest step of all, upon which we can only say a few words, is that which is called by deep writers and experienced believers on this point, the absorbing low of Christ. How shall I tell you what this is? I cannot, except I quote Wesley’ s words-- “ Oh, love Divine, how sweet thou art! When shall I find my willing heart All taken up with thee.” “ I thirst” --can you get as far as that? “ I faint” --that is a high state, indeed I “ I die” --that is the top. “ I thirst, I faint, I die to prove The fulness of redeeming love, The love of Christ to me. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The knowledge of the love of Christ accessible to all It is by the knowledge of Christ that we begin to love God; with the growing love we become capable of receiving a larger knowledge; and every fresh accession of knowledge enriches, invigorates, and expands the love. “ He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” “ The Life is the Light of men.” For that great knowledge of the love of Christ of which Paul is thinking, a great love is necessary. This knowledge, though so wonderful, is not regarded by Paul as a privilege too lofty, a prerogative too Divine, for the commonalty of the Church. The best and highest things in the Kingdom of God are not reserved for a few elect and princely souls. There are gradations of power in the Christian Church and varieties of service. But the knowledge of the love of Christ in its breadth and length and depth and height is accessible to all the saints. It is like the visible heavens which bend over the monotonous plains of human life as well as over its mountains, and flood with the same splendour the cottages of peasants and the palaces of kings. The heavens are always near, and they are equally near to all men, as near to the poor as to the rich, to barbarous as to civilized nations, to the obscurest as to the most illustrious of mankind. It is the same with the knowledge of the love of Christ. No genius or learning can give us any exclusive property in it. The open vision of its glory is not reserved for those who can leave the common paths of men and live in silence and solitude on mountain heights of contemplation. To no prophet or apostle was a knowledge of the love of Christ ever given that we ourselves may not receive. To apprehend “ what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ” --this was all that Paul could ask for himself; he asks it for the Christians at Ephesus; and he describes it as the common blessedness of “ all the saints.” And yet “ it passeth knowledge.” When Paul speaks of the love of Christ, the fire in his heart nearly always bursts into flame. Its “ breadth” cannot be measured, nor its “ length,” nor its “ height,” nor its “ depth.” Immensity is the only adequate symbol of its greatness. But the energy of the love has been revealed.1. It has been revealed by Christ’ s infinite descent, for us sinners and our salvation, from His eternal glory to the limitations of man’ s earthly life; from eternal peace and eternal joy to hunger and thirst and weariness of pain; from the sanctity of heaven to contact with the evil passions and with the evil lives of men; from the immortal honours with which angels and archangels surrounded His throne to the kiss of Judas, to the slander and malice of the priests, to condemnation for blasphemy, to the death of a criminal on the cross; from His infinite blessedness with the Father to the desolation of that awful hour in which He cried, “ My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!” Revealed? No! For the, heights of Divine majesty from which He came rise far beyond the limits of our keenest vision, and we cannot sound the depths of darkness into which He descended to achieve our redemption. The love of Christ “ passeth knowledge.” 2. It is to be measured not merely by what He endured for us, but by the energy of the eternal antagonism between good and evil. In His infinite righteousness He regarded our sin with an abhorrence which our thoughts can never measure, and yet the energy of His love transcended the energy of His righteousness, or rather blended with it and transfigured just resentment into pity; and under the power of this glorious inspiration infinite righteousness, which abhors sin, became infinite mercy for the race that had been guilty of sin, and so restored us to life, to holiness, and to endless joy. 3. Nor was the revelation of His infinite love, which, though revealed, can never be known, exhausted in His incarnation, or in His earthly ministry, or in His death which atoned for the sin of the world. He has risen from the dead and ascended to glory, but He has not forsaken the race He came to save, nor has He withdrawn to Divine realms of untroubled peace remote from the darkness, the confusion, the storms of this present evil world. The kingdom of heaven is founded on earth, and He, its Prince, is here. Unseen, He has been present with those in every generation who have asserted His authority over all nations, and who have entreated men to receive from His love the remission of their sins and eternal life in God. Their sorrows and their joys, their reverses and their triumphs, have been His. The hostility which surrounded Him during His earthly life has been prolonged during the eighteen Christian centuries, has extended from country to country, from race to race, has assumed vaster proportions, and is still undiminished. The fierce and reckless cruelty of Herod has reappeared in the persecutions which have tried the faith and loyalty of innumerable saints. Secular governments, resenting His claims to a throne diviner than theirs, have flung His people to the lions and burnt them at the stake. At the bidding of corrupt priests and of popular fury, judges as base and cowardly as Pilate have condemned to death those whose only crime was loyalty to the truth and to Him. On one day the common people, stirred with a passion of enthusiasm by some great display of His power and goodness, have surrounded Him with shouts of Hosanna, and have hailed Him as their King; on the next they have rejected Him as an impostor, covered Him with infamy, clamored for His destruction. Within the Church itself there has been wide and persistent neglect of His plainest laws, and its spirit has often seemed altogether alien from His own. There has been fierce contention as to who should be the greatest, keen personal ambition for the highest places in the kingdom of heaven. How often has self-confidence, as lofty as Peter’ s, been followed by as deep and as shameful a fall! How often, in hours of darkness and danger, have many, who really loved Christ, forsaken Him and fled! How often have those who were elect to great responsibilities in the Church, and great honours, betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver! How often has the kiss of the traitor come from the lips of a friend! But there is no need to appeal to the gloomy history of Christendom. We ourselves can recall a vacillation in His service which at the beginning of our Christian life we should have regarded as impossible; high resolutions broken almost as soon as they were formed; hours when love for Him kindled into enthusiasm followed by base disobedience to His commandments. Our own history, it is to be feared, has been the history of great multitudes besides. And the love of Christ has not only been unquenched; its fires have never sunk. 4. We are even now only in the early dawn of the supreme revelation; the Divine morning will become brighter and brighter through one millennium of splendour after another, and will never reach its noon. In the resurrection of Christ and His ascension to the throne of God, He has illustrated the immense expansion and development possible to human nature, and His resurrection and glory are the prophecy of our own. Through ages without end, inspired with the life of Christ, and sustained by the exceeding greatness of the Divine power, which wrought in Him when God raised Him from the dead, we shall ascend from height to height of righteousness, of wisdom, and of joy. From age to age with unblenched vision we shall gaze upon new and dazzling manifestations of the light in which God dwells; with powers exalted and enlarged, we shall discharge nobler and yet nobler forms of Divine service; with capacities expanding with our growing delight we shall be filled with diviner and yet diviner bliss; eternity will still lie before us, stretching beyond the farthest limits of vision and of hope; and through eternity the infinite love of Christ will continue to raise us from triumph to triumph, from blessedness to blessedness, from glory to glory. His love “ passeth knowledge.” And yet we are to know it, to know it by the illumination of the Spirit of God. And the knowledge, according to Paul, is to invigorate, enrich, and perfect our higher life, or, to use his own phrase, by the knowledge of “ the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,” we are to “ be filled unto all the fulness of God.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The paradox of Christ’ s love I. The love of Christ has been so manifested as to be patent to the simplest understanding. II. The love of Christ will ever be a mystery beyond our highest reach of knowledge. III. There will be no essential contradiction between the known and the unknown in the love of Christ. IV. It will be for the advantage of the saints to know more and more of the love of Christ. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)A paradox I. An impossibility. “ To know which passeth knowledge.”1. In its beginning.2. In its motive.3. In its tenderness.4. In its immutability.5. In its value.6. In its future expression. II. A possibility. “ To know.”1. In its beginning in us, if not in Him or for us.2. In its effects, if not in its cause. It is a mountain whose base covers the world, and whose peaks are the foundation of the throne of God; but its many lower heights may now be scaled, and will well repay the climber. (P. F. J. Pearce.)Christ’ s love, known and unknown I. There are some respects in which the love of Christ passeth knowledge.1. In its date.2. In its motive.3. In its sacrifices.4. In its benefits. II. There are some respects in which the love of Christ may be known.1. In its scriptural details.2. In its practical application.3. In its practical influence. (G. Brooks.)Christ’ s transcendent love I. The experience of Divine love is an object of desire. To know that we are loved! Is not this one of the chiefest blessings of life? Is it not most true, in a terrestrial sense, that there is no living without some sense of others’ love? Now, the text sets before us the experience of celestial love as an object greatly to be desired. But we cannot know the celestial except through the terrestrial. We cannot understand the Divine apart from human manifestations. Let us, then, in praying this prayer, pray also that we may so live as to know the love which God has seated as an abundant spring in the human hearts around us. II. The experience of Divine love is a satisfying experience.1. There is a satisfaction arising from the possession of riches that is a part of our nature. Well, St. Paul speaks of “ the riches, of God’ s glory” in this connection. 2. There is a satisfaction in the consciousness of power; and St. Paul speaks of being “ strengthened with might by God’ s Spirit” in this connection. 3. There is another kind of satisfaction arising from the consciousness of mental treasures; a memory and an imagination teeming with great thoughts, with beautiful shapes and pictures. This kind of satisfaction is also brought into association with the subject. He speaks of “ the inner man,” and of “ Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.” There is a great satisfaction in being able to form a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ in His glorious character and attributes, and in keeping it before the mind’ s eye. It is a vast mental treasure, even apart from the sense of being an object of His love. 4. The knowledge of love, the apprehension of it as our life inheritance, and the portion of all souls--this is the deepest satisfaction. There is many an humble Christian, who has read nothing, can think but little, whose mind is not stored with ideas, but who is peaceful and happy in religion because he has made the knowledge of love his own--God is his Father, Christ his loving Redeemer who died for him. He finds all his life to be an expression of Divine love. The great cavity of his nature has been filled up, and it is enough. III. The knowledge of Christ’ s love is the knowledge of something most vast, of something infinite. The apostle, with that grand reach of expression which he loves to employ, speaks of its breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and again, of its surpassing knowledge. He means that we should desire to comprehend how exceeding vast, how profound, how boundless, how immeasurable, is the energy of this love. If you are standing, let us say, before Lincoln Minster, when the sunlight is pouring all its glory upon towers and windows and traceries, making the whole object so magically beautiful that you almost wonder whether it is not a dream that is passing before you, you do not want a bystander to begin teasing you with statements of the exact number of feet there are in the length, the breadth, the height of the building. They will not help you to enhance your impression of its magnificence. Or, if you are standing before the vast roaring flood of Niagara, you do not care at the moment of your greatest rapture of wonder to be informed exactly how many gallons of water are going over the fall at each second. These are matters of curiosity, interesting enough in other moods of mind; but when we have to do with the great feelings of awe, of wonder, in the presence of grandeur and sublimity, we wish to escape out of the region of exact figures and measurements. Much more so with this vast thought, the love of Christ. We need not desire, as we are unable to apply to it the measures of time and space. (E. Johnson, M. A.)The matchless love of Christ I. The subject of love mentioned in the text. It is the degree, rather than the nature of this love, which now claims our attention. The love of God and the love of Christ are substantially the same, though they differ considerably in their modes of operation. The Father’ s love appears in the gift of His Son; the love of Christ appears in a cheerful consecration of Himself to the great work of human redemption. The love which could make such a sacrifice, and urge onward to the accomplishment of such a work, must be boundless. Love, according to the character of its object, is simply goodwill, or a compound of goodwill and complacency. The latter is that which the Redeemer exercises towards His people; the former is that which He exercises towards a sinful world.1. The character of its objects. Mankind, in their degraded and ruined condition, are the objects of the Saviour’ s compassion. As the objects of His love, they are comparatively insignificant, morally worthless and extremely guilty. In proportion to the worthlessness of an object, is the intensity of the love by which it is kindly regarded and enriched. 2. The deep humiliation and intense suffering to which this love constrained the Saviour to submit. Some persons are benevolent, or rather seem to be benevolent, up to the point of self-denial, but you never find them going beyond. The world would never have thought so much of the benevolence of Howard, if instead of making the visits of mercy himself, he had employed a number of agents to inquire into the condition of criminals confined in the prisons of Europe. Jesus Christ did not effect the salvation of the world by delegation. It induced Him personally to stoop, and personally to suffer. 3. The misery from which it delivers. Here all comparison must fail. Negro emancipation--the rescue of many from the fierceness of the flames, or the violence of the billows, is nothing compared with the great salvation, which Christ, under the influence of infinite love, has effected. 4. The numbers that might, and the multitudes that actually will, experience the happy effects of this love evince its vast extent. II. The manner in which it should be known. A knowledge of Christ, and especially of His love, is intimately connected with the vigour of every Christian principle and the lustre of every Christian grace,1. Our knowledge of the love of Christ must be extensive. Contracted notions on this subject are unpardonable, and cannot be entertained without dishonour to Christ and serious injury to ourselves. 2. Our knowledge of the love of Christ must be experimental. We must know not merely by report, but by a participation of the blessings it diffuses. It must exist, not merely as Divine light in the intellect, but as sacred fire in the heart. 3. Our knowledge of the love of Christ must be influential. It must lead to action, to right action, to benevolent action, to self-denying action. 4. Our knowledge of the love of Christ must be progressive. There are but few subjects of knowledge that the human mind can exhaust, and certainly the love of Christ is not of their number. (J. Kay.)The love of Christ Chrysostom, speaking of this love of God in Christ, saith, “ Oh, I am like a man digging in a deep spring; I stand here and the water riseth upon me; I stand there and still the water riseth upon me.” But though we cannot ever know it all, yet we may and must grow in the knowledge of this love of Christ, in the searching of this sea that hath neither bank nor bottom, and where, “ the deeper the sweeter.” (John Trapp.)The love of Christ Saith the story: “ In the Roman Forum there gaped a vast chasm which threatened the destruction of the Forum, if not of Rome. The wise men declared that the gulf would never close unless the most precious thing in Rome was cast into it. Then Curtius, a belted knight, mounted his charger, and rightly judging that valour and love of country were the noblest treasures of Rome, he leaped into the gulf. The yawning earth closed upon the great-hearted Roman, for her hunger was appeased. Perchance it is but an idle tale; but what I have declared is truth. There gaped between God and man a dread abyss, deep as hell, wide as eternity, and only the best that heaven contained could fill it. That best was He, the peerless Son of God, the matchless, perfect Man, and He came, laying aside His glory, making Himself of no reputation, and He sprang into the gulf, which there and then closed once for all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Past knowledge I. The love of Christ is wonderful, because it is impartial (see Matthew 5:45). Look at the sunshine pouring down over a great city, and think on what different characters the light falls. The same sun shines on the Church and its faithful worshippers, and on the house of shame and infamy. The same light gilds the dying bed of the Christian and the couch of the infidel and blasphemer. The same beam glitters on the blessed altar of the faithful, and on the cell of the impenitent murderer. Look at the sunshine and the shower in the country. The fields of the earnest, prayerful man, and those of the unbelieving, prayerless scoffer lie golden under the same sunlight, are watered by the same showers. And why is this so? Surely it is a type of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. We shall get to know more of the love of Christ if we learn to be more impartial in our love for our fellow men. II. The love of Christ is wonderful in its effects. In all the long roll of heroes, there are none so great as those who fought under the banner of Christ’ s love. Feeble old men, little children, weak women, were transformed by that marvellous power; they could do all things through Christ who strengthened them. Did you ever read, brethren, how the last fight of gladiators in the Coliseum ended? It was when Rome had become Christian, but still the cruel sports of the people had not been entirely given up. After a famous victory, the emperor, a feeble boy, and all the great men of Rome, went to the crowded theatre to witness the amusements given in honour of the triumph. After the harmless sports were over some gladiators entered the arena armed with sharp swords. The people shouted with delight because the old savage amusements of their heathen days were restored to them. Suddenly an old man, dressed in the habit of a hermit, and unknown to all, sprang into the arena, and declared that as Christian people they must not suffer men to slay each other thus. An angry cry rose from the eager crowd. The gladiators, disappointed of their gain, menaced the hermit fiercely, crying, “ back, old man, for thy life.” But the stranger stood fearless before that angry mob, he heeded not the swords of the gladiators, nor the yells of the people, but solemnly protested against the deed of blood. In another moment he lay dead on the red sand, pierced by a dozen wounds. He died, but his words lived. When the people saw the fearless courage of a weak old man, shame filled their hearts; the sports were stopped, and never again did the gladiators fight in the Coliseum. III. The love of Christ is wonderful in its effect on our work. It is a common saying that such and such a work is a labour of love; and, believe me, that is the best done of all which is done for love. Long ago, there was an old cathedral somewhere abroad, I cannot tell you where. On one of the arches was sculptured a face of exceeding beauty. It was long hidden, but one day a ray of sunshine lighted up the matchless work, and from that time, on the days when the light shone on the face, crowds came to look at its loveliness. The history of that sculpture is a strange one. When the Cathedral was being built, an old man, worn with years and care, came to the architect, and begged to be allowed to work there. Fearing his age and failing sight might cause the old man to injure the carving, the master set him to work in a dark part of the roof. One day they found the stranger lying dead, with the tools of his craft around him, and his still face turned up towards that other face which he had carved. It was a work of surpassing beauty, and without doubt was the face of one whom the artist had long since loved and lost. When the craftsmen looked upon it, they all agreed--“ this is the grandest work of all, it is the work of love.” We, my brothers, are all set to do some work here in the temple of our lives, and the best, the most beautiful, the most enduring, will be that which we do because the love of Christ constraineth us. IV. The love of Christ is wonderful in its power of pardon. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)The love of Christ I. An interesting subject. It is the “ love of Christ.” The love of Christ would furnish us with a thousand sources of reflection; but we shall confine ourselves to one view of it only. It is the incomprehensibility of this love. He tells us it “ passeth knowledge.”1. Witness the number of its objects. It is but a few that the bounty of a human benefactor reaches and relieves. We pity an individual. We take up a family. We explore a neighbourhood. The liberality of a Thornton flows in various channels, through different parts of a country. The compassion of a Howard visits the miserable in other lands, after weeping over the dungeoned victims of his own. But a “ multitude, which no man can number, out of every nation, and people, and tongue, and kindred,” will forever adore the riches of the Redeemer’ s love. 2. Witness the value of its benefits. 3. Witness the unworthiness of the partakers. 4. Witness the expensiveness of its sacrifices. The only quality in the love of many is its cheapness. It will endure no kind of self-denial. 5. Witness the perpetuity of its attachment. How rare is a friend that loveth at all times! How many fail, especially in the day of trouble! 6. Witness the tenderness of its regards. II. Here is a desirable attainment. It is to know it. But does not the apostle say, that this love “ passeth knowledge” ? How then does he pray that we may know it? Can we know that which is unknowable? I answer, we may know that in one respect which we cannot know in another; we may know that by grace which we cannot know by nature; we may know that, in the reality of its existence, which we cannot know in the mode; we may know that, in the effects, which we cannot know in the cause; we may know that in its uses, which we cannot know in its nature; we may know that increasingly, which we cannot know perfectly. We therefore observe, with reference to your knowledge of this love--1. Your ideas of it may be clear and consistent. 2. Your views of it may be more confidential and appropriating. Your doubts and fears, with regard to your own interest in it, may yield to hope; and that hope may become the full assurance of hope. 3. Your views of it may be more impressive, more influential. III. This leads us to remark, a blessed consequence: “ That ye may be filled with all the fulness of God.” If we consider man in his natural state, he is empty of God; if in his glorified state, he is full of God, or, as the apostle says, “ God is all in all” ; but, in his gracious state, he has a degree of both of his original emptiness and his final plenitude. He is not what he was; neither is he what he will be. His state is neither night nor day; but dawn: the darkness is going off, and the splendour is coming on. (W. Jay.)The surpassing love of Christ The love of Christ is too deep for any created understanding to fathom; it is unsearchable love, and it is so in divers respects.1. It is unsearchable, in respect of its antiquity; no understanding of man can trace it back to its first spring; it flows from one eternity to another. We receive the fruits and effects of it now; but, O how ancient is that root that bears them! He loved us before this world was made, and will continue so to do, when it shall be reduced into ashes. 2. The freeness of the love of Christ passes knowledge. No man knows, nor can any words express, how free the love of Christ to His people is. It is said (Isaiah 55:8), “ My thoughts are not your thoughts.” In My thoughts, it is like itself, free, rich, and unchangeable; but in your thoughts it is limited and narrowed, pinched in within your strait and narrow conceptions; that it is not like itself, but altered according to the model and platform of creature, according to which you draw it in your minds. Alas! we do but alter and spoil His love, when we think there is anything in us, or done by us, that can be a motive, inducement, or recompence to it. His love is so free that it pitched itself upon us before we had any loveliness in us at all. 3. The bounty and liberality of the love of Christ to His people passeth knowledge. Who can number, or value the fruits of His love? They are more than the sands upon the seashore. It would weary the arm of an angel to write down the thousandth part of the effects of His love, which come to the share of any particular Christian in this world. Sins pardoned; dangers prevented; wants supplied. 4. The constancy of Christ’ s love to His people passeth knowledge. No length of time, no distance of place, no change of condition, either with Him or us, can possibly make any alteration of His affections towards us (Hebrews 13:8). So then, the love of Christ is a love transcending all creature love, and human understanding. We read in Romans 5:7-8, that “ peradventure for a good man, some would even dare to die” ; but we never find where any, beside Jesus Christ, would lay down his life for enemies. It is recorded as an unparalleled instance of love in Damon and Pithias, the two Sicilian philosophers, that each had courage enough to die for his friend. One of them being condemned to die by the tyrant, and desiring to give the last farewell to his family, his friend went into prison for him, as his surety to die for him, if he returned not at the appointed time. But he did not die; yea, he had such a confidence in his friend, that he would not suffer him by default to die for him; and if he had, yet he had died for his friend. But such was the love of Christ, that it did not only put Him into danger of death, but put Him actually unto death, yea, the worst of deaths, and that for His enemies. O what manner of love is this! We read of the love that Jacob had for Rachel, and how he endured both the cold of winter, and heat of summer, for her sake. But what is this to the love of Jesus, who for us endured the heat of God’ s wrath? Beside, she was beautiful, but we unlovely. David wished for Absalom his son, “ Would God I had died for thee!” But it was but a wish; and had it come to the proof, David would have shrinked from death, for all the affection he bare his beautiful son. But Christ actually gave His life for us, and did not only wish He had done it. O love, transcending the love of creatures; yea, and surmounting all creature knowledge! The uses follow. If the love of Christ pass knowledge, O then admire it! yea, live and die in the wonder and admiration of the love of Christ? As it is a sign of great weakness to admire small and common things, so it speaks great stupidity not to be affected with great and unusual things. O Christian! if thou be one that conversest with the thoughts of this love, thou can’ st not but admire it; and the more thou studiest, the more still wilt thou be astonished at it. And among the many wonders that will appear in the love of Christ, these two will most of all affect thee, viz.: 1. That ever it pitched at first on thee.2. That it is not, by so many sins, quenched towards thee. (J. Flavel.)The love of Christ known and beyond knowledge In form, but not in idea, the text is paradoxical. There is certainly a high and precious sense in which it is the privilege and the calling of the children of God to attain to a conscious apprehension of spiritual things in a form and by processes that lie beyond the range of the natural understanding. It is this for which the apostle here prays. I. Certain things as to which the love of Christ passes knowledge.1. Respecting its originating causes. We love whatever seems lovely to us, either because of the possession of amiable qualities and attributes of character, or because of the existence of certain recognized relations to ourselves that call for our affections. Beyond these conditions, and independent of them, we are incapable of conceiving how the affection of love can come into existence or exercise; and yet it is very certain that in our case these conditions were not found in us towards God. While men were yet sinners, enemies, hateful and haters of God, the Divine love moved forth guided by heavenly wisdom, and sustained by the Divine omnipotence, to redeem and save and exalt to glory the ruined offspring of a fallen ancestry. All this entirely “ passeth knowledge.” 2. In respect to this degree, as seen in its operations, the Divine love to man passes knowledge. 3. The love of Christ passes knowledge in respect to its long suffering. As it began without any worthiness on our part, so it is continued towards us despite our disobedience and ingratitude. 4. In the bounty of its provisions (1 Corinthians 2:9). II. Certain things as to which the love of Christ may be known.1. We may know the love of Christ as a great truth revealed in the Scriptures. 2. The gospel, which is the manifestation of the love of Christ, may be known as a grand remedial scheme and dispensation of the grace of God. 3. We may know the love of Christ by the experience of His saving power. 4. We may know the love of Christ by His conquest of sin in us. 5. We may know the love of Christ by the victory which He gives us over death. (D. Curry, D. D.)Knowing the love of Christ I. Do you know the love of Christ? II. Do you know it in such wise as to feel at the same time that it passeth knowledge? III. Do you at once experience and exhibit the effect of knowing it, in that you are filled with all the fulness of God? (T. Dale, M. A.)Christ’ s love What beautiful emblems of Christ’ s love are the two grandest objects of nature, sapphire sea and sapphire sky; the boundless extent of heaven’ s blue field cannot be measured even by the astronomer; so the length and breadth, and height and depth of the love of Christ surpass all knowledge. We know something of what is nearest us of the sky, the human side of it, us it were. That part which lies immediately above our earth is familiar to us, from the offices of beauty and usefulness which it serves; the firmament in this respect shows forth the handiwork of God in ministering continually to our wants. But the profound abysses of blue beyond, the eternal, unchangeable heavens that declare God’ s glory, and that seemingly have no relation to man, are utterly incomprehensible to us; the very stars themselves only give us light to show the infinity of space in which they are scattered. So the love of Christ in its human aspect, as displayed in the work and blessings of redemption, and in offices of care and kindness to us, is so far comprehensible, for otherwise we could not build our trust upon it, and St. Paul would not speak of knowing it; but its infinite fulness, its divine perfection, its relation to the Universe, is utterly beyond our knowledge, and eternity itself, though spent in acquiring larger and brighter views of it, will fail to exhaust the wondrous theme. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 3:20-21 Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.Grace abounding It is necessary that we should emphasize the fact that this describes the Divine disposition; for although men think, perhaps, that it makes but little difference, if God only does what we ask, whether He does it from a direct, voluntary purpose, or whether it is the tendency of the Divine mind previous to our petition, yet it does make a great deal of difference. It makes, perhaps, but little difference to me whether a river is supplying Brooklyn with water, or whether it is supplied by a reservoir; but it does make a difference in respect to abundance and continuity. There is that old iron slave, the steam engine--the only slave that you have a right to keep in bondage--and night and day it stands lifting, and lifting, and lifting the vast supplies of water, and pouring them over into the Ridgewood reservoir. I know that there will be enough; but when you are talking about endlessness, copiousness, what is this compared with that which I see every day under my chamber window, where the whole ocean sweeps in and out, and, night and day, without pump, or steam, or any like mechanical force, is always there, as it was before there was a man on these shores, and as it will be after the last man shall have died in future ages? The copiousness, the abundance of the ever-flowing ocean, may fitly represent the abundance of the Divine thought, and mercy, and goodness; where most men think of God as one from whom favours are obtained, if at all, by what may almost be called the pleading of prayer; by the bringing to bear upon Him influences which at last persuade Him to grant the things asked for, so that when the persuasion stops, the supply stops. Many seem to think that prayer is but an engine that lifts--abundantly lifts, it may be--blessings upon the heads of those that employ it; but that if the engine stops for a moment, the reservoir will run dry. No! it is the eternal disposition of God to be full of love, and mercy, and kindness, and He inspires in you those impulses which lead you to go and ask Him for those things which you need. Now this quality of the Divine disposition is shadowed forth in God’ s natural government. When I look into nature, I see--what? Not sticks, stones, flowers, trees--I see Him that made them. I see things that were created by Christ Jesus. When I look upon the heavens of the natural world, I behold Him who made the natural world. If I see frugality, narrowness of compass, want of variety, I am not mistaken as to the disposition of the Creator; but if, on the other hand, I find abundance, superabundance, endless change, and endless variety, I cannot be mistaken as to their meaning. In the revelations of nature, then, we see God’ s disposition. We see His housekeeping. These are His gardens; these are His fields; this is His colouring--His frescoing; these are His seasons; and I can, from these elements in nature, infer His disposition, as much as I can infer a man’ s disposition from those things which go to make up His housekeeping. What is their language? Do they not corroborate the declaration of our text? Is He not a God that does exceeding abundantly beyond what we ask or think? Variety is another term for abundance. From the infinite variety that abounds throughout nature, one would think that God never wanted to have two things to be alike. An endless diversity, that tends to endless unity, is the characteristic of creation. Abundance by continuity and succession is another of these hints; for everything which takes place in nature occurs in such a way as constantly to link it with something that is to come. There is a tendency in nature to reproduce and continue, so that there shall not only be great variety and great abundance at any one time, but greater variety and greater abundance in time to come. Abundance by increase affords an illustration of the Divine nature. Men say, “ We get just according to what we do.” They suppose that the effect which we gain from natural laws is measured by the cause which we employ. It is not true. I plant a single kernel of Indian corn, and I gain from that kernel a stalk with two or three ears, and not less than a hundred kernels on each ear. I plant one kernel and get three hundred. Is there any proportion between what I do and what I get? The seedsman goes forth, sowing not one seed, but many seeds. He, taking them, and scarcely knowing their nature, gives them to the furrow, and they germinate, and the earth nurses them in its bosom, and persuades them to come forth, and the wind searches for them, and the dews and rains hunt them, and all warming and stimulating influences begin to play upon them, and they give back not according to what the sower gave to the earth, not according to the power which he has exerted upon them, but according to that nature which God has infused into the material creation; and therefore they give abundantly beyond what the sower did, and beyond what he had reason to expect before he had experience of God’ s bounty. On my summer nook stands a venerable apple tree, probably a hundred and fifty years old. It has now lost much of its hair. It is dead and bald at the top. I let it stand because it is a sentinel of ages. It has buried generation upon generation. It heard the old revolutionary cannon; balls fell not far from its foot. For probably a hundred years it has borne its annual crop of apples, and a great abundance of them. There was a time when a boy eating an apple, took from his mouth a seed, and snapped it, and it fell into the grass, and the rain worked it into the soil, and the soil coaxed it to grow. That little seed of an apple, not so large as your fingernail, struck down its root, and lifted up its trunk, which has stood the greater part of two centuries, and produced a thousand bushels of fruit and myriads of seeds. Now, is God’ s nature indicated by this? Yes, because the way God makes the natural world act indicates how He thinks. It indicates what His thoughts and tendencies are, and these mark His disposition. Would that we had a more frequent sense of God’ s bounty! No man can look upon what he brings to the work, and what the work becomes in his hand, without being humbled in view of his own weakness, nor I trust, also, without being filled with admiration and reverence for that loving Heart that does exceeding abundantly more than we ask or think. If these views and experiences are correct, there is every encouragement for men to ask in prayer for what they need. Now how have you been dealing with this God who has dealt with you on this pattern of doing exceeding abundantly more than you asked or thought? You have treated Him on the assumption that He was penurious, and willing to give only on terms that were strict and severe. Many men seem to shrink from prayer as though it were a matter of doubt whether they could pray. God, then, does not limit Himself by the desert of those to whom He gives mercies, but takes His patterns from the largeness and generosity of His own nature. He pleases Himself by giving. (H. W. Beecher.)Measureless power and endless glory The form of the text marks the confidence of St. Paul’ s prayer. The exuberant fervour of his faith, as well as his natural impetuosity and ardour, comes out in the heaped up words expressive of immensity and duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted lips, the flight of his arrow to the mark. He is gazing on God, confident that he has not asked in vain. Let us look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to expect great things of God. I. The measure of the power to which we trust. Now there are three main forms under which this standard, or measure, of the Redeeming Power is set forth in this Epistle, and it will help us to grasp the greatness of the apostle’ s thought if we consider these. Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of the preceding prayer, “ that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory.” The measure then, of the gift that we may hope to receive is the measure of God’ s own fulness: The “ riches of His glory” can be nothing less than the whole uncounted abundance of that majestic and far-shining nature, as it pours itself forth in the dazzling perfectnesses of its own self-manifestation. And nothing less than this great treasure is to be the limit and standard of His gift to us. But another form in which the standard, or measure, is stated in this letter is: “ The working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20); or, as it is put with a modification, “ grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ” (Ephesians 4:7). That is to say, we have not only the whole riches of the Divine glory as the measure to which we may lift our hopes, but lest that celestial brightness should seem too high above us, and too far from us, we have Christ in His Human-Divine manifestation, and especially in the great fact of the resurrection, Set before us, that by Him we may learn what God wills we should become. In Him we see what man may become, and what His followers must become. The limits of that power will not be reached until every Christian soul is perfectly assimilated to that likeness, and bears all its beauty in his face, nor till every Christian soul is raised to participation in Christ’ s dignity and sits on His throne. But there is a third form in which this same standard is represented. That is the form which is found in our text, and in other places of the Epistle “ According to the power that worketh in us.” What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in us? And thus we have the measure, or standard, set forth in terms respectively applying to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For the first, the riches of His glory; for the second, His resurrection and ascension; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. The first carries us up into the mysteries of God, where the air is almost too subtle for our gross lungs; the second draws nearer to earth and points us to an historical fact that happened in this every day world; the third comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret it by the light of these other measures, will not yield results as great as theirs, and open before us the same fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity to the Divine nature. II. The relation of the Divine working to our thoughts and desires. The apostle, in his fervid way, strains language to express how far the possibility of the Divine working extends. He is able, not only to do all things, but “ beyond all things” --a vehement way of putting the boundless reach of that gracious power. And what he means by this “ beyond all things” is more fully expressed in the next words, in which he labours by accumulating synonyms to convey his sense of the transcendent energy which waits to bless: “ exceeding abundantly above what we ask.” And as, alas! our desires are but shrunken and narrow beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit when he adds, “ above what we think.” He has been asking wonderful things, and yet even his farthest reaching petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of God’ s power. One might think that even it could go no further than filling us “ with all the fulness of God.” Nor can it; but it may far transcend our conceptions of what that is, and astonish us by its surpassing our thoughts, no less than it shames us by exceeding our prayers. Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only about the inward gifts of God’ s grace. That grace is like the figures in the Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger than a nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent whose walls expanded or contracted at the owner’ s wish--we may enlarge them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. We are not straitened in God, but in ourselves. “ According to thy faith,” is a real measure of the gift received, even though. “ according to the fiches of His glory” be the measure of the gift bestowed. Note, again. III. The glory that springs from the Divine work. “ The glory of God” is the lustre of His own perfect character, the bright sum total of all the blended brilliancies that compose His name. When that light is welcomed and adored by men, they are said to “ give glory to God” and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the working of God’ s power on His redeemed children will issue in setting forth the radiance of His name yet more, and a prayer that it may. So we have here the great thought expressed in many places of Scripture, that the highest exhibition of the Divine character for the reverence and love--of the whole universe, shall we say?--lies in His work on Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby on them. Amid all the majesty of His works and all the blaze of His creation, this is what He presents as the highest specimen of His power--the Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied and conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the footsteps of their Lord. How dusty and toil worn the little group of Christians that landed at Puteoli must have looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and entered Rome! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher and priest and patrician would have curled their lips, if they had been told that in that little knot of Jewish prisoners lay a power before which theirs would cower and finally fade! Even so is it still. Among all the splendour of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive tawdrinesses of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor enough; and yet it is to His redeemed children that God has entrusted His praise, and in their hands He has lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory. Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of yourselves who have it laid upon you as a crown. His honour is in our hands. We are the “ secretaries of His praise.” IV. The eternity of the work and of the praise. As in the former clauses, the idea of the transcendent greatness of the power of God was expressed by accumulated synonyms, so here the kindred thought of its eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar aggregation. The language creaks and labours, as it were, under the weight of the great conception. Literally rendered, the words are--“ to all generations of the age of the ages” --a remarkable fusing together of two expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely congruous. We can understand “ to all generations” as expressive of duration as long as birth and death shall last. We can understand “ the age of the ages” as pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are “ ages” ; but the blending of the two is but an unconscious acknowledgment that the speech of earth, saturated, as it is, with the colouring of time, breaks down in the attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly that solemn conception is the one intended by this strange phrase. The work is to go on forever and ever, and with it the praise. As the ages which are the beats of the pendulum of eternity come and go, more and more of God’ s power will flow out to us, and more and more of God’ s glory will be manifested in us. It must be so. For God’ s gift is infinite, and man’ s capacity of reception is indefinitely capable of increase. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)God’ s ability The apostle does not give this text as a detached sentence. It is the culmination of a statement; it is something that comes after a serious, anxious effort which he himself has made; and we must look into the preliminary statement if we would know how Paul was dazzled, overwhelmed, made speechless by the infinite capacity of God to transcend all mortal prayer and all finite imagination. The apostle has been uttering a prayer which reads thus:--“ That He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man--able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask: That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith--able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask: That ye being rooted and grounded in love--Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask: May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge--Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask: That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God--Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask.” Reading the prayer in this manner, using the text as a kind of refrain to each petition, and each petition itself seeming to exhaust the very mercy and love of God, we get some notion of the apostle’ s conception of God’ s infinite wealth, infinite grace, and infinite willingness to give. Understand, then, that in coming to God and availing ourselves of the doctrine of this text, it is incumbent upon us that we should specify what we want from God. Suppose that a number of petitioners should go to the legislature with a petition worded thus: “ We humbly pray your honourable house to do everything for the nation, to take infinite care of it, to let the affairs of the nation tax your attention day and night, and lavish all your resources upon the people.” Suppose that a petition like that should be handed into the House of Commons, what would be the fate of it? It would be laughed down, and the only reason, the only good reason, why the petitioners should not be confined to Bedlam would be, lest their insanity should alarm the inmates. That is not a petition. It is void by generality; by referring to all it misses everything. You must specify what you want when you go to the legislature. You must state your case with clearness of definition, and with somewhat of argument. If it be so in our social, political prayers, shall we go to Almighty God with a vagueness which means nothing, with a generality which makes no special demand upon his heart. Read the text in the light of the gospel, and you will see the fulness of its glory, so far as it can be seen by mortal vision. Ask anything of God and I am prepared to quote these words of the text in reply. What will you ask? Let us in the first instance ask what we all want--whatever may be our condition, age, circumstances. Let us ask for pardon. Is your prayer, God forgive my sins? Now you may apply the apostle’ s words: “ He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that you ask.” You cannot conceive God’ s notion of pardon. You have an idea of what you mean by forgiveness; but when you have exhausted your own notion of the term forgiveness, you have not shown the Divine intent concerning the soul that is to be forgiven. When God forgives, He does not merely pardon, barely pardon--He does not by some great straining effort of His love, just come within reach of the suppliant, and lay upon his heart the blessing which is besought. He pardons with pardons. He multiplies to pardon! What will you ask for now? Ask for sanctification. Is your prayer, Sanctify me body, soul, and spirit? Then I am ready once more to quote you the apostle’ s text: “ He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Now this ought to stimulate us in all saintly progress, to inspire us in the study of Divine truth, to recover our jaded energies, and tempt, lure, and draw us by the mighty compulsion of inexhaustible reward. This is the peculiar glory of Christian study--that it does not exhaust the student. His weakness becomes his strength. At sunset he is stronger than at sunrise; because Christian study does not tax any one power of the mind unduly. It trains the whole being, the imagination, the fancy, the will, the emotion; lifts up the whole nature equally, with all the equability of complete power--not by snatches and spasms of strength, but with the sufficiency, breadth, and compass of power which sustains the balance always. This ought to rebuke those of us who imagine we have finished our Christian education. I believe there are some persons in the world who are under the impression that they have finished God’ s Book. They say they have “ read it through.” There is a poor sense in which it may be read through; but there is a deeper, truer sense in which we can never get through the Book of God. It is an inexhaustible study--new every day, like morning light. You have seen splendour before, but until this morning you never saw this light. So it is with this great wonderful Book of God in the study of it. God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Here then is a stimulus, a spur to progress, a call to deeper study. We think we have attained truth. We have not attained all that is meant by the word truth. No man who knows himself and who knows God will say that he has been led into all the chambers of God’ s great palace of truth. This is the sign of progress; this is the charter of the profoundest humility. The more we know the less we know. We see certain points of light here and there, but the great unexplored regions of truth stretch mile on mile beyond all our power to traverse the wondrous plain. How is it with us today then? Are we fagged men, exhausted students? Do we sit down under the impression that there is nothing more to be known? If we have that idea let us seek to recover our strength and to recover our inspiration by the word--He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. There are attainments we have not made, depths we have not sounded, and heights, oh, heights! We can but look up and wonder, expect, adore. If this be so, we ought to look calmly, with a feeling of chastened triumph, upon all hindrances, difficulties, and obstacles in the way of Christ’ s kingdom upon the earth. We may look at these in relation to our own puny strength, and quail before them. But, we are not to depend upon our own resources, but upon God’ s, in attempting the removal of everything that would intercept the progress of His holy kingdom in the world. There is a great mountain: I cannot beat it down, all the instruments I can bring to bear upon it seem utterly powerless. But God touches the mountains and they smoke. The Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and great Himalayas, shall go up like incense before Him, and His kingdom shall have smooth uninterrupted way. I say, in my hours of weakness, yonder is a stone which I cannot remove. If I could get clear of that obstacle all would be right; but the stone is heavy, the stone is sealed, the stone is watched. What can I do? I go up the hill wearily, almost hopelessly, and behold! the stone is rolled away, and on the obstacle there sits the angel of God. Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think! It may be difficult for some minds to follow the argument out spiritually; we must therefore descend to illustration. Here is a very clever artist, who has made a beautiful thing he brings before us, and we gather round it and say, “ It is most exquisitely done. What is this, sir?” “ That,” replies the artist, “ is my notion of a flower, and I am going to call that flower a rose.” “ Well, it is a beautiful thing--very graceful, and altogether beautifully executed: you are very clever.” So he is, and now that exhausts his notion of the rose. But let God just hand in a full-blown rose from the commonest garden in the world, and where is your waxen beauty? Underneath every leaf is written, “ He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Let Him just send the sweet spring morning in upon us with the first violet, and all your artificial florists, if they have one spark of wit left, will pick up their goods and go off as soon as possible. He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. The meanest insect that flutters in the warm sunlight is a grander thing than the finest marble statue ever chiselled by the proudest sculptor. Now we are going to have a very festive day. We are going to pluck flowers and fashion them into arches, and we shall make our arches very high, very beautiful--and, so far as the flowers go, they are most gorgeously and exquisitely beautiful. We have put up the wires; we have festooned these wires, and we say, “ Now, is not that very beautifully done?” and of course, we who always drink the toast “ our noble selves,” say yes. But God has only to take a few raindrops and strike through them the sunlight, and where are your pasteboard arches and your skilful working! He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. My fellow students, in this holy mystery, believe me, as in nature, so in the higher kingdom of grace. As in matter He beats all your sculptors, and is in all schools infinitely superior to men, so in the revelation of truth to the heart, in the way of redeeming man from sin, in the way of sanctifying fallen corrupt human nature--all your theorists and speculators, all your plaster dealers and social reformers and philanthropic regenerators, must get out of the way as artificial florists when God comes to us with the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. Then let us leave all inferior teachers and go straight to the Master Himself. We have to deal with sin, and the only answer to sin, which answer is comprehended in one word, is the Cross. God’ s foolishness is better than our wisdom. God’ s weakness is infinitely superior to our strength. “ He everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” (J. Parker, D. D.)Abundant answer to prayer Miss Hopkins, in her story of Miss Robinson’ s work among our soldiers at Portsmouth, relates that when the “ Institute” was first projected Miss Robinson one day went to her, almost in despair at the hopeless aspect of affairs. Opposition to the scheme was strong, and funds were sorely needed. The lookout was dark enough, but the eye of faith pierced the gloom. “ We knelt down,” says Miss Hopkins, “ and prayed that, if it was His will, He would give us the means to stay this flood of iniquity that was sweeping away His work in the army, and enable us to do the right thing. I fear our faith was not strong enough,” she continues, “ to ask for more than a few hundreds, but still it was the prayer of faith. The answer to that prayer was £15,000.” Divine ability for human necessity In this remarkable verse we have a wonderful instance of St. Paul’ s cumulative way of speaking. Whenever I get fairly into one of St. Paul’ s Epistles, I always feel as though the man is in bonds. Language is too poor a medium for him. He cannot get out all that is in for the dear life of him, eloquent though he was. If you had asked him about it, he would have said, “ Language is bankrupt. It will not meet the case.” I remember once, in the north of England, hearing a very celebrated, and eloquent, and powerful Welsh preacher, who was wonderfully fluent in the English tongue, too, but he was preaching to a full congregation of English people, and his soul was in his message. It flashed in his eye, it fired his Celtic tongue, and he was so thoroughly elevated and raised by the nobility of his theme, and the thoughts within him burned and breathed at such a rate, that Saxon would not do, and he paused a moment and said, “ Oh, if you only understood Welsh!” Then he would have been able, in his more familiar tongue, to climb somewhat higher to the point he aimed at. I think that it is, just like that with St. Paul. He beggars language, and then he says: “ It is not enough.” Now look at it. There is that passage in which he compares the light afflictions of the present with the glory of the future. Do you see how he piles it up? He says, “ A far more exceeding weight of glory.” And if you analyse this verse, it will take you a long time to read it. Let us try; it is worth it. “ God is able.” Thank God for that. “ God is able.” “ God is able to do.” Plenty of gods who can boast. “ God is able to do.” “ God is able to do abundantly.” “ God is able to do exceeding abundantly.” “ God is able to do exceeding abundantly all.” “ God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all.” “ God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask.” “ God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.” Here I think he flung his pen down and said, “ It is no use.” It could not be. He climbed up the ladder to the very highest rung that words could take him; and then he got on a higher ladder, and climbed up as far as thoughts could take him; and then he wanted Jacob’ s ladder to reach to the throne of God in order to tell us what God will do to any man who says in his heart, “ Be my God.” The way in which Paul moves upward in his passion, struck me once when I was in Wales. I was moving up a high and rocky slope. First of all it led me through a meadow. After the meadow there was an upward pathway through a wood. Up a little higher and I caught a gleam of the river beyond. Higher still I saw the shaggy rocks, and tall hills behind; higher still and I saw the golden cornfields at their feet. And still higher went I, until right away yonder on the horizon I saw the black-capped mountains higher than them all. And still I had to rise, and rising at last I stood upon the summit, and said, as I looked around, “ This is perfection.” But it was not; for on turning in one direction I perceived a sight I had not caught before. What do you think it was? It was a glimpse of the infinite sea stretching away beyond all ken, to meet the infinite sky. St. Paul gets up to that height, and then he wants a pair of wings to fly with. (J. J. Wray.)An Omnipotent Helper Let us note some of the applications of the truth here taught of God’ s Almightiness to help. I am in the grasp of some great temptation. I long to break away. I have tried; but I am impotent. The case seems hopeless. Like a spent, exhausted swimmer, I am about to give over, and to sink helpless beneath the dark waves. But what is that I hear above the noise of the waves? “ Call on Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that thou canst ask or think; call on Him.” He is mightier than sin, stronger than the strongest temptation. Satan is bold. He has great courage. His victories are countless. “ But Satan trembles, when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees.” I once walked the deck of an ocean steamer with a man who related to me the sad story of his life. There had been a time when he thought he was converted, and was united to a Christian Church. For years he thought he knew the peace and joy of a justifying faith. But he had yielded to passion, and now thought his case utterly hopeless. I spoke to him of reform, recovery. “ Impossible,” he said. “ You know nothing,” he added, “ of the terrible might of a reigning passion. Resolution and effort are useless. I am lost.” Such were his declarations, as we paced the deck beneath the midnight stars. And it was then that, admitting all that he said, I rejoiced to point him to One who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that he could ask or think, an Omnipotent Helper. Reader, I know not what there may be that is peculiar and disheartening in your case, but I do knew you are not beyond the help of the Infinite Helper. All you can ask, or even think, and more too, He is able to do. “ Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” (W. Lamson, D. D.)Abundance The grace of God is marked by the affluence which characterizes all His works. What abundance in that sun which has shone so many thousand years, and yet presents no appearance of exhaustion, no sign of decay! What abundance of stars bespangle the sky; of leaves clothe the forest; of raindrops fall in the shower; of dews sparkle on the grass; of snowflakes within the winter hills; of flowers adorn the meadow; of living creatures that, walking on the ground, or playing in the waters, or burrowing in the soil, or dancing in the sunbeams, or flying in the air, find a home in every element--but that red fire in which, type of hell, all beauty perishes and all life expires! This lavish profusion of life, and forms, and beauty, in nature, is an emblem of the affluence of grace, of God’ s saving, sanctifying grace. In Christ all fulness dwells. We are complete in Him. There is in His blood sufficient virtue to discharge all the sins of a guilty world, and in His Spirit sufficient power to cleanse the foulest and break the hardest heart. Ye are not straitened in Me, says God, but in yourselves. Try Me herewith, He says--ask, seek, knock! Who does will find that it is only a faint image of the plenitude of grace we behold in that palace scene where the king, looking kindly on a lovely suppliant, bends from his throne to extend his golden sceptre, and says, “ What is thy petition, and what is thy request, Queen Esther, and it shall be given thee to the half of my kingdom?” (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God’ s grace They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret, as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord; but, even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened. They take God’ s ticket to heaven, and then put their baggage on their shoulders, and tramp, tramp, the whole way there afoot. (H. W. Beecher.)Distrusting God’ s sufficiency A man says to his agent, “ I want you to go on a business tour for me. First go to Buffalo. Here is the money, and here are the directions that yea will need while there. Thence go to Cleveland, and there you will find remittances and further directions. When you get to Cincinnati you will find other remittances and other directions. At St. Louis you will find others; and at New Orleans still others.” “ But,” says the agent, “ suppose when I get to Cleveland, or any of the other places, I should not find anything?” He is so afraid that he will not, that he asks the man to give him money and directions for the whole tour before he starts. “ No,” says the man, “ it will be sufficient if you have the money and directions you need for each place when you get to it: and when you do get to it you will find them there.” Now, God sends us in the same way. He says, “ Here is your duty for today, and the means with which to do it. Tomorrow you will find remittances and further directions; next week you will find other remittances and other directions; next month you will find others; and next year still others. I will be with you at all times, and will see that you have strength for every emergency.” (H. W. Beecher.)Unmeasured bounty Exceeding poverty of thought is one of the characteristics of fallen man. When the poison of sin began to work, it introduced this poverty--those poor low thoughts about God, which made man think that his Maker was jealous of his knowing too much. And ever since, has this pauperizing influence kept working--always narrowing, always lowering, ever tending to what is mean and small. And with our poverty of mind has come poverty of action. Small thoughts produce small deeds: we do not run in the way of God’ s commandments, until He has enlarged our hearts. How merciful, then; it is of God to deal with us in the power of His own thoughts, and not ours. God is very merciful and long suffering in doing this; for he might have said “ According to their thoughts so be it unto them.” And what could we have said, if this had been His method of acting? We might have sorely felt our loss, as there was revealed to us that to which we might have attained; but we must have acknowledged that we had been dealt liberally with, nevertheless. He might have said, “ As they expected but little from Me, they shall get but little--they shall get up to file full measure of their own poor mean thoughts, but nothing more” ; and that would leave us very poor indeed. The teaching is this. Leave all of eternity to the thought of God; do so as a child; do not perplex yourself with your thinkings, you will soon come to things too deep for you; let it be enough for you that you shall enjoy the fruit of His thought. You will begin to reap the fruit thereof the moment you close your eyes on earth; you will find yourself encompassed with it; like the newborn babe you will find yourself provided for in every particular; and wherever you go, whatever you are, throughout eternity, you will always find yourself surrounded by the thoughts of God. No doubt we could think of many things which would, if we were sure that matters would be so arranged, calm and assure us much as regards the other life. Whatever these thoughts are, we may be certain we shall have what is better than the best of them--God will have thought kinder, tenderer, nobler things by far. In all things concerning eternity, I wish to repose myself upon the fact that “ God has thought.” Further: this little sentence says, “ Never be afraid of thinking a great thought of God; for if it be one worthy of Him in kind, He will be sure to be far greater than it, in degree. Let your mind go out in a great thought of God. Do not cramp yourselves by the limitations with which you are so familiar in practical life; your mind is dealing with One to whom mere earthly rules and reasonings do not apply.” Never be afraid of expecting a great thing from God We have no desire for any real good, but that it is overtopped by His desire that we should have good; we have no imagination of a good, but lo! it has been surpassed by a previous thought of His, out of which He has prepared a greater good. With the world the rule is, “ not up to what we can think” ; with God it is “ above what we can think.” The water pots which are to hold our wine He wills to be filled up to the brim; the feast which He spreads is to have baskets of fragments which remain. And as coming after the idea, “ above what we can ask,” these two words are very useful. Our want of faith makes us afraid to ask; this little sentence takes the most effectual way of lifting us above our fears; for it says, “ You cannot think, how much less ask too much.” The region of thought must, here at least, always be vaster far than that of fact; God says, “ you could not exhaust that great field, then how can you the little one; therefore, ask largely, leaving me to act out of resources beyond your thought--resources unseen.” (P. B. Power, M. A.)The inworking power “ According to the power that worketh in you.” What does this mean? St. Paul is speaking here of the conditions upon which the Divine ability will be exerted for us. The dew and the rain will refresh the plant and the flowers according as they open their hungry pores to take them in. You cannot get much verdure--you cannot get much green life and beauty off a rock, however heavily the dew falls upon it. No; it is the open pores that take it in. Never forget that God’ s blessings are bestowed according to the desires and the askings of our heart. The flow and volume of the river are according to the height at which the hills and mountains draw to themselves the wealthy clouds; and the good gifts of God are poured out according as the soul lifts up its thoughts and wishes to the skies. The produce of the farm is according to the diligence of the farmer and the generous character of the soil. You have got soil the most generous in the world. All you want is the farmer’ s intelligence, and the power that worketh in you. Then comes the “ able to do abundantly above all you think.” If the miller lift the sluice so as to turn aside the water, his mill is silent; the stones are idle. No flour in his meal bag, no coin in his purse--however full the millstream is. And if you and I are so guilty before God as by our indifference to turn aside the rivers of possibility and privilege and help that He pours out, then there will be no reward for us. (J. J. Wray.)God’ s grace inexhaustible As the scattered rays of light are all included in the focus, as the fountain contains the streams, as the object reflected is prior to and nobler than the different reflections of it--so all finite and created good is contained in Him who is the supreme good; all earthly excellence is but the partial emanation, the more or less bright reflection of the Great Original. To have a portion, therefore, in God, is to possess that which includes in itself all created good. The man who is in possession of some great masterpiece in painting or sculpture, need not envy others who have only casts or copies of it. The original plate or stereotype is more valuable than any impressions or engravings thrown off from it; and he who owns the former owns that which includes, is capable of producing all the latter … Surveying the wonders of creation, or even with the word of inspiration in his hand, the Christian can say, “ Glorious though these things be, to me belongs that which is more glorious far. The streams are precious, but I have the Fountain; the vesture is beautiful, but the Weaver is mine; the portrait in its every lineament is lovely, but that Great Original, whose beauty it but feebly depicts, is mine, my own. God is my portion, the Lord is mine inheritance. To me belongs all actual and all possible good, all created and uncreated beauty, all that eye hath seen or imagination conceived; and more than that, for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that love Him. All things and beings, all that life reveals or death conceals, everything within the boundless possibilities of creating wisdom and power is mine; for God, the Creator and Fountain of all, is mine.” (J. Caird, D. D.)Christ more than satisfies But you will tell me that man’ s wishes are very large, and that it is hard to satisfy them. Ah! my brethren, I know it is--with anything here below. You may have heard, I dare say, of the gentleman who told his servant--“ You have been a very faithful servant to me, John, and as you are getting old, I should like to give you a pension. Now, what do you think would satisfy you?” “ Well, master,” said he, “ I think if I had fifty pounds a year I should be very well satisfied indeed.” “ Well, think it over,” said the master, “ and come to me and let me know.” So the day comes. “ Now, what do you want to satisfy you? Well, sir, as I said before, I should never want for anything, or wish for anything in this world, if I had fifty pounds a year.” “ Well, John, it shall be done; there is the settlement for you: you shall have it.” That man went out of the door, and said to a friend, “ I wish I had said a hundred.” So, you see, it is not easy to satisfy man. When he thinks he is satisfied, he still sees something beyond, the horse leech in his heart still cries, “ Give, give.” But God is a satisfying portion. You cannot wish for anything more than this. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Unknown riches of grace There are shores paved with shells which no human foot has trod; there are fields carpeted with flowers which human eyes have never seen; there are seas inlaid with pearls which human research has never found out; so there are things in the great mind of God itself, and in the Scriptures, which lie concealed from the most powerful mental efforts of human intellect. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)The work of the Spirit I. What this work is. It is the direct acting of God the Holy Ghost, the third Divine Person in the adorable Trinity, as a Person, upon our spirit. It is, farther, His working in us to restore perfectly that image of God in our soul which the fall of man into sin has so grievously blurred, and which in all those who have fallen into wilful sin has been by their own act still more obliterated. On the one side, then, it is, so far as regards the agent, supernatural. It is the working in us, and on us, of the creative Spirit. It is the power of another within us: and that other the eternal God; the self-existent Being; to whose gracious will we owe our existence; by whose perpetual power encompassing and upholding us we continue to be; “ in whom we live, and move, and have our being” ; of Him whose all pervading power upholds the universe, whose presence and whose will rolls the countless worlds which people universal space along their pathless way. He is working within us; working upon our souls by the one, indivisible, Almighty power of Godhead. Now though, on the one side, that into which we are inquiring is thus truly a power far above any natural to man, even the energy of the Divine power working within us; yet, on another side, it is most really a work in which we have a share; it is, as I have said, a work in us, as well as on us; it is a work in the will of a being with a will--in the affections, heart, desire, and reason of one who can pervert that reason so that it cannot be wrought on, or can yield it up to this power; can harden the heart, can freeze up the affections, can poison the desires, can stiffen the will, against the operation even of Him who is Almighty. But again: not only may we discover that this work is thus on the one hand wrought upon us supernaturally, whilst on the other it advances through the action of our natural powers, and with our conscious cooperation; but further, we may trace the part of us on which it operates. It is “ in the spirit of our minds” that we are to be “ renewed” ; it is “ in the inner man” that we are to be “ strengthened with might by His Spirit.” II. But further still: we may trace in many particulars the law of this Divine work, as it advances in those who yield themselves to its blessed processes for their renovation. For it has about it special characteristics of its own, on which we shall do well to meditate.1. It is a real work. It is not the mere calling up out of the depths of our nature certain passing impulses or actions, but it is so truly a new modification of its very constitution that there are cast forth new emanations of desire and action, which show that the very fountain of spiritual being from which they arise has undergone a change. There is first a desire to act in all things with an eye to God. Next, there is the practice of offering up to Him each day as it passes by; and with this a crying of the soul to Him against its remaining selfishness, earnest supplications for a clearer eye, truer affections, and a simpler purpose. And all of these mark on the soul which He is training this first great character of His working, that a real change is passing on it; a change of the nature itself in true harmony with the laws of its own constitution, and yet a change which could not have sprung from itself, and so which proves that the power of One above itself is working on it by His own might. 2. But again, it is another characteristic of this work that in each one in whom it is wrought it is an increasing work. No mark is set down oftener than this in Holy Scripture. It is a growth: “ Grow in grace.” It “ increaseth with the increase of God.” And in nothing is the distinction between this heavenly work and any lower change more clearly shown than in this, that whereas the vigour of all inferior powers is soon exhausted, this tends ever to perfection. 3. Further, this is a gradual work. The very word “ growth” implies so much. That which increases by the putting forth of an inner life is always distinguished by this feature from that which is enlarged by occasional and external increment: and this is eminently true of the work of God’ s grace in the soul. The conflict of the spirit with the flesh is inevitable, and so the progress of the final victory is of necessity gradual. 4. This may lead us to another mark of this great work. Marvellous as it is in its results, it is in its progress most secret. Here, too, it is as in nature so in grace. All growth is secret, so secret that eye of man never saw the separate parts of that mighty mystery of growth which every succeeding springtime repeats so profusely around him. The grass, the green herb, the tree, each leaf, each blade, each bough, each flower, in gradual living growth most secretly accomplishes around us its own law of increase. We see the result as we mark each developed part, and gaze upon the rich beauty which, unseen by us, though close beneath our sight, has painted the glowing flowers with all the lights of heaven. But we saw not the process. This is that “ path” of God’ s secret doings “ which the vulture’ s eye hath not seen.” And so most truly is it with that “ kingdom of heaven” within the renewing soul which is “ like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened.” That marvellous life which the Spirit is quickening in the soul which He renews, which “ is hid with Christ in God,” is secret as is the quickening of the living flesh in the dark chambers of the womb, or as the growth of those members “ which day by day were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.” 5. But there is yet another mark of this work, where it is truly accomplished, which we shall do well to note. Though gradual and secret, it is also universal. Herein again it differs palpably from all merely human operations. For every reform of the moral character which is accomplished by secondary powers is more or less partial. There is no object short of God which can duly draw forth all the capacities which He has implanted in man’ s nature, and there is no power less than that of God which can duly accomplish that development. There is, moreover, about this universal progress one essential character of all true life. The change which proceeds from an inward principle, essentially one and indivisible, is yet multiform in its external manifestation. The same one inward power of life casts itself equably forth in the growth of every several limb, and every other adjunct of the body; the growing tree at the same moment expands in its stem and thickens in its branches, and multiplies its leaves and adorns itself with flowers: and “ the fruit of the” living “ Spirit,” in like manner, “ is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” And from this it follows, that whilst each character is growing in all graces, yet every separate character, as it has its own law of perfection, grows and ripens according to its separate kind. And hence the beauty of the army of the saints of Christ: they are uniform in the midst of their diversity, and multiform in their unbroken unity. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.)Latent power It is impossible to over-estimate, or rather to estimate, the power that lies latent in the Church. We talk of the power that was latent in steam--latent till Watt evoked its spirit from the waters, and set the giant to turn the iron arms of machinery. We talk of the power that was latent in the skies, till science climbed their heights, and, seizing the spirit of the thunder, chained it to our surface, abolishing distance, outstripping the wings of time, and flashing our thoughts across rolling seas to distant continents. Yet what are these to the moral power that lies asleep in the congregations of our country, and of the Christian world. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Ephesians 3:21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.Amen. God’ s all-sufficiency and glory I. Consider the acknowledgment, which the apostle makes, of God’ s all-sufficiency. God’ s ability intends not merely His power, but all those perfections which render Him a suitable object of our faith in prayer. It imports an exact knowledge of what our wants are, a ready disposition to supply them, wisdom to discern the proper time and manner of granting supplies, as well as power to effect whatever His wisdom sees best to be done.1. God often does for men those favours which they never thought of asking for themselves. 2. God answers prayer in ways that we think not of. He will not always bestow the particular things which we ask, for we often mistake our own interest; but He will grant us things more valuable in themselves, or better adapted to our condition. Or, if He gives us the blessings in substance, He will send them in a more suitable time and manner, than we had proposed. I remember to have heard, on good authority, a remarkable story of an African, which will illustrate this thought. The poor negro, in his own country, was led, by contemplation on the works of nature, to conceive that there must be, though invisible to him, a supreme, all-powerful, wise, just, and good Being, who made and governed the world. Impressed with this sentiment, he used daily to pray to this in, visible Being, that he might, by some means or other, be brought to a more distinct knowledge of Him, and of the service due to Him. While in this contemplative and devout state of mind, he, with a number of others, was treacherously and perfidiously taken by some of his own countrymen, and soon after was sold for a slave. Now his faith began to waver. “ For,” thought he with himself, “ if there is such a just and good Being, as I have supposed, who governs the world, how is it possible that fraud and iniquity should be successful against innocence and integrity? Why are I and my fellow prisoners, who have acted with openness and simplicity, made to suffer, while our enemies are permitted to triumph in the success of their deceit and violence?” The poor fellow, after several changes of masters, was finally sold into a pious family in New England, where he was carefully instructed in the Christian religion, which he embraced with great appearance of sincerity and joy, and obeyed with exemplary diligence and zeal. And, in the relation of his story, he often made this pious reflection, that while he was perplexed to see the triumph of fraud over innocence, God was really answering his fervent prayers, and bringing him to the enjoyment of the means of religious knowledge and eternal salvation; that what he had thought was an objection against the justice of Providence, was really a wonderful and merciful compliance with his daily supplication. 3. The mercies which God is pleased to grant us, often produce happy consequences far beyond what we asked or thought, 4. The worth of the blessings which we ask and God bestows infinitely exceeds all our thoughts. II. Consider the ascription of glory which the apostle makes to this all-sufficient God.1. God is glorified by the increase of the Church. 2. God is glorified in the Church, when a devout regard is paid to the ordinances which He has instituted. 3. God is glorified by the observance of good order in the Church, and by the decent attendance of the members on their respective duties. 4. That God may be glorified, there must be peace and unity in the Church. 5. That glory may be given to God in the Church, there must be exemplary holiness in its members. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Glory to God though Jesus Christ I. Glory must be given to God. The apostle, as may be inferred from the connection of the words, has chiefly in view the signal benefits of redemption in this elevated ascription of praise. II. Through whom glory is to be given. “ Through Jesus Christ.” Of Him, through Him, to Him, are all things. He is appointed Head over all. He is the only Mediator between God and man, whether for supplication or intercession or thanksgiving. In Him God bestows all grace upon us, and in Him all our words and our works are sanctified. Whatever we do in the service of God, if it be not done in the name of Christ, and in dependence upon His mediation and Lordship, it is done according to our own carnal will; it is not done according to the will of God. III. By whom glory is to be given to God. “ The Church.” By the Church is meant the congregation of faithful men, among whom the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments rightly administered. All God’ s works show His praise, but His saints shall bless Him. IV. During what period. “ Throughout all ages.” Every work of man has its limit and its end: all the glory of the creature is as the flower of the field; the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. But it is not so with the glory of God; His praises are endless as His life. Eternity only is the full scene of God’ s praise, “ As it was in the beginning, so it is now, and shall be evermore.” (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)The glory of God It must be remembered that no praise can add to God’ s glory, nor blasphemies detract from it. The blessing tongue cannot make Him better, nor the cursing any worse. Nec melior si laudaveris, nec deterior si vituperaveris. As the sun is neither bettered by birds singing, nor injured by dogs barking. He is so infinitely great, and constantly good, that His glory admits neither addition nor diminution. (T. Adams, D. D.)Glory is God’ s alone Caesar once said to his opponent, “ Either I will be Caesar, or nobody.” So the Lord saith, “ Either I will be a great God, or no God,” That man disparages the beauty of the sun who sets it upon a level with the twinkling stars, which only borrow their light therefrom. (Archbishop Seeker.)How God is glorified The glory of God is from His perfection, regarding extrinsically, and may in some degree be described thus:--It is the excellency of God above all things. God makes this glory manifest by external acts in various ways (Romans 1:23; Romans 9:4; Psalms 8:1). But the modes of manifestation, which are declared to us in the Scriptures, are chiefly two; the one, by an effulgence of light and of unusual splendour, or by its opposite, a dense darkness or obscurity (Matthew 17:2-5; Luke 2:9; Exodus 16:10; 1 Kings 8:11). The other, by the producing of works which agree with His perfection and excellence (Psalms 19:1; John 2:11). (Arminius.)God’ s glory eternal Agesilaus … might have led Tigranes, King of Armenia, captive at the wheels of his chariot. He rather chose to make him an ally; on which occasion he made use of that memorable expression, “ I prefer the glory that; will last forever to that of a day.” (Plutarch.)God glorified in Christ A sick woman said to Mr. Cecil, “ Sir, I have no notion of God. I can form no notion of Him. You talk to me about Him, but I cannot get a single idea that seems to contain anything.” “ But you know how to conceive of Jesus Christ as a man,” replied Mr. Cecil; “ God comes down to you in Him, full of kindness and condescension.” “ Ah! sir, that gives me something to lay hold on. There I can rest. I understand God in His Son.” “ God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” (W. Baxendale.). Ephesians 4:1I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.Calling and conduct I. The behaviour of Christians should correspond with their vocation.1. From a sense of gratitude.2. The Divine sentiment from which the vocation sprang should possess them. II. Certain virtues specially become the Christian vocation.1. Because of what they are in themselves.2. Because of the great end they promote--“ the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This reveals the real grandeur of these virtues. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The obligations of the Christian calling I. The nature of the obligations resting on Christians.1. They spring from the circumstances of the Divine call. (1) It exhibited unparalleled condescension and mercy on the part of God.(2) It witnessed to a Divine unity in mankind. Christ was no apostle of Judaism; no national hero; but the Hope of Humanity. 2. They are determined by the fact of the Divine call Having been summoned by that call into a spiritual separation from “ the world,” the followers of Jesus were at the same time constituted into a “ calling” or profession by themselves. (1) Its historic reputation had to be sustained.(2) It was a “ holy” and a “ heavenly” calling (2 Timothy 1:9; Hebrews 3:1; Philippians 3:14).(3) The spiritual unity it had called into existence should not be lost. II. How these obligations of the Christian calling are to be satisfied.1. By humility and gentleness.2. The root and sustaining principle of these is love. The lover of mankind will subordinate his own pleasure and advantage to the welfare of others. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The nature and obligation of a Christian’ s calling I. The nature of a Christian’ s calling.1. It is a holy calling (2 Timothy 1:9).2. It is an honourable calling (Philippians 3:14).3. To serve an honourable Master (1 Timothy 1:17).4. Hence it is a profitable calling (1 Timothy 4:8). II. The obligation of the calling.1. We must first study the principles of our calling (Ephesians 1:17).2. We must be emulous to claim the privileges of the calling (Ephesians 3:16-19).3. We must cultivate the spirit of the calling (Ephesians 4:2-3).4. We must perform the duties of the calling (John 14:23). (1) In civil life (Ephesians 4:25).(2) In religious life (Ephesians 4:24).(3) In domestic life (Ephesians 6:1-9). III. The dignity of the calling (1 Thessalonians 2:12). IV. The object of the calling (1 Peter 5:10). (T. B. Baker).Walking worthy of our calling How comes it to pass, that one half of this Epistle is made up of exhortation? Does not this force itself on one’ s conviction as its cause--that the saints of God need it? They want not only to be comforted, they want not only to be taught, but they want to be roused. I. First as it regards their privilege. Beloved, it is one of the greatest that can be communicated to a fallen sinner. My dear hearers, in one sense, there is not a creature on earth, but what has a call of God to serve Him. There never could be a state in which there could be no law, because the very law of creation puts a man under obligation to serve God. But this is an especial calling; a call of a higher order, a covenant calling, an effectual calling: secured by the certainty of the Divine counsel, and never to be frustrated by man. We find in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, that it is a call to liberty; “ brethren, ye have been called unto liberty.” Ah! man, with all his fond ideas of liberty, knows nothing of liberty, till he is under the teaching of God the Holy Ghost; for man, by nature, is a bond slave. Oh! the liberty of a free spirit; that can look death in the face, that can look quietly from the troubles of life to the God that ordained them, and find peace and rest in the midst of them! But observe, they are described as having been called into the holy fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:9)--“ God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ.” But they are also called to glory, to His kingdom. II. Let us now, secondly, speak of the exhortation that stands based on this glorious privilege. “ I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles” : “ I therefore beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” He does not beseech them to be worthy of that vocation. But he beseeches them to walk worthy of their vocation, their calling, because they have received such wondrous mercy. And if you ask me how they could do it?--in proportion as you walk in holy liberty, as you walk in the peace of the gospel, as you walk in the fellowship of Christ, as you walk in the path of holy walking. But I would remark, beloved, by way of concluding observation--see what place humility of soul occupies in this passage before us. Observe, “ Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness.” He did place it first; and it is its right place; it is the great place, next to faith, hope, and love. The more a man knows of the crucified One, the lower he lies; the more he knows of the depth of God’ s grace, the more he abases himself. Observe, too, what great stress is laid here upon what are the passive graces of the spirit. We ought to contend for activity; we live in days in which activity is required; not only activity of opposition, but activity of dispersion of God’ s truth. But if you ask, What ought to be in the front?--it is the passive graces of the Holy Ghost. “ All lowliness, meekness, long suffering, forbearing one another in love, and endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” But observe that the basis of all is privilege. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)On the Christian’ s vocation This exhortation takes in the whole circle of our duties. In effect, if we exhort a man of noble birth, or of distinguished rank in life, not to do anything unworthy of himself, disgraceful to his family, or unbecoming his high station, we say everything that can be said.1. There is not any truth more evidently expressed, nor more frequently repeated, in the sacred Scriptures, than that the first object of our vocation to Christianity is to disengage us from the world, to break the chains which bind our affections to creatures. You are Christians: and therefore, when you appear among men, you are to make yourselves distinguished by charity, purity, and every virtue. 2. It is therefore a most destructive illusion to reason as Christians are sometimes heard to do: “ I am a man of the world; I must live as the world does; I must conform to its manners.” “ I am a Christian; therefore I am not of this world; therefore I cannot live as the world does, cannot conform to its manners.” Reason in this manner, and your determination will be conformable to the spirit and to the grace of your vocation. You must take notice that there are two kinds of separation from the world: the one corporal and exterior; the other, a separation in heart and in spirit. Withdraw yourselves from the world, before the world retires from you. You must quit the world by choice, and by an effort of virtue, or be torn from it at length by force and violence. Follow, therefore, now the sweet attractions of Divine grace. (J. Archer.)The Christian’ s calling What is the kle?sis, vocation, or calling, of which the Scripture speaks so often? Take the following hints:1. It is the calling of God (Romans 11:29; Philippians 3:14; comp. 2 Thessalonians 1:11, 2 Timothy 1:9, Hebrews 3:1, 2 Peter 1:10, Ephesians 1:18), because it is God Himself who calls us from darkness to light, and from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of His dear Son. 2. It is a high calling (Philippians 3:14), for the prize attached to it is eternal life. 3. It is a holy calling (2 Timothy 1:9), because the end and purpose of it (at least on earth) is holiness. 4. It is a heavenly calling (Hebrews 3:1), for it comes from and draws us to heaven. 5. The hope of our calling (Ephesians 4:4) is the hope which those called by God to serve Him may cherish. It belongs to the brethren alone, and proceeds entirely from God (1 Corinthians 1:26). This is what our fathers termed effectual calling, and it occupies a prominent place in all our systems of theology. The doctrine is based upon, or takes for granted the following principles-- (1) That the human race is fallen, and needs to be restored to God. (2) That even this fallen and redeemed race cannot of itself return to God, but needs the assistance of a Divine call. (3) That the election and the calling are co-extensive. (4) That, therefore, the salvation of the Church is, in its origin, means, and end, to be ascribed to the pure and sovereign will of God. Our walk should be worthy of this vocation. There ought to be some relation between our conduct and our hopes, between our character and the promised reward. If His love has opened up to us glorious and immortal hopes, should not our service correspond to them? Worthy of His calling? It is a great, high, noble principle. It is a rule of life which lifts us from the dust, and gives us the position, hopes, and fears of immortal creatures. (W. Graham, D. D.)Christian consistency A writer on Christian consistency, says: “ History records that in the days of Tiberius it was thought a crime to carry a ring stamped with the image of Augustus into any mean or sordid place, where it might be polluted! How much may those who profess to be a holy people learn even from a heathen!” Apostolic exhortation I. Consider, in the first place, that “ therefore” of his and what it implies. For there are many reasons for not exhorting people to walk earnestly and carefully, and worthily of their high name and knowledge. It is much pleasanter to dwell exclusively upon the privileges and blessings of Christianity, and to leave its heavy responsibilities and penalties out of sight. But this “ therefore” was something that moved the apostle, even from his prison, to fill half his Epistle with earnest, importunate, and pointed admonitions. A very potent “ therefore” it must have been--but what was it? It does not appear to have been any one statement or fact in particular, but rather all that has gone before; as if, pausing at the end of the third chapter, he had been reading over what he had written, and had been so moved by it that he felt compelled, constrained, to break off into this exhortation. It is this strong feeling in his mind which finds expression in that word “ therefore.” And what was it that he had been writing about? Why, it was the marvellous grace and loving kindness of God towards the Gentiles revealed to him, and preached by him; their fellowship in Christ, their union with the remnant of Israel and with one another in one divinely constituted body, their eternal predestination to this grace and adoption in Christ. II. Consider, in the second place, the title which St. Paul here assumes in order to give force to his exhortation: “ I, the prisoner of (or rather in) the Lord.” Himself a prisoner, enduring a painful captivity for the Master’ s sake, how properly might he exhort them in liberty to be true to their colours and to the standard of Christ. And this may lead us to reflect how universally true it is that Christianity needs example in order to be believed and obeyed. It is too weighty to be accepted on its own strength, too little favourable to the natural pride and indolence of men, too tremendous in its promises, revelations, claims, and assumptions. Men are beginning to perceive that the Christianity of Christ and His apostles was intended to be a life--a supernatural life, indeed, because the life of Christ Himself, and yet a life to be lived amongst men by ordinary people, and to be readily distinguished by certain palpable differences from the natural life of men. III. Consider, in the third place, what it was of which they were to walk worthy. Their “ calling,” or “ vocation” --what was it? Not anything which we speak of now as a “ calling,” such as we follow for gain, or honour, or convenience, or even for duty: this calling whereof the apostle speaks is of God. It is, in fact, His invitation, which He has addressed to each one of us as inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)The prison house I. Let us think first of the place and manner of St. Paul’ s imprisonment. The place was Rome, the capital of the world. A city full of glorious memories of the past, and famous in the present for art, and eloquence, and learning. Its soldiers could boast that they had conquered the world, and could point out the tombs of Pompey and of many another hero along the Appian Way. Its streets had been trodden by some of the greatest of poets, and its Senate-House had echoed with the burning words of the first orators of the world. Rome was full of contrasts, wealth and beggary, beauty and squalor, the palace of Caesar, and the haunt of vice and shame, were close together. The city was ruled over by a cruel tyrant, at once a hypocrite and a monster of iniquity. It was in such a place, so glorious and so shameful, that St. Paul was a prisoner. He was not, however, confined in a dungeon. By the favour of the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, whose duty it was to take charge of all prisoners awaiting trial before the Emperor, the apostle was allowed to live in a hired house of his own, to have free access to such friends as he had, and to preach the gospel freely to those who would hear him. But still St. Paul was a prisoner. After the Roman fashion, he was chained to a soldier, and at night probably two soldiers were linked to him. Yet, although an exile, a prisoner, waiting for a trial where he would have little chance of justice, knowing that the sword hung above his head ready to fall at any moment, St. Paul utters no complaint, no murmur of discontent. On the contrary, he bids his hearers rejoice in the Lord alway; he himself thanked God, and took courage; he tells his disciples that he has learnt in whatsoever state he is, to be content. He is poor, yet making many rich. The heathen tyrant can make him a prisoner, but his chains cannot keep him from the glorious freedom of the sons of God. And now what lesson can we learn from the prison house at Rome? We can learn this, that this world in which we live is in one sense a prison house to all.1. It is a prison house of hard work. In our great cities the roar of traffic, the rattle of machinery, the shriek of the steam whistle, the eager crowds flocking to office and bank and exchange all mean one thing--work. Every man’ s talk is of business; he is in the prison house, and he is chained to his work. 2. Next, this world is a prison house of sorrow and trial. Everyone who has lived any time in the world can show you the marks of his chain. Everyone whom we meet is wearing a crown of thorns. It is hidden under the scanty white locks of the old, and the sunny tresses of youth. Specially is this world a prison house to those who strive to do their duty, and help their fellow men. For them in all ages there have been prison bars, and chains of persecution. If we would look on some of the greatest teachers, philosophers, and benefactors of mankind, we must look for them in a prison house. Socrates, when seventy-two years old, was a prisoner, and condemned to drink poison, because he taught higher lessons than the mob could understand. Bruno was burnt at Rome, because he exposed the false philosophy of the day. When Galileo, an old man of seventy, taught the truth about the earth’ s motion, they cast him into the dungeons of the Inquisition, and after death the Pope refused a tomb for his body. And so for many others who dared to do their duty and to speak the truth. But the stonewalls could not confine the mind; the iron chain could not bind the truth. Some of the most glorious works in literature were composed in prison. The prison house at Rome has given us some of those Epistles of St. Paul which have gone far to convert the world; and the finest allegory in the English language was written in Bedford gaol. “ If we suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are we.” There are prisoners who are not the Lord’ s. There are some fast bound in the misery and iron of bad habits, and habitual sin. These are lying in the condemned cell, bound hand and foot with the devil’ s chain. And I tell you that you will often find this life a prison house, where you must give up your own will, deny yourselves, learn to endure hardness, and to bear the chain which suffering, or neglect, or ignorance put upon you. If you are indeed the prisoners of the Lord, the iron of your chain will make you brave to suffer and be strong. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)Freedom in bonds This prisoner has more freedom than any emperor ever had. External freedom, with internal bonds, is but an affectation, and a mockery of freedom. A man flattered and deceived by an ostentation of bodily freedom, while his spirit is held in the heavy chains of his own lusts and fears, is as melancholy a spectacle as any under the sun. The evil spirit laughs to see his slave enjoying the fond delirious conceit that he is a free man. The slavery is then perfect. Paul’ s prison lies open to all heaven. In spirit, he walks at large, in boundless light. The prisoner writing to those who are worthy to know the secret, says: “ I am surrounded by innumerable angels,” I walk in paradise with “ the spirits of just men made perfect,” I am entertained with “ unspeakable things.” Chrysostom says: “ Were any to ask, whether he should place me on high with the angels, or with Paul in his bonds, I would choose the prison.” According to his own showing, he was less in peril in prison, than in the third heavens. As a safeguard against his ecstasy, he must needs have some messenger of Satan, to buffet him. In prison he found no such temptation. His bonds were a precious means of grace to him. Finding an unspeakable peace in “ lowliness of mind,” he commends the same to his brethren in Christ. (J. Pulsford.)The privilege and duty of the Christian calling I. The privilege declared. Their “ vocation,” i.e., calling. Men have callings in the world--their business, profession, temporal office. The apostle speaks of “ the calling of God.” There are different callings spoken of. There is--1. An external calling--the invitation to gospel privileges.2. An official calling--the appointment to administration in the Church.3. An internal and effectual calling by the Spirit of God. This is (1) an enlightening calling.(2) A sanctifying calling.(3) A uniting calling. It binds to (a) Christ (1 Corinthians 1:9). (b) The Church (Ephesians 4:4; Ephesians 1:18-22). (4) A saving calling (1 Thessalonians 2:12). II. The duty urged. How can anyone walk “ worthy” ? It means suitably, in a manner somewhat becoming those who enjoy such privileges. As if the apostle would say: Have you--1. A call to knowledge? Walk wisely.2. A call to holiness? Walk unblameably.3. A call to fellowship? Walk lovingly.4. A call to glory? Walk happily. Conclusion: These things--1. Should put us on examination.2. Should move us to diligence. (H. Parr.)The life worthy of the calling I do not think that St. Paul would consider, or have a right to consider, that his bondage was then his “ vocation” ; but an affliction, a sickness, an inability even to move, may be as much a “ vocation” as anything that may happen in life. But he urges the Ephesians to use “ worthily” --while they have it--their “ vocation to walk.” To “ walk” ought to be used as the emblem of a Christian life; and for this reason, because “ walking” alone of all our actions places the whole man in motion, and that motion is a progressive one. It was “ a calling” ! Then there must be a caller. Who was the Caller? Was there not a Providence in the fact of your “ calling” ?1. In the first place remember that “ call” came from the Holy Trinity. The Father willed it, the Son mediated to obtain it, the Holy Ghost applied it. Is it then a fact that you have been thought worthy of the notice, the remembrance, the power, the love of each Person in that holy blessed Trinity? What a sacred, what a solemn thing that “ call” must be! 2. Each Person in that mysterious Three is love, perfect love. That “ call” then was the call of infinite, unspeakable love. Have you been walking “ worthy of the vocation” of love? Could you say that your life is a life of love. Your walk, your walk! does it drop love at every step? Remember what you were when you had a call of love. You were unloving and unlovable. 3. But there is another particular characteristic of that love wherewith you were called. It was a call of forgiveness. The whole Trinity had combined to make that forgiveness. Now let me ask, Is there anyone at this moment in the whole world whom you have not forgiven? If so, then you are not walking worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called. 4. But there was another predominant characteristic in your call--it was a call to holiness. “ Be ye holy, for I am holy.” Now are you walking every day a holy walk? Moreover, your call was a call to activity; also a call to a higher life. Are you walking worthy of it? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Calling and walk 1. I feel sure that I shall carry along with me the experience of every child of God, when I say that his call, however it came to him, was very humbling. God has thousands of methods by which He draws souls to Himself, but in one respect, there is no difference between them all--He never calls a soul without humbling it. It is very likely that the instrument which effected your call was not one that the world would call great. It is very likely that the providences which attended it were very humbling providences. But however this may be--however it may be in respect of outward things, I am quite sure that as the grace of God began to take effect upon your heart, your soul passed into very low places, down into the very dust. You began to see yourself in a very different light from any in which you ever saw yourself before. And let me say, that I believe one of the chief reasons why many young Christians are happier than other Christians, is that in the first stages of grace, there is a more realizing, deep sense of nothingness, and sin. 2. But if it was an humbling call, I am sure it was a very kind one. Perhaps in the recollection of what took place then, now the thought is “ Through what exercises of mind you passed” ; but at the time itself, the chief feeling with you was--“ How very kind this is of God! what wonderful patience God has been exercising towards a poor, miserable sinner!” 3. And let me further remind you, brethren, that your call was a very personal thing. It was characterized by individuality: each soul is singled out by itself by God. As respects “ walking,” the apostle uses the figure for two reasons: one because it is distinctly a progressive motion, in all places progress; and secondly, it is the only movement which engages and puts in action the whole man. But as was the “ calling,” so must be the “ walk,” --humble, tender, earnest, holy, heavenly. Whatever progress you have made, still remember, that whatever cause there was for humility at the beginning, there is more cause now. For now, a wrong thought is worse than once a wrong action, because you are more responsible. Walk in the valley. That is an unworthy thought which ever lifts itself too high, either to God or man. And was God very kind, very patient, very long suffering, to bear with you, to choose you, to call you? Then be you just like that to every poor fellow sinner. And never forget what a real, personal, earnest matter between your soul and God, your “ call” was. You have nothing to dread more than for religion to become a generality. As many as have felt God’ s callings, know the exceeding weight and moment of every little thing. By little things you were made, by little things you were called. Therefore, again, if you would not frustrate the grace of God, you must be holy. “ He hath called you, not to uncleanness, but to holiness.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Walking worthy of one’ s vocation I. The vocation wherewith a believer is called.1. It is God’ s speaking to the heart of a sinner in and by His word (2 Corinthians 4:6; John 5:25). 2. It is to the enjoyment of the greatest privileges (Isaiah 61:1; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1; Galatians 5:13). 3. It is various, and yet the same, to all believers. (1) Various--as to age, instruments, manner.(2) Same--as to tendency. 4. It is of the sovereign goodwill of God (Romans 9:19-24). 5. God never repents and revokes this calling (Romans 11:29). 6. It is the duty and privilege of professors to make it sure to themselves. II. What it is to walk worthy of this vocation. In general: When there is a suitableness in the walk to the nature of the calling. Particularly--1. When it is such as has been exemplified in Christ and His Church.2. When it tends to the edification of those about us--saints and sinners.3. When such as God approves in His Word. III. The manner in which the apostle enforces his exhortation. “ I, the prisoner,” etc. (H. Foster, M. A.)Mission of the saints Each of God’ s saints is sent into the world to prove some part of the Divine character. Perhaps I may be one of those who shall live in the valley of ease, having much rest, and hearing sweet birds of promise singing in my ears. The air is calm and balmy, the sheep are feeding round about me, and all is still and quiet. Well, then I shall prove the love of God in sweet communings. Or perhaps I may be Called to stand where the thunder clouds brew, where the lightnings play, and tempestuous winds are howling on the mountain tops. Well, then I am born to prove the power and majesty of our God: amid dangers He will inspire me with courage: amid toils He will make me strong. Perhaps it shall be mine to preserve an unblemished character, and so prove the power of sanctifying grace, in not being allowed to backslide from my professed dedication to God. I shall then be a proof of the omnipotent power of grace, which alone can save from the power, as well as from the guilt of sin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Worthy walkin g:--There is a seemliness appertaining to each calling. So here. We must walk nobly, as becometh the heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Luther counsels men to answer all temptations of Satan with this word, “ I am a Christian.” They were wont to say of cowards in Rome, “ There is nothing Roman in them.” Of many Christians we may say, “ There is nothing Christian in them.” It is not amiss before we serve the world to put Alexander’ s questions to his followers, that would have persuaded him to run at the Olympic games. “Do kings use to run at the Olympics?” Every believer is higher than the kings of the earth. He must therefore carry himself accordingly. (J. Trapp.)What are we called to 1. The knowledge of God (1 Peter 4:9).2. The faith of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:9; Galatians 2:6).3. Holiness of life (1 Thessalonians 4:7; Romans 7:1).4. Peace (1 Corinthians 7:15). (1) With God (Romans 5:1).(2) With our consciences (Acts 24:16).(3) With one another (Ephesians 4:2). 5. Eternal life (1 Peter 3:9; 1 Peter 5:10; 1 Thessalonians 2:12). (Bishop Beveridge.)What is it to walk worthy of our calling 1. Generally, to carry ourselves as becometh Christians (Philippians 1:27; Colossians 1:10; 1 Thessalonians 2:12). 2. Particularly-- (1) To believe what Christ asserts (1 John 5:10).(2) To trust in what He promiseth (2 Corinthians 1:20).(3) To perform what He commands (John 14:15). (Bishop Beveridge.)Why walk worthy of our calling 1. Otherwise we sham our profession (Hebrews 6:5).2. We lose the comfort of our calling (Psalms 19:11).3. We shall lose its end (Hebrews 12:14). (Bishop Beveridge.)Our walk is watched A gentleman in England said that he owed his conversion mainly to the marked consistency of a merchant who lived not far from him. His neighbour was a Christian, and professed to carry on his large business on strictly Christian principles. This surprised him; but not being sure of its reality, he determined to watch him for a year, and if at the end of that time he found that he was really what he professed to be, he would become a Christian also. All the year he watched without finding any flaw or inconsistency in his dealing. The result was a thorough conviction that the merchant was a true man, and that religion was a reality. Ephesians 4:2 With all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love.Exhortation to lowliness These words, after all that has gone before, thrill us like the tones of a trumpet. If it had been left to ourselves to expand the general exhortation into practical details, we should have insisted, perhaps, on the duty of cultivating a magnanimity corresponding to the greatness of our position and the greatness of our hopes. We might have argued that those who have received such a “ calling” should exhibit a certain stateliness of character, a lofty indifference not only to the baser pleasures of life but to power and fame. Or we might have urged that with such a “ calling” Christian men should be inspired with a passionate zeal for heroic tasks and fortitude for martyrdom. This would be to walk worthily of the calling wherewith we were called. But instead of appealing to us in this lofty tone, Paul exhorts us to humility, to meekness, and to long suffering; and this suggests a principle of great value in the discipline of the spiritual life. Religious excitement, originated by direct contact with God, will always enlarge and exalt our conception of God’ s greatness, and will deepen our sense of dependence on Him. The heart may be flooded with a shining sea of religious emotion; the imagination may be glowing like the heavens at sunset with purple and golden splendour; but as emotion becomes more intense, and as our conception of the Christian life becomes more and more glorious, the infinite greatness of God’ s righteousness and power and grace will inspire us with deeper wonder and awe. We have received unmeasurable blessings, we have been raised to wonderful honours, we are hoping to share with Christ Himself infinite blessedness and glory; but all that we have has come from the eternal thought and purpose and love of God; all that we hope for will be conferred by His grace and “ the exceeding greatness of His power.” The wealth is not ours; it is a Divine gift: the strength is not ours; it is the inspiration of the Divine life: the dignity is not ours; it is conferred on us by the free unpurchased love of God, because we are in Christ. We live in palaces of eternal light and righteousness, and among the principalities and powers of heaven; but our native home was in the dust, and this transfigured, eternal, and glorified life was not achieved by our own strength, it has come to us from God. We are nothing; God is all. Humility, lowliness, is disciplined by prayer, by communion with God, by the vision of Divine and eternal things; by meditation on God’ s righteousness and our own sin, on the greatness of God and the limitations of all created life, on the eternal fulness of God and our own dependence on Him; on the blessings which God has made our inheritance in Christ, and the dark destiny which would have been the natural and just result of our indifference to God’ s authority and love. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Lowliness and meekness go together Where there is “ lowliness” there will be “ meekness,” the absense of the disposition to assert personal rights, either in the presence of God or of men. Meekness submits without a struggle to the losses, the sufferings, the dishonour which the providence of God permits to come upon us. It may look with agitation and distress upon the troubles of others, and the miseries of mankind may sometimes disturb the very foundations of faith; but in its own sorrows it finds no reason for distrusting either the Divine righteousness or the Divine goodness. It is conscious of possessing no merit, and therefore in the worst and darkest hours is conscious of suffering no injustice. The same temper will show itself in relation to men. It has no personal claim to defend. It will, therefore, be slow to resent insult and injury. If it resents them at all, the resentment will be a protest against the violation of Divine laws rather than a protest against a refusal to acknowledge its personal rights. There will be no eagerness for great place or high honour, or for the recognition of personal merit; and therefore, if these are withheld, there will be no bitterness or mortification. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Meekness an element of long suffering Meekness is one of the elements of long suffering. Paul is thinking of the mutual relations of those who are in Christ, and his words imply that there will be large occasions for the exercise of this grace in the conduct and spirit of our Christian brethren. We are not to assume that all those who are honestly loyal to Christ will keep His precepts perfectly, or that in all those who have received the Divine life the baser elements and passions of human nature have been extinguished. Our Christian brethren will sometimes treat us unjustly. They will judge us ignorantly and ungenerously. They will say harsh things about us. They will be inconsiderate and discourteous. They will be wilful, wayward, selfish. They will make us suffer from their arrogance, their ambition, their impatience, their stolid perversity. All this we have to anticipate. Christ bears with their imperfections and their sins; we too have to exercise forbearance. In forbearance, meekness and love are blended. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Advantage of meekness There is nothing lost by meekness and yielding. Abraham yields over his right of choice: Lot taketh it. And, behold, Lot is crossed in that which he chose: Abraham blessed, in that which was left him! As heaven is taken by violence, so is earth by meekness. And God, “ the true proprietor,” loves no tenants better, nor grants larger leases to any, than the meek. (J. Trapp.)Long suffering improved Some years ago, I had in my garden a tree that never bore any fruit. One day, I took my axe in my hand, determined to fell it. My wife met me in the pathway and pleaded for it: “ Why, the spring is now very close, stay and see whether there may not be some change in it: and if not, then you can cut it down.” As I never repented following her advice before I yielded to it now: and what was the consequence? Why, in a few weeks the tree was covered with blossoms, and in a few more it was bending under a load of fruit. “ Ah,” said I, “ this should teach me. I will learn a lesson from hence not to cut down too soon: that is, not to consider persons incorrigible or abandoned too soon, so as to give up hope for them, and the use of the means of prayer on their behalf.” (W. Jay.)Human forbearance The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way; but took it up, for possibly, said they, the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little superstition in that, yet much good may be learnt from it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any, there may be some work of grace there going on, that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to shed His precious Blood for it: therefore despise it not. (Archbishop Leighton.)Lowliness is Christlike The late Rev. Dr. R-- had a somewhat lofty manner of expressing himself. In the course of visiting his parish he called at the cottage of an elderly female, who familiarly invited him to “ come in by and sit doun.” The Doctor, who expected a more respectful salutation, said, in stately tones, intended to check any further attempt at familiarity, “ Woman, I am a servant of the Lord come to speak with you on the concerns of your soul.” “ Then ye’ ll be humble like your Maister,” admirably rejoined the cottager. The Doctor felt the reproof deeply, and never again sought to magnify himself at the expense of his office. (C. Rogers, LL. D.)The meek deflated A missionary in Jamaica was once questioning the little black boys on the meaning of Mat 5:5, and asked, “ Who are the meek?” A boy answered, “ Those who give soft answers to rough questions.” Meekness and forbearance Anthony Blanc, one of Felix Neff’ s earlier converts, was very earnest in winning souls to Christ. The enemies of the gospel were angry at his success, and used alike scoffs and threats against him. One night, as he was returning home from a religious meeting, he, was followed by a man in a rage, who struck him a violent blow on the head. “ May God forgive and bless you!” was Anthony’ s quiet and Christian rejoinder. “ Ah!” replied his assailant, furiously, “ if God does not kill you, I’ ll do it myself!” Some days afterwards Anthony met the same person in a narrow road, where two persons could hardly pass. “ Now I shall be struck by him again,” he said to himself. But he was surprised, on approaching, to see this man, once so bitter towards him, reach out his hand and cry to him, in a tremulous voice, “ Mr. Blanc, will you forgive me, and let all be over?” Thus this disciple of Christ, by gentle and peaceful words, had made a friend of an enemy. (Clerical Library.) Ephesians 4:3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.The unity of the Spirit By virtue of his having the Spirit, the believer is in union with every other spiritual man, and this is the unity which he is to endeavour to keep.1. This unity of the Spirit is manifested in love. A husband and wife may be, through providence, cast hundreds of miles from one another, but there is a unity of spirit in them because their hearts are one. We, brethren, are divided many thousands of miles from the saints in Australia, America, and the South Sea, but, loving as brethren, we feel the unity of the Spirit. 2. This unity of the Spirit is caused by a similarity of nature. Find a drop of water glittering in the rainbow, leaping in the cataract, rippling in the rivulet, lying silent in the stagnant pool, or dashing in spray against the vessel’ s side, that water claims kinship with every drop of water the wide world over, because it is the same in its elements; and even so there is a unity of the Spirit which we cannot imitate, which consists in our being “ begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” bearing in us the Holy Ghost as our daily quickener, and walking in the path of faith in the living God. Here is the unity of the Spirit, a unity of life, nature working itself out in love. This is sustained daily by the Spirit of God. He who makes us one, keeps us one. Every member of my body must have a communion with every other member of my body. 3. The unity of the Spirit will discover itself in prayer. 4. There is also a unity of praise. 5. This unity will soon discover itself in co-working. It was a motto with Bucer, “ To love all in whom he could see anything of the Lord Jesus.” It is said of some men that they appear to have been born upon the mountains of Berber, for they do nothing but cause division; and baptized in the waters of Meribah, for they delight in causing strife. This is not the case with the genuine Christian; he cares only for the truth, for his Master, for the love of souls; and when these things are not imperilled, his own private likes or dislikes never affect him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Exhortation to unity Let us here inquire-- I. Into the state and character of those to whom the advice of the text is given. The persons to whom the advice is given are all members of one body; they are members of Christ and of one another. All inhabited by one Spirit. Called in one hope of their calling. The property, the subjects, the servants of one Lord. Professing and possessing one faith. This God is “ above” them “ all,” superintending and governing them, although infinitely exalted: through them “ all,” and they live and move and exist in Him; and “ in them all,” for they are “ an habitation of God through the Spirit.” II. What this advice implies.1. The “ unity of the Spirit,” of which the apostle speaks, it should be observed, is an internal unity, an unity between the spirits of men. It may subsist, therefore, between persons of different nations, educations, conditions, etc. 2. It is an unity of affection--mutual love, viz., desire of, and delight in, each other--mutual sympathy. 3. It is an unity of intention; one and all must have the same end in view, the glory of God in our own salvation, and the salvation of others. 4. It is an unity of resolution to prosecute that end. 5. It is an unity of operation (1 Corinthians 3:9), their work in the field. III. The reasonableness of this advice. Inhabited as they are by one Spirit, which can no more set them at variance with each other, than the soul which resides in the human body can set the members of it against each other. Called from similar misery to a similar state of safety and happiness, in the same way and manner: having one object of hope, and one hope, is it not reasonable they should be united? (Anon.)The unity of the Spirit 1. Christians should strive for unity in faith and opinion. Lowliness of mind and patience will conduce to this; as pride, self-love, and impatience make men easily dissent in affection and opinion. Satan is constantly trying to stir up strife in the Church. 2. Means to be taken for the attainment of unity. (1) Abandon a striving spirit.(2) Renounce vainglory.(3) Esteem others better than self. 3. It is not enough for us to entertain peace; we must give diligent endeavour to compass and maintain it. (1) Because the wisdom from above is peaceable.(2) A contentious nature is bred within us, and must be rooted out.(3) The devil is always ready to sow discord.(4) Unity is a comely thing, and a credit to religion.(5) God takes to Himself the title of “ the God of peace” (Romans 15:33; 1 Corinthians 13:11). 4. A peaceable disposition is an excellent means of concord. (Paul Bayne.)How to get and maintain peace 1 Take heed of giving offence.2. Avoid taking offence.3. Guard against beginning any contention.4. To keep peace, get pure hearts. (Paul Bayne.)The unity of the Spirit: the bond of peace I. What is to be kept. “ The unity of the Spirit” --the unity of which the Holy Spirit is the Author: that oneness of believing men in Christ which is the Spirit’ s new creation. It must be an unity corresponding in its nature and character to the nature and character of Him who is its Author and Creator.1. Look at its outward manifestation.2. The real seat of this unity is within, in the heart. II. The unity of the spirit is to be kept.1. There must be an endeavour to keep it. And the endeavour must be most earnest and most strenuous. 2. There is a bond provided for keeping this unity. The bond of peace. The endeavour, strenuous and sustained as it must be, is not to be the endeavour of violence or excitement. It is no desperate groping and struggling in the dark that is required. The unity of the Spirit is to be sedulously kept. But the keeping of it is to be quiet, calm, peaceful. The bond, the girdle, which is to be the means of keeping it, is peace. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)The unity of the Church I. Observe, in the first place, there is much said in the Word of God on this very subject of the true unity of the children of God (John 17:20-23; Romans 14:19; Romans 15:5; 1 Corinthians 1:10; 2 Corinthians 13:11; Philippians 3:1-3; Colossians 3:12-15). But there is an expression in the text, that I would not pass over: the apostle speaks of it us “ the unity of the Spirit,” because He secretly inclines heart to heart in the children of God. II. But, observe, secondly, some of those high motives that we have. The world thinks that we are full of discrepancies; that our differences are unutterable, and that we have no real unity. But we say that in the midst of it all there is a solid, real, substantial, veritable unity.1. It is the unity of a flock. Many folds; but one flock.2. It is the unity of one body. There are many members in that body.3. It is the unity of a temple.4. The unity of a family. III. Observe we now, beloved, the precept given to us in the words of the text--“ Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And here I would desire to give tender counsel, that in order to bear with infirmities and to avoid all needless separations, all causeless divisions, I must be effectually called and renewed by the Holy Ghost. Observe, further, that the words imply difficulty. “ Endeavouring.” It is a hard thing; it is easy when the love of Christ constrains, but in itself we find abundance of difficulty. How little can I understand my brother’ s position! How little can I see a secret principle of his spirit! How little can I comprehend the prejudice that works through him; that he has been brought up in from his infancy. Labour for it in all things possible. It is not the surrender of principle; it is not the sacrifice of truth; it is not the giving up of conscience. No, beloved; that is a sort of union the Spirit of God never would sanction. Do not attempt that which is actually impossible. We may “ endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit” in a way that never can be attained. It is the unity of a flock; various are the grades in that flock. It is the unity of a temple; various are the stones in that temple. It is the unity of a body; various are the members of that body. It is the unity of a family; but all the family do not speak alike, all the family do not think alike. To attempt it, is to attempt that which is unattainable; and we forget that, although these things have their source in our sin and ignorance, yet the eternal God overrules them for good, and brings good, and educes good out of evil. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)The unity of the Church of Christ So long as imperfect men are gathered together in a Christian society--men of different types of character sad different powers, and with a special fondness for their own way; men liable to mistake excited feeling for intensity of conviction, and to treat their own opinions with the reverence due to absolute truth--they will require to be admonished to “ endeavour,” etc. I. The unity of the church. Spiritual--not formal.1. Unity of life. Bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit; their affections set on things above, etc. 2. Unity of service. Christians have one Lord, towards whom they cherish one faith. He inspires the same loyalty; it is into His service they have been all baptized. 3. Unity of worship. We have not an unknown God; he that hath seen Christ hath seen the Father. We know Him to be righteous in all His works, and holy in all His ways. To worship is to perceive His excellence, and to love Him for it; to be strengthened by communion with Him, calmed by submission to Him. II. How to preserve the unity of the Spirit.1. By recognizing it.2. By cherishing a peaceful mind. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)The promotion of unity among members of thy same Church If we are to endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace in the same Church, then we must avoid everything that would mar it. Gossip--gossip is a very ready means of separating friends from one another. Let us endeavour to talk of something better than each other’ s characters. Dionysius went down to the Academy to Plato. Plato asked what he came for. “ Why,” said Dionysius, “ I thought that you, Plato, would be talking against me to your students.” Plato made this answer: “ Dost thou think, Dionysius, we are so destitute of matter to converse upon that we talk of thee?” Truly we must be very short of subjects when we begin to talk of one another. It is better far that we magnify Christ than detract from the honour of His members. We must lay aside all envy. Multitudes of good people liked the Reformation, but they said they did not like the idea of its being done by a poor miserable monk, like Martin Luther; and so there are many who like to see good things done, and good works carried on, but do not care to see it done by that upstart young brother, or that poor man, or that woman who has no particular rank or state. As a Church let us shake off envyings; let us all rejoice in God’ s light; and as for pride--if any of you have grown vainglorious of late, shake it off. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Wherein the unity of the Church consists This unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists in submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein consists the unity of the body? Consists it not in this, that there is one life uniting, making all the separate members one? Take away the life, and the members fall to pieces; they are no longer one; decomposition begins, and every element separates, no longer having any principle of cohesion or union with the rest. There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck with the power there is in a single living influence. Have we never, for instance, felt the power wherewith the orator unites and holds together a thousand men as if they were but one; with flashing eyes and throbbing hearts all attentive to his words, and by the difference of their attitudes, by the variety of expressions of their countenances, testifying to the unity of that single living feeling with which he had inspired them? Whether it be indignation, whether it be compassion, or whether it be enthusiasm, that one living influence made the thousand for the time one. Have we not heard how, even in this century in which we live, the various and conflicting feelings of the people of this country were concentrated into one, when the threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was heard one cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the mighty winds hold together as if one the various atoms of the desert, so that they rush like a living thing across the wilderness? And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the subjection to the one uniting Spirit of its God. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Unity among dissimilarities Unity, is that which subsists between things not similar and alike, but things dissimilar and unlike. There is no unity in the separate atoms of a sand pit; they are things similar; there is an aggregate or collection of them. Even if they be hardened in a mass they are not one, they do not form a unity; they are simply a mass. There is no unity in a flock of sheep; it is simply a repetition of a number of things similar to each other. If you strike off from a thousand five hundred, or if you strike off nine hundred, there is nothing lest of unity, because there never was unity. A flock of one thousand or a flock of five is just as much a flock as any other number. On the other hand, let us turn to the unity of peace which the apostle speaks of, and we find it is something different; it is made up of dissimilar members, without which dissimilarity there could be no unity. Each is imperfect in itself, each supplying what it has in itself to the deficiencies and wants of the other members. So, if you strike off from this body any one member, if you cut off an arm, or tear out an eye, instantly the unity is destroyed; you have no longer an entire and perfect body, there is nothing but a remnant of the whole, a part, a portion; no unity whatever. This will help us to understand the unity of the Church of Christ. If the ages and the centuries of the Church of Christ, if the different churches whereof it was composed, if the different members of each Church were similar, one in this, that they all held the same views, all spoke the same words, all viewed truth from the same side, they would have no unity; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the sand-pit over again. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Advantages of unity Great is the force of unity, peace, and concord. One man serves to strengthen and stablish another, like many staves bound together in one. Many sticks or staves bound together in one bundle are not easily broken; but sever them and pull them asunder, they are soon broken with little strength. Thus the case in all societies, whether it be in the Church, or commonwealth, or in the private family. (W. Attersol.)How unity is to be attained An apparent union may be produced by none thinking at all, as well as by all thinking alike; but such a union, as Leighton observes, is not produced by the active heat of the spirit, but is a confusion rather arising from the want of it; not a fusing together, but a freezing together, as cold congregates all bodies how heterogeneous soever, sticks, stones, and water: but heat makes first a separation of different things, and then unites those that are of the same nature. (H. G. Salter.)Real unity 1. ll real unity is manifold. Feelings in themselves identical find countless forms of expression; for instance, sorrow is the same feeling throughout the human race; but the Oriental prostrates himself upon the ground, throws dust upon his head, tears his garments, is not ashamed to break out into the most violent lamentations. In the north we rule our grief; suffer not even a quiver to be seen upon the lip or brow, and consider calmness as the appropriate expression of manly grief. Nay, two sisters of different temperament will show their grief diversely; one will love to dwell upon the theme of the qualities of the departed; the other feels it a sacred sorrow, on which the lips are sealed forever. Yet would it not be idle to ask which of them has the truest affection? Are they not both in their own way true? In the East, men take off their sandals in devotion; we exactly reverse the procedure, and uncover the head. The Oriental prostrates himself in the dust before his sovereign; even before his God the Briton only kneels: yet would it not again be idle to ask which is the essential and proper form of reverence? Is not true reverence in all cases modified by the individualities of temperament and education? Should we not say in all these forms worketh one and the same spirit of reverence? 2. All living unity is spiritual, not formal; not sameness but manifoldness. You may have a unity shown in identity of form; but it is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness on the sea beach--that unity which the ocean waves have produced by curling and forcibly destroying the angularities of individual form, so that every stone presents the same monotony of aspect, and you must fracture each again in order to, distinguish whether you hold in your hand a mass of flint or a fragment of basalt. There is no life in unity such as this. But as soon as you arrive at a unity that is living, the form becomes more complex, and you search in vain for uniformity. In the parts it must be found, if found at all, in the sameness of pervading life. The illustration given by the apostle is that of the human body--a higher unity, he says, by being composed of many members, than if every member were but a repetition of a single type. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Spiritual unity The union for which the Lord Jesus prayed was a union of spiritual men--a union not of mere professors but of His true disciples--a union in the Lord. Any other union is little worth. A union of professors with professors of one dead Church with another dead Church is but a filling of the charnel house, a heaping of the compost pile. A union of dead professors with living saints, this union of life and death is but to pour the green and putrid water of the stagnant pool into the living spring. It is not to graft new branches into the goodly vine, but to bandage on dead boughs that will but deform it. It is not to gather new wheat into the garner, but to blend the wheat and chaff again together. It is not to gather new sheep into the fold, but it is to borrow the shepherd’ s brand and imprint it on the dogs and wolves and call them sheep. The identifying of christened pagans with the peculiar people has done much dishonour to the Redeemer, has deluded many souls, and made it much more difficult for the Church to convince the world. It was not this amalgamation of the Church and the world which the Saviour contemplated when He prayed for His people’ s unity. It was a union of spiritual men--a holy unity springing from oneness with Himself. Union with Christ is an indispensable preliminary to union with the Church of Christ. An individual must be joined to Christ before he can be a true member of the Church of Christ. And those individuals and those Churches which are the most closely joined to Christ are the nearest to one another, and will be the first to coalesce in the fulfilment of Christ’ s prayer--“ May they all be one!” (Hamilton.)Need of unity “ Ane stick’ ll never burn! Put more wood on the fire, laddie; ane stick’ ll never burn!” my old Scotch grandfather used to say to his boys. Sometimes, when the fire in the heart burns low, and love to the Saviour grows faint, it would grow warm and bright again if it could only touch another stick. “ Where two or three are gathered together” the heart burns; love kindles to a fervent heat. “ Ane stick’ ll never burn” as a great, generous fire will be sure to. Si collidimur, frangimur “ If we clash, we are broken,” according to the old fable of the two earthen pots swimming in the sea. “ The daughter of dissension is dissolution,” said Nazianzen; “ and every subdivision in point of religion is a strong weapon in the hand of the contrary party,” as he (the historian), upon the Council of Trent, wisely observed. Castor and Pollux, if they appear not together it presageth a storm. (J. Trapp.)Unity aids work By union the pyramids of Egypt, the gates of Thebes, and the columns of the Parthenon were reared, and oceans crossed, and valleys filled up. (Dr. Cumming.)Strength of union There was a small band of three hundred cavalry in the Theban army, who proved a great terror to any enemy with whom they were called to fight. They were companions, who had bound themselves together by a vow of perpetual friendship, determined to stand together until the last drop of their blood was spilled upon the ground. They were called “ The Sacred Battalion, or the Band of Lovers,” and they were bound alike by affection for the State and fidelity for each other, and thus achieved marvels, some of which seem almost fabulous. What a name for a militant Church, “ The Sacred Battalion!” It is when she is thus animated by one spirit that she is victorious. Love of Christian unity The attachment of the Rev. John Elliot, usually called “ The Apostle to the Indians,” to peace and union among Christians was exceedingly great. When he heard ministers complain that some in their congregations were too difficult for them, the substance of his advice would be, “ Brother, compass them. Brother, learn the meaning of those three little words--bear, forbear, forgive.” His love of peace, indeed, almost led him to sacrifice right itself. Unity is strength Separate the atoms which make the hammer and each would fall on the stone as a snow flake; but welded into one, and wielded by the firm arm of the quarryman, it will break the massive rocks asunder. Divide the waters of Niagara into distinct and individual drops, and they would be no mere than the falling rain, but in their united body they would quench the fires of Vesuvius, and have some to spare for the volcanoes of other mountains. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)False unity Divisions are bad things. Do not fancy that I have any sympathy with those who, confounding charity with indifference, regard matters of religion as not worth disputing about. Such a state of death is still worse than war. Give me the roaring storm rather than the peace of the grave. Division is better than such union as the frost produces, when with its cold and icy fingers it binds up into one dead, congealed, heterogeneous mass, stones and straws, pearls and pebbles, gold and silver, iron and clay, substances that have nothing in common. Yet divisions are bad things. They give birth to bad passions. They cause Ephraim to envy Judah, and Judah to vex Ephraim. Therefore, what we ought to aim at is to heal them, and when we cannot heal them, to soften their asperities. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Unity in the bond of peace Bind not thine hands, but bind thy heart and mind. Bind thyself to thy brother. They bear all things lightly who are bound together by love. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. For to this end was the Spirit given, that He might unite those who are separated by race and diversity of habits: old and young, rich and poor, child, youth, and man, male and female, and every soul become in a manner one, and more entirely so than if they were of one body. For this spiritual relation is far higher than natural relation, and the perfectness of the union more entire; because the conjunction of the soul, being simple and accordant, is more perfect. And how is this unity preserved? “ In the bond of peace.” It is not possible that unity should exist in enmity and discord. St. Paul would have us linked and tied one to another; not simply that we be at peace, not simply that we love one another, but that in all there should be but one soul. A glorious bond is this: with this bond let us bind ourselves together, alike to one another and to God. (Chrysostom.)Need of harmony The following incident in the life of Lord Nelson contains a lesson for Christians. On the day before the battle of Trafalgar, Nelson took Collingwood and Rotherham, who were at variance, to a spot where they could see the fleet opposed to them. “ Yonder,” said the Admiral, “ are your enemies; shake hands and be friends like good Englishmen.” The fulness of the unity Were all Churches and church members concerned to “ keep the unity of His Spirit,” a bond of peace, strong as the everlasting firmament, would encircle them. But how is it possible that we should worthily conceive of the riches comprehended in “ the unity of the Spirit” ? We have seen a company of a thousand musicians and singers playing and singing one tune in harmony. The persons were distinct, the instruments distinct, and the voices very distinct, and yet all were a composed unity. An army of a hundred thousand men, in movement and operation, may be a perfect unity. But in order to form an idea of the “ unity of the Spirit,” we must imagine that the whole universe, visible and invisible, with all its distinctions, elements, powers, and virtues were dissolved in one sea of being. For all have sprung from such a sea, and, in the Spirit, are such a sea of living, blissful unity. Even in the sphere of striving, corrupt nature, we see enough to make us wonder at the variety which the Spirit carries in the bosom of His unity. For all the variety, in earth and heaven, is wrought “ by One and the self-same Spirit.” The new growths, the joy and the glory, which constitute our summer, are so much of the fulness of the Spirit opened to our view. The creatures in different elements and latitudes are so distinct that they have no communion with each other; but they are all One in the Spirit which animates them. The sea and its contents, the innumerable tribes of the air, and all the species found on our hills and in our plains and valleys, are but very partial manifestations of the wealth and variety of the Spirit. The all things of the Father, and all things of Creation, and the all things in Christ’ s finished work are included in the Spirit’ s unity. Pause and contemplate “ the river of God’ s pleasures,” “ the fulness of joy” which the perfect know above. Whatever our understandings may hold as truth, is but a mere division of this unity. “ The unity of the Spirit” is “ the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus,” and can only be apprehended by the affections. (J. Pulsford.) Ephesians 4:4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.The seven unities of spiritual life 1. One body.” Now the body is for our habitation, and it is for our action upon the world around, and it is for our reception of influences that the world around exerts upon ourselves. The body is for habitation, for activity, and for reception. If, then, in our own personal body our spirit so dwells that all the various organs work together for a common end, which end is good, then our body is what God designed it to be. And if in a group of persons the common life actually resides in each individual, so that each for the rest works willingly and earnestly towards procuring a common good, then there is a “ body.” So, if through our bodily frame we act well upon the world, the use for which God designed the body is being fulfilled: and if our various senses are inlets of wisdom and of happiness from the world without, then again the use for which God designed the body is being fulfilled. And if a group of men are acting upon the world by their various individualities, combining by one thought to promote one good, they are a body--the use God designed in forming men into societies is being fulfilled. So, too, if they are receiving from without the various influences of knowledge and of happiness, they are as one body--the use that God designed is being fulfilled. We notice then, again, with respect to the body, that some of its members are more essential to existence than others, and yet they are all essential to completeness of existence. And one last thing concerning the body we may say, which is this--that though particular works require particular organs, or a connection of such organs, these are always best done when the general health and aptitude of the body are highest. Thus, if you have to work as a player upon instruments of music, or work as a painter with colours and with the pencil, the hand is requisite; but will it be merely the hand to which your excellence is due? Certainly not. If there be no general fineness of your senses, there cannot be any peculiar excellence in your specialty. Whatever be that specialty of a man which requires a certain organ or group of organs, his work will always be of the best sort according to the general health of his bodily sensibilities, the general harmony of his bodily powers. And so it will be in the works of a spiritual society. Whatever we require to be done, though it may, so to say, need only a part of our organism to fulfil it, that will be best done when our general state is healthiest. If we be full of bodily excellency, then any particular work will be most excellent. 2. There is “one Spirit.” Were there not one life in the root, the blade, and the ear, there could be no progression from the root towards the full corn. Were there not one life throughout the bodily frame, there could not be this union of activities to promote common advantage. There is one life in each thing that lives; nay, it could not be called living, were it not for this fact of internal unity. Now, speaking of ourselves completely, and not of the animal man merely, we say that if there be a disturbance in the spirit, the unity of life will show itself in the distress and groans of experience; but we say also, that whatever we do spiritually aright, whether it be to sing, to pray, to read, to give gifts, to discuss, to advise, to study--whatsoever we do aright, the benefit of the part will produce a blessing for the whole. Especially is the Spirit called the Holy Spirit. Now, the first thing required of us in preparing what is holy is separation; and the next thing is conjunction. The soul disunites from the world, and comes into conjunction with the Lord God. 3. “One hope.” “ Ye are called in one hope of your calling.” A happy thought that is, that we are called. We have not in uncertainty come and asked, Is there any heaven, and which is the way there? Is there any God, and is He friendly? But there has come a call to us, and it is a call upwards. That is the only call that is a sufficient one for men. It is the call to glory and virtue that is a sufficing call for man. We are called, then; and as replying to the Divine call, with our active feet and our ready hands, we partake in a hope. Now, what is this hope? We hope for the redemption of the body, and the full perfection of the spirit; and as we are already much interested in one another, it is not simply the full redemption of our own flesh and blood, and the full perfection of our own individual limited spirit, that satisfies us, but we hope for a wise and happy world; we hope for a full and abiding joy. We are all called to do good--all called to be good; and it is quite certain that we can never be satisfied until individually there be a perfect spirit in a harmonious and healthful frame, and socially, also, there be a perfect spirit in a harmonious and healthful frame. This is our hope, and it is a hope of which we need not be ashamed. 4. “ One Lord,” --the Lord Jesus Christ. One Lord; but men have not been at one in their thoughts of Him; they have not been at one in their conduct, which they have professed was governed by Him. This Lord has brought strife into the world. Now, to reconcile opposed persons is very hard, but to reconcile opposed opinions much easier; for truths have no animosity to each other; but persons, although their interests may be identical, are often, and soon, and very, angry with one another. Now, we must seek to reconcile truths in our own mind. Of course, as they are in the Divine mind which contains all truths in eternal harmony, there is no reconciliation required; but it will require much effort to make our little minds in some humble manner a transcript of the bright Divine mind. 5. “ One faith” : by which we adhere to the one Lord. Faith is at once an expression of a weakness that we acknowledge, and of a strength which we trust and receive. It is, then, our adherence to the one Lord, who in His humanity gives us all necessary example and sympathy, and in His Divinity sustains us with a fund of strength that can never be exhausted. 6. “ One baptism.” The actions that pertain to baptism, like the opinions that pertain to faith, are of comparatively little moment; but baptism itself is essential, because it is the application of the purifying element to the soul. Now, there are two principal elements, the water and the fire, that are applied for purification; and surely any man who comes out of the water after baptism, or has used the water thoroughly in any way for baptism, may say to himself, “ This very water that cleanses me could drown me; this very water, whose action is so gentle, could sweep me away, as with a mighty rage.” In its gentle application, water removes impurities from us, as still capable of being cleansed; but should we become utterly impure, instead of washing in the wave to be made clean, we are washed away by it, that the earth may be cleansed. 7. Then we may speak last of all of the “one God,” --the one God and Father of us all, who is over all in His creative love, who is through all in the actions of His multiform but harmonious providence, and who is in us all, making the body of the spiritual Church to be the residence of His own love and truth. The Father of all: is the great Fatherhood of God yet manifested to the world? No, Is even His unity as the one Lord of creation manifest to the world? No. And are we approaching--for this is surely a suitable thought to allow ourselves in the closing moments of this discoarse--to a time truly catholic? Is society getting more catholic, or more conglomerate; more of a Church, or more of a medley? Are things becoming more in common; the spirit becoming more truly holy? (T. T. Lynch.)Gospel unities 1. There is one body--the Church.2. One Spirit--the Holy Ghost.3. One hope--the resurrection from the dead.4. One Lord--Jesus Christ.5. One faith--the Christian religion.6. One baptism--Christian baptism.7. One God and Father of us all--the Lord God Almighty. (1) He is above all. Then He is supreme. And because of this-- (a) He is worthy of our worship. (b) He is worthy of all reverence in our worship. (2) He is through all. Then He permeates all. (3) He is in you all. Then we may each realize Him. Conclusion: If all this be true--then union should exist everywhere. (A. F. Barfield.)The unity of the Church The Church is one. When the apostle wrote this Epistle there were societies of Christians--Churches--in Rome, in Corinth, in Thessalonica, in Philippi, in Colosse, in Ephesus, in the cities and towns of Galatia, in the Syrian Antioch, and in Jerusalem. There were less famous Churches in other cities. They stood apart from each other; every separate Church had authority over its own affairs, maintained its own discipline, elected its own bishops and deacons, organized its own worship. As yet there was no confederation of these independent societies under any central ecclesiastical authority. Their unity was not constituted by an external organization, but by their common possession of the Spirit of God, and it is therefore called by the apostle “ the unity of the Spirit.” He has spoken of the unity of the Church in the earlier part of the Epistle. The exclusion of the pagan races from “ the commonwealth of Israel” had ceased; “ the middle wall of partition” which separated them from the sacred court in which the elect nation had nearer access to God had been broken down. There was now one city of the saints, of which all Christian men of every nation were citizens; one household of God in which they were all children; one holy temple “ built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone,” into the sacred walls of which they were all built “ for a habitation of God in the Spirit.” He has asserted this unity in a still bolder form; for after speaking of the glory of Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, “ far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come,” he described the Church as “ the Body” of Christ, the organ of His life and thought and will, “ the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” And now he returns to this great conception. The “ Body” of Christ, he says, is “ one” ; the “ Spirit” of Goal who dwells in it is “ one” ; and in harmony with this unity of the “ Body” of Christ and this unity of the “ Spirit” who dwells in it, the great “ hope” of all Christian men, of all who have been called into the Divine kingdom and have obeyed the call, is “ one.” There is “ one Lord,” only one--Christ Jesus the Prince and the Saviour of men; “ one faith” --not a common creed, but a common trust in Christ for eternal righteousness and eternal glory; “ one baptism,” and one only, the same rite by which Christ visibly claims men as belonging to the race for which He died, and over which He reigns, is administered to all. There is “ one God and Father of all” ; we all worship before the same eternal throne, and in Christ we are all the children of the same Divine Father; His sovereignty is absolute and supreme--He is “ over all” ; the power of His life penetrates the whole Body of Christ--He is “ through all” ; and His home is in all Christians--He is “ in all.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The communion of saints Believers in Christ are bound together in the ties of a holy brotherhood. Let us look a little at the nature of this communion. I. With respect to the condition. “ There is one Body and one Spirit” ; and the exercise of that Spirit and the execution of His office are the same in all--to show them the things of Christ, that thus through Christ they may hold communion with the Father. The whole Body of the faithful are joined together in communion with the Father of spirits. They all meet at the same throne; they all unite in one common feeling, and join in one common song of praise. II. Their pursuits. The Church is dispersed throughout the world; it is separated by difference of language, rank, age, circumstances; but being partakers off one Spirit and one faith, they are of one heart and one mind in the gospel, and they unite in the pursuit of God’ s glory. III. Their enjoyments. Here again their hearts are one. Christ Jesus is the centre of their joy. (William Reeve, M. A.)One Body and one Spirit The Church or Body is one. There are not two rival communities. The Body, with its many members and complex array of organs of very different position, function, and honour, is yet one. The Church, no matter where it is situated, or in what age of the world it exists--no matter of what race, blood, or colour are its members, or how various the tongues in which its services are presented--is one, and remains so, unaffected by distance or time, or physical, intellectual, and social distinctions. And as in the Body there is only one Spirit, one living principle--no double consciousness, no dualism of intelligence, motive, and action--so the one Spirit of God dwells in the one Church, and there is, therefore, no rivalry of administration, and there are no conflicting claims. And whatever the gifts and graces conferred, whatever variety of aspect they may assume, all possess a delicate self-adaptation to times and circumstances, for they are all from the “ one Spirit,” having unity of origin and oneness of design and result. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The oneness of Christ’ s Church The real spiritual Church of the Redeemer is one Body. All the members of that Church partake of the same grace, adhere to the same rule of faith, are washed in the same Blood, are filled with the same hopes, and shall dwell at length in the same blessed inheritance. Heretics and ungodly men may find their way into the Church, but they remain really separated from its “ invisible conjunction of charity.” There may be variations in what Barrow calls “ lesser matters of ceremony and discipline,” and yet this essential unity is preserved. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The Church is not a material Body In contemplating this Body you must divest yourselves of a material idea. What we call matter is by no means essential to living organisms. On the contrary, it is essential to the reality, unity, and permanence of a body that it be not material. “ There are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial.” But the celestial is much more strictly a body than the terrestrial. For a celestial body is incapable of decay, but an earthly body soon collapses, and falls into an inorganic mass. A body may be material, or psychical, or spiritual. The material is the lowest, and least worthy of being called a body. Strictly speaking, matter is an apparition. It is essentially deficient of the higher qualities of being, and consequently cannot maintain its integrity. It is a dense vapour that “ appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away.” As our own material body is a veil hiding another body, in like manner, the material universe is a covering upon a more glorious universe. The sanctuary, which was so constructed as to be a figure of creation, had for its outmost covering rough animal skins; but by lifting a series of coverings, you came to gold, and within all was the Divine Presence. Peter, James, and John were permitted to see that our Lord had, within His material body, a divinely luminous one, which was His true body. We are called to become citizens of the kingdom which is the inner and true body of the universe. This is the kingdom of heaven, which our Lord preached and opened to men. Our souls live, move, and have their being in this inner sphere. We are a part of it. (J. Pulsford.)Sins against unity All sins against unity are sins against the Holy Ghost. (Dr. Hedge.)Union is strength If you consider how it is that a hempen twine is made strong enough to draw a loaded waggon, or to bear the immense strain of a ship as she rides at anchor, you will see a significancy that perhaps did not occur to you before, in the use which Holy Scripture makes of this work of human art as an emblem. It is formed of many threads twisted together into one cord, and these cords are again combined into one cable. Each thread is in itself so weak, that a child could break, or the slightest weight would burst it; but when the threads are turned into one rope, their united strength is such as would have seemed incredible. “ A three-fold cord is not quickly broken.” The truth is just before us that union is strength. They who are weak and helpless singly are able to produce a vast result, when they combine their powers. It was in order to restrain His sinful creatures from carrying out what they had combined with the intention of doing, that God frustrated the building of the tower of Babel, and scattered them over the face of the earth, and He gathers together again His elect people in one body in Christ, that by uniting their various energies in one work, and for one end, they may strengthen each other’ s hands, and effectually “ bruise under foot” the powers of darkness. (Bishop Trower.)Christian work promotes unity Captain Moreton, to illustrate the concord that came from union in work, retailed the following incident he had heard from Mr. Macgregor (Rob Roy). He was walking one day on the southern English coast, and fell across some seafaring men quarrelling about the way in which a button had been sewn on one of their coats. They were on the point of coming to blows, when a cry was raised that there was a ship on the Goodwin Sands, and that the lifeboat was needed. Instantly the trumpery quarrel was at an end, and all were heartily at work doing their best to save their shipwrecked brethren. Ephesians 4:5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism.The Lord of the Church From the beginning, the Church is constituted of all who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. I. How is the Lordship of Jesus constituted? Not by the suffrages of men; but by the will of God. And it is the reward of His servantship. II. What does this Lordship comprise? Master, Teacher, Leader, Captain, Prince. In all things He is preeminent. In and over the Church He, and He only, has the right to reign. III. How is this Lordship essential to the Church? The saints who form the one Body, and are actuated by the one Spirit, and are called in the hope of having one Lord, are companions in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. They are servants under one Master; disciples under one Teacher; soldiers under one Captain; subjects under one Lord. He is preeminent and paramount. And it is His Lordship that gives tone to their character, firmness to their testimony, steadfastness to their hues, and direction in all things. IV. The practical uses of this doctrine.1. It stirs gratitude.2. It requires obedience.3. It promotes equity and fair play among Christians.4. It binds together Christians in unity. There are differences of service and ministration rendered, but the same Lord is the rallying point of the whole kingdom. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The five points of universal charity I. One faith. This may be interpreted of the principle of faith as applied to revelation in general, and to Christ, the great object of that revelation, in particular. This faith is “ precious.” It unites to a precious Saviour. It is precious, as the medium of deriving the greatest benefits. II. One baptism. We prefer to consider this as the baptism of the Spirit; the sign being put for the thing signified. III. One hope. This is termed, the one hope of their calling; namely, the one object to which they are all called, and which, therefore, they all have in hope, This is heaven, and is rather a state than a place, being two-fold, the one introductory, the other future and permanent. IV. One Lord. This is Jesus Christ, viewed as a Saviour by faith and hope, and regarded as Lord by the principle of Christian submission and obedience. His supremacy, all true Christians joyfully acknowledge. V. One God, and father of all. Here the apostle leads Christians up to the source of human redemption; and the ultimate object of all religious worship and homage. With God the Father, the plan of our salvation originated. Our Saviour perpetually refers His mediation to the will and appointment of His Father. “ I came not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. The work that My Father giveth Me to do,” I do it. And even now, He carries on the process of human redemption in heaven, entirely in accordance with the will of the Father (John 5:19). Let us follow this epitome with some reflections on the agreement of Christians in these several particulars.1. How great must be the work of their salvation! What great objects without are concerned in it; what great dispositions are wrought within them in relation to these objects to accomplish it! Here is God the Father intending it from eternity, Jesus Christ procuring it in time by His mediation, and a glorious heaven in future for its completion and enjoyment. Here is the Holy Spirit bringing their minds into contact with these objects, so as to be deeply influenced by them, through the medium of revealed truth, by the power of faith; which faith is expressly said to be of the operation of the Spirit of God, and the effect of the exceeding greatness of His power: and here is a supernatural principle of hope given them for the promotion of the same object. 2. What provision is made by these objects for the promotion of Christians in holiness? All the means and agencies requisite for that purpose are here at hand. The principle of faith with which they are endowed renders every part of the Bible that is favourable to holiness capable of being brought to bear on them. The principle of hope also is a great help and incentive to holiness. It saves us from being drawn to sin by the allurements of the world, presenting something infinitely more captivating before us; and it saves us from being driven to sin by its terrors, suggesting in such ease the affecting idea of the loss of its great object. Particularly does it influence to holiness by leading the mind to converse with holy objects, which must have a tendency to assimilate it to them. 3. What a foundation is laid, by the agreement of Christians in these particulars, for a mutual affection! The points of agreement among Christians, compared with those of disagreement, are much fewer in number but far greater in importance. 4. What a fearful thought is the fact of Christ’ s lordship to the ungodly! They who neglect Him, little think of His present grandeur, and of His future glory. (J. Leifchild.)The Church of the future I believe in the Church of the future. I think that there will come a day, at no distant time, when from the watchtowers of Asia, once the land of many lords, there shall roll out the exultant chorus, “ One Lord!” When from the watchtowers of Europe, distracted by divisions in the Faith, there shall roll up the great chorus, “ One Faith!” When from the watchtowers of America, torn by controversies respecting the initiatory rite into the vestibule Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, there shall burst forth the inspiring chorus, “ One Baptism!” When from the watchtowers of Africa, as though the God of all the human race were not her God, as if the Father of the entire family were not her Father--when from the watchtowers of neglected and despised Africa, there shall roll forth the chorus, “ One God and Father of us all!” When the sacramental host, scattered all over the face of this lower creation, shall spring upon their feet, and, seizing the harp of thanksgiving, they shall join in the chorus that shall be responded to by the angels, “ One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all; to whom be glory, dominion, and majesty, and blessing forever.” (A. Cookman.) Ephesians 4:6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.The universal Fatherhood of believers I. A truth proclaimed by the gospel. II. A truth manifoldly confirmed by Christian experience.1. The Divine Father is over all His children. Fatherhood the ultimate truth concerning God on which all others rest, and out of which they grow. Expressive of (1) supreme authority;(2) protective care;(3) the grace of God as an administrative principle. 2. The Divine Father is through all His children. This preposition suggests movement and instrumentality. (1) The energy of the Father working through His children;(2) the distribution of spiritual gifts;(3) the revelation of the Father through believers. 3. The Divine Father is in all His children. (1) In the consciousness of their relationship to Him (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6);(2) in real union with Him (John 17:22-23). (A. F. Muir, M. A.)One God and Father The ideas connected with God and Father are here joined beautifully in the same person--power and love. Majesty is softened with tenderness, and the splendours of the Divinity tempered by the condescensions of paternal love. This principle is indeed wonderfully exemplified in all God’ s dealings with the human race since the beginning of the world. The entire Jewish theocracy was the clothing the splendours of the present Ruler under the forms of a carnal ritualism. Whenever, in the old Testament, the glory of the Lord appears, two things take place--the sinful creature is laid in the dust, and then a word of comfort comes from the excellent glory: power is tempered with grace; the majesty of Jehovah with the human heartedness of the Father. Thus it was with Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5-9); Ezekiel fell prostrate (Ezekiel 3:23); and Daniel fainted and was sick certain days (Daniel 8:17-27); John, the beloved, fell down as dead before the glory of his Master (Revelation 1:17); and even the fierce murderer of the saints (Acts 9:4-5) was overwhelmed by the manifested glory. It is a source of comfort to remark that in these and all such cases there is ever some word or act of kindness on the part of God to raise up and strengthen His trembling creatures. It is the realizing of the name, “ God and Father.” This is, indeed, the principle of Incarnation. The awful glory of the incorruptible God is tempered, softened, humanized in the person of Christ. (W. Graham, D. D.)The Fatherhood of God There are degrees of Fathership; or rather, there are such different degrees of the development of a Father’ s love as make new orders in the relationship. He is the Father of the inanimate creation. Job calls Him the Father of the rain. In a higher sense and measure, He is the Father of the whole human race. All are the creatures of His hand; all are the subjects of His special providence; for all Jesus died. But the believer says it as a heathen or man of the world never says it. Or, see it again in this way. God has only one begotten Son, Jesus Christ. As many as believe are united to Jesus Christ; they become members of that mystical body. So they become sons by a double process, and by virtue of their union with Christ they are sons indeed. Therefore to them in a further degree God is Father. I do not say He is a reconciled Father to them, that He did not need (that is not in the Bible), but they are reconciled children to Him. There are two persons who best know what it is to say “ Father.” One is a little, simple, trusting child, “ of the womb of the morning,” who has not yet unlearnt the faith of his infancy. The other is a penitent, rising up from his sin, going back to his home--“ I will arise, and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee.” I believe the remedy of all sorrow and almost all sin will be to think of God more as a Father. But this is not the line of thought along which I wish to take you now, but it is this, that God is the common Father of us all. Surely it would be a great thing if we could have it always before us--“ One God and Father of all.” There is a great deal of harshness of opinion in the world just now, and men are very busy unchurching and un-Christianizing one another. The rich speak of the poor as “ the lower orders,” and the poor--partly in consequence because they think the rich look down upon them--the poor dislike the rich much more than the rich dislike the poor. But ought this to be where all are one family? Do we call brothers and sisters “ lower orders” ? At this moment, have you any disagreement with any living man? have you any quarrel? Now think--That person has the same Father that I have; how patient that Father has been with that man; how very patient God has been with me; and is this the way, as a child of God, I should act to another child of the same God? There are deep mysteries in God’ s providence--why some are heathen and some are Christian, some know nothing and some know much, some have so many advantages and some have so exceedingly few. But let us never forget the Word, and all it tells, and all it teaches us to do--“ One God and Father of us all.” I know nothing which brings heaven so near. Here are we on earth trying to say, and we ought to say, every day, “ Our Father.” And up there, just inside the blue veil, the hundred forty-and-four thousand have “ the Father’ s name on their foreheads.” Was this the reason why Christ taught us to say, “ Our Father” ? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)God the Father of all The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’ s joy. The lowly pine on the mountain top waves its sombre boughs, and cries, “ Thou art my sun.” And the little meadow violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed breath, “ Thou art my sun.” And the grain in a thousand fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, “ Thou art my sun.” So God sits effulgent in heaven, not for a favoured few, but for the universe of life; and there is no creature so poor or so low that he may not look up with childlike confidence and say, “ My Father, Thou art mine.” (H. W. Beecher.)God is above all When Bulstrode Whitelock was embarking, in the year 1653, as ambassador for Sweden, he was much disturbed in his mind, as he rested at Harwich on the preceding night, which was stormy, while he reflected on the distracted state of the nation. It happened that a good and confidential servant slept in an adjacent bed, who, finding that his master could not sleep, at length said, “ Pray, sir, will you give me leave to ask you a question?” “ Certainly.” “ Pray, sir, don’ t you think that God governed the world very well before you came into it?” “ Undoubtedly.” “ And pray, sir, don’ t you think that He will govern it quite as well when you are gone out of it?” “ Certainly.” “ Then, sir, don’ t you think you may trust Him to govern it properly as long as you live?” To this last question Whitelock had nothing to reply, but, turning himself about, soon fell fast asleep, till he was aroused and called to embark. Ephesians 4:7 But unto every one of us is grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.Grace determining function I. The function or office of any Christian in the church depends upon the gift which he possesses. II. This gift originates in the grace of Christ.1. It is not merely by nature or education.2. Nor is it the reward of desert.3. Still less is it arbitrary or capricious. III. Therefore the position and task determined by this grace should be accepted with grateful unquestioning obedience.1. Every Christian has received some gift fitting him for usefulness. 2. Loyalty and faith towards the Head of the Church demands that he should make the utmost use of it. 3. By so doing he is the more certain to receive increase of grace for further and higher service. “ Every gift of the Spirit is a prophecy of greater gifts.” (A. F. Muir, M. A.)The gift of Christ “ The gift of Christ” is the gift which He confers. That gift is measured, and each individual receives according to the sovereign will of the Supreme distributor. And whether the measure be great or small, whether its contents be of more brilliant endowment or of humbler and unnoticed talent--all is equally Christ’ s gift, and of Christ’ s adjustment, and all is equally indispensable to the union and edification of that Body in which there is “ no schism.” The law of the Church is essential unity in the midst of circumstantial variety. Differences of faculty or temperament, education or susceptibility, are not superseded. Each gift in its own place completes the unity. What one devises another may plead for, while a third may act out the scheme; so that sagacity, eloquence, and enterprise form a “ three-fold cord, not easily broken.” It is so in the material creation--the little is as essential to symmetry as the great--the star as well as the sun--the raindrop equally with the ocean, and the hyssop no less than the cedar. The pebble has its place as fittingly as the mountain, and colossal forms of life are surrounded with the tiny insect whose term of existence is limited to the summer twilight, Why should the possession of this grace lead to self-inflation? It is simply Christ’ s gift. The amount and character of “ grace” possessed by others ought surely to create no uneasiness nor jealousy, for it is of Christ’ s measurement as well as of His bestowment, and every form and quantity of it as it descends from the one source is indispensable to the harmony of the Church. The one Lord will not bestow conflicting graces, nor mar nor disturb, by the repulsive antipathy of His gifts, that unity which Himself creates and exemplifies. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Gifts differ--be natural Now you that have lately been converted, do not go and learn all the pretty phrases that we are accustomed to use. Strike out your own course. Be yourself. “ But I should be odd.” You need not mind that. All the trees that God makes are odd. The Dutch chip them round, or make them into peacocks, but that style of gardening is not to our mind. Some people say, “ What a lovely tree.” I say, “ What a horribly ugly thing it is.” Why not let the tree grow as God would have it. Do not clip yourselves round or square, but keep your freshness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Use your own gift It is said that in Derby resides Mr. Thomas Eyre, a veteran in the temperance cause, for forty years an abstainer and an earnest worker, but unable now to go out and labour, being paralyzed. In his window is hung a small board, with the following notice: “ A temperance pledge kept here. All who are weary of drinking, come in and sign.” “ Yesterday,” said our aged friend, “ one who has long been a slave to drink, and in great distress, came in, and for the first time signed the pledge.” This example is worthy of being imitated. Ephesians 4:8 Wherefore He saith, when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.The glory of the ascended Christ I. The ascension of Christ secured and declared His triumph.1. The glory of Christ was foreshadowed by the triumphal procession of Jehovah to Zion. (1) The captives of the Lord of salvation: the redeemed; sin; death; Satan. (2) The riches of the Lord of salvation: gifts, not of gold, etc., but of spiritual life, endowment, and reward. 2. The descent and ascension of Christ reveal the universal character of His triumph. There is no sphere of the universe He did not enter, and there is nothing that remains unaffected by His influence. II. The gifts conferred upon Christians and exercised in the Church are a portion of the glory of the ascended Lord. Instead of fretting at the manifold distinctions of the Christian ministry, we ought to look upon these as showing forth the unspeakable fulness and glory of Jesus Christ. The varied functions of the ministry, and the private gifts of the membership, are signs not of weakness, but of all-conquering power, and they all emanate from the one Lord. The rich variety of nature is surpassed by the more significant and glorious variety of grace. (A. E. Muir, M. A.)The ascension of Christ I. The fact of Christ’ s ascension.1. It should afford us supreme joy to remember that He who descended into the lower parts of the earth has now “ ascended up far above all heavens.” Shame is swallowed up in glory, pain is lost in bliss, death in immortality. Well deserves the Warrior to receive glory, for He has dearly won it (Psalms 6:8). 2. Reflect yet again that from the hour our Lord left it, this world has lost all charms to us. If He were in it, there were no spot in the universe which would hold us with stronger ties; but since He has gone up He draws us upward from it. The flower is gone from the garden, the first ripe fruit is gathered. Earth’ s crown has lost its brightest jewel, the star is gone from the night, the dew is exhaled from the morning, the sun is eclipsed at noon. Joseph is no more in Egypt, and it is time for Israel to be gone. No, earth, my treasure is not here with thee, neither shall my heart be detained by thee. 3. We must henceforth walk by faith, and not by sight. Jesus is no more seen of human eyes; and it is well, for faith’ s sight is saving, instructing, transforming, and mere natural sight is not so. 4. Reflect how secure is our eternal inheritance now that Jesus has entered into the heavenly places. Our heaven is secured to us, for it is in the actual possession of our legal representative, who can never be dispossessed of it. II. The triumph of the ascension (see Psalms 24:1-10; Psalms 68:1-35).1. Our Lord’ s Ascension was a triumph over the world, He had passed through it unscathed by its temptations; He had been solicited on all hands to sin, but His garments were without spot or blemish. He rises above all, for He is superior to all. As the world could not injure His character by its temptations, so no longer could it touch His person by its malice. 2. There, too, He led captive sin. Evil had assailed Him furiously, but it could not defile Him. 3. Death also was led in triumph. Death had bound Him, but He snapped each fetter, and bound death with his own cords. Our Saviour’ s ascension in that same body which descended into the lower parts of the earth is so complete a victory over death, that every dying saint may be sure of immortality, and may leave his body behind without fear that it shall forever abide in the vaults of the grave. 4. So, too, Satan was utterly defeated! 5. Brethren in Christ, everything that makes up our captivity Christ has led captive. Moral evil He has defeated, the difficulties and trials of this mortal life He has virtually overcome. III. We may now turn to consider the gifts of the ascension. The blessings which come to us through the ascension are “ for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Observe next, that these filling blessings of the ascension are given to all the saints. Does not the first verse of our text say: “ Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” The Holy Spirit is the particular benediction of the ascension, and the Holy Spirit is in measure given to all truly regenerated persons. Trace all gospel success to the ascended Saviour. Look to Christ for more successful workers. As they come, receive them from His hands; when they come, treat them kindly as His gifts, and daily pray that the Lord will send to Zion mighty champions of the faith. IV. We shall conclude by noticing the bearing of our Lord’ s ascension unto sinners. “ He received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also.” When the Lord went back to His throne He had thoughts of love towards rebels still. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The ascension of Christ Having spoiled His enemies on the cross, He further makes a public triumphal show of them in His own person, which is a second act; as the manner of the Roman emperors was, in their great triumph, to ride through the city in the greatest state, and have all the spoils carried before them, and the kings and nobles, whom they had taken; and this did Christ at His ascension, plainly manifesting, by His open show of them, that He had spoiled and fully subdued them. (T. Goodwin.)Gifts for men It was the custom of the Roman emperors at their triumphal entrance to cast new coins among the multitudes; so doth Christ, in His triumphal ascension into heaven, throw the greatest gifts for the good of men that were ever given. (T. Goodwin.)Ascension of Christ Must the sun need come to us, or else cannot his heat and light profit us? Nay, it doth us more good, because it is so far off: so this Sun is gone from as, that He may give more light to us, which made Him say, “ It is good for you that I go from you.” Therefore, away with this carnal eating of spiritual things. (Henry Smith.)Diversity of gifts Everyone hath some excellency or other in him, can we but find and improve it. God hath dispensed His gifts diversely, for the common benefit. And as, in the same pasture, the ox can find fodder, the hound a hare, the stork a lizard, the fair maid flowers; so there is none so worthless, but something may be made of him; some good extracted out of the unlikeliest. Yea, wisdom is such an elixir, as by contraction (if there be any disposition of goodness in the same metal) it will render it of the property. (John Trapp.)Captivity captured Two things are referred to in these words, as following from the ascension of Christ into heaven. One has reference to the manifest accomplishment of His work in the fact of His ascension; the other is a statement of what He does in consequence of that success--not resulting from it, but as the expression of His goodwill on the occasion of His success. I. Christ overcame those special foes which He came to earth to encounter. II. Having overcome them, He still holds them in His power. He lives now; He has taken His place before God; there He waits. He waited once before till the fulness of time came; He waits now till the appointed season comes. He has not let His prisoners free; He had not let them go out of His hand. III. Christ bestows a special gift on men that they may share in His victory. He gave gifts in the shape of apostles, pastors, teachers, and so on, for the definite purpose of carrying on His work--the perfecting of the saints. He thus bestows, not spoils which He has gained from His enemies, but the special gift of His own favour. IV. But one more very important thought. Who shall thus not only share with Him. The spoils, but enjoy the free gift of Christ? Why, those who follow Him. (H. W. Butcher.)Christ’ s ascension I. The exaltation of Christ. His work was done, and therefore He ascended up on high in His official capacity. II. The achievements of Christ. “ When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive.” Look at the expression “ captivity.” Then it seems that the souls for whom He bled and suffered were “ captives;” the prophet calls them “ lawful captives, and the prey of the terrible.” “ What! lead them captives again?” Some may be inclined to say, “ Oh, it’ s only being transferred from one captivity to another.” First, He overcomes them by grace, and then He leads them “ captive” into His blessed and glorious captivity, and leads them to say, “ We were in captivity to Satan’ s malice once; the old serpent held us fast once, but now we are in captivity to the Lord Jesus Christ, to His love, to His sway, to His sovereignty; with His three-fold cord in our hearts, fixed and twined completely round our affections.” III. The treasures that Christ distributes. How grand and glorious is the catalogue of the gifts He gives to believers! He has given all gifts. He never made a saving or exception of any. There is no limit to His bounty. Everything in Christianity is the free gift of God. “ He gave gifts to men.” In order to condense here as much as I can, I shall classify a little, and just observe, in the first place, the first gift bestowed after His ascension. “ If I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I go away, I will send Him to you, and when He is come He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.” So that this is the first ascension gift. Oh, what an amazing gift! There is another gift that we must mention. When He “ ascended up on high,” He gave the gift of imputed righteousness to those new-created souls of whom the Holy Ghost became the Teacher. (J. Irons.)The purpose of Christ’ s gifts I. Christ gave special gifts, in order that through an endless diversity of lives and works and thoughts, we may be all united to one another in one Body, pervaded and animated by one Spirit. The first grand object in our Lord’ s mind was and is union among men, union with God. As a rule we value ourselves on our diversities. And that without ever asking ourselves, “ Why am I different?” God makes nothing in vain. If He has made me different from my friend in some point of character, it is surely that I may supply something in him; that he and I together may effect something for each other and for others which separately could not be accomplished. II. The gifts of Christ to us are directed to producing in us steadiness of character through reality. We are to measure ourselves and our opportunities truly, and to get rid of self-deceptions.1. How common it is for earnest persons to fancy that a wide gulf exists between their capacities for doing God’ s service and the opportunities which He affords them! Is not this in reality a very specious form of murmuring against God? We need to use earnest prayer for nothing more than a true faculty of vision. 2. Another and very lowering habit of mind and life which interferes still more with that “ steadiness through reality” of which we are in quest, is what I may venture to call “ frivolity in the very discharge of earnest duty.” There are many most noble occupations which ought to have an inspiring power, that are not glorified at all by those who use them, and that seem to haw no elevating effect on them. Now, one cause of this is to be found in secret impurities of the thought and imagination of the heart. Nothing so protects a man--awful thought! from the influence of God’ s Spirit; nothing so certain to prevent his acquiring that steadiness which truth of knowledge and truth of thought and of will bring with them. But second only to this in its miserable blighting effect, is to approach earnest duties in a frivolous, light, unprayerful spirit. III. The third object of Christ in giving us gifts from heaven is, that we may grow in spiritual strength by living lives of spiritual activity. (Archbishop Benson.)The gifts of Christ to His Church I. The nature of the gift. It was--1. A gift of men. Not merely a record, but a living voice speaking to living men. 2. A varied gift. Variety in unity, shown-- (1) By distinct offices.(2) By individual characteristics. II. The object of the gift. “ For the perfecting of the saints,” etc., shown--1. By enabling them better to discharge their ministry. Christ’ s own life of service our pattern (Matthew 20:28). 2. By edifying Christ’ s body. III. The ultimate end. “ Till we all come,” etc., The end is perfect conformity to Christ, the “ perfect Man.” The means--knowledge of the Son of God (John 17:3); full knowledge hereafter (Ephesians 3:19; Philippians 3:10; 1 Corinthians 13:12). Practical application:1. Consider the priceless blessing the Gospels have been. Charter of our faith (Luke 1:1-4). Christ’ s own gift by His Spirit (John 14:26). 2. Are we ourselves becoming like Christ our Pattern? This the practical object. A Church of living stones--true disciples of the Master. (A. C. Hellicar, M. A.)Jesus gives mercy When the Duke of Argyll was taken before James II to receive sentence for the part he had taken in the rebellion in Scotland, the king said to him, “ You know that it is in my power to pardon you.” The duke, who knew the king well, replied faithfully, “ It may be in your power, but it is not in your nature,” and he was led forth to prison and death. It is not so with King Immanuel. He who says, “ All power is given unto Me both in heaven and in earth,” is the same who says, “ Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out.” (R. Brewin.)The Conqueror’ s gifts As in the Roman triumphs the victor ascended up to the capitol in a chariot of state, (the prisoners following on foot with their hands bound behind) and threw certain pieces of coin abroad to be picked up by the common people; so Christ in the day of His solemn inauguration into His heavenly kingdom triumphed over sin, death, and hell, and gave gifts unto men. (J. Trapp.)Gifts for the rebellious Mr. Moody tells us how his elder brother ran away from home soon after their father’ s death, and the absence of the beloved boy was the perpetual grief of his mother’ s heart. She waited years and years for a letter from the wanderer, but none came. Long years had rolled away, and the mother’ s hair had grown grey, when, one summer’ s afternoon, a sunburnt man was seen coming into the gate at Northfield. He knocked at the door. The mother went and opened the door, and invited the stranger in. He held back for a moment, until the tears started, and he exclaimed, “ No, mother, I will not come in until you forgive me!” He did not stand there long. Her big motherly heart rejoiced more over the returning prodigal than over all of the boys that had never run away. Jesus keeps no sinner waiting outside His open door. The forgiveness of a lifetime’ s sin is the very first boon to the hungry penitent. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) Ephesians 4:9-10 Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?He that descended is the same also that ascended. The eternal union in the person and work of the Redeemer I. There was union between the greatness of Christ’ s person and the greatness of His obedience. He was so great that He could not be greater. There was no possibility of His going higher. That is what Jesus Christ did in coming to the world--“ He descended.” He not only assumed human nature, body and soul, into union with His Divine Person; but more than that--“ He descended.” The Divine Person came down--the Divine Person was in the manger--He, the whole of Him, was made under the law. II. There was union between the greatness of the obedience and the merits of the sufferings. Here again there must be no dividing. The sufferings without the obedience would not have been an atonement; and the sufferings and the obedience would not have given satisfaction without the greatness of the Person. And though He rendered perfect obedience in life, yet He could not be a Saviour without suffering--without shedding His blood. In hell there is suffering, but no obedience; in heaven there is obedience, but no suffering; but here, in one place, we behold both obedience and suffering. III. There is union between the merits of the sufferings and the height of the exaltation (ascension). “ He who descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens.” He could not ascend without descending first, and descending lower than the earth. All the riches of the Godhead as Creator would not pay our debt. He must give Himself as our ransom. IV. There is union again between the height of his exaltation and his work in filling all things to the end of time: “ that He might fill all things.” The Bible teaches us that He could not fill the Church without ascending up far above all heavens. Whilst here in poverty and bondage, working out our salvation, He was out of His poverty enriching those who came into contact with Him; but now He is rich in mercy, and from the throne He administers forgiveness. His great work on earth was to fill the demands of heaven; and His great work in heaven is to fill the demands of earth. From the earth He filled heaven with obedience; and from heaven He fills the earth with forgiveness. From the earth He filled heaven with satisfaction; and from heaven He fills the earth with peace. From the earth He filled heaven with atonement; and from heaven He fills the earth with holiness. (Lewis Edwards, D. D.)The contrasted humiliation and exaltation of Christ I. The circumstances of the Saviour’ s depression from His original state.1. The incarnation of Christ may be thus expressed.2. This form of language may denote the death of Christ.3. This style may be intended to intimate that burial to which He yielded.4. The separation of the Redeemer’ s Body and Spirit may be described in these words. II. The glory of His subsequent exaltation.1. It is in itself an absolute expression of love. To descend to all this humiliation and suffering could not be agreeable to any other end, save an achievement of mercy. 2. It justifies an expectation of surpassing benefits. Whatever was the quality of the act, it must answer to the act itself. Nothing little can it involve. If this be an errand of mercy, how great must be that mercy! 3. The act regulates and secures its own efficiency. The Messiah did not send His word to save us. From on high He did not direct the scheme of salvation. He “ descended to the lower parts of the earth.” This showed His infinite intentness, 4. This act is to be regarded as of incomparable worth and excellence. Never were so combined, and never could so unite, the jealousy of the Infinite Honour and the commiseration of human woe. III. The reciprocal influence of these respective facts. “ The same” was He who bowed Himself to these indignities, and who seized these rewards. And this identity is of the greatest value. Surely it is much to understand, much to be certified, that He who was manifest in flesh--taking our very nature, seen in the relationships of our life--full of tenderness and compassion--the comforter of mourners and the friend of sinners--is none other than the Supreme over all things, guiding and administering all his prerogatives and powers to the very end for which he was incarnated and crucified. This is what the text affirms. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)The ascension of Christ above all heavens, that He might fill all things The ascension of Christ (His resurrection completed) sums up, according to Paul, the whole gospel, and stamps it with the seal of heaven. Aristotle tells us of Plato’ s dialogues that they were but beautiful dreams without rational foundation or conclusion, ingenious stories to embody his spiritual instincts rather than to furnish a rational ground capable of sustaining the sublime hopes they seek to embody. How different this from the gospel which furnishes us with facts that are not only capable of sustaining the hopes of the world, but of inspiring hopes which infinitely transcend the highest imaginations of man’ s unaided powers to conceive, and which daily in our midst prove their Divine source by quickening dead souls, cleansing polluted hearts, and breaking the chains of evil habits! I. The ascension of Christ looked at in the light of its previous and preparatory history. That the Son of Man ascended from the deepest depth of human history and experience, from the lower parts of the earth, up above all heavens, presupposes His descent. “ That He ascended, what does it imply but that He descended,” and that His original home was above the heavens? He ascends to no height from which He did not descend. In short, to use his own words, that “ He came out from God and came into the world” before He could again leave the world and enter upon His inheritance of the Father’ s glory. “ He who was rich became poor, that we, through His poverty, might be rich.” II. We have now to look at this fact of our Lord’ s ascension in the light of its declared purpose--“ That He might fill all things,” which will reveal its connection with the vaster and ever-enlarging history of the world subsequent to His leaving the earth and His being carried up above all heavens. Let us, however, briefly consider it, first of all with respect to the new heavens and the new earth; then with respect to our nature and history; and lastly, with respect to the providence and government of God--as parts of the great whole to be filled from the fulness of the ascended Son of Man.1. With respect to the new heavens and the new earth, what may we not infer, from the ascension of Christ in the full integrity of His nature, as to the conversion, transformation, and ennobling of the material of our earthly sphere? The nature and history of His person clearly reveal the relations between heaven and earth, the material and the spiritual, God and man. We cannot for a moment look upon the transformation and exaltation of Christ’ s nature as an isolated fact, or as dissociated from “ the restitution of all things.” The gospel, therefore, contains a gospel for nature as well as for man, the prediction of the day when the strife of elements shall cease, when the powers of darkness shall be swallowed up of light, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, when the tares shall no longer grow with the wheat, when creation, now so weary, shall lift up her head and rejoice in the redemption for which she groans and travails. 2. Having seen what we are taught by the ascension of Christ with respect to the new heavens and the new earth, let us now consider what we should learn from it with respect to man. For if we cannot dissociate the history of Jesus from the history of the earth, much less are we able to do so from the history of mankind. He almost always speaks of Himself as “ the Son of Man.” In Jesus Christ the headship of mankind is at the right hand of God with full powers of deliverance and exaltation for all men. By His ascension our nature is endowed with an exalted fulness, and clothed with a glory becoming the Son of God. In Jesus our nature is filled with all the fulness and clothed with all the glory of the Father. And, as such, He is exalted above the heavens on our behalf, as the centre of a new kingdom--a human kingdom--“ the kingdom of God and of His Christ.” It is reserved for human nature to constitute the home kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is to be set up in our nature, and to unite the innermost powers of humanity with the innermost powers of Deity. But this kingdom of God is also to be the temple of God, not merely a Divine dominion lying round about and without the immediate presence of the King, and only indirectly and mediately associated with Him, but the sphere of His household presence--His home--the very life of which will be the enjoyment and worship of Himself. 3. Having considered the ascension of Christ in its relation to the new heavens and the new earth, and also with respect to the nature and history of man, let us now look at it, briefly, in its relation to the government and providence of God. If nature is gathered up and crowned in man, and mankind are gathered tip and represented in the Son of Man, who is exalted to the throne of universal dominion, then it is clear that all things are governed and caused to work together in the interests of His kingdom, which centres in His body the Church, which is His Bride; that all things are bent to one purpose, the end to which the whole creation moves. The history of the world and man, of nature, providence, and grace, is thus seen to be one whole of many parts, in which there has been nothing parenthetic or episodical--nothing in vain, but which has been working together for the one foreseen and pre-determined end. Tempest and storm have combined with sunshine and zephyr; anarchy and rebellion have wrought with submission and order; war and peace, slavery and liberty, sickness and health, death and life have all been made to cooperate in bringing about the condition and prospects of the present hour which carries the necessary preparations, and is charged with the necessary powers for the grand consummation of the Divine purpose. The leaven works through all elements; the tree grows through all seasons; the kingdom advances with every age. III. In the last place, we can but very briefly glance at the method and means by which this purpose, for which the Son of man; is exalted above all the heavens, is to be carried out. It is being fulfilled in many ways; all means are subordinate to this one end. That He might fill all things is the one purpose--“ The one far off Divine event to which the whole creation moves.” For this the heavens watch the earth labours, the elements work, and the undesigned strife of human history is carried on. Two things are ours--preaching and prayer, alike our duty and our privilege. By these the Church of 120 very soon over ran the nations, and “ turned the world upside down.” By these now will the triumphs of the Church be carried on to her final conquests. (W. Pulsford, D. D.)Christ filling all things I. Christ’ s life was marked by changes the most unparalleled. He descended from the highest circumstances to the lowest, and ascended from the lowest to the highest again. II. Amidst all these changes He preserved His identity: “ the same.”1. The same in being.2. The same in sympathy.3. The same in purpose. III. The grand end of these changes was the spreading of the highest influence through the universe. “ That He might fill all things.” “ Fill all” institutions, books, intellect, hearts, with His system and Spirit. (David Thomas.)Christ filling all things I. How Christ fills all things. Not with His body--for as it has been well said, “ Christ’ s body may be anywhere at any time; but Christ’ s Spirit is everywhere at all times.” Of that body of Christ--of spiritual body at all, still more of spiritual body glorified--we know, and we can know, nothing; but, as far as our faculties can reach, body must occupy definite space. How, then, does Christ fill all things” ?1. By His influence. We know that even here a person may occupy a much larger sphere than he actually “ fills” with his presence. Carry on that idea of the power of extending influence infinitely, and we shall be arriving at some conception of the way in which Christ can “ fill all things.” The effect of such a life and death--the beauty of that unparalleled character--the effect of that upon a world, who can estimate? How it has moulded the mind--how it has raised the tone--how it has determined the conduct of all mankind. 2. But there is more than influence, there is sovereignty and care. The queen fills her realms, and we are always conscious of the power of our queen. How much more does the royal, superintending power and love of Jesus fill the universe; There is nothing so small, that it is below it; and there is nothing so great, that it is above it; nothing independent of it; nothing despised by it. 3. By the presence of the Holy Ghost. II. What does Christ fill? “ All things.”1. Heaven. Every spirit in heaven reflects Him. Every tongue tells of Him. Every joy is full of Him. Every holiness glorifies Him. 2. And there is a solemn sense in which Christ “ fills” hell. A rejected Saviour--nothing else. 3. Christ “ fills” all nature. You will miss the sweetness of nature, if you do not feel this. Christ is in the leaf and flower--in the morning blush and the evening glow--in the song of the little bird--in the loneliness of solitude--in the harmony of the landscape. 4. And providence--i.e., the ordered course of human events--it is all Christ. What is providence? The “ working together” of all things for the sake of God’ s people. Who administers God’ s great empire with the delegated power? Christ. “ He hath put all things in subjection under His feet.” Is it a sorrow? Christ “ fills” that sorrow. Is it a joy? Christ “ fills” that joy. And this is the true meaning of life; an inner current of Christ always running along parallel with the flow of events. 5. But, still more, the Church--“ the Church, which is His fulness” --because He “ fills” it. All ordinances, all gifts, all communications of the Spirit, all prayer and preaching, all our sweet worship, all our blessed sacraments, all our fellowships, all our sympathies, all our diversities, all our oneness--it is all Christ. Nothing would be real without Him. It is as He is there, that anything has power to teach, or to comfort, or to bless. III. Why does Christ fill all things?1. That all honours should be to Him in every degree; that all should owe all always to Him; that He should be the light and joy of the whole world. 2. That no man upon this earth should ever find any real satisfaction out of Christ. If you do, the voids will be always greater than the comforts. Other things may promise--but He is truth. Other things may trifle with you--but He loves you. Other things may please--but He “ fills.” 3. That there may be always, in Christ, a fulness suited to every man’ s want. If we only look high enough, there is the fountain “ filled” :--a full pardon--a full Bible--a full smile--a full rest--a full life--and a full heaven. 4. And so it comes at last to pass, that, in everything, it is not the thing, but the Christ that is in it--for He so “ fills,” that He becomes the thing He “ fills” ; and, little by little, the crust drops off--like the shell horn the fruit; or, like the covering from the blossom. The external ceases; the material falls away; the material passes; and the Christ which it contains, stands out alone--the All in all of His servants’ souls: so that we have, and desire to have, in either world, only Him! (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The humiliation and ascension of Christ I. Christ’ s humiliation and descension. Christ descended according to His Divine nature, not indeed by a proper and local motion; but because it united itself to a nature here below; in respect of which union to an earthly nature, it might metaphorically be said to descend to the place where that nature did reside. And thus much for the way and manner how Christ did descend. We are now to direct our next inquiry to the place whither He descended; and for this we are to reflect an eye upon the former verse of this chapter, which tells us that it was into “ the lower parts of the earth” ; but what those “ lower parts of the earth” are, here lies the doubt, and here must be the explication. I conceive these words in the text to bear the same sense with, and perhaps to have reference to, those in Psalms 139:15, where David, speaking of his conception in his mother’ s womb, says, that “ he was framed and fashioned in the lowest parts of the earth.” In like manner, Christ’ s descending into the lowest parts of the earth, may very properly be taken for His incarnation and conception in the womb of the blessed Virgin. I add, that these words, of Christ’ s descending and ascending, are so put together in the text, that they seem to intend us a summary account of Christ’ s whole transaction of that great work of man’ s redemption from first to last; which being begun in His conception, and consummate in His ascension, by what better can His descending be explained, than by His conception, the first part and instance of this great work, as His ascension was the last? So that by this explication the apostle’ s words are cast into this easy and proper sense, that the same Christ, and eternal Son of God, who first condescended and debased Himself so far as to be incarnate and conceived in the flesh, was He who afterwards ascended into heaven, and was advanced to that pitch of sublime honour and dignity, far above the principalities and powers of men and angels. II. Christ’ s exaltation and ascension. As for the way and manner how He ascended, I affirm that it was according to His human nature, properly and by local motion; but according to His Divine, only by communication of properties, the action of one nature being ascribed to both, by virtue of their union in the same person. As for the place to which He advanced, it is, says the apostle, “ far above all heavens.” But the words of the text have something of figure, of hyperbole, and latitude in them; and signify not, according to their literal niceness, a going above the heavens by a local superiority; but an advance to the most eminent place of dignity and glory in the highest heaven. III. The qualification and state of Christ’ s person. In reference to both these conditions He was the same--“ He that descended is the same also that ascended.” Which to me seems a full argument to evince the unity of the two natures in the same person; since two several actions are ascribed to the same person, both of which, it is evident, could not be performed by the same nature. IV. The end of Christ’ s ascension “ that He might fill all things.” Now, Christ may be said thus to fill all things in a double respect.1. In respect of the omnipresence of His nature and universal diffusion of His Godhead. But yet this is not the “ filling all things” directly intended in the text; for that was to be consequent to His ascension; “ He ascended that He might fill all things” ; it accrued to Him upon and after His ascension, not before; but His omnipresential filling all things being an inseparable property of His Divine nature, always agreed to Him, and was not then at length to be conferred on Him. 2. In the second place, therefore, Christ may be said to fill all things, in respect of the universal rule and government of all things in heaven and earth committed to Him as Mediator upon His ascension. All the elements the whole train and retinue of nature, are subservient to His pleasure, and instruments of His purposes. The stars fight in their courses under His banner, and subordinate their powers to the dictates of His will. The heavens rule all below them by their influences, but themselves are governed by His. He can command nature out of its course, and reverse the great ordinances of the creation. The government, the stress and burden of all things, lies upon His hands. The blind heathen have been told of an Atlas that shoulders up the heavens; but we know that He who supports the heavens is not under them, but above them. (R. South, D. D.)The end and design of Christ’ s ascension 1. In the first place, this term “ all things” may refer to the whole series of prophecies and predictions recorded of Christ in the Scriptures; which He might be said to fill, or rather to fulfil by His ascension. 2. But, secondly, the term “ all things” may refer to the Church; which sense I shall most insist upon, as carrying in it the subject matter of this day’ s commemoration. Now, Christ, it seems, would not have the fabric of His Church inferior to that of the universe: it being itself indeed a lesser world picked or rather sifted out of the greater, where mankind is brought into a narrower compass, but refined to a greater perfection. And, as in the constitution of the world, the old philosophy strongly asserts that nature has with much care filled every little space and corner of it with body, there being nothing that it so much abhors as a vacuity: so Christ, as it were, following the methods of nature in the works of grace, has so advantageously framed the whole system of the Church; first, by an infinite power making in it capacities, and then by an equal goodness filling them. Now the Church being a society of men combined together in profession of Christian religion, it has unavoidably a double need or necessity emergent from its very nature and constitution. That is, one of government, the other of instruction; the first agreeing to it simply as a society, the second, as it is such a society. And it is Christ’ s great prerogative to fill it in both these respects. I. As for the time in which it was conferred, this is remarkable in a double respect.1. In respect of the Christian religion itself, it being about its first solemn promulgation. The beginning of everything has a strange and potent influence upon its duration. And the first appearances usually determine men either in their acceptance or dislike. Had not Christ therefore ushered in His religion by miracle and wonder, and arrested men’ s first apprehensions of it by something grand and supernatural; He had hindered its progress by a disadvantageous setting forth, exposed it naked to infidelity, and so rendered it first disputable, and then despised. It had been like the betraying a sublime and noble composition by a low and creeping prologue, which blasts the reputation of the ensuing discourse, and shuts up the auditors’ approbation with prejudice and contempt. 2. But, secondly, the time of Christ’ s sending the Spirit is very remarkable in respect of the apostles themselves. It was when they entered upon the full execution of their apostolic office; and from followers of Christ became the great leaders of the world. II. The manner how it was conferred (see Acts 2:2-3). This action exhibits to the world the great means chosen by God for the propagation of the kingdom of Christ. Ephesians 4:11 And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.The Christian ministry I. From this passage we learn, that the institution of the Christian ministry--the appointment of pastors and teachers--is from God, is of Divine authority. The object which the Christian ministry is designed to effect is the conviction and conversion of sinners, and the edification and consolation of saints; but these are effects which no human, and, indeed, no created, power is able to produce. The office of the Christian ministry--that is, the institution of a separate order of men to attend, more peculiarly, to the religious instruction of others--is admirably adapted in its own nature as a means to effect the object intended, and its adaptation is evident even to the eye of human wisdom; but it was not devised by human wisdom, and it must not be judged of, or regarded, solely from its extrinsic fitness. II. Since, then, the text informs us, in the first place, that the appointment of pastors and teachers is a Divine institution, intended to be instrumental in accomplishing certain objects, and of course deriving all its efficacy from the blessing of Him who appointed it, we shall now consider what objects it was designed to effect. For what purpose did God give pastors and teachers? It was “ for the perfecting of the saints, for the edification of the Body of Christ.” The “ perfecting of the saints” may here mean the completion of their number. It may also mean, making them perfect in holiness. We are further informed by the apostle, that God “ gave pastors and teachers for the edifying of the Body of Christ.” “ The Body of Christ” is an expression often used in Scripture to denote the Church of Christ. And the great object of this figurative mode of speaking is to represent the absolute dependence of believers upon their great living Head at all times for nourishment and strength, and, indeed, for existence or vitality, as well as the close and intimate connection that subsists between the Head and all the members--that is, between Christ and His people--and between the members with each other. The word “ edify” properly means to build; and it is taken from another figurative idea, sometimes given us in Scripture, of the Church of Christ, or of true Christians in their connection with and dependence upon Christ, namely, that of a building or temple, of which Christ is the foundation, and in which all His people are represented as stones. And in this work of edification or sanctification, pastors and teachers whom God has appointed are master builders, whose great duty and privilege it is to be employed as instruments in edifying the Body of Christ--in building up the saints in their most holy faith--in carrying on the great work of which our Saviour laid the foundation while He lived upon the earth--in not only bringing men to the knowledge and belief of the truth, but also in leading them to walk in the paths of holiness--to walk in harmony and in love--and to contribute to one another’ s spiritual progress. III. We would now consider the statement which the text contains of the more comprehensive and ultimate objects for which the Christian ministry was instituted, and which the labours of pastors and teachers are intended to serve, namely, that Christians may grow up in “ all things unto Him who is the Head--that they may all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man--unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” And here we would notice the description the apostle gives of the direct objects and effects of the labours of pastors and teachers, namely, that Christians “ speak the truth in love.” “ Speaking the truth” is contrasted with being tossed to and fro like children, or carried about with every wind of doctrine; and as the appointment of pastors and teachers, with their regular and faithful ministrations, are intended by God to preserve the Church, or Body of Christ, from the latter of these, so they are also fitted to produce and secure the former. “ To speak the truth” means here to hold and to maintain sound and correct views of Christian doctrine--of the great principles of the oracles of God. And this is an acquisition of great importance, lying at the very foundation of all true religion, which is built upon right views of the Divine character, and of the Divine plans and purposes with regard to the human race. But, besides this, it is also necessary that men “ speak the truth in love” --that is, that their assertion and maintenance of the truth, even against its opposers, should never lead them into any violation of the great law of Christian charity and love. Not that either ministers or private Christians are bound to speak or to think more favourably of opposers of the truth than the fair and impartial examination of their conduct may seem to warrant and to require. But when our opinion is really and sincerely fair and impartial, it is no objection to it that it is unfavourable; for that must just depend upon the grounds and merits of the case. Our opinions upon all points should be exactly conformable to truth--to the intrinsic merits of the subject; but the expression of these opinions, and the conduct which they may lead us to adopt, should be at all times regulated by love. The great terminating object of the Christian ministry--and indeed of all God’ s dealings with His people--is stated by the apostle in the eighteenth verse--“ that we may all come in” --or rather into--“ the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God--unto a perfect man--unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” This describes the state of the Church in its collective capacity--when the objects of the Christian ministry, and indeed of all other means of grace, shall have been accomplished. At present, there is nothing like complete unity of faith and knowledge. There is reason, however, to think that times are in reserve for the Church, even upon earth, when these evils shall be greatly lessened, if not altogether removed--when the Church shall indeed resemble a great and a holy Society, founded upon one rock, and that rock Christ:--devoted to the one great purpose of manifesting the glory and making known the manifold wisdom of God. But whatever degree of harmony and purity the Church of Christ shall attain upon earth, when God shall pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, and introduce the glory of the latter days, certain it is that there will be a time when all His people shall come into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, when there shall be nothing whatever to hurt or to offend, when His people shall be all righteous--freed from everything that may pervert either the judgment or the conduct--made perfect in holiness, and altogether restored to the lost image of their great Creator and their living Head. (W. Cunningham, D. D.)Ministers in the Church appointed by Christ I. A remarkable instance of our exalted Lord’ s liberty to His Church in bestowing divers gifts upon her.1. The gifts.2. The Giver.3. The act of donation.4. The time to which it relates. II. The end or design of this gift.1. In respect of the saints, these who are in Christ already, the ministry is to perfect them, πρὸςτὸνκαταρτισμὸν. The word signifies the restoring and setting dislocated members again in their proper place. It signifies also, the perfecting and establishing them in the restored state. So the Corinthians, who by their factions and divisions were rent asunder, and as a disjointed body, are exhorted to be κατηρτισμένοι, perfectly joined together, as a joint well knit (1 Corinthians 1:10). The saints being, by reason of remaining corruption, so ready to turn aside both from Christ the Head, and from their brethren fellow members. God gave ministers to be spiritual surgeons to set them right again, and to fix them in nearer union to Christ by faith, and to their brethren in love. 2. In regard of themselves, for the work of the ministry. It is for work that they are appointed. This work, for the kind of it, is διακονία, a ministry or service, the first excluding idleness, the second excluding a lordly dominion. 3. In respect of the Body of Christ; it is to edify, viz., the mystical Body of Christ. (T. Boston, D. D.)Service the purpose of the Church The text is clouded by a wrong punctuation. If a single comma be dropped, so as to make the text read, “ He gave some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints for the work of ministering,” it will clearly express what some expositors believe is its meaning, and be in harmony with what is taught elsewhere in the New Testament as to the duty which is owed by the Church to the world. “ The saints” have a ministry if “ the Body of Christ” is to be “ edified.” The Church is not to be as a lake without any outlet--a mere glass in which the sky is reflected--but a reservoir that yields what it receives for the health of mankind. Every member has something to do. Every Christian is to be a channel of blessing to others, “ even as the Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” I. In the development of this theme let us consider, first, the disparity in circumstance and condition between ourselves and the vast multitude of our fellow men; the contrast between our and their moral experience. If there be anything approaching the truth in our oft-repeated confessions, we have entered, through Christ, upon an ample inheritance of privilege and honour and power. Our sins are forgiven; a new life has been given us; we live in God’ s fellowship. “ All things are yours,” says the apostle, “ whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.” And what deed ever conveyed riches like these? “ Why am I, honest and industrious, harassed and tormented, while dishonesty thrives, and has the world, cap in hand, at its feet? Where is the evidence of the love, or the wisdom, you preach? Where even is justice? It is a bad world; and the best thought about life is, that it will soon come to an end.” II. This brings us, second, to the principle which is expressed in the text, and on which alone these inequalities can be justified. Every variety implies in some sense superiority or inferiority. But who would wish for a mere uniformity, which would be the destruction of all that is interesting, of all that is beautiful, of all emulation, of all excellence? Who cannot see that to receive from one another and to impart to each other what we mutually lack, is a far better thing than to be born to an exact equality of advantages? Variety is essential to the proper development of society; and whilst God alone can explain why the obvious advantage is with one man, or with one class instead of another, still He takes from it all that is invidious by associating with privilege the responsibility of service. Turn, for illustration of this, to the account of the calling of Abraham. He was chosen out of the ranks of his countrymen, and out of the world of his day, for special enlightenment; to hear a Divine voice that was unheard by all others, and to realize a communion more elevated and purer than theirs. And why? Did it denote that he monopolized the Divine favour? that those who were left in the dark had no part in the thoughts and the purposes of Jehovah? On the contrary, he was elected for their sakes; in him, who was thus favoured and quickened, all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. And this is always the end which God has in view in the appointment of any to superior possession and privilege. Their endowment is to bring good to the many. Every great movement in social or political life may be traced to some individual, or to some company of men, who have been privileged to originate the high enterprise. The diffusion of truth is not by the equal instruction of all men at the same moment, but by circles and schools who have found out the truth, and through whom it spreads out until it becomes the possession of all. The preference is shown to the few in the interest of the many. And it is the same in respect of the Church. Those in its fellowship are to serve; for it exists not for itself, but for man, for humanity at large; because man is comprehended in the great love of the Father and in the scope of the redemption which Christ came to accomplish. (Chas. De Witt Boardman, D. D.)The Divine choice of ministers For if no prince will send a mechanic from his loom or his shears in an honourable embassage to some other foreign prince, shall we think that the Lord will send forth stupid and unprepared instruments about so great a work as the perfecting of the saints and perpetual dishonour of that wicked king Jeroboam, who made no other use of any religion but as a secondary bye thing, to be the supplement of policy, that “ he made of the lowest of the people” those who were really such as the apostles were falsely esteemed to be, the “ scum and offscouring of men,” to be the priests unto the Lord. (Bishop Reynolds.)Pastors needed In the church of San Zeno, at Verona, I saw the statue of that saint in a sitting posture, and the artist has given him knees so short that he has no lap whatever; so that he could not have been a nursing father. I fear there are many others who labour under a similar disability: they cannot bring their minds to enter heartily into the pastoral care. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Charles Kingsley as a pastor On one occasion Kingsley was visiting a sick man suffering from fever. “ The atmosphere of the ground floor bedroom was horrible, but before the rector said a word he ran upstairs, and, to the great astonishment of the people of the cottage, bored with a large auger he had brought with him several holes above the bed’ s head for ventilation. And when diphtheria, then a new disease in England, made its appearance at Eversley, he might have been seen running in and out of the cottages with great bottles of gargle under his arm, and teaching the people to gargle their throats as a preventive.” (Life of Charles Kingsley.)A good pastor Father Taylor said of a certain member of his flock who kept continually falling back into drunken ways, “ He is an expensive machine; I have to keep mending him all the time; but I will never give him up.” (C. A. Barrel, D. D.)Careless pastors St. Francis, reflecting on a story he heard of a mountaineer in the Alps who had risked his life to save a sheep, says, “ O God, if such was the earnestness of this shepherd in seeking for a mean animal, which had probably been frozen on the glacier, how is it that I am so indifferent in seeking my sheep?” (W. Baxendale.) Ephesians 4:12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.No perfection without pains “ However prodigious may be the gifts of nature to her elect, they can only be developed and brought to their extreme perfection by labour and study.” Think of Michael Angelo working for a week without taking off his clothes, and Handel hollowing out every key of his harpsichord, like a spoon, by incessant practice. Gentlemen, after this, never talk of difficulty Or weariness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The perfecting of believers The invisible power of Christ, and His visible gifts in the Church, are in cooperation “ for the perfecting of the saints.” An endless variety of ministry is provided for this end. Every Divine ministry is supplied with its measure of wisdom and of grace, from the treasury of Christ. Diversities of gifts are necessary to meet a corresponding diversity in the natures of men. Each disciple is susceptible of a development peculiar to himself; nor can his perfection be confounded with that of any other man. The perfection of a primrose is not that of a lily, nor the perfection of a lily that of a rose. God’ s idea of perfection is not to make lilies into fruit trees, nor fruit trees into cedars. God will have His lily-like children to be perfect as lilies, and His cedar children to be perfect as cedars, and so on. There will be endless diversity among men, yet each perfect in his own order. The riches of Divine love and wisdom, strength and beauty, will be mirrored in the variety. “ The perfecting of the saints” is not only very distinct from their conversion, or first faith in Christ; but much more important than their comforting. The Divine method of comforting is by perfecting. To comfort souls, and leave them unrenewed and disqualified for life in heaven, would be delusive and cruel. To look to Christ as the Beginner of the new life is absurd, unless we also look to Him as the Finisher. Finishing the life of faith, and perfecting men, are the same work. “ The perfecting of the saints” can never be promoted by the ministry of a mere evangelist, or preacher of gospel facts. The hodman is very useful, but not as an architect. A reiterator of common places is not a teacher. The perfecting of your house must be given to other hands than the men who dig out the foundation. The grand end of the Christian ministry, as it is also the end of time, and the end of Christ’ s whole work, is to perfect man, or rather to perfect humanity. (J. Pulsford.)The edifying of Christ’ s body I. The edifying of Christ’ s body consists in enlarging your views of the polluted, guilty, helpless state of fallen man. II. Person, work, and relation of Christ to His people. III. The freedom with which the Scriptures hold Him forth for our salvation. IV. The privileges of believers. V. The necessity of, and Scriptural arguments to enforce, an exemplary walk before God, the Church, the world. VI. The sovereignty of God in the disposal of His favours. VII. The grounds of submission to Him. VIII. In pointing out to them their particular sins. “ It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you,” etc. (1 Corinthians 5:1, etc.). Errors. Galatians. In putting them in mind of their future glory. “ Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:10). (H. Foster, M. A.)The Christian Church the body of Christ Observe some points of importance connected with the Church as the body of the Redeemer. I. Its visibility. II. It is a living body. III. As the body--the Church just exhibit Christ’ s mind and character. The body of flesh Christ had was under the control and hallowed influence of the Holy Spirit. It was the residence of the Deity. Now just so also His body the Church. It is to receive celestial influences and impressions from Christ, and then to show them forth.1. Was Christ meek and lowly? So must be His Church.2. Spiritual and holy? So must be His Church.3. Self-denying and forbearing? So must be His Church.4. Devoted and obedient? So must be His Church.5. Compassionate and merciful? So must be His Church. The mind, and spirit, and life of Christ, must be reflected by the Church, the body of Christ. IV. As the body of Christ, it must carry out the purposes and will of Christ.1. The Church must be a teaching holy.2. The Church must be a sympathizing body.3. The Church must be an active body.4. The Church must be a liberal and benevolent body.5. It must be a heavenly body. It is of heavenly formation. He had heaven in His spirit, and words and life, so must the Church His body. (J. Burns, D. D.)The Church Christ’ s body I. The Church is called Christ’ s body.1. All the senses are in the head for the guidance and protection of the body (Ephesians 1:22; Colossians 1:19; John 1:16; 1 Corinthians 1:30). 2. The variety and respective usefulness of the members in it (1 Corinthians 12:15, etc.). 3. The infirmities to which the various members are liable. 4. The concern of one member for another (1 Corinthians 12:26). 5. Its continual increase, etc. (Ephesians 4:12-13; Ephesians 4:16). 6. Christ, as its Head, has the preeminence, etc. (Colossians 1:18). 7. Without it, Christ would not be complete (Ephesians 1:23; Hebrews 2:13). II. The edifying of the body in ministry of the word, consists--1. In enlarging their views of gospel truths, in their importance, connection, and use. 2. In pointing out to them their sins and errors. “ it is reported commonly that there is fornication among you,” etc. (1 Corinthians 5:1, etc.). Galatians. 3. In getting before them their duty in their various connections in life. (H. Foster, M. A.) Ephesians 4:13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.Development I. Christian unity.1. Oneness of faith. 2. Oneness of knowledge. This signifies practical acquaintance, or what you sometimes term a “ saving knowledge of Christ.” 3. Oneness of aim or object. Seeking to become perfect men in Christ, full-grown men, to attain to the loftiest standard of perfection, both in strength and beauty, in the universe. II. Christian stability. Christian men are not to be like children in weakness, credulity, waywardness, changeableness, and much else peculiar to childhood; but to be strong, robust, fixed, settled in their religious belief and manner of life, showing that their faith had so inwrought itself with the very fibre of their spiritual life as to impart moral stamina, enabling them to stand like men, and not be tossed about like feeble children. But the apostle’ s figures supply something more than the thought of childish weakness. “ Tossed about with every wind,” suggests the idea of a drifting, unmanageable ship, dismasted, and without rudder or compass, driven before every wind. A plight most pitiable. This suggests the thought of instability and unrest. The vessel pursues no course but such as the wind dictates, and you know how unsafe a ship master that is when it has sole command. Now Paul knew the danger of this restlessness, not only to the individual possessed by it, but the damage it might be to others. Hence he desires all Christians to be united in the grand verities of the gospel, vigorous in faith, clear in personal acquaintance with Christ, that they might have a life of uniform stability, be firm, fixed, and unwavering in mind and heart, faith and life. The doctrine, then, that comes out here is that of Christian stability, not obstinacy; steadfastness, not stupidity. III. Christian growth.1. Growth is gradual. Little by little is the principle on which it proceeds. A child does not become a man at one bound, a picture is not painted by the magic of a single stroke, a building is not reared by one single supreme effort, nor does the oak tree mature in a single day. “ Line upon line,” layer upon layer, “ here a little and there a little,” are the lines upon which all things move ere maturity and perfection are reached. Continuity, progression, development, evolution--or whatever else you may please to call it--this is the great governing law. 2. This growth is constant. Day and night, summer and winter, in storm and calm, the principle is in operation. It may appear sometimes to the good man as if no progress could be registered, he seems to himself to be putting forth no fresh blossoms, and yielding little or no fruit. And yet, those very times, that seem so unpropitious to him, may be the most successful periods of his life, his roots may be striking deeper, and spreading wider in preparation of richer foliage and fruitage in the future. Always growing--though not always giving the same outward indications of growth--this is the law of the Saviour’ s kingdom. 3. This growth is silent, and imperceptible. You can neither see nor hear its actual operation. Growth is one of the most effective forces in nature, and yet the most silent. 4. The growth spoken of in the text is upward. It is “ growing up into Christ the Head in all things.” Upward growth is a marked speciality of the Christian life. Aspiration is the thought. Upward, heavenward, is the Christian’ s watchword. IV. Christian cohesion. The Church is likened to the human body. A few points of comparison between the two will show the beauty and appropriateness of the figure.1. Fitness of position and work. “ Fitly joined.” So it is in the Church when it is under the entire governance of the Master, every man occupies his own place and does the work for which he is fitted by gifts and opportunity. 2. Here is compactness--“ fitly joined and compacted together.” Heart, mind, sympathy, principle, motive, aspiration, and wish, so closely blended as to become one heart and one mind, “ that there be no schism in the body,” but working together with the greatest order for the one purpose, the well-being of the body, and the glory of its Head. 3. Here is also mutual aid--“ by that which every joint supplieth.” Helping together is the thought, every joint contributing its share so as to promote the general good of the whole body. You see the beauty of this comparison where the Church of Christ is, in its best sense, a mutual aid society, where every joint is supplying its quota of aid for the good of the whole. (J. T. Higgins.)The reunion of Christendom Augustus Hart’ s superb description of the Rhine falls may well serve as an analogue of the reunion of the Church. “ The cross streams, which had been prancing along sideways, arching their necks like war horses that hear the trumpet broke from the main stream and forced their way into it. From the valley of thunder, where they encountered, rose a towering misty column, behind which the river unites unseen, as though unwilling that any should witness the awfully tender reconcilement.” That “ awfully tender reconcilement” of the long conflicting currents of Church life is even now being solemnized behind the mist of our encounters. What a yearning for unity pervades the Churches. This very desire is, in its intensity, a presage and pledge of its own fulfilment; only the spirit of love could have inspired it. He is brooding, moving on the cloudy chaos. What a perceptible giving there is in that ice of exclusiveness! (B. Gregory, D. D.)One faith “ Some think variety of religions as pleasing to God as variety of flowers. Now there can be but one religion which is true, and the God of troth cannot be pleased with falsehood for the sake of variety.” (Bp. Horns.)The designs of the Christian ministry 1 To bring Christians to the unity of the faith.2. To bring Christians to the knowledge of Christ.3. To bring Christians to the perfection of Christian character.4. To bring Christians to the enjoyment of the fulness of Christ. (G. Brooks.)The Church a school for heaven I. The teachers in this school.1. God, the great and effectual instructor of the Church.2. The human teachers--the ushers under God.3. The Church collectively. II. The manuals used;1. Conscience.2. The Scriptures.3. God’ s providence. III. The learners.1. The universal race of man.2. The private members of the Church.3. Pastors.4. The angels. (Dr. W. R. Williams.)The importance of preparatory instruction for the ministry I. The relation subsisting between Christ and the Church. Christ the Head, the Church the body. II. The officers given by Christ for the service of the Church.1. Apostles.2. Prophets.3. Evangelists.4. Pastors and teachers. III. The special ends for which these officers were given.1. To instruct men for the ministry.2. To edify the Church. (W. Roby.)Development of spiritual life I. The progressive development of the spiritual life.1. Intellectual.2. Emotional.3. Moral.4. Harmonious. II. The obstacles to this development.1. They arise from the necessary limitations of our nature.2. They arise from indwelling sin.3. They arise from the influence of the world.4. They arise from the power of temptation. (G. Brooks.)The model Man We all have a certain ideal of manly character before our minds, formed of the elements we most admire and fain would imitate; and that ideal is very often embodied in some actual hero, living or dead. But our ideals are not seldom defective or false: our heroes fall short even of these. The poor copy we set before us has a still poorer copy made from it, in our own characters and lives. Let us aim at once at the highest mark. We may not reach it, but we shall obtain more than with any lower one. Our blessed Saviour is the absolutely perfect type of the manly character. I. When we think of an ideal man, we think of a being with a body as the perfection of beauty in form, and movement, healthy and strong, full of capacity to do and to endure. There have been very noble minds in weak bodies; but being in such tabernacles, they groaned, being burdened. The true ideal motto is that of the Latins, mens sana in copore sano. There is every reason to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ wore such a body. As the taint of hereditary depravity did not cleave to His soul, neither did the curse of ancestral disease infect His body. He that was so obedient to law of every kind, saying: “ It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” --would faithfully observe the laws of health, as to food, air, exercise and rest--never guilty of any excess, never exposing Himself to needless injury. The purity and peacefulness of His spirit were every way promotive of bodily health. Therefore we say to those who would be like Jesus Christ,--be healthy and strong if you can be; cultivate your physique religiously, and understand your bodily system, that you may intelligently work out your Maker’ s plans. II. The second element in model manhood is strength of mind; we mean, at present, of the intellectual powers, rather than of the will or the affections. Mind is necessary to understand, to plan, to execute, to rule over Nature, ourselves, and ether men. In the case of our Saviour, goodness and knowledge were blended together. III. The third element in manhood is strength of will The manliest man, to our thinking, is the one who stands upright on his own feet, self-poised, not leaning on anyone else, thinking out his own thoughts, making up his own mind, adhering to his own purpose, master of himself, bending all his powers to his one aim, undismayed by difficulty, conquering opposition, resolute in suffering as vigorous in action, and so victorious in the end. IV. One more constituent of manly character is strength of heart. (F. H. Marling.)Christ the model of the Christian life I purpose to inquire, What, from the New Testament, was Christ’ s own teaching respecting His relations to man?1. Christ confirmed and enlarged the ethical truths which existed in His age. Whatever was just, and pure, and true, and good, from whatsoever quarter it may have been derived, and whether it was held by the Jews or by the enlightened heathen, was accepted at His hands. The moral precepts of the gospel were not originated by the Saviour when He came upon the earth. They belong to a system of natural ethics. They are the outworkings of natural laws which were made when man was made, and when the world was made. They were partly found out, they were imperfectly known, they shone dimly, before the coming of Christ; but they were unveiled at the time of Christ’ s advent more perfectly, and accepted more fully, and carried back to their true source, and arranged so, with reference to their real character, as that they should become transcendently more fruitful than ever they had been in isolation and twilight under heathen civilization. 2. He delivered men from bondage to vehicles and forms of worship; not, however, that He might destroy these things, not that He might detach them from these things, but that He might deepen their sense of the truths and principles which these things had been employed to express. He taught that, whenever there was any conflict between the inward principle and any external law, or custom, or ordinance, the law, or custom, or ordinance, must go down. He taught that the physical must be subordinate to the spiritual, for whose sake it was originally created. He taught that the spirit was to be master of the flesh. 3. Our Saviour cleansed and amplified the knowledge of spiritual truth, and carried that truth far higher than it had ever gone before. 4. He added to the realm of spiritual truths most important elements which had never before been clearly known. The nature of God; the certainty of immortality, etc. 5. More important than all was the fact of the vital intercourse between God’ s soul and ours. 6. Christ came, by His sufferings and by His death, to open the way for the universal forgiveness of sin, and for redemption from it. 7. The last point that I shall make in this category is that Christ taught Himself to be Divine; and that His divinity is such a true divinity as makes it proper for men to offer, and for Him to receive, all that it is possible for a human soul to give to its God. (H. W. Beecher.)The characteristic element of the Christian life Love was the design of the Old Testament economy as much as it is of the New. But, while they contemplate the same thing, they do so from different points of view. The economy employed by the Old Testament to bring men up spiritually into that condition in which they should live by love, succeeded only in getting men to live by conscience. Christ came under new conditions, and with new influences, and re-asserted the grand truth that the economy of God in life began with the manifestation, first, of the Divine nature. He taught men that God was love; that love was the essential characteristic element of the Divine nature; not that there were not justice, and reason, and intelligence, and many noble attributes; but that these were all enfolded in love, and that they acted under the influence of love, which was the characteristic element of divinity. Christ’ s own character, also, and His peculiar life work, were manifested round about this centre of love. For by love God sent Him; and He executed the errand on which He was sent in the spirit of self-sacrificing love.1. A true Christian has, or may have, large elements of reason and knowledge; of veneration and worship; of faith and aspiration; of activity and obedience; of earnestness and zeal; and yet not one of these, nor all of them, will make him a Christian, until the soul pours a whole summer of love round about them. Then the presence of this love in the midst of these other qualities will determine that he is a Christian. It is not knowledge that is evidence that you are a Christian; it is not a sense of duty; it is not mere outward conduct of any sort; it is the benevolent tendency of the heart; it is the soul’ s sweetness and love power. 2. The peculiar Christian graces which are enjoined upon us in the Bible are all love children. Not only are they to be known by their likeness to love, but they cannot be born without love. And there is not a Christian grace that is not easy to those who love enough. I have sometimes stood and marvelled at the vastness of the water wheel that lay silent by the side of the mill, and wondered by what power it could be turned. Meanwhile there was the trickling of water through a small pipe, which fell on the far side of it, and did not stir it. At last the miller went to the gate further up, and lifted it, and the flood poured down in larger measure; and the moment enough water had flowed into it, the great slave wheel began instantly to toil and turn; and all day, and all night, and so long as the water continued to pour upon it, it ground out its treasure, singing and spilling its musical water as it rolled round. And so it is with that wheel of the soul, in its revolutions of daily life. If the stream of love pours on it abundantly, how, it revolves! How does it work out every interior fruit of the heart and life, only so that the stream of love pours on it! 3. We can trace, in the light of this truth, the progress of Christian life, or growing in grace. The test that you are growing in grace is that you are growing in more perfect moral qualities in the direction of love. 4. And as it is in the individual, so it is collectively, or in Churches. The spread of Christianity is to be measured by the spread of its distinctive spirit. As growth in conscience, or reason, is no evidence of growth in grace with the individual, so growth in these things is no evidence of growth in grace with the Church. Growth in beneficence is the test in both cases. The Church is taking possession of the world, not geographically, but in the degree in which it is able to stimulate and maintain the summer of benevolence among men. The union of Christians--and of Churches, for that matter--is to come from this characteristic spirit of love, or from nothing at all. And the aggression of the Church on the world will be victorious only when a whole Christianity brings the whole human soul to bear upon the world in the power and plenitude of love. And we are talking about the Church owning the world. Christian hearts will own the world, but Christian Churches never will. For, when we take the world captive, it will be by the subduing power of Christian love. (H. W. Beecher.)The perfect Manhood All Churches, all ordinances, all doctrines, all sorts of moral teachers, are ordained for the sake of making perfect men; and Christianity may be said to be, in a general way, the art of being whole men, in distinction from partial men, and make-believe men. It is not enough to say that Christianity tends to make men better. Its aim is to develop a perfect manhood. “ Till we all come unto a perfect man.” And that manhood can never be reached except in Christ Jesus. We hold a nature in common with the Divine nature. When we can work out from it the accidental, the transient, the local, that which is left is strictly Divine--it is like Christ. No man can be Divine in scope and degree; but in kind he may. Every oak tree in the nursery is like the oak tree of a hundred years. Not in size, but in nature, it is just as much an oak tree as the biggest. We are not of the Divine magnitude, nor of the Divine scope, nor of the Divine power; but we are of the Divine nature. There is no picture that was ever painted, there is no statue that was ever carved, there was no work of art ever conceived of, that was half so beautiful as is a living man, thoroughly developed upon the pattern of Christ Jesus.1. To live well for the life to come is the surest way of living well for this world. And to live rightly for this world is the surest way of living rightly for the world to come. The world is grandly constituted to develop manhood in those who know how to use it. But how base and ignoble are they who squander their manhood in this world; who pass through the most wondrously organized system of education--namely, the natural, civil, and social world--and parcel out their noble nature, as it were, for sale; who coin conscience; who suppress their spiritual nature; who dignify success in worldly things; who live, not for manhood, but for selfishness, for pride, for pitiful pelf! How does a tool or machine pass through the various shops in its construction? It goes in a lump of pig-iron. Melted and rudely shaped it is at first. It passes out from the first set of hands into the second. There something more is given to it, not of fineness, not of polish, but of shape, adapting it to its final uses. The next shop takes something from it, it may be, trimming away the clumsiness, reducing it in bulk, that it may be finer in adaptation. And, still going on from shop to shop, it passes through some twenty different sets of hands, and gains something from every single man that touches it. And it is a perfect tool or machine when it issues from the other side. This great world, my young friends, is God’ s workshop. You are put in on one side, and every single shop, every single experience, is to take from you something that you are better without, or add something to you that shall fit you for use. And blessed is the man, who gathers as he goes, symmetry, shapeliness, temper, quality, adaptation, so that when he issues from the further side he is a perfect man. But what a base thing for a man to be put into God’ s workshop, which was set up on purpose to make man, and come out on the other side without a single attribute of manhood. Ah 1 such wastes as there are! For a man to walk through cities and towns, and see what becomes of manhood, is enough to turn his head into a fountain of tears. It is enough to see the wastes of antiquity--the battered statues; the toppled-down columns; the fractured walls; the ruins of the Parthenon. But of all the destructions that have gone on in this world, and that are now going on every day in the great cities which are grinding and crushing out manhood, the destruction of men is the saddest. And woe be to the man that is burned, or that is crushed, and that comes out worthless, and goes into the rubbish heap of the universe! 2. I call you, young men, to a Christian life, not simply because it is the way of duty, but because it is the only way in which you can find your own selves. There are reasons springing from the eternal government of God, from the rightful authority of God, from the issues of the eternal world, why you should be Christians; but there are other reasons springing from the nature of your own soul--from your makeup. I hold that no man can be a man who is not a Christian. I hold that the true Christian is the noblest man, the strongest man, the freest man, the largest man. He is like a harp, not subjected to rude and random, touches, but handled by a skilful player. His soul is so organized and acted upon that there is melody produced from every single chord, and from all of them matchless harmonies. 3. I call you to discriminate between God’ s men and the Church’ s men. I do not call you to be men in the Church, or to be men according to the sects, whether they have prevailed in times past, or do now prevail. As a vine, growing in a garden by the side of the road, does not confine all its flowers and clusters to the garden side, but hangs over the wall, and bears blossoms and clusters in the road; so a man, wherever he grows, should be larger than the thing he grows in. Wherever you go, let your manhood be bigger than any human institution. It is a shame for an institution to be bigger than the man it has reared. God did not call you to be canary birds in a little cage, and to hop up and down on three sticks, within a space no larger than the size of the cage. God calls you to be eagles, and to fly from sun to sun, over continents. 4. I use this truth as a matter of criticism, to ask you to discern between the true man and the current gentleman of life. In life man has occasion for pride of gentlemanliness whose manhood has nothing in it of religion. A man must be a Christian who would be a gentleman. Christianity, as I have said, is the science of being a whole man. 5. Let me beseech you to take heed to the substitution of class character for manhood. Beware of classes and “ sets.” Be larger than any class will ever let its members be. 6. Beware of the narrowness of professional character, which will be your temptation. For no profession has so many claims upon a man as mankind has. No man can afford to live for his profession, and in his profession. No man can afford, by the side of the sounding sea, to build his but on a little rivulet that runs into it, and never go down to wet his feet in the flood, or try its depths. Men need mixing. Men need to feel a sympathy with the whole of human life, Therefore, remember that you are not to be educated out from among your fellow men, but for them. (H. W. Beecher.)How perfection is attained Everything in the universe comes to its perfection by drill and marching--the seed, the insect, the animal, the man, the spiritual man. God created man at the lowest point, and put him in a world where almost nothing would be done for him, and almost everything should tempt him to do for himself. (H. W. Beecher.)Christian perfection a lengthy process The process of Christian perfection is like that which a portrait goes through under the hand of the artist. When a man is converted, he is but the outline sketch of a character which he is to fill up. He first lays in the dead colouring. Then comes the work of laying in the colours; and he goes on day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, blending them, and heightening the effect. It is a life’ s work; and when he dies he is still laying in and blending the colours, and heightening the effect. (H. W. Beecher.)Christian perfection is attainable Christian perfection is attainable, from the fact that it is commanded. Does God command us to be perfect, and still shall we say that it is an impossibility? Are we not always to infer, when God commands a thing, that there is a natural possibility of doing that which He commands? I recollect hearing an individual say he would preach to sinners that they ought to repent, because God commands it; but he would not preach that they could repent, because God has nowhere said that they can. What consummate trifling! Suppose a man were to say he would preach to citizens that they ought to obey the laws of the country because the government had enacted them, but would not tell them that they could obey, because it is nowhere in the statute book enacted that they have the ability. It is always to be understood, when God requires anything of men, that they possess the requisite faculties to do it. Otherwise God requires of us impossibilities, on pain of death, and sends sinners to hell for not doing what they were in no sense able to do. (J. Finney.)Difficulty of Christian perfection There are things precious, not from the materials of which they are made, but from the risk and difficulty of bringing them to perfection. The speculum of the largest telescope foils the optician’ s skill in casting. Too much or too little heat--the interposition of a grain of sand, a slight alteration in the temperature of the weather, and all goes to pieces--it must be recast. Therefore, when successfully finished, it is a matter for almost the congratulation of a country. Rarer, and more difficult still than the costliest part of the most delicate of instruments, is the completion of Christian character. Only let there come the heat of persecution--or the cold of human desertion--a little of the world’ s dust--and the rare and costly thing is (liable) to be cracked, and become a failure. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)Ministers to continue tilt the Church be perfect I. That the office and work of the ministry is to continue till all the elect of God be fully perfected, and the Church arrive at its full growth.1. That Christ’ s presence is promised to the ministry always, even to the end of the world (Matthew 28:20); now this supposeth the existence of the ministry till then. 2. The sacraments are to continue till then, and consequently a ministry by which they may be dispensed. As to baptism, it is plain from that (Matthew 28:20). And as for the sacrament of the supper, it must continue till the Lord come again. 3. The Scripture holds forth public ordinances, in which the Lord keeps communion with His people, never to be laid aside till they come to glory. It is one of the singularities of the upper house, that there is no temple there (Revelation 21:22). Here they look through the lattices of ordinances, till they come to see face to face in heaven. Reasons of the doctrine. It must continue. 1. Because the ministry is a mean of the salvation of the elect. While there is a lost sinner to seek, the Lord will not blow out the candle; and while the night remains, and till the sun arise, these less lights are necessary to be continued in the Church. 2. The ministry is appointed of Christ, in some measure to supply the want of His bodily presence in the world. 3. Because their work which they have to do, will continue till then. They are ambassadors for Christ, and while He has a peace to negotiate with sinners, He will still employ His ambassadors. 4. What society can be preserved without government and governors. Every society hath its governors, and so the Church must have hers also. II. The diversity of gifts bestowed on ministers hath a tendency to, and is designed for advancing of unity among God’ s elect people, for unity is the centre of all these divers gifts. These are as the strings of a vial, some sounding higher, others lower; yet altogether making a pleasing harmony. There are many things necessary to make a compact building, such as the Church is. Some must procure the stones, some lay them; some smooth and join the wood, and altogether make a compact uniform house. III. Whatever differences are now among the godly, yet a perfect unity is abiding them, in which they shall all have the same apprehensions and views of spiritual things. To confirm this, consider--1. The perfect unity of the elect of God, is that which is purchased by the blood of Christ, and therefore must needs take effect. 2. This unity is prayed for, by the great Mediator, whom the Father heareth always, and whose intercession must needs be effectual (John 17:21-23). 3. The same Spirit dwells in the head and in all the members, though not in the same measure. This Spirit hath begun that union, and is still at the uniting work; and it consists not with the honour of God, not to perfect that which He hath begun. 4. The occasion of the discordant judgments that are among the people of God, will at length be taken away. There is great darkness now, in those that have the greatest share of light and knowledge. IV. That the Church of Christ shall at length arrive at its full growth in glory, as a man come to perfect age. Then shall it be perfect in parts, every member being brought in, and in degrees every member being at its full growth. How does the heir long till the time of his minority be overpast that he may get the inheritance in his hands. V. Then, and not till then, comes the Church to perfection, when every member thereof is brought to a perfect conformity with Christ, bearing a just proportion to Him, as members proportioned to the head. VI. As is our faith and knowledge of Christ, so is our growth and perfection. It is the knowledge of Christ, that introduces us to the blessed state of perfection. The more we believe in, and know Christ, the nearer are we to perfection; and when these are come to their perfection, then are we at our full growth. (T. Boston, D. D.)The saints’ meeting; or, progress to glory Obs. 1. Teacheth us, that God hath ordained the ministry of the gospel to last to the end of the world. The ministration of the law had an end; but there is none to the ministration of the gospel, before the end of the world. Here may be given a double excellency to the gospel. It is more gracious and more glorious. Obs. 2. This “ until” gives matter of exhortation; instructing us to wait with patience for this blessed time; to be content to stay for God’ s “ until.” It is a sweet mixture of joy in trouble, the certain hope of future ease. We are got through the gate, let us now enter the city; wherein we shall find five principal passages or streets.1. What? There shall be a meeting.2. Who? We, yea, we all: all the saints.3. Wherein? In unity; that unity.4. Whereof? Of the faith and knowledge of God’ s Son.5. Whereunto? To a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. I. What? “ meet.” The meeting of friends is ever comfortable: “ When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum; whom when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage” (Acts 28:15). II. Who? “ We.” There is a time when the elect shall meet in one universality. III. Wherein? “ In the unity.” A perfect unity is not to be expected in this life; it is enough to enjoy it in heaven. Though a kingdom have in it many shires, more cities, and innumerable towns, yet is itself but one; because one king governs it, by one law: so the Church, though universally dispersed, is one kingdom; because it is ruled by one Christ, and professeth one faith. But that unity which is on earth may be offended, in regard of the parts subjectual to it. What family hath not complained of distraction? What fraternity not of dissension? What man hath ever been at one with himself? I would our eyes could see what hurt the breach of unity doth us. Scilurus’ s arrows, taken singly out of the sheaf, are broken with the least finger; the whole unsevered bundle fears no stress. We have made ourselves weaker by dispersing our forces. IV. Whereof? This unity hath a double reference: first, to faith; secondly, to knowledge. And the object to both these is “ the Son of God.”1. “ Of the faith.” Faith is taken two ways: either passively or actively. Either for that whereby a man believes, or for that which a man believes. So it is used both for the instrument that apprehends, and for the object that is apprehended. (1) If we take it for the former, we may say there is also a unity of faith, but by distinction. Faith is one--one in respect of the object on which it rests, not one in respect of the subject in which it resides. Every man hath his own faith; every faith resteth on Christ: “ The just shall live by his own faith.” (2) But if me rather take it--for Christ in whom we have believed--we Shall all meet in the unity of those joys and comforts which we have faithfully expected. 2. “ Of the knowledge.” That knowledge which we now have is shallow in all of us, and dissonant in some of us. There is but one way to know God, that is by Jesus Christ; and but one way to know Christ, and that is by the gospel. Yet there are many that go about to know Him by other ways; they will know Him by traditions images, revelations, miracles, deceivable fables. But the saints shall “ meet in the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God” ; there shall be union and perfection in their knowledge at that day. V. Whereunto? “ To a perfect man.” Before, he speaks in the plural number of a multitude, “ We shall all meet” ; now by a sweet kind of solecism he compacts it into the singular--all into one. “ We shall all meet to a perfect man.” Here lie three notes, not to be balked.1. This shows what the unity of the saints shall be: one man. O sweet music, where the symphony shall exceedingly delight us, without division, without frets! 2. The whole Church is compared to a man; we have often read it compared to a body, here to a man. 3. Full perfection is only reserved for heaven, and not granted till we meet in glory; then shall the Church be one “ perfect man.” This implies a spiritual stature whereunto every saint must grow. Whence infer--1. That we must grow up so fast as we can in this life, joining to faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,” etc., (2 Peter 1:5). We must increase our talents, enlarge our graces, shoot up in tallness, grow up to this stature. For God’ s family admits no dwarfs: stunted profession was never sound. If a tabe and consumption take our graces, they had never good lungs, the true breath of God’ s Spirit in them. 2. God will so ripen our Christian endeavours, that though we come short on earth, we shall have a full measure in heaven. We have a great measure of comfort here, but withal a large proportion of distress; there we shall have a full measure, “ heapen and shaken, and thrust together, and yet running over,” without the least bitterness to distaste it. This is a high and a happy measure. Regard not what measure of outward things thou hast, so thou get this measure. (T. Adams.)Fulness of Christ We know a little of Christ our Saviour, but, oh! how small a portion have we seen of the fulness that is in Him! Like the Indians, when America was first discovered, we are not aware of the amazing value of the gold and treasure in our hands. (Bishop Ryle.) Ephesians 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.The mature Christian The apostle here describes the perfect man, or mature Christian, both negatively and positively. I. The negative description.1. Christians must not remain children. In understanding, constancy, and fortitude, they should be men. 2. Christians must not be tossed to and fro, like a ship rolling on the waves. He who embarks for the heavenly world must consider, that the ocean on which he sails is subject to changing winds and perilous storms. He must not promise himself smooth waters, soft gales, and clear skies; but go provided for all kinds of weather. The word of truth must be his compass, and faith his pilot; hope must be his anchor, and knowledge and good works his ballast; prudence must keep the watch, and sober reason hold the helm. Thus he may sail with safety in all seasons. 3. Christians must not be carried about with every wind of doctrine. False doctrines, like winds, are blustering and unsteady. They blow from no certain point, but in all directions; and they frequently, and sometimes suddenly, shift their course. They make great noise and bustle, disturb the atmosphere, and, by their violent motions, they spread confusion and ruin. Light bodies are easily taken up and driven about by every wind that blows. The gale which cleanses the wheat, disperses the chaff. The deep-rooted oak stands firm in its place, while the dry leaves beneath it are caught up, wafted around, and made the sport of every gust. So the sincere Christian, rooted and grounded in the truth, and grown up to maturity in faith and knowledge, is steadfast in his religion, whatever storms may assault him. 4. The apostle warns us that we are in danger from the sleight of men, and the cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. II. The positive description.1. We must “ speak the truth in love” ; or “ be sincere in love.” (1) We should acquire a good doctrinal knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.(2) We should be well established in the truth.(3) We should see that our hearts are conformed to the truth.(4) We must walk in the truth. 2. As we must adhere to the truth, so we must “ grow up in all things into Christ, who is the Head.” (1) Christ is the Head of believers.(2) They must grow up into Him.(3) They must grow in all things. A partial religion is worthless. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Christian education In Christian character, it may be, relatively speaking, that the moral functions--faith, hope, conscience, and love--stand higher on the scale than social affection, taste, and the lower forms of human reason; but if Christian character is to be complete, it must include them all. Suppose a painter, in painting a man’ s face, should omit the hair and the eyebrows, saying, “ A man can live without hair, and I paint only the important features,” and should represent simply the mouth, the eyes, and the nose; what sort of a picture would he make? Absurd as such a thing would be in art, how much more glaring would be the absurdity, in drawing the portrait of the soul, of leaving out any part of it! Religious culture carries with it everything. All the parts are required to make the whole on this ideal--Christ Jesus. I have around my little cabin in the country a dozen or so of rhododendrons. Broad-leaved fellows they are. I love them in blossom, and I love them out of blossom. They make me think of many Christians. They are like some that are in this Church. Usually they come up in the spring and blossom the first thing, just as many persons come into Christian life. The whole growth of the plants is crowded into two or three weeks, and they develop with wonderful rapidity; but after that they will not grow another inch during the whole summer. What do they do? I do not know, exactly; they never told me; but I suspect that they are organizing inwardly, and rendering permanent that which they have gained. What they have added to growth in the spring they take the rest of the season to solidify, to consolidate, to perfect, by chemical evolutions; and when autumn comes, the year’ s increase is so tough that, when the tender plants that laughed at these, and chided them, and accused them of being lazy, are laid low by the frost, there stand my rhododendrons, holding out their green leaves, and saying to November and December, “ I am here as well as you.” And they are as green today as they were before the winter set in. Now, I like Christians that grow fast this spring, and hold on through the summer, and next spring grow again. I like Christians that, having grown for a time, stop and organize what they have gained, and then start again. I like periodicity in Christian growth. (H. W. Beecher.)A young man’ s responsibility Into the life of every youth there comes an hour when an irresistible instinct awakens in him the consciousness that he is no longer a child. When he realizes his own separate personality, when he begins to think, to judge, to act for himself, and when, because he has the ability, he has also the right to be self-controlled, in that hour he becomes a young man. In that hour you might liken him to that young prince of whom we read in English history, who was caught in the act of putting on his father’ s crown: only with this difference, that the young man is lifting to his brow the crown that belongs to none other, but is the God-given crown of his own manhood. I. The fact that you are no longer children involves your personal responsibility.1. You are responsible for your body. (1) To take such physical exercises and recreative amusements as will develop it and keep it in health and strength. (2) Not to injure your body by carelessness or dissipation. 2. You are responsible for your mental and moral culture; for the development of your faculties; for the wise use and the strong growth of all your powers. 3. You are responsible for your influence. 4. You are responsible, in view of the future that is before you. As yet you are but spreading your canvas and sailing out of harbour. Out yonder is that great and wide sea of life that is full of perils for them that navigate therein. There are sunken rocks, there are shifting shoals, there are treacherous coasts, there are wreckers with false lights, there are sirens with deceptive songs, there are straits narrow and perilous with unimagined and tremendous difficulties; and you are responsible now as you begin the voyage of your life to prepare yourself for the difficulties that are ahead, to take chart and compass with you. 5. Remember, too, that you are responsible for your soul. You cannot ignore the fact that you come to a world where men have fallen, but where men have been redeemed. II. The fact that you are no longer children demands a manly steadfastness of will. The inconsistency, the fickleness, the shiftiness, natural in a child, because a sign of immaturity, is out of place in those who are no longer children. The glory of young men is their strength--strength of will--the energy that turns itself to that which is good--the power to say “ No” with decision, and “ Yes” with concentration. III. Because you are no longer children you are expected to be men. What is a man? What is manliness? Manliness is virtue--vir, a man; virtue, the quality of a man. Truthfulness is a virtue, therefore it is manly. Justice is a virtue; therefore it is manly. Good temper is a virtue; therefore it is manly. Whatever is virtuous is manly. Whatever is manly is virtuous; and, vice versa, whatever is not virtuous is unmanly. Talk that is not virtuous is unmanly talk; love that is not virtuous is unmanly love; life that is not virtuous is unmanly life. Be men. Be virtuous. What is manliness? It is godliness. “ God created man in His own image. In His own image created He him.” God is true, God is just, God is pure, God is gracious, God is swift to forgive, God is tender to the fallen, God is the helper of the helpless. Be godly, and being godly you will be manly. But how to become manly? How to be like God? Young men, once in the history of the world God sent a man to teach us how to be men, and to be men indeed! Jesus of Nazareth was His name: Son of God and Son of man. If you would be manly, let Jesus teach you. (W. J. Woods, B. A.)The case of deceivers and deceived considered Here are two sorts of persons marked out by the apostle in the text, the deceivers and the deceived; the one, subtle and crafty, and full of intrigue; the other, easy and credulous, and unsuspecting; the one, supposed to have all the wiliness of the serpent, without the innocency of the dove; the other, all the tameness and simplicity of the dove, without the serpent’ s wisdom. Both are blamable, though in different respects, and not in the same degree; one for abusing and misemploying their talents, and the other, for not employing them at all to discern between true and false, between good and evil. Both are accountable to God as delinquents; one for high contempt, and the other for great supineness and neglect. I. I propose to consider the case of deceivers, or seducers, such as, by their flight and cunning craftiness lie in wait to deceive. And here it will be proper to inquire, upon what motives, or with what views, men are led thus to beguile and misguide others. The particular motives in such cases may be many; but they are all reducible to these three heads, pride, avarice, voluptuousness; that is to say, love of honour, or profit, or pleasure. II. To consider the case of the deceived, who suffer themselves to be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. They are supposed to be ignorantly, and in a manner blindly, led on by others; otherwise, they would be rather confederates and confidents in managing the deceit, and so would be more deceivers than deceived. There are, I think, three cases which will take in all sorts of men who suffer themselves to be deceived in things of this kind.1. Those who have no opportunity, no moral possibility of informing themselves better. 2. Those who might inform themselves better, but do not. 3. Those who might also be better informed, but will not. III. To subjoin some advices proper to prevent our falling in with either. The best preservative, in this case, is an honest and good heart, well disposed towards truth and godliness, having no by-ends to serve, no favourite lust or passion to indulge. The evidences of the true religion, and of its main doctrines, are so bright and strong, when carefully attended to, that common sense and reason are sufficient to lead us, when there is no bias to mislead us. (D. Waterland, D. D.)Doctrinal preaching But there were some rising up who objected to doctrinal preaching. It was not necessary, they said, in these days; practice, and perhaps a little experience, but no doctrine. But really if you take away the doctrine you have taken away the backbone of the manhood of Christianity--its sinew, muscle, strength, and glory. Those men reminded him of Philip when he wished to enslave the men of Athens, and would have them to give up their orators. Demosthenes replied, “ So said the wolves--they desired to have peace with the shepherds, but the dogs must be first given up--those pugnacious dogs that provoked quarrels. The wolves would lie down peaceably with the lambs, and delight themselves with the sheep, if only those bad-tempered dogs were hanged.” So perfect peace was promised among the sects if doctrine were given up; but depend upon it, these were, after all, the preservation of the Church, which without them, would soon cease to be … “ Burn the charts; what is the use of charts? What we want is a powerful engine, a good A-1 copper-bottomed ship, an experienced captain, and strong, able-bodied mariners. Charts! ridiculous nonsense--antiquated things--we want no charts, destroy every one of them. Our fathers used to navigate the sea by them, but we are wiser than they were. We have pilots who know every sand and sunken rock, who can smell them beneath the water--or by some means find them out. Men know what’ s o’ clock now-a-days, we don’ t want chronometers.” So they put out to sea without charts; and, looking across the waters, we may expect to witness the shipwreck of those who thought themselves so wise, and fear sometimes lest we should hear their last gasp as they sink and perish. Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Shallow Christians I was informed by the engineer who had charge of the survey of that great treasure which Mr. Seward secured for us in Alaska, the eternal ice house of the globe, that even where summer brings vegetation, if you take a staff and drive it down in many parts two or three feet, you strike solid ice, because summer never goes lower than that. And as it is there, so it is in men--only different men are very different in this respect. In some men, if you go down six inches you strike ice; in some men you strike ice if you go down a foot; and in some men you do not strike ice until you go down two feet; but somewhere or other, in everyman, if you go down far enough you will come to a solid foundation, where summer does not reach. What we want, therefore, is tropical heat, that pierces to the very centre; and there are many in whom only heat of a very searching nature is sufficient. (H. W. Beecher.)Growth in knowledge As when men stand and look into the heavens with the naked eye they see some three thousand stars; as with a glass of a certain power they may see some ten or twenty thousand, and as with a larger glass they may see still more, penetrating to the infinite depths of space, so the human mind has been such that at first it could see a little of the nature of God, then a little more, then a little more, and so on, with a power of vision that has increased clear down to the present time. (H. W. Beecher.) Ephesians 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.Lovingly real Although ale?theuein has in usage the special force of “ expressing truth,” yet here it seems to be the expression by a whole life and conversation, and so to answer to the recent phrase--too recent to find place in a great version; the phrase of “ being real.” It means the tone of true life answering to true conviction. For the apostle, with a crash of images, bids us not be infantile, and not toss and twist as the waves of opinion surge to the breath of every new system, system ever so fortuitous, ever so scheming, ever so methodically misleading; but counter to all this, bids us form a purpose of steady growth, a growth depending on our own will, a growing into Jesus Christ. Of this mystic attainment, the moral intelligible meaning at this present is: “ To be real--in love” --reality in contrast to illusion, love in contrast to self-seeking. Is not this the world’ s problem of life? The very epigram of ethics--“ Lovingly real.” It is easy to be straightforwardly real, and show no tenderness for anyone but yourself. It is easy to express devoted interest by voice and look, and to be a dissembler. But to be real oneself and to be in love even with those that are not real and not loving, requires such an ejection of self-pleasing and self-seeking, as must be troublesome to the best, and intolerable to the most. There is an honesty of manner which, as Cicero says, makes “ a brow look not so much a brow as a pledge to society, an austerity like that of an archaic bust, a massive simplicity on which an age or a kingdom might lean; yet (says he) such a man may be a deceiver from his boyhood, his spirit shrouded by his looks, and his doings by four wails.” Or the selfish may wear no disguise at all. As in a vivid portrait lately exhibited to us--“ the motive of his talk was never an appeal for sympathy or compassion, things to which he seemed indifferent, and of which he could make no use. The characteristic point with him was the exclusiveness of his emotions. He never saw himself as part of a whole, only as the clear-cut, sharp-edged, isolated individual … needing in any case absolutely to affirm himself.” The feigning of the actor and the indifference of the egotist are equal, though contrasted tributes to the world’ s high honour of honesty. But in neither of them is there a grain of love. Love has its tributes too. All the forms of society are penetrated and saturated with the expression and exhibition of our interest in each other. And these forms are hollow only if you choose to make them so. Genuine courtesy fills every one of them with meaning. I. Testimony for Christ. And here we have a first application of this antithetic unity of reality and love:--Independence with considerateness, dignity with humility, self-respect free from self-consciousness, and kindness without assumption. It is reality which Christ seems to require as a first condition of our remaining within the circle of His own influences present and to come. And how effective it is! Even the rudest personal testimony, the forced-out declaration in clumsiest English of “ what He hath done for my soul,” seems to clench the holdfast of the speaker, and to pierce like nails into the consciences of hearers. II. A loving word of faithful warning to rich men. III. Loving reality in worship. If the great antithesis of reality and lovingness is a help in the guidance of our own heart, and has a bearing on the present fast-changing relations between rich and poor, ought it not further to contribute something to our view of the modern agitations of the Church? It cannot be without significance even to an unconcerned looker-on (if the literature of the time can allow us to imagine such a person), that these agitations centre upon worship. But has not reality as much to do with the question as lovingness? For what is worship? Is it not a recognition of the truth of things, how things are in the world? Was it not so framed of old by God, has it not so been felt by man to be the most expressive, the most solemn recognition of realities unseen, of veritable relations filling all the region around man? (Archbishop Benson.)Truth in love Everyone here knows how much depends on the way in which a thing is done. You may do a substantially kind thing in such an ungracious manner, that the person to whom you do it will rather feel irritated, and wounded, and sorry that he needs to take any favour from you, than grateful and obliged to you. And, unhappily, there are in this world some really good and Christian people, who are so unsympathetic; so devoid of the power of entering into the feelings of others, and so regardless of the feelings of others, that when they do a kindness to anybody, and especially to a poor person, they do it in much the way in which you would throw a bone to a hungry dog. You will sometimes find a real desire to do good, alloyed with so much fussiness, so much self-sufficiency, and such a tendency to faultfinding, that so far from good being done, a great deal of mischief follows. Then, on the other side, you may have known men and women who had so much Christian wisdom, and such a gift of sympathy and tact, that even in doing a severe thing--even in finding serious fault, or declining to grant some request--they were able to make a friend for life of the person they were obliged to reprove or deny. Now, there are many ways in which a man may “ speak the truth.” You may speak the truth with the view of insinuating falsehood. It was so, when the Pharisees said of our Blessed Lord, “ This man receiveth sinners.” Then you may speak the truth in envy. It was so, when the Pharisees saw Christ going as a friend into the house of the publican Zaccheus; they murmured, saying “ That He was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner.” It was quite true, what they said; but it was the truth spoken in envy that the poor outsider was to be brought within the fold. Then you may speak truth in pure malignity: from a desire to give pain, combined with certain coarseness of nature. It is commonly so with that class of persons who make a boast of speaking their mind, which usually consists in telling anybody something that he will not like to hear. Now, St. Paul tells us in the text how Christian people are to speak the truth. “ In love.” Truth, spoken in love, has incomparably greater force to do good--to direct people, to mend people--than truth spoken in severity, even though it be spoken with good intentions. If a minister, in preaching the gospel, assume a severe, harsh, overbearing manner, then, though what he speaks be God’ s truth, his chance of really doing good to those who hear him is greatly diminished. I daresay many now present are aware of the curious way in which my text was written by St. Paul himself in the language in which he wrote it. He put the things more forcibly than we have it in our Bibles; using an idiom which cannot be rendered well in our English tongue; at least in a single word. St. Paul referred to all conduct, as well as to speech. And he meant more than the mere cultivating of a truthful spirit. If we were literally, though awkwardly, to translate his words, they would be “ truthing it in love” ; that is, thinking, speaking, and doing the truth in love. Now let us think a little of our duty in regard to the first of the two things which are to be combined--truth and love. Let us think of what is implied by speaking and living the truth. Of course some things here are very plain. Every little child knows what is meant by speaking the truth; and anything like trying to define that simple fact would only perplex it. Yet how truly it has been said by a very thoughtful writer, that “ each man has to fight with his love of saying to himself and those around him pleasant things, and things serviceable for today, rather than the things which are.” We come to difficult matters, thinking of the believer’ s duty of speaking the truth. At this point of our meditation, we come to the question, To what degree is a Christian man bound to speak the truth when it will be disagreeable, in the way of finding fault? Here is a matter for that Christian prudence we must ask from the Holy Spirit. We must avoid the extreme of cowardly appearing to acquiesce in wrong for fear of giving offence: and we must avoid the other extreme of needlessly blurting out whatever is in us, regardless of the pain this may cause. Disagreeable truths are seldom in actual life spoken in love. They are sometimes spoken to the very end of mortifying and wounding; and it is no justification of one who has spoken in that spirit, that all he said is quite true. There has been such a thing as a professing Christian of high pretension saying to a gay, thoughtless young person, “ Your heart is hardened: your conscience is asleep: I’ ll pray for you:” saying all that (which was all quite true) in so malignant a tone, that it was as bad to bear as a blow or a stab. Ah, brethren, that is not the way to win souls to Christ and salvation! II. Thus we are led back to the second great characteristic, which is to be in the Christian’ s heart, speech, and life. That is love. And if love be the fulfilling of the Law: if faith, hope, and love be the three great Christian graces, but love the chiefest of all; we need not wonder that our truth is to be leavened with love, like everything else we do. Yes, let the two things always go together: Truth and Love. Truth, without love, will fail to do what God meant it for: and love without truth, would flatter the soul into a false peace, from which the waking would be in woe. Truth is the stern hard thing, like the bare branches of winter: Love is the softener and beautifier, like the green foliage on the summer tree. If you show that you love people, you may tell them truths that condemn them, and vet awaken no bitterness: you may show them how wrong they are, and only make them thankful to you for setting them right. Do you ask how we are to reach this love, that ought to leaven all our speaking, thinking, feeling, and being; how we are to cast out the poor enmities, jealousies, irritations, and self-conceits, that often make people speak the truth in anything but love, and hear the truth in anything but a loving spirit? The answer to that question is ready: and one plain inspired declaration is as good as twenty. Listen to St. Paul’ s words: “ The love of God” (and that, you know, brings along with it love to man) “ is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)Speaking the truth in love The Spirit in which the truth is spoken is as important as the utterance of truth itself. I. A few illustrations of speaking the truth in love.1. If I speak the truth in love, I shall delight in all, who exhibit that truth, even though in many things they differ from me. 2. If I speak the truth in love I shall rejoice in the exhibition of truth, even by those who are personally offensive or injurious to me. This thing Paul did (Philippians 1:15). 3. If I speak the truth in love I shall not seek to magnify myself by the utterance of the truth, at the price of the degradation or disparagement of others. 4. If I speak the truth in love I shall defend it in a loving spirit. 5. If I speak the truth in love, I shall be moved by a loving purpose in the utterance of truth. My spirit will be benevolent and my aim will be within the sphere of love. II. Some considerations by which we maybe moved to endeavour whenever we speak the truth to speak in love.1. Christian truth is revealed as a means of bringing us men back to love. The apostasy of man is a wandering from love. The moral restoration of man is restoration to perfect love. And Christian truth is revealed as a means of restoring us to love. 2. Christian truth is best illustrated and enforced by the voice, and by the countenance, and by the hands of love. 3. No aim or object, however important, can justify the transgression of the law which demands perfect love. If it be right to be bitter and unloving in speaking the truth, it would be right to steal or to kill for the truth’ s sake. 4. Except as we speak the truth in love, we cannot expect to spread widely the knowledge of the truth. The man who speaks the truth, but not in love, may succeed in diffusing it; but he who speaks it in love will surely prosper. The one is like a man sowing good seed while a rough wind is blowing, or when surrounded by fowls, which devour it up--the other is like a man sowing when the atmosphere is calm, and no creature is near to prevent the seed falling into the ground. 5. Unless we speak the truth in love we are liable to depart from the truth. Between the state of our affections and our religious beliefs there is a close and abiding connection. Departure from love, if it be more than temporary, will involve some departure from the truth. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. 6. There are temptations incident to speaking the truth, and manifold temptations connected with much speaking, and these are best met and resisted by the power of love. He who speaks the truth is in danger of making his advocacy of the truth a personal matter--a means of exalting himself, and of serving himself, and he is in jeopardy of enlisting for his service pride and vanity; but he who speaks the truth in love, loses himself, and forgets himself, and becomes absorbed in the manifestation of the truth. Thus speaking, the speaker is to the truth, as the easel is to a painting, and as a candlestick is to a light. 7. Schism is promoted if the truth is not spoken in love. 8. We are servants of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in speaking the truth, only so far as we speak in love. Failing here, we are the servants of some sinful lust or passion. We wear the livery of truth as our professed Master, and do the work in that livery of another master, who is opposed to him whom we profess to serve. We admit that it is very difficult in some circumstances to speak in love. The anger which is aroused by contradiction, the fear of being worsted which is called into play by opposition, the desire for a creditable share of personal strength, which is awakened, with its attendant pride and vanity, unite to render it difficult. But a true and loyal Christian is not a man to put aside a duty because it is difficult. It was a difficult matter to him to repent, but he has repented; difficult to believe, but he has believed. He is the child of a Father who only doeth wondrous things. Truth needs not the service of passion, yea nothing so dissevers it as passion when set to serve it. The spirit of truth is withal the spirit of meekness. (S. Martin, D. D.)Loyalty to truth and love to men issuing in likeness to Christ The special object which the apostle has in view here is to warn the Ephesian Christians against error and false doctrine, capricious winds blowing about them the tricks of the theological conjuror, the craftiness of the cunning deceiver. The best security against this, he seems to think, is in the cultivation of a truth-loving spirit, and a truthful tongue. They who are themselves deceivers are, in their turn, commonly deceived, for, however suspicious and cunning they may be, falseness so twists and perverts the moral faculty, so distorts the vision, and blunts the touch, that such men will often suspect where they ought to confide, and confide where they ought to suspect. The most inveterate liars will sometimes be easily imposed upon, and believe the lie of some mere clumsy charlatan, who is, after all, far less cunning than themselves. So the blind lead the blind, and by a righteous retribution, both fall into the ditch; while he who is once on the track of truth, if he will but pursue her fair and gracious form, shall hold his steadfast course, falling neither into ditch nor quagmire, till at length he come along the shining way to the door of the Father’ s house, where truth and righteousness dwell forever. A merchant, on a railway journey, happened, by good fortune, to find himself in the same compartment as Bishop Wilberforce. Turning his opportunity to account, he thus addressed the worthy prelate: “ I have often, my lord, wished to ask of such a person as yourself which is the right way in religious matters; the sects are so conflicting, the roads seem so diverse--Catholicism, Protestantism, Free Churchism, and what not--that, to a plain man like me, it is difficult to know which road to take. Can you tell me?” “ Nothing easier,” said the Bishop; “ take the first turning to the right, and then keep straight on.” It is much to be feared that there are many who know the first turning to the right, but will not take it, or, if they take it, do not keep straight on. I. Loyalty to truth. What a changed world this would be, and what a glorious Church, if there were no treasons, no rebellions, no wrongs against the truth.1. Truth in the commercial world.2. Truth in social intercourse.3. Religious truth. II. Love to man, in conjunction with loyalty to truth. III. Likeness to Christ. (J. W. Lance.)The mission of the clergy; or, the faithful preacher I. What is the duty of the faithful preacher? The text answers, “ to preach the truth in love.” What is truth? The first great truth of religion is the knowledge of God. II. What constitutes a faithful preacher? Now some would say, preaching the truth does so. Not exactly, my brethren. For it is possible to be convinced of a thing without being very well pleased with it.1. In the first place, whosoever will “ speak the truth in love,” before all things it is necessary that he be himself “ of the truth.” Your lips to be truthful must be the exponents of an indwelling Divine and deep seated love. 2. Furthermore it is necessary to truthfulness of speech, or faithful preaching, that we preach the truth in love to men’ s souls. 3. But with all his faithfulness the faithful preacher must take care “ what manner of spirit he is of.” True, he must “ not shun to declare all the counsel of God” --true, he must “ nothing extenuate” nor allow the wicked to remain in their sins, and vainly content themselves with a peace which does not belong to them. Still, on the other hand, he “ must not set down aught in malice,” or preach the truth, however faithfully, with the spirit of bitterness, or sarcasm, or spiritual pride. Especially is it laid upon us, reverend brethren, to “ speak the truth in love” to those who dissent from the character or convictions of our church. If we are lovers of the truth, the truth will be spoken by us elsewhere than in the pulpit: the pulpit doubtless offers a prominent opportunity of speaking the truth and enforcing its obligations with all that fervour and faith which belong to a heart that is itself in the fear of God: but true preachers of God will not rest here. III. Why preachers should be faithful in the way I have pointed out. (W. Fisher, M. A.)Truthful dealing 1.The text assumes that if we are Christians our daily conversation will be mainly with our fellow Christians. If our relations with our fellow Christians were only occasional, it would be vain to think that our truthful discharge of those relations could ensure growth in the whole spiritual life; but the true Christian cannot be merely in occasional and accidental contact with those who are radically united with him in Christ. 2. The blessed fruits of the fellowship into which we enter inwardly and spiritually in our union with Christ, and visibly and outwardly in our public profession of faith as members of the Christian Church, can only be manifested by truthfulness and loyalty. We are to be truthful to our profession. A profession of obedience to Christ is a profession of willingness to sacrifice ourselves for them that are His. 3. Where there is this honesty of purpose towards the brethren, we shall be sure to find candour, simplicity, and plain truthfulness in every act of life. The man who is seeking his own things, who associates with his neighbours only to make a profit of them, requires to hide his purpose by untruthfulness; but the man who knows that no Christian can venture to have an interest of his own apart from the interest of the whole Church needs no concealment. Surely, when professing Christians deal with one another in secresy and guile, they are either confessing that they have not felt the power of grace in their own souls, or they have basely doubted the power of grace in their neighbour. 4. If our actions were always pure in the sight of God and man, if our Christian life were perfect, if we were not still under the power of sin, so often intent on selfish ends, it would be easy for us to be candid and sincere to one another. The test of Christian truthfulness is to be found in its power to assert itself as the rule of our life in spite of the sins that disturb even Christian fellowship. 5. It is plain that truthful dealing in these and many other ways, is possible only if, as the apostle says, it is truth speaking “ in love,” not merely that we are to speak the truth lovingly, not harshly. To live a life of open-hearted candour towards our brethren, if we have no love to Christ in our hearts, is the greatest of all hypocrisies. (W. R. Smith, M. A.)Power of love in winning souls A convict condemned to die was visited in his cell at different times by ministers and Christian philanthropists, who tried to awaken him to a proper sense of his condition, and to prepare him for his end; but none of them succeeded in making any impression upon him. He seemed hopelessly hardened. At last a humble but venerable preacher came, and sat down beside him, and talked so tenderly and so directly to his heart, that he broke down, and conversed freely, and exhibited signs of genuine repentance, The good man prayed with him, and left him in tears. “ I couldn’ t stand that,” the convict said, telling the gaoler how his visitor had dealt with him; “ Why, he called himself a sinner--and said he needed a Saviour as much as I did! That wasn’ t the way the others talked.” Helpfulness of love A famous painter at Antwerp called Quentin Matsys was in early life a blacksmith. He fell in love with a young woman, but her father refused to let her marry the blacksmith unless he painted a great picture. He knew nothing about the easel, but much about the anvil. He did not, however, give up his purpose. He studied and painted early and late, and in six months he produced his famous picture, “ The Misers,” and won his wife. On his own portrait he wrote the words, “ Love made me a painter.” (G. Fleet.)Speaking the truth in love The manner of saying a thing is of as much importance as the thing said. Apples of gold, when taken out of their pictures of silver, and hurled at your head, may become the instruments of great pain, much harm, and even murder. So words that are not fitly spoken. They may in themselves be good and true enough, but if uttered in a rude, insolent, arrogant, and offensive manner, they will probably result in evil rather than good. The question of manner is, therefore, something worth taking into consideration, equally by him whose office it is to instruct, advise, rebuke, and exhort his fellow men. For while not everyone can be like the shepherd of King Admetus, whose-- “ Words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths was rough, In his seemed musical and low,” there are yet very few who, by taking heed thereto, may not cultivate an agreeable, gentle, winning manner, even though by nature they be rough and harsh. The heart is the source of the manner of speech as much as of the words. Temper and soften that; fill it with Christ’ s charity. Let your words be winged by love, and their own sweetness will heal the wound they strike. (Christian Age.)Gentleness in reproving A skilful physician having to heal an imposthume, and finding the person to be afraid of lancing, privately wrapped up his knife in a sponge, with which, while he gently smoothed the place, he lanced it. So, when we encounter an offending brother, we must not openly carry the dagger in our hand, but with words of sweetness administer our reproof, and so effect the cure. How to proclaim the truth When I was a very young student, perhaps about sixteen years of age, I breakfasted with Caesar Malan, of Geneva, at Dr. John Brown’ s. When the doctor told him that I was a young student of divinity, he said to me, “ Well, my young friend, see that you hold up the lamp of truth to lot the people see. Hold it up, hold it up, and trim it well. But remember this: you must not dash the lamp in people’ s faces. That would not help them to see.” How often have I remembered his words! They have often been of use to me. (Dr. Morrison.)Truth, in love “ The portrait is like me, but too good looking,” was the criticism once made to an artist, which called forth the significant reply, “ It is the truth, lovingly told.” (Spencer Pearsall.)The work of Christ’ s living Body I. The nature of the Christian church as a body. No one would ever draw from the inspired pages the modern notion of the Church as composed of various self-originated societies, with conflicting creeds, diverse government and discipline, with changeful worship and ordinances, adapted to the taste or humour of their capricious founders. No. The Church presented in the Bible is like Jerusalem, “ a city which is at unity in itself.” The Church is not only a society having common interests, a city with a general charter, a kingdom having one Sovereign. These comparisons do not sufficiently illustrate its unity; but it is one Body, under the direction of one Head, animated by one vital Spirit. II. The union and communion between the ministers and members of the Church and its Divine Head. III. The means by which the growth and extension of the Church are promoted. Like the human body, to which it is compared, the Church of Christ does not attain its growth at once, but passes through infancy and childhood to the full vigour and maturity of manhood. The growth of the Church consists not only in the advancement of its own members in faith, holiness, and love, but also in its aggressive movements upon the world, the conversion of sinners through its instrumentality, and the adding unto it of such as shall be saved. How then are we, my brethren in the ministry, to effect our part in the edification of the Church and the conversion of the world? All the duties of our high function have a tendency to these glorious ends; but preeminent among them, as if including all others, and giving to them all their efficacy, is that specially noticed in the text--“ speaking the truth in love.” The truth of God must ever be held in connection with the Church of God. It is at once her support and her adornment. She is the tree of life, which bears those leaves of truth that are for the healing of the nations. But truth in all its beauty, integrity, and fair proportions, is found only in union with the Church. But what is to be the spirit of our teaching? We must not only inculcate the truth as it is in Jesus, but do it in the spirit of Jesus, which was the spirit of love. “ Teaching the truth in love.” (Bishop Henshaw.)The Head and the Body I. Our union to Christ--“ The Head, even Christ.”1. Essential to life.2. Essential to growth.3. Essential to perfection.4. Essential to every member. II. Our individuality--“ Every joint; every part.” Each one must mind his own office.1. We must each one personally see to his own vital union with the Body, and chiefly with the Head. 2. We must be careful to find and keep our fit position in the Body. 3. We must be careful of our personal health, for the sake of the whole Body; for one ailing member injures the whole. 4. We must be careful of our growth, for the sake of the whole Body. The most careful self-watch will not be a selfish measure, but a sanitary duty involved by our relationship to the rest. III. Our relationship to each other--“ Joined together” ; “ that which every joint supplieth.”1. We should in desire and spirit be fitted to work with others. We are to have joints. How could there be a Body without them? 2. We should supply the joint-oil of love when so doing; indeed, each one must yield his own peculiar influence to the rest. 3. We should aid the compactness of the whole by our own solidity, and healthy firmness in our place. 4. We should perform our service for all. We should guard, guide, support, nourish, and comfort the rest of the members, as our function may be. IV. Our compact unity as a Church.1. There is but one Body of Christ, even as He is the one Head. 2. It is an actual, living union of a mere professed unity, but a Body quickened by “ the effectual working” of God’ s Spirit in every part. 3. It is a growing corporation. It increases by mutual edification. Not by being puffed up, but by being built up. It grows as the result of its own life, sustained by suitable food. 4. An immortal Body. Because the Head lives, the Body must live also. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Head and members There is a great fitness in the figure of the head and the members. The head is--1. The highest part of the body, the most exalted. 2. The most sensitive part, the seat of nerve and sensation, of pleasure and pain. 3. The most honourable part, the glory of man, the part of man’ s body that receives the blessing, wears the crown, and is anointed with the oil of joy and of consecration. 4. The most exposed part, especially assailed in battle, and liable to be injured, and where injury would be most dangerous. 5. The most expressive part, the seat of expression, whether in the smile of approval, the frown of displeasure, the tear of sympathy, the look of love. (G. S. Bowes.)Oneness with Christ The moment I make of myself and Christ two, I am all wrong. But when I see that we are one, all is rest and peace. (Luther.)Growing up into Christ 1. Of the things into which we are to “ grow up,” I should place, first, assurance--an assurance of our own forgiveness--an interest in Christ, and in all the promises. Assurance, or, which is almost the same thing, peace, is entirely a matter of “ growth.” It develops like the harvest; and many seasons have to pass over it. It begins in a little seed of trembling hope, which scarcely gives a sign, or sends out one shoot. Then you go on to a feeling of faith, which comes and goes, as capricious as an April day. Then you proceed to a trust, which begins to settle itself, and to spring upward. Then that trust becomes firmer and firmer; while, in exact proportion, the life rises visibly, but feebly, higher and higher, till you reach, through much discipline, and after many pains, and perhaps only at the very last--to an unquestioning faith, and entire confidence, and a belief that has not a shadow, that He is yours and you are His--that you can lie, covenanted, undertaken for, safe forever--sure as the everlasting hills--steadfast as the throne of God; while, all the time, the richness of the fruit bears ample testimony to the depth of the root. 2. Another thing into which we “ grow,” and a sure accompaniment of this increase of faith, and without which you may very justly suspect whether it is faith at all, is humility. Never think that humility belongs most to the young Christian, or to the earlier stages of the Divine Life. 3. Side by side with a deepening humility will come the exquisite grace of simplicity. Simple thoughts about truth, simple views of Christ, simple language about religion, simple manners, simple dress, simple conduct. The fine, and the showy, and the effective all belong to infancy. 4. Then another part of growth is, to “ grow” out of self. They have got high up who have escaped from themselves. First, from self-indulgence; then from self-exaltation; self-consciousness. And, still higher, those who, scarcely looking into themselves at all, never seek in self what is only to be found in Christ. It was the characteristic feature of Christ Himself, that “ He pleased not Himself.” Let me tell you one or two of the great secrets of “ growth.” You must be happy. You wilt never grow till you are happy--happy in your own soul with God. Nothing will ever grow out of sunshine; and the sunshine of the heart is the felt smile of God. Then you must have communion with the holy, invisible things of another world. Growth is an influence from above. The higher atmosphere draws up the plants. Place yourself where the showers fall. Take in the virtue of strength through the drops of truth. And remember we “ grow” from within. The heart first, the life afterwards. And use well what you have. Action is the key of growth. Therefore, the fierce winds blow over the forest--that each tree, and bough, and little spray, being moved, and shaken, the sap may the better run. Stirring things are to quicken us--that God’ s grace may operate, that we ourselves, not being stagnant, but active, and busy, and diffusive--may “ grow” ; grow up to that great Worker, who so travailed for us all. And you must yield yourselves to the Pruner’ s hand. Now there would be very little to gather in your gardens but for the dresser’ s knife. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Christ the Head of the Church Let us consider Christ-- I. As head of the body. From this union so complete, the meanest member derives benefit: separate from the Saviour, the Church is nothing; united to Him, all her members grow and thrive. But there is one very important point not to be forgotten--the sympathy of the Head and of the Church (1 Corinthians 12:26-27). II. As the covenant-heart of the Church (see Ephesians 1:20-22). Adam was the head of the human race, and their welfare or ruin depended on his obedience or disobedience to God. Christ was chosen to be the representative or federal Head of the family of God; and “ in Him they are all made alive.” III. As Head of the Church in the exercise of his kingly authority. IV. As the Head or fulness of divinity (see Colossians 2:9-10). What a glorious display does this give us of our Immanuel! Possessed of the fulness of the Godhead, He is at the head of creation as “ Lord of all” (Colossians 1:15-18). (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)Obeying the Head in all things Patterns of the obedience which we should yield to Jesus Christ, the members hesitate not to obey the head, even to their own loss and painful suffering. Take the hand, for instance. Archbishop Cranmer stands chained to the stake. The fagots are lighted. With forked tongues the flames rise through the smoke that opens, as the wind blows it aside, to show that great old man standing up firm in the fiery trial. Like a true penitent, he resolves that the hand which had signed his base recantation shall burn first; and how bravely it abides the flame! In obedience to the head, the hand lays itself down to suffer amputation; in obedience to the head, it flings away the napkin, sign for the drop to fall; in obedience to the head, as was foreseen by some of our fathers when they attached their names to the League and Covenant, it firmly signed the bond that sealed their fate, and doomed them to a martyr’ s grave. Let the head forgive, and the hand at once opens to grasp an enemy’ s, in pledge of quarrel buried and estrangement gone. Would to God that Jesus Christ had such authority over us! Make us, O Lord, thy willing subjects in the day of Thy power! Ascend the throne of our hearts! Prince of Peace! take unto Thee thy great power, and reign! The one body:--Now let us, for a few moments, observe what the head does in the natural body, and then see what that spiritual Head does for His mystical body.1. The head directs. The ends of all the nerves are gathered within that wonderful arch, the skull, which might be called the electric telegraph room of the body, communicating instantly by thought, through those fine white wires the nerves, with every part, and the most distant extremity of the body. If the Christian acts rightly, it is Christ who directs him: He “ of God is made unto us wisdom” ; and the Christian, feeling his ignorance, and asking for wisdom, according to the promise, “ If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God,” is generally guided into all moral and saving truth. 2. The head nourishes. If the nerves are once severed, all below the part severed becomes dead, for the communication is stopped between the head and the members; and if the communication were once stopped between Christ and a member, that member would instantly become paralyzed, or die. As it is in the natural body, the limb withers, the flesh shrinks, the muscles collapse, and the man becomes a mass of bones and shrunken sinew; as I have myself for a long time visited one who was dead from the head downwards, from some such accident as this--whose hands were tied over his body, perfectly lifeless, perfectly motionless. So, if the communication only be imperfect, though not stopped, nutrition and growth are immediately impeded; the heart begins to palpitate, so that disease might be supposed to exist there; and if the leading nerves do not work, if the nervous energy be impaired, the health of the member at once becomes weakness. Christ is the Head of the body; and all the spiritual nourishment which that body receives is as directly received through its union with the Head, as the nourishment of the body is through its union with the natural head. 3. The head unites. My hand and my wrist are next door neighbours; but, near as they are, it is only through the head that they sympathize. Were the nerves separated, they would have just as much sympathy as two corpses laid in the same room. If my hand holds communion with the wrist, it is through the union of both with the head. As one hand holds communion with the other at the opposite quarter of the body, so does the nearest member, as well as the farthest. And so it is with Christians. The nearest believers are united, not by neighbourhood--for we know in this monstrous city that men may live next door to one another, and know nothing whatever of each other, and care less--but by union with Christ, the Head, the members sympathize with the nearest, as well as with the farthest, because they are both one in Christ. 4. The growth of the body depends on the health of every part; and it is this which the apostle directs our attention to, where he says, “ According to the effectual working in the measure of every part” ; and in this way it is that the body “ maketh increase to the edifying of itself.” A healthy body is that in which each part is healthy. No part can be disordered in the natural body, without affecting the whole, more or less. The festered little finger will make “ the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint,” will communicate throbs through the whole body to the brain, spread inflammation, break up sleep, take away appetite, impair digestion, bring on the flushing of fever, or the paleness of atrophy in the cheek. Growth is the result of every part of the body doing its work. Not only is the daily waste made up, and the daily loss repaired, but the body is increased by the addition of fresh particles. The food we take is incorporated, and becomes part of our wonderful body: the salts, the alkalis, the different elements in food, are all carried by the arteries and veins to the different parts, and the stream of life lands and deposits each cargo of supplies at the wharfs along the shore. The very bulb at the root of the hair is fed, and without that nourishment it would not grow. Now, this supply cannot be carried on except the head is united to the members; but it is by each joint of the body receiving its supply, and doing its work, that the body grows. The supply is received in order that the work may be done; and as the work could not be done except the supply were received, so neither will the supply be given if the work is not done. All parts have not, indeed, the same office in the natural body, but all have their own; each part has its own particular work; and the body will be healthy or not in proportion as each part does its own work. No part of the body is idle. The hand, indeed, does not support the body, like the foot; but it supplies the food, and helps it in many ways. The eye does not feed the body, like the hand; but it enables the hand to do so better. The little hidden arteries, that creep along those wonderful hollows, and valleys, and trenches in the bones, and through the skin and the flesh, cannot be seen like the veins; but they are all at work, conveying the stream of life safely and carefully along. No part is idle; each is at work; and it is by each doing its work that the body grows. “ The whole body,” says the apostle, “ fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint” supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body. So is it in Christ’ s body the Church. Every member has its work to do--its own place in the mystical body, and its own work in that place. Now, this work is not only the work of the minister of the gospel--not the work purely of the bishop, or the elder, or the deacon. How fearful would be the witness against the nominal Christian, if this were the testimony of a servant! Now, it is by each member bearing this in mind, and endeavouring to act out his part, that the Church spreads, and grows, and acts on the world. Think, beloved brethren, what would be the effect on the world at large, if all those only who met together in this house of God every Sabbath day went forth with Christian consistency of conduct, and simplicity of motive and dependence, to exhibit the example of their Redeemer in the world on the weekdays. Think, if every part did its work with energy, what that work would be. (W. W. Champneys, M. A.) Ephesians 4:16 From whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.The Church is one body of different parts I. The Church is a unit body. It is not meant to convey the idea that the Church is in any way a material and tangible body, presented to the senses like material substance generally. It is not a body of any earthly form and figure. Our common conception of a body is a combination of particles constituting certain qualities and forces. We understand the spiritual through the analogies and symbols of the material and earthly. The Church is a holy combination of all spiritual powers and sympathies meeting in one centre and end, proceeding from the nature of Divine law and order, the relation of moral beings to one another, and the relation in which all stand to God, the spiritual Father and wise Ruler of the universe. This is the Church in its highest and purest form; it is the Church in the body of its principles, and the sympathies of its heart.1. The unity of the Church consists in its design and service. 2. It is a unity of sympathy. 3. It is a unity of privilege. 4. It is one in relation. The Church stands related to its source and Head, to Divine order, to all intelligent beings, to itself and all belonging to its laws and blessings, to this world and the next. These are relations of privilege and responsibility, of honour and duty. 5. It is one in life and spirit. 6. It is one in likeness. The Church, as the product of one mind, carries the same Divine image everywhere, both in its laws and members. It is intended to mould the human family into the Divine likeness. II. The Church, as one body, possesses various parts and fit organs to perform its work and conserve its existence. It is not one clumsy mechanical piece, without either parts or joints, but a body of numerous organs for the accomplishment of different services. In its spiritual constitution it is a body of various elements, for the performance of high and gracious designs. In order that these various elements may have mediums of expression to reach their intended and fit end, there must be a befitting organization of parts and suitable quality.1. The members of the body are intended to perform the required functions for the service of the body itself. The body has to serve itself before it can be useful to others. It is, in a sense, its own saviour or destroyer. The right use of its own functions and resources is its salvation; the rejection of this is its sure death and decay. There are some powers given for its protection, there are others for its growth and vigour; there are others for its comfort and happiness, and others, again, intended for its beauty and attraction. To have a perfect body, all these must do their own work, and cooperate for a common end; and to have a healthy and happy Church, all its functions must be active in doing their own work, and united together for one holy and high end. 2. The body has relations and duties to things besides itself. The body stands related, some way or other, to all the things of earth. All the works of this world depend upon the fitness of the members of the human body to do them; so that if these were to fail, all would stop. There could be no art without the mind and the senses; neither would there be commerce, building of houses, cultivation of the field, or any other work of any kind whatever. Such is the vast importance of the members of this small body, that all in life and society depend upon their order and efficiency. So is it in analogy with the Church; all in society morally depends upon the efficiency and the right use of its means and organs. All have their work. Unity of likeness and variety of work are the two things which demand and consume the service of the one and the whole. The head, the heart, and the hand of all have work, and that as much for their own sake as that of others; and all this diversity and force are for the needful and common service of the whole. To make these different organs complete and effective, you will see at once that there are other conditions required, which may be suggested as worthy of your respect and belief. (1) It is needful that these organs should be in their proper position. (2) Each organ must have its particular and proper work assigned to it. (3) It is required that they are all regularly and faithfully exercised. Exercise is the soul of power; it is both the condition of health and usefulness. (4) It is expected that there is a common sympathy between all the members of the body. They are coupled together. Harmony of parts in a machine, of members in the human body, of functions in society, of powers in the mind, and of graces in the soul, are analogous one to another, and are equally necessary for happy working and successful results. Sympathy in the members of the body is expressed by mutual cooperation and assistance, by subordination to and respect for one another, and constant assisting and forbearing with one another. As with the body corporeal, so is it intended to be in the body spiritual. The strongest must sympathize with the weak. Extremes are intended to meet, and do meet, in harmony here. (5) The body must have elasticity, to act with ease, comfort, and effect. The body is not made in one piece, but of different parts. Between these there is unity, and yet there is elasticity, so that everyone can play its own part without inconvenience to itself or encumbrance to its neighbour. (6) All are governed by one will and intelligence. The members of the body, though various and numerous, are governed by one rational will, hence their unity in operation and subject. The Church, in all its members and functions, is governed by one constant and unfailing will, and this is one source of its power and unity. Only one will governing all, through all time and in all places, and that the one and the whole! What a thought!--what a comfort! (7) It is requisite that there should be life underlying the whole. III. All the parts in the organization of the body abe subordinate, and intended for the increase of the whole.1. It is to be a general and complete increase of the whole body. In order to have a well-developed and equally proportionate Church, all means must be used, all functions must be exercised; thus every part is developed, so that it becomes a true counterpart of real existence, and fit for all intended for it, and demanded of it. 2. It is a conditional increase, produced by the use of means. To secure the increase of the whole body, the law of the conditions demands that all means should be used, all powers exercised, the spirit one of faith and love, the motive true and unselfish, and the activity constant and unyielding. God gives increase according to law and order; and when these things are united, never does it fail. When our life unites with Divine order, happy results always follow, and never disappoint us. 3. It is an indefinite increase. There is neither limit nor end prescribed to it. It runs down through time and eternity; it pervades the universe of rational and responsible existence. 4. The soil and quality of the increase is love. Increase in love is one towards ourselves stud the object or objects of our desire and delight at the same time. As love is the refining power of the soul, to increase in it is to advance in all that is morally pure and beautiful. It is the sweet element of happiness, and he who grows in it increases in the thing all wish and all seek. It is one of the chief elements in which we become like God, for He is love. IV. The Church, as a body of parts, is dependent upon its representative head for its order and resources.1. Its laws and resources are from Him. The laws given by the Head to the Church are few and natural, proceeding from the unchangeable relations of man to man, and man to God. Love to God and love to man are the great moral laws which remain in the Church forever, without declension or change, because they are essential to the relations of moral beings, and the moral universe could not exist without them. 2. From Him it receives its symmetrical proportion and harmony. The symmetry of the Church is the harmony of all its parts with themselves, with the Divine economy of the universe, and with itself, in all times and places. This three-fold symmetry it receives from its glorious Head, who is one and unchangeable. 3. From Him it receives its oneness. This gives the Church, through all times and places, unity of purpose and character. Its oneness is not in its feet, but in its Head. 4. From Him it receives light and life. As life and light are elements in importance and value above all others, so is Christ to the Church. As He is made by God the representative Head, He is made its light and life. 5. From Him it receives its beauty and attraction. A deformed head would destroy every possible beauty and attraction of the whole body. A noble head gives beauty and nobility to the whole. We look first at the head; we form our opinion of the whole from the character of the head. In its outward form the Church may appear mean and unattractive in some of its members, but the Head makes up for the whole. The Head is never out of sight; it is visible to all from all its members. 6. Its magnitude and universality are received from the Head. His greatness becomes that of the Church, by virtue of the relation existing between them. Where the Head is, the Church is represented. In the Head, the Church of earth and heaven are united; the spirit of the Head unites the present with the future, and thus gives to the Church universality in time and space. 7. The Church is indebted for its hope and high destiny to its Head. The Head lives for the body. The exaltation of the Head will be that of the body also. The Head is above all human reach; and, in connection with its Head, the body will triumph over all foes and opposition. (T. Hughes.)Mutual dependence I. Observe, in the first place, that all the true members of Christ are entirely dependent on Christ. Independence is the great principle of our corrupt nature--that sinful independence, that would lead the creature not to acknowledge its entire dependence on God. But let me say to such that hear me, be assured of this; the soul in that state Never can enter the kingdom of heaven. II. But observe now, that the members of Christ are not only dependent on Christ, but they are dependent upon each other. Look at a tree; is it not so? I see the branch dependent upon its stem, as the stem is dependent upon its root; but I see little branches dependent upon the other branches, and still smaller fibres dependent upon the smallest branches. And so is it in this figure before us: “ from whom the whole body,” in its parts “ fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part.” III. And now consider the great object and end, for which all this takes place. It “ maketh increase of the body.” That is, “ the whole body” in its parts “ maketh increase of the body” as a whole. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Christian work and Christian life Christian life in the truest sense is impossible apart from Christian activity. In other words, in the Church everyone has something to do. I. There must be a hearty conviction that because we can therefore we ought to do so. Power, you know, is a talent down to its uttermost limit, and as long as there is something which “ every joint” can supply, alas for that joint’ s health and life, if it fails of its function. A Christian that does no Christian work, is an anomaly. Analogy teaches this. Nature is not receptive only: nature is a bountiful giver; rendering back again, thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold, that which man entrusts to her keeping. Social life teaches the same doctrine. We cannot, if we would, do without one another. II. All Christians have not the same work to do. Every joint is to supply something, but every joint is not to supply the same thing. It is to be according to “ the measure of every part.” There is something to be done by all of us; but our work varies with our position in life. (W. G. Barrett.)An honourable vocation for all Very little are some of the joints and fibres; but every little helps. Who shall despise the day of small things? But for the accumulated atoms, the aggregated littles, where were the body? As the author of “ Felix Holt” says, we see human heroism broken into units, and are apt to imagine, this unit did little--might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with. There is a latter day apologue of a gimlet that grew exceedingly discontented with its vocation, envying all the ether tools in the carpenter’ s basket, and thinking scorn of its own mean duty of perpetually boring and picking holes everywhere. “ The saw and the axe had grand work to do; and the plane got praise always; so did the chisel for its carving; and the happy hammer was always ringing merrily upon the clenching nail.” But for it, a wretched, poking, paltry, gimlet its work was hidden away, and very little seemed its recognized use. But the gimlet is assured, on the best authority, that nothing could compensate for its absence, and is therefore bidden be content, nay happy; for though its work seems mean and secret, it is indispensable. To its good offices, the workman is said to look chiefly for coherence without splitting; and to its quiet influences, the neatness, the solidity, the comfort of his structure may greatly be ascribed. The apologue has, of course, its practical application. “ Are there not many pining gimlets in society, ambitious of the honour given to the greater-seeming tools of our Architect, but unconscious that in His hands they are quite as useful? The loving little child, the gentle woman, the patience of many a moral martyr, the diligence of many a duteous drudge, though their works may be unseen and their virtues operate in obscurity, yet are these main helpers to the very joints and bands of our body corporate, the quiet home influences whereby the great edifice, Society, is so nicely wainscoted and floored without split boards … ” John Newton said that if two angels came down from heaven to execute a Divine command, and one was appointed to conduct an empire, and the other to sweep street in it, they would feel no inclination to change employments. So again, the same robust divine affirmed that a Christian should never plead spirituality for being a sloven; “ if he be but a shoe cleaner, he should be the best in the parish.” As the old servant tells Ruth in Mrs. Gaskell’ s story, “ There’ s a right and a wrong way of setting about everything--and to my thinking, the right way is to take a thing up heartily, if it is only making a bed. Why, dear, ah me! making a bed may be done after a Christian fashion, I take it, or else what’ s to come of such as we in heaven, who’ ve had little enough time on earth for clapping ourselves down on our knees for set prayers?” This quaint speaker had laid to heart the lesson once for all enforced upon her, to do her duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her; her station was that of a servant, and, looked at aright, as honourable as a king’ s: she was to help and serve others in one way, just as a king is in another. Her parting counsel to Ruth runs thus: “ Just try for a day to think of all the odd jobs as to be done well and truly in God’ s sight, not just slurred over anyhow, and you’ ll go through them twice as cheerfully,” besides doing them more efficiently. John Brown, of Haddingten, being waited on by a lad of excitable temperament, who informed him of his desire to become a preacher, and whom the shrewd pastor saw to be as weak in intellect as he was strong in conceit, advised him to continue in his present vocation. The young man said, “ But I wish to preach and glorify God.” The old commentator replied, “ My young friend, a man may glorify God making broom besoms; stick to your trade, and glorify God by your life and conversation.” As it was said of Bossuet, in the seventeenth century, that he could not walk, or sit down, or even pluck a currant, without your recognizing in him the great bishop (so asserts a modern French divine, not of Bossuet’ s Church), just so the workman and the domestic servant who are animated by their Master’ s spirit, distinguish themselves among their fellows by a certain air of nobility; under their blouse or their livery may be seen to shine the signal light of their aristocratic spirituelle, the image of the Most High Himself. However mean their employment, they go about it with neither disgust nor indifference; but with an intelligent interest, because, in the sight of God, and indeed in their own eyes, their occupation is on a level with that of king or emperor. (Francis Jacox.)The Church edifying itself in love I. The church of Christ is compared to a body.1. The life of a body.2. Its head.3. The members.4. Their unity.5. Its nourishment.6. The soul. II. The imperfections of this body.1. Its numbers.2. Its graces. III. The endeavours it should make for its own edifying. IV. The fact that the more love abounds, the more will it be edified. Love--1. Enlarges supplication.2. Inclines to peace.3. Produces condescension.4. Promotes activity. (N. Vincent, M. A.)The Church, Christ’ s Body, a growing body Concerning this growth, the apostle says-- I. It is from Christ. He is the causal source from which all life and power is derived. II. It depends on the intimate union of all the parts of the body with the head, by means of appropriate bands. III. It is symmetrical. IV. It is a growth in love. (Dr. Hodge.)The Body of Christ The figure in the mind of the apostle is that of a human body, in its unity, in its symmetry, in its structural completeness, its framework of bones shielding the brain, shielding the eye, sheathing the life marrow in the spinal column; in the legs supporting the frame as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold, the whole wrapped in an enswathement of closely-knit, cunningly-knit muscles, ramified with countless nerves, furnished with eyes, ears, hands, feet, and all the rest:--“ The whole body fitly,” etc. This is the object before the eye of the apostle as he writes of the body that grows out of Christ. I. As a body the Church possesses visibility. For about thirty-three years, more or less, God manifest in the flesh was visible to the eyes of the world. Indeed, for that last twelvemonth of His life on earth it may be said that Palestine saw little else. Tabor in its bold isolation, Hermon with his glittering crown of snow, even Jerusalem itself, was hardly so obtrusively visible as this great, strange personage. And louder, gladder doxology never rolled up from earth to heaven than that of the whole orchestra of priests, Levites, scribes, and Pharisees, Sanhedrim, and synagogue when the body of Jesus disappeared from human view. They never for a moment questioned that this was the “ end all” of the whole perplexity. Little did they dream that the withdrawal of this body only made way for another a thousand times more visible. It is time long ago that men understood and recognized this truth. They suppose that Christ is a purely historic Christ, while in fact He is a contemporary Christ. They fancy that the Body of the great Nazarene Reformer is gone forever from sight and time; while, in fact, the Church is His Body now visible to the eyes of millions. As a body, the Church of Christ is visible. Should the thought arise that the Church as a whole includes vast numbers of members who are not visible--that here and there in the world are members of the Body of whom the world knows nothing--we answer, Yes, and only part of the human body is visible. We do not see the lungs and the heart and the nerves and the blood, and yet the body is visible, and so is the Church, which is the Body of Christ. II. As a body, the Church consists of a great variety of component parts. The constituents of a human body are very numerous, very various; and these constituents find their way to the body from every quarter of the globe. The whole round world has been laid under contribution to make up the body in which you live, move, and have your being. And is not this true of the Church which is the Body of Christ? Not a variety of temperament, not a grade of intellect, not a style of social life but has contributed to the building up of this Body of Christ. In that Body we find the learned professor, and by his side the child of illiteracy; the scientist discoursing of the plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth out of the wall, of beasts, birds, and fishes, of meteors and stars, of Orion and Pleiades, and by his side one who hardly knows that the earth is round, and is right sure of very little else than that he is a poor lost sinner, and that Christ died to save him. One member of this Body dwells among Greenland’ s icy mountains, another on India’ s coral strand; one wears the black skin of the African, another the red skin of the American Indian; one the yellow skin of the Chinese, and another the tawny skin of the Malay; another still the white skin of the Caucasian; but all alike are members of the Body of Christ. III. As a body, the Church is also characterized by a compact organic unity. It is a body “ fitly framed together,” etc. This unity is a unity of Life and Spirit. The vital force that gives life to, warms, propels, acts in each believer, issues from Christ. “ From whom,” etc. In a vine, however large, the same life is in every leaf and every branch, every tendril and every grape. In the whole vine there is perfect unity of life, and that life is the one vine life. This is seen in the similarity of fruit the vine produces. On the same vine you do not find here the Malaga grape, there the Catawba, and here the Isabella; but on every branch the same fruit; for they are all the product of one life. But Jesus said, “ I am the vine,” etc. If any leaf on the vine can say “ such a life dwells in me,” every other leaf can say the same.1. The Church is the Body of Christ--it is His head, His brain--an organ of thought to Him. Whatever is lofty, pure, noble in the conception of the Church, in the conceptions of the believer, is due to the Spirit of Christ acting through the mind of the Church. 2. The Church is the eyes of Christ (Matthew 9:36). The Jews thought that on Calvary those pitying eyes forever closed in death. Today, after so many centuries, Jesus looks abroad through a hundred millions of compassionate eyes upon the children of men scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. 3. The Church is the feet of Jesus. How restless were those feet (Matthew 9:35). And today the Church, His Body, is going about “ all the cities and villages,” etc. 4. And the Church is the hands of Jesus. How blessed the relation of membership in this Body of Christ, His work employing our thought, our eyes, our hands, our feet, our lips! This being so, two consequences follow.1. No member of this Body must do anything that Jesus would not have done when He was on the earth. 2. Every member of this Body of Christ must be ready, willing, anxious to do what Jesus would do in his, in her place. (William P. Breed, D. D.)The vitality and development of the body The figure is a striking one. The body derives its vitality and power of development from the head. The Church has a living connection with its living Head, and were such a union dissolved, spiritual death would be the immediate result. The body is fitly framed together, and compacted by the functional assistance of the joints. Its various members are not in isolation, like the several pieces of a marble statue. No portion is superfluous; each is in its fittest place, and the position and relations of none could be altered without positive injury. “ Fearfully and wonderfully made,” it has its hard framework of bone so formed as to protect its vital organs in the thorax and skull, and yet so united by “ curiously wrought” joints, as to possess freedom of motion both in its vertebral column and limbs. But it is no ghastly and repulsive skeleton, for it is clothed with flesh and fibre, which are fed from ubiquitous vessels, and interpenetrated with nerves--the spirit’ s own sensational agents and messengers. It is a mechanism in which all is so finely adjusted, that every part helps and is helped, strengthens and is strengthened, the invisible action of the pores being as indispensable as the mass of the brain and the pulsations of the heart. When the commissioned nerve moves the muscle, the hand and foot need the vision to guide them, and the eye, therefore, occupies the elevated position of a sentinel. How this figure is applicable to the Church may be seen under a different image at 2:21. The Church enjoys a similar compacted organization--all about her, in doctrine, discipline, ordinance, and enterprize, possessing mutual adaptation, and showing harmony of structure. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The growth of the body “ The body maketh increase of itself” according to the energy which is distributed, not only through it, but to “ every part” in its own proportion. Corporeal growth is not effected by additions from without. The body itself elaborates the materials of its own development. Its stomach digests the food, and the numerous absorbents extract and assimilate its nourishment. It grows, each part according to its nature and uses. The head does not swell into the dimensions of the trunk, nor does the “ little finger” become “ thicker than the loins.” Each has the size that adapts it to its uses, and brings it into symmetry with the entire living organism. And every part grows. The sculptor works upon a portion only of the block at a time, and, with laborious efforts, brings out in slow succession the likeness of a feature or a limb, till the statue assume its intended aspect and attitude. But the plastic energy of nature presents no such graduated forms of operation, and needs no supplement of previous defects. Even in embryo the organization is perfect, though it is in miniature, and development only is required. For the “ energy” is in every part at once, but in every part in due apportionment. So the Church universal has in it a Divine energy, and that in all its parts, by which its spiritual development is secured. In pastors and people, in missionaries and catechists, in instructors of youth and in the youth themselves, this Divine principle has diffused itself, and produces everywhere proportionate advancement. And no member or ordinance is superfluous. The widow’ s mite was commended by Him who sat over against the treasury. Solomon built a temple. Joseph provided a tomb. Mary the mother gave birth to the Child, and the other Marys wrapt the Corpse in spices. Lydia entertained the apostle, and Phoebe carried an Epistle. Of old the princes and heroes went to the field, and “ wise-hearted women did spin.” While Joshua fought, Moses prayed. The snuffers and trays were as necessary as the magnificent lamp stand. The rustic style of Amos, the herdsman, has its place in Scripture as well as the graceful paragraphs of the royal preacher. A basket was as necessary for Paul’ s safety at one time as his burgess ticket, and a squadron of cavalry at another. And the result is, that the Church is built up, for love is the element of spiritual progress. That love fills the renewed nature, and possesses peculiar facilities of action in “ edifying” the mystical Body of Christ. And, lastly, the figure is intimately connected with the leading idea of the preceding paragraph, and presents a final argument on behalf of the unity of the Church. The apostle speaks of but one Body--“ the whole Body.” Whatever parts it may have, whatever their form, uses, and position, whatever the amount of energy resident in them, still, from their connection with the one living Head, and from their own compacted union and mutual adjustment, they compose but one structure “ in love.” (J. Eadie, D. D.) Ephesians 4:17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.Exhortation to converts 1. Ministers of the Word must both speak, and with protestation enforce, the ways of God. 2. We must do all good things in the Lord’ s power. 3. Our estate which we have in Christ must avail with us to leave oar old ways. 4. We must not spend our time after grace as we did before. (1) It is more to God’ s dishonour, and our own danger, to sin after grace, for God will be sanctified in all that come near Him, or He will by His judgments sanctify Himself in them. The times of ignorance God does not so strictly look to. (2) We should be worse servants to God and holiness, than we were to sin and the devil; for when we were in the flesh, we walked after the devil, and were free men from righteousness. (3) The time of grace itself includes a persuasion, for it is a day wherein the Sun of Righteousness shines in our hearts, as the time before our conversion was a night. Now, the day is not for works of darkness, but of light. (4) It is a great injustice to spend the time after grace in the lusts of our own hearts; for, would we not think ourselves wronged if, having hired one to work here or there, he should go loitering and wasting his time elsewhere? 5. Such as are called to faith, must not be like the world. (1) Ministers must call off the godly from conforming to the world. (2) We must not be afraid to be singular. 6. To walk after our vain minds is heathenish. 7. All the courses which the natural man can devise are vain. (Paul Bayne.)Kept from mental vanity A German writer says that the king’ s daughter had a very learned man come every day to instruct her in the sciences. He was very weak and sickly, dwarfed and deformed. One day the king’ s daughter said to him, “ How is it that you, a man with so much intelligence and such a wonderful intellect, should have such a miserable body?” The teacher made no answer, but he said, “ Bring us some wine.” The order was given, the wine was brought, and they drank it. He said, “ This is very pleasant wine; in which kind of vat do you keep it?” She said, “ In an earthen vat.” “ Oh,” he said, “ it is strange that in such a beautiful palace as your father has he should have wine in an earthen vat. Why don’ t you put it in a gold or silver vat?” The king’ s daughter said, “ So it shall be.” One day the learned man was teaching the king’ s daughter, and he said, “ I am weary--bring me some wine.” The wine was ordered. He tasted it; it was sour. He said, “ This is miserable wine. What is the matter with it?” She said, “ I cannot understand it, for we have the wine in a golden vat.” “ Ah!” he said, “ that’ s what’ s the matter with it; that’ s what has spoiled and soured it. Now,” he said, turning to the king’ s daughter, “ I will explain why God puts my mind in such a miserable body. Had He put my mind in a body that was golden, beautiful, and imposing, I should have been spoiled with vanity; but He put me in an earthen vessel, and so I have been kept humble.” (Dr. Talmage.)Vanity even in death Danton’ s last words to Samson, the executioner, were, “ Thou wilt show my head to the people; it is worth showing.” Ephesians 4:18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the, life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.Spiritual blindness A coward never knows what the ecstasy of courage is; and if you ask me why, my reply is, that he has not that in him by which he can know it. A man hearing a magnificent symphony of Beethoven says, “ I would give more for ‘ Yankee Doodle’ than for a thousand such symphonies.” Why? Because he has not that in him by which he can appreciate Beethoven’ s music. A man says in regard to a magnificent work of art, “ I would rather see the sign that hangs over the door of the tavern in our town than any picture that Raphael ever painted.” Very likely he would. That sign is just coarse enough for him to understand; and he has not that in him which would enable him to interpret the paintings of a great master. Many men would rather read a ballad than Milton’ s “ Lycidas” or “ Comus” or “ Paradise Lost.” (H. W. Beecher.)The immorality of the heathen We are environed by an invisible, Divine, and eternal world. It does not lie far away from us in the remote future, but surrounds us now as the starry heavens surround the common earth, There is a faculty in us which, when inspired and illuminated by the Spirit of God, enables us to see it. When once that world is revealed to us our whole conception of human duty and of human destiny is changed. We discover that the pleasures and pains of this brief and transitory life, its poverty and its wealth, its honours and its shame, are of secondary importance, that there is a kind of unreality in them all, that they are external to us, that they are rapidly passing away. In this life indeed it is impossible for us not to be affected by them; and they have their place in the discipline of our righteousness. But our horizon has widened, and we see beyond them. We discover that it is only the larger world which has been revealed to us by Christ that is real and enduring; and that compared with its august and glorious realities “ things seen and temporal,” are but passing shadows. We see that the true life of man is the eternal and Divine life by which he is related to what is eternal and Divine; that the true honour, the true wealth, the true wisdom, the true happiness of man are found in that eternal and Divine kingdom. But Paul says that heathen races are living among things seen and temporal, not among things unseen and eternal. The faculty by which they should be brought into contact with what is real and enduring, is impaired, so that it mistakes shadows for substances, dreams for realities: they “ walk in the vanity of their mind.” And as no light reaches them from the infinite and eternal world, they are “ darkened in their understanding.” Darkness and death go together. Man was so created that the root of his perfection is in God. But where the knowledge of God is lost the life of God is lost. Heathen men are living in regions of moral darkness, in which the life of God cannot be theirs. They are separated, estranged, “ alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.” But the ignorance is not a mere intellectual defect involving no moral fault; they are “ alienated from the life of God … because of the hardening of their heart.” Their increasing moral insensibility was the real cause of their ignorance; and their ignorance and moral insensibility were the causes of their alienation from the life of God. What kind of men they had become through this hardening of their heart Paul describes in words which it is not possible to read without a sense of horror. They were “ past feeling.” They had ceased to he sensitive to the obligations of truth, of honesty, of kindness, of purity; and to the guilt of falsehood, of injustice, of cruelty, of sensual sin. They committed the grossest vices, and were conscious of no shame. Their imagination was no longer fascinated by the beauty and nobleness of virtue. No sentiment of personal dignity checked the indulgence of the foulest and most disgraceful passions. They had no reverence for the purer and loftier traditions of better times. They were untouched by the censure and scorn of the wiser and nobler of their contemporaries. All the inducements that draw men to virtue and all the restraints that hold them back from vice were destroyed. They were “ past feeling.” Their sin was therefore gross and habitual. They were not betrayed into sin, against their better purposes; they were not merely overcome now and then by the violence of their passions; they were not mastered by some malignant power, against which they struggled in vain; nor were their worst excesses followed by any remorse. They sinned deliberately and without any protest from their reason or their conscience, or any purer and more generous affections in their moral life. “ They gave themselves up” --it was their own act, done with set purpose and with the consent of their whole nature--“ they gave themselves up to lasciviousness” --to a life in which there was a wilful, reckless, wanton defiance of all moral restraints. Vice, by their own choice and intention, was not to be an occasional incident in their life, it was to be their main business, the employment at which they were to “ work” ; and as some men have an insatiable desire for money, these men had an insatiable desire for every kind of impurity, “ they gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” It is a horrible picture. But Paul was describing the men among whom he had lived and among whom the Christians at Ephesus were living still. The morality of the Greek cities of Asia Minor was so base and so foul that we wonder that the fires of God did not descend to destroy them. Is it surprising that with such a moral environment the Christians at Ephesus, who a few years before had been heathen men themselves, required the ethical teaching contained in the later chapters of this Epistle? (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Christians must live above the world To ourselves the ethical condition of the Ephesian Christians is profoundly suggestive, perhaps I ought to say that it is very alarming. English society is free from the gross, the sensual, the brutal vice which infected the great heathen cities of Asia Minor. There is a strong public sentiment on the side of truthfulness, honesty, temperance, purity, industry, self-control, kindliness, and public spirit. We inherit these virtues from our parents; we have been disciplined to them by all the complex influences that have contributed to form our character. In a very true sense they are natural to us, and we practise them without effort. And so it is assumed that when a man receives the life of God there is no reason for any great change in his moral habits. There may be defects of temper which have to be corrected, and in some of the details of moral conduct we may recognize the necessity for amendment; but if he has lived among good moral people he takes it for granted that in working out his own salvation he has to think almost exclusively of his spiritual life; his moral character is already what it should be. He attends public worship more frequently than before; secures more time for private prayer, for religious thought, for reading the Bible and other religious books; he tries to increase the fervour of his love for God and the steadfastness of his faith in God; he takes up some kind of religious work. About moral discipline he thinks very little. About the necessity of reconstructing his whole conception of moral duty, adding to it new elements, resting it on new foundations, he thinks still less. The results of this grave error are most disastrous. The ideal of the ethical life is no higher in the Church than it is in the world. But if the morals of the Church, as a whole, are not distinctly in advance of the morals of society as a whole, if when a man becomes a Christian his moral life is not governed by nobler laws and inspired with a new generosity and force, the power of the Church will be seriously impaired, and its triumphs will be only occasional and intermittent. At times a great passion of religious enthusiasm may enable it to count its converts by thousands; but the fires of enthusiasm soon sink, and for its permanent authority the Church should rely on steadier forces. In heathen countries, although the morality of Christian converts may be grossly defective, it is in advance of the morality of the mass of their fellow countrymen. The darkness of their old life is about them still, but their faces are towards the light. In countries described as Christian there should be the same difference between the morality of those that are in Christ and the morality of those that are not. The revelation of the Divine love and the Divine righteousness, of our kinship to God, of the glorious immortality which is the inheritance of all that have received the Divine life, should ennoble our ideal of every moral virtue, and should inspire us with a more ardent passion for moral perfection. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Ignorance of religion It’ s ignorance of the price of pearls that makes the idiot slight them. It’ s ignorance of the worth of diamonds that makes the fool choose a pebble before them. It’ s ignorance of the satisfaction learning affords that makes the peasant despise and laugh at it; and we very ordinarily see how men tread and trample on those plants which are the greatest restoratives, because they know not the virtue of them; and the same may justly be affirmed of religion, the reason why men meddle no more with it is--because they are not acquainted with the pleasantness of it. (Anthony Horneck.)Ignorance of a depraved heart But there is another sort of ignorance which is not an ignorance of an empty understanding, but of a depraved heart; such an ignorance as does not only consist in a bare privation, but in a corrupt disposition; where the understanding is like that sort of blind serpents, whose blindness is attended with much venom and malignity. This was such a blindness as struck the Sodomites; there was darkness in their eyes, and withal villany in their hearts. (Dr. South.)Guilty ignorance There is also an affected ignorance, such a one as is contracted by a wilful neglect of the means; and this is not excusing but condemning … In the midst of light to be in darkness; for an Israel to have an Egypt in a Goschen; this is highly provoking, and may justly cause God to lay hold on vengeance. (Dr. South.)Innocent ignorance Is any father so cruel, or hard hearted, as to disown and cast off his son, because he is a fool? No; an innocent ignorance excuses from sin, both before God and man; and God Himself will own that maxim of equity, “ Ignorantia excusat peccatum.” (Dr. South.)Different kinds of ignorance Ignorance may be distinguished into five kinds; human, natural, affected, invincible, proud, and puffed up.1. Human. This is not sinful, as in Adam not to know his nakedness nor Satan’ s subtlety; as in the angels, and even Christ, as man, not to know the latter day. 2. Natural.--The ignorance of infirmity, incident to man’ s nature since the Fall. 3. Affected ignorance (see John 3:19).--These shut their ears when God calleth; and, being housed in their security, will not step to the door to see if the sun shines. This ignorance, if I may say so, doth reside rather in their affection than understanding part. 4. Invincible ignorance.--When God hath naturally darkened the understanding by a sore punishment of original sin. 5. A proud ignorance.--Whereof there is no hope, saith Solomon (Proverbs 27:1). The other is invincible, indeed this more invincible: a fool is sooner taught. (T. Adams.)Natural ignorance We read of an ancient king, who being desirous to know what was the natural language of men; in order to bring the matter to a certain issue, made the following experiment:--He ordered two infants, as soon as they were born, to be conveyed to a place prepared for them, where they were brought up without any instruction at all, and without ever hearing a human voice. And what was the event? Why, that when they were at length brought out of their confinement they spake no language at all, they uttered only inarticulate sounds like those of other animals. Were two infants in like manner to be brought up from the womb without being instructed in any religion, there is little room to doubt but (unless the grace of God interposed) the event would be just the same. They would have no religion at all: they would have no more knowledge of God than the beasts of the field, than the wild ass’ s colt. Such is natural religion l abstracted from traditional, and from the influences of God’ s spirit. (J. Wesley.) Ephesians 4:19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness.Past feeling There are two great extremes into which persons fail with regard to Christian feeling. There are some whose religion seems to consist in feeling only. But remember that if your feeling is not based on solid acquaintance with Scriptural truth, it will rise like a bubble, and be as beautiful in its colours, but burst as easily. On the other hand there is religion without feeling Some persons seem to think all emotion, or warmth, or fervour, is enthusiasm, and settle down satisfied with a cold reception of Christian truth. I. The importance of Christian feeling. One of the great points of contrast between the people of God and the wicked.1. The godly man feels sorrow for sin.2. The godly man feels the emotion of love.3. The godly man is filled with joy. II. Suggestions for those anxious on the subject.1. The feelings, however warm, can never justify, and the want of feeling does not prevent justification. 2. If you want to be made to feel, you must lose no time in going near to the Father’ s throne. 3. Remember always that feeling is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and that you cannot work yourself up to it. (The Clergyman’s Magazine.)Spiritual insensibility In the wilds of North America, amid vast prairies and trackless woods, there lived, through many centuries, the race of the Red Men. Encroached upon from all sides, hemmed in by settlers from Europe, and defrauded of their ancient territories, that race of men has almost disappeared from the face of the earth. They were a race of hunters; unsettled, cruel, and deceitful; yet not without many features of character which gave them a peculiar interest. Their hospitality was inviolate; and the stern gravity of their manners deeply impressed the stranger. But there was one thing about them, in particular, which they cultivated with especial care, and which was matter of especial pride: this was their power of absolutely repressing the slightest outward exhibition of feeling. If they were glad, they never looked it; if the most awful misfortune befell them, it wrought not the least change on their iron features and their impassive demeanour. From his tree-rocked cradle to his bier, the Indian brave was trained to bear all the extremes of good and evil, without making any sign of what he felt. If he met a friend, the dearest friend on earth; or if he was being tortured to death at the fiery stake; he preserved the same fixed, immovable aspect. And you could not please him better than by believing that he was as completely beyond all feeling as he seemed; for he set himself out as “ the stoic of the woods,” as” a man without a tear.” And, indeed, it is curious to think how much, in this respect, the extreme of civilization and the extreme of barbarism approach one another. Greek philosophy centuries ago, and modern refinement in its last polish of manner, alike recognize the mute Oneida’ s principle, that there is something manly, something fine, in the repression of human feeling. A Red Indian, a Grecian philosopher, an English gentleman, would all be pretty equally ashamed to have been seen to weep. Each would try to convey by his entire deportment the impression that he cared very little for anything. And there is no doubt at all, that it might be unworthy of the grown-up man, who has to battle with the world for his family’ s support, were his feelings as easily moved as in his childish days, or did his tears flow as readily as then. Even the gentleness and freshness of womanly feeling would hardly suit the rude wear of manhood’ s busy life. And it must be admitted, that the highest pitch of heroism to which man has ever attained, as well as the vilest degree of guilt to which man has ever sunk, has been attained, has been sunk to, by the putting down of natural feeling. The soldier volunteering for the forlorn hope, must do that as truly as the desperate pirate who spreads his black flag to the winds. And yet St. Paul was right when he wrote those words of the text. When he was speaking of people who had become hopelessly and fearfully bad, who had broken through every restraint, who had flung off every obligation; he was quite right to mention, as something symptomatic of their case, that they were “ past feeling.” They were thoroughly hardened. You could make no impression upon them. That was the most hopeless thing about them. Yes, brethren, St. Paul was right. It is one of the last and worst symptoms of the soul’ s condition, when feeling is gone. You know that it is sometimes so also with the body. Sometimes when disease has run a certain length, there is nothing which looks so ill as an entire cessation of pain. For that may indicate that mortification has begun, and so that all hope is at an end. So with spiritual insensibility; for that is arrived at by most men only after a long continuance in iniquity: and that is an indication which gives sad ground for fearing that the Holy Spirit, without whom we can never feel anything as we ought, has ceased to strive with that hardened soul--has left that obdurate heart alone. Yet we must not imagine that our text describes a state of matters which can only be found among the most degraded and abandoned of the race. I believe, on the contrary, that our text names a spiritual condition which is too common a condition; a condition to which we have all a strong tendency; a spiritual condition which we must all daily be striving and praying against. We all run a great risk of becoming so familiar with spiritual truths, as that we shall understand them and believe them without feeling them; without really feeling what their meaning is, and without that degree of emotion being excited by them that ought to be excited. You may remember what a faithful and zealous minister tells us, of a conversation which he had with an aged man in his parish, a respectable decent man, who bore an unstained character, who never was absent from church or sacrament. That zealous minister, in his parochial visitation, went to that respectable man’ s house, and there, addressing him and his family, he told simply of the salvation that is in Christ, and urged those who listened to a hearty acceptance of it. The minister finished what he had to say, and when he left the house his friend accompanied him; and when they were alone together, said something like this: “ Spend your time and strength upon the young; labour to bring them to Jesus: it is too late for such as me. I know,” he said, “ that I have never been a Christian. I fully believe that when I die I shall go down to perdition; but somehow I do not care. I know perfectly all you can say; but I feel it no more than a stone.” And that man, we are told, died with the like words on his lips. He had lost the springtime of his life; he had missed the tide in his affairs that might have borne him to heaven: his heart had, under the deadening influence of a present world, grown hard and unimpressionable; and, saving only God’ s irresistible Spirit, there was no use in anyone speaking of religious things to such as him. Oh, past feeling! Past feeling! Not past it in the mere sentimental sense in which the poet tells us that “ it is the one great woe of life to feel all feeling die” ; not past it in that mere sentimental sense in which youth has a freshness of feeling and heart which tames down, which passes away with advancing years; not past it merely in that sense in which as we grow older we grow less susceptible, less capable of all emotion; not past it merely in the sense, that when the hair grows grey, and the pulse turns slower, the tear flows less readily at the gospel story, and even at the table of communion we miss somewhat of the warmth of heart and the vividness of thought which we felt in earlier days; but “ past feeling” in that saddest sense, that religious words fall with little meaning on the ear, and with no impression at all upon the heart: “ past feeling” in that saddest sense, that now to all spiritual truths, to all expostulation and all entreaty, to God’ s abounding mercy, to Christ’ s blessed sacrifice, to the hopes of heaven and the fears of perdition, the understanding may indeed yield a torpid, listless assent; but the heart is stone! (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)The story of the unarousable These words were used as descriptive of certain persons a good while ago; but they are a striking photograph of some people in this day. You and I have known them--men sensitive on all other things; but, so far as the subject of religion was concerned, accurately described by my text: “ Past feeling.” It does not require much to arouse the emotions of an audience on a great many subjects. If a nation be in peril and the subject be patriotic, you know how the hats go up and the handkerchiefs wave from the galleries, and the reporter taking down the speech interlards his notes with “ applause,” “ vociferous cheering,” “ cries of hear, hear.” I heard a Frenchman sing the “ Marseillaise Hymn” on the Champs Elysees in Paris on the day when the German guns were thundering at Sedan, and I shall never forget the enthusiasm of the singer or the enthusiasm of the audience. It required but little to stir them. So, also, if upon a public occasion, it is proper to recite the virtues of the dead, it is like when on a summer morning at sunrise you shake a tree heavily laden with glittering dew. But you know as well as I do that, if the subject be deeply religious, while there are many earnest countenances in an assemblage, and some are broken down with emotion, there are those who by their manner and by their look excite the suspicion that they have gone down into the condition spoken of by the text: “ Past feeling.” I remember some years ago going through a medical museum, in Philadelphia, with a very learned surgeon, and he pointed to me under the glass cases, the splintered bones, and the cancerous protuberances, and the fractured thighs, and he said: “ What beautiful specimens they are.” I thought if that man had to endure the agonies that those things suggested, he would not have thought they were such splendid specimens. My dear friends, there are those who coolly philosophize about the splintered, cancered, and fractured souls of men, but if the Spirit of God would come upon them and they could see it was their own condition, that they were diseased, and leprous, and broken, and death struck, they would stop philosophizing so placidly, Some years ago, when John Hawkins was speaking in Greene-street Church, New York, showing the condition of an inebriate, a man rose up in the gallery and cried out: “ That’ s me!” The truth went right to his heart. And, my dear friends, if tonight, while I speak, the Holy Spirit of God would show all those of you who are yet unforgiven and unchristian your true condition, there would be an outcry on the right and an outcry on the left, and above me and beneath me, and my voice would be drowned out, and I should have to stop in the services because of the praying, and the repenting, and the weeping--thousands of voices filling the air with the cry: “ That’ s me! that’ s me!” And yet, I suppose, there are people in the building tonight who suppose I exaggerate. They have no appreciation of their peril. Eternal consumption having seized upon their vitals, they think themselves in perfect health. I remember riding from Geneva to Chamouni, and the driver of the diligence--we were being drawn by six horses--gathered the reins in one hand, and with the other lifted his hat, and bowed very low. I looked to see what he was bowing to. It was a cross at a gate post. I could not but admire the man’ s behaviour. Oh! my friends, if we could really understand how much that symbol of Christ’ s suffering means, the whole world would bow in obeisance, nay more, it would burst into tears of repentance. I was in a meeting in the Fourth Ward, New York, one night last summer, and the city missionary was commending Christ to the sailors. There was a German who seemed to take the truth to himself, and when the leader of the meeting said; “ Christ died for you; is there any of you that feel it?” this man sprang to his feet and cried: “ Me! me!” Why, my friends, if you could appreciate what Christ has done and suffered in your behalf, you could not be stolid and indifferent. (T. de W. Talmage, D. D.)Past feeling Truly, there are no colours in human language dark enough wherewith to describe this state. Conceive of a person standing amid this present world, all whose senses have, one by one, been utterly destroyed; on whose sightless orbs the sun shines in vain; whose ear receives no intelligence from the world without; whose hand feels not; whose tongue is dumb; in whom every sense is gone, while yet his soul, living and conscious in itself, is imprisoned in his body! How awful, how unspeakably awful, would be such a living death! And yet what would be such a condition as compared with that of him who stands amid eternity in like manner, dead in all his spiritual sensibilities to the influences of God and the realities of heaven--dead in all the spiritual faculties which were given to him for his knowledge and his happiness, and only stung forever with the vague, terrible consciousness that he is dead and lost to all the influences of God’ s mighty and most merciful Spirit? It is truly a state so awful, even in the thought of it, that it seems almost impossible. And yet this is nothing more than the condition to which, the text informs us, every man--you and I--may bring himself. I. The progress of the soul to spiritual insensibility is not one that can be entered upon without an internal struggle and a feeling of painful emotion. There is a consciousness, an instinct, in every human breast that man is to live a life beyond this present; that the service of Christ is both his duty and his interest; that he can only attain to eternal joy by becoming worthy of heaven; while at the same time he feels, from the witness both of conscience and of revelation, that he cannot depart from God without forfeiting all happiness for his immortal soul. No man, therefore, can determine to take the latter course without a feeling of alarm and sorrow. II. The soul’ s progress to the condition of “ being past feeling” is a gradual one. Its final state of insensibility is not attained until after many awakenings and many relapses. It is often a long while ere a man becomes incapable of being aroused at times to seriousness and consideration. Only, it requires continually a stronger excitement to produce this result; and each time his feelings are less and less acute and effective. After each relapse, he is not the same man that he was before. The death frost has struck in deeper and nearer to the seat of life. He is harder to be aroused, and less sensitive when he is aroused. And so he goes on, step by step, awakening less and sinking more, until at last he begins to wonder how it could ever be that he once felt alarmed about his soul. Or else it may be that when, having enjoyed to satiety the present world, he would endeavour to be religious for the selfish purpose of gaining the future one also, he finds he has no power to be religious. He has no longer the sensibilities in whose right exercise consists religion. He has all along turned his back upon God and heaven, and travelled down and down all the frozen steps of indifference, until now, when at last he would return, he finds himself with a yawning eternity before, and an impassable wall of ice behind. His long outraged spiritual sensibilities are dead. III. The progress we are considering is a deceptive one. No man expects to lose his soul. If a man knew that beyond a certain fixed and evident point he could not be saved, he would doubtless be careful to observe more closely his place upon the scale of life and death. But there is no such evident point, and hence he has no irresistible exterior evidence of his spiritual situation. His heart, within, moreover, acting under the same delusion, tends to keep up the same deception. The soul is borne along by so equable and smooth a movement, that at no point is the sinner sensible how far gone he is from God. Should you ask him at any period concerning his condition, he will confess, indeed, that all is not right, that his conscience is not satisfied; but he will say that he does not intend to put off the subjection of himself to God forever--it is only for a season; and he does not think it will be any more difficult to “ repent and be converted” hereafter than it is at present or has been before. True, he admits that there is a difference between his religious feelings now and some time ago, but he supposes it is only the novelty of his first serious impressions wearing off; and this, he argues, is only what he should naturally expect. Moreover, his transient seasons of spiritual sensibility, instead of being used as opportunities of return, are made to strengthen his delusion, being interpreted as evidences that he is still capable of emotion. He thanks God that he is not morally dead yet; and therefore he concludes that he can venture to delay a little longer in carelessness and sin. His very resolution hereafter to repent thus blinds his eyes to the process of decay that is constantly going on in his heart. (Wm. Rudder, D. D.)The road to spiritual insensibility There is the man who but as yesterday stood amid the brightness and purity of dawning life. His heart was tender and sensitive to the influences of the Spirit as the strings of a harp to the breathings of the wind. Perhaps pious parents instructed him in the Word of truth, and by their watchfulness and their prayers not only kept alive, but increased the flame of natural piety in his breast. The thought of God could subdue him into deepest reverence. The love of Christ could cause his young heart to throb with a quicker pulse and fill it with an ardent gratitude. The hope of heaven could illuminate his mind with a deep, undefined delight. And so he passed from childhood to youth. And then began the fierce contest between the evil that was in his nature and the good which summoned him to overcome that evil. It would have been comparatively an easy matter for him to have decided then, and devoted himself forever to the service of his God. But he determined--not, however, through indifference to heaven or daring rebellion against God--first to make trial of the world, tits conscience and his heart protested, but he hushed them with the plea that it was only for a season. Thus, without any outbreak of iniquity, without greatly offending man, he glided on to maturity. His life was generally upright and correct. His fellow men called him honourable. His friends loved him for his love. But he had not yet truly, sincerely chosen Christ, nor had the Spirit as yet forsaken him. He was visited from time to time, and again and again, by the power of the grace of God. The loving hand of Christ roused him from his dangerous slumber, and the voice of Christ warned him of duty and judgment and eternity; and for each time he was filled with alarm. Conscience was heard again. He felt the necessity of repentance. He was not fit to die, and he knew that he was not, and shrank from death; but then that dread event seemed to him no nearer now than it did in his youth, and it seemed that repentance could be no more difficult at some future period than at the present. So he once more smothered conscience and sensibility, and went on as he had done before. Afflictions came, disappointments came, but their effect was only for a moment, and he crushed his feelings to indifference again. And so he lived, and passed on to white old age, repulsing and grieving the Spirit of God, outraging his own nature, until the Spirit left him and he could feel no more. Had such an end been foretold him formerly as the result of such delay as he then meditated, and such indifference as he then practised, he would have plucked out his right eye and cut off his right hand rather than delayed for one hour the submission of his soul to God. But now the acceptable time is passed, and the sun is setting; the shadows of the night are gathering around his soul; the power to feel is gone, his moral nature is benumbed, his intellect is clouded; he cannot repent, and without a fear, without a hope, he waits the summons to pass from his probation to his recompense. (Wm. Rudder, D. D.)Degradation of the heathen The Greek word signifies to “ grieve out,” to have done with grieving over one’ s actions, so that all sense of shame is lost. This is a fearful trait of character, and marks, with unerring skill, the polytheism of the heathen. Read their literature, and observe how deeply immoral the best and purest of their writers were; look at the monuments of the Greeks and Romans in general--look at the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and think how scandalous and shameless the public manners of the nation must have been; or enter a heathen temple in India, where the gods are to be worshipped, and you behold at the present hour the abominations of Venus, Baal, and Astarte. Shame is one of the first feelings of childhood, as well as one of the strongest of our manhood, and when we have become able to extinguish it, our condition is morally hopeless. The beautiful and the good can attract us no more. Hence the natural consequence was the next step in the climax, viz., “ They gave themselves over unto all lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” A fearful picture, truly! Every word is emphatic, and shows the dominion which sinful habit had acquired over them. It was their own act; they gave themselves over to it. Sin is a fearful master; it increases its dominion over us with all the rapidity of a burning fire. Every indulgence enlarges the appetite, and makes repentance more improbable and more difficult. Such were the Gentiles as Paul saw them, and described them with a master’ s hand. Hence the necessity of a Divine Revelation to teach, and a Divine Deliverer to redeem. The Day star has arisen to chase away the darkness and the dangers of the night. It may be objected to the apostle’ s description of heathenism--that it is exaggerated, and even contrary to the innate principles of human virtue and rectitude. Bur the proper answer to this is--1. it is yet to be proved that there are innate principles of virtue in man--I admit innate capacities only--and till this is done, we may hold by the words of Paul in this matter. 2. I mentioned already that the literature and monuments of the heathen, ancient and modern, are remarkably corrupt and abominable. 3. I add that the wise men and philosophers taught sentiments of the grossest impiety and vileness, so that, as Origen says, “ In committing adultery and whoredom, they did not think themselves violating good manners.” Among the refined and civilized Greeks, theft was dishonourable only when the thief had not sufficient adroitness to conceal it. The great philosopher of Athens taught Aspasia the arts of seduction. The wise men of heathenism had hardly any perception of the beauty of truth. Whitby collects some of their maxims on this subject. Menander lays down the rule, “ that a lie is better than a hurtful truth” ; Proclus asserts that “ good is better than truth” ; Darius, in Herodotus, teaches, “ When telling a lie is profitable, tell it!” Plato allows you to lie as much as you please, if you do it at the proper time, for, as Maximus Tyrius asserts, “ there is nothing decorous in truth, save when it is profitable, and sometimes a lie is profitable, and truth injurious to men.” These specimens will be sufficient to justify the apostle in his awful denunciations of the crimes and corruptions of the heathen world. (W. Graham, D. D.)Sin hardens man When men have long taken a custom of sinning, they grow hardened and senseless, as the highway doth by being often trod upon, or as a labourer’ s hand grows hard by constant labour. And so sin becometh familiar to them, and they become “ past feeling,” and are “ given up to work uncleanness with greediness.” (R. Baxter.)The loss of moral sensibility The chief danger of the poison called nightshade is its tendency to deprive the stomach of sensibility, and so to render the most powerful antidotes of no avail. Exactly like this is the effect of long continued evil habits. Those who are governed by them lose all moral sensibility. Nothing will work upon them. They are “ past feeling.” Seeing, they see and do not perceive, and hearing, they hear and do not understand. The conscience becomes as it were “ seared with a hot iron.” In that state, applications which before would have made it start and tremble, fail to move it. (R. A. Bertram.)Past feeling An old man took a little child up into his arms and put his fingers into the abundant curls of his sunny hair, and said, “ Oh, dear child, while your mother sings to you and tells you about Jesus, think of Him and trust Him.” Grandpa, said the little boy, “ don’ t you trust Him?” “ No, dear,” he said, “ I might have done so years ago, but my old heart has got so hard, nothing ever touches me now.” And the old man dropped a tear as he said it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The man in the iron mask It has long been a mystery who was the man in the iron mask. We believe that the mystery was solved some years ago, by the conjecture that he was the twin brother of Louis XIV, King of France, who, fearful lest he might have his throne disturbed by his twin brother, whose features were extremely like his own, encased his face in a mask of iron and shut him up in the Bastille for life. Your body and your soul are twin brothers. Your body, as though it were jealous of your soul, encases it as in an iron mask of spiritual ignorance, lest its true lineaments, its immortal lineage, should be discovered, and shuts it up within the Bastille of sin, lest getting liberty and discovering its royalty, it should win the mastery over the baser nature. But what a wretch was that Louis XIV, to do such a thing to his own brother! How brutal, how worse than the beasts that perish! But, sir, what art thou if thou doest thus to thine own soul, merely that thy body may be satisfied, and thy earthly nature may have a present gratification? O sirs, be not so unkind, so cruel to yourselves. But yet this sin of living for the mouth and living for the eye, this sin of living for what ye shall eat and what ye shall drink, and wherewithal ye shall be clothed, this sin of living by the clock within the narrow limits of the time that ticks by the pendulum, this sin of living as if this earth were all and there were nought beyond--this is the sin that holds this City of London, and holds the world, and binds it like a martyr to the stake to perish, unless it be set free. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 4:20-21 But ye have not so learned Christ. The Christian method of moral regeneration The Christian method of moral regeneration includes three distinct processes.1. The renunciation of the previous moral life. The ethical change was not to be partial, but complete. But this complete moral revolution is not accomplished either by one supreme effort of our own will, or by any momentary shock of Divine power. It is a lifelong and painful process. (1) Self-examination is necessary. Our moral habits must be compared, one by one, with the commandments of Christ, and their conformity with the genius and spirit of Christian ethics must be patiently and honestly tested. In the humblest and obscurest of our Christian brethren we may often discover virtues which bring home to us how incompletely we have mastered our inferior and baser self. The imperfections in other men which provoke our resentment may make more vivid to us our own imperfections. The resentment itself, by its bitterness and impatience, may reveal to us a vanity, a wilfulness, and an impatience, which we thought we had subdued. (2) Self-discipline, personal effort, as well as reliance on the Divine grace. If we discover that we have fallen into habits of careless speaking, and that with no deliberate intention to deceive, we are frequently conveying false impressions, we must call these habits by their right name; careless and inaccurate speaking is falsehood. We must watch our words so as to cheek the sin. We must speak less. We must think before we speak. We must submit to the humiliation of correcting the false impressions which we have created by our carelessness. If we find that we judge men hastily and harshly, condemn them on inadequate evidence, draw injurious conclusions from facts of which perhaps we have an imperfect knowledge, we must break the habit of rash judgment, must be silent about the conduct of other men till we are sure that we are right, and even when we are sure that we are right, ask ourselves whether there is any obligation resting upon us to pronounce any judgment at all. If we find that we are disposed to indolence we must try to discover whether we are yielding to any forms of physical indulgence which are unfriendly to vigorous and persistent industry, and avoid them. If sometimes we are betrayed into excessive drinking, we must consider whether our moral safety does not require us to abstain altogether from the kinds of drink that are perilous to us. 2. The constant renewal of the higher and spiritual life by the power of the Spirit of God. The “ spirit,” which is that element of our life which comes to us direct from God, restores to the “ mind” its soundness and health, the clearness of its vision, and its practical force and authority. In this high region of our nature Paul finds the springs of moral regeneration. Strength as well as light comes to us from invisible and eternal things; from the immeasurable love of God, from the glory of His perfection, from the knowledge that He is our comrade in every conflict with sin, that He is troubled by our defeats, and rejoices in our victories, from the hope of dwelling forever in His eternal peace and righteousness and joy. But if we are to be under the constant control of that spiritual universe by which we are environed, there must be a constant renewal of the spiritual life. It is not enough that, once for all, we have been born of God. The Divine life given in the new birth must be fed from its eternal springs, or the stream will soon run shallow, will cease to flow, will at last disappear altogether. The constant renewal of the spiritual life is the work of the Spirit of God; but we are not the merely passive subjects of His grace. It is our duty to “ be renewed.” We are required to form the moral and spiritual habits which render possible, and which secure, the fresh access from day to day of Divine inspiration. There should be an habitual remembrance of the power and goodness of the Spirit, whose coming has more than compensated for the loss of the earthly ministry and visible presence of Christ. There should be habitual trust in Him as the Giver of light, of strength, of joy, and of righteousness. There should be habitual prayer for His teaching and His strong support. We should think much of God, and our thoughts of Him should be determined and controlled by the revelation of Himself in Christ. We should “ mind” --“ not earthly things” --but things heavenly and Divine; for our citizenship is in heaven, our riches, our honour, our blessedness, our home, are there. 3. The appropriation of the righteousness and holiness of that new and perfect humanity which God created in Christ. Christ is the prophecy of our righteousness, as well as the sacrifice for our sins--the prophecy, not merely the example or the law, of our righteousness; for He came down from heaven to give the very life of God to man, and in the power of that life all righteousness is possible. The prophecy has been fulfilled in every generation since He ascended to the Father, and in every country in which the Christian faith has been preached. The Lord Jesus Christ announced that He had come to give to the human race a new and diviner life, and strength to achieve a diviner righteousness. And we see that those great words have been accomplished. He has originated a new and nobler type of moral character, and a new and nobler religious faith. He Himself has been the root of the new ethical and spiritual life which has revealed its strength and its grace in Christian nations. His own unique perfection has been repeated, in humbler forms, in the lives of innumerable saints. The Vine has sent forth its branches into all lands, and men of every variety of civilization and of culture, of every variety of moral temperament and moral character, have illustrated the characteristic qualities of Christ’ s own righteousness. In Him a new humanity was created. He is the Head of a new race. We ourselves are conscious that through Him we have passed into the Kingdom of God, are under the authority of its august and eternal laws, and that if our union with Him were more intimate we should have strength to achieve an ideal perfection. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)True learning I. Our lesson.1. Learning Christ is (1) much more than learning doctrine, precept, or ceremony.(2) Much more than knowing about Christ, or learning from Christ. 2. It includes several forms of knowledge. (1) To know Him as a personal Christ.(2) To know His nature, and to treat Him accordingly.(3) To know His offices, and how to use them.(4) To know His finished work for God and for us.(5) To know His influence over men, and to test it.(6) To know by learning Christ the way to live like Him. II. How we have not learned it.1. So as to remain as we were before. Unchanged, and yet at peace.2. So as to excuse sin because of His atonement.3. So as to feel a freedom to sin because of pardon.4. So as even to commit sin in Christ’ s name.5. So as to reckon that we cannot conquer sin, and so sit down under the dominion of some constitutional temptation.6. So as to profess reverence for His name and character, and then think little of the truth which He reveals. III. How we have learned it. We know the truth, and know it in its best light.1. As directly taught by His own self, and by His own Spirit.2. As distinctly embodied in His life and character.3. As it relates to Him and honours Him.4. Consequently, as it is in Him. Truth is in Jesus, indeed and of a truth, for in Him everything is real.5. Consequently as it works a total change in us, and makes us like to Him in whom truth is embodied. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Thorough reformation He exhorts not to an outward reformation of their converse only, but to that truth and sincerity of sanctification, which the doctrine and power Of grace in Christ teacheth and worketh in all true Christians: “ If so be,” saith he, “ ye have learned the truth as it is in Jesus.” Which doth not, as other doctrines of philosophers, etc., teach you to put off the evils of your outward converse only, and to put on a new conversation over an old nature, as a sheepskin over a wolfish nature; he that doth no more falls short of that truth of grace which Christ requires; but it teaches principally to put off the old man, as the cause of all the evils in the outward converse; and that is his meaning, when he saith. “ As concerning the outward converse put off the old man,” without which it is impossible to reform the converse. (Thomas Goodwin.)Learning Christ To make a profession of religion is comparatively easy--and that on many accounts.1. Because the secret doings of a man are known only to himself. 2. Because a man’ s doings, which are known to his family, by reason of the partiality and kindness of the members of that family, do not become known to many besides. 3. Because those who make a profession are so numerous that they have a family feeling for one another, and are always ready to help one another. 4. The heart of man aids a mere profession. I. Those who have learned Christ properly, and not as the hypocrites, have learned their need of Christ. Do you feel your sins to be a burden, too heavy for you to bear? II. Those who learn Christ properly, to the salvation of their souls, learn the worth of Christ. He obeyed the law for us; He died on the cross for us; He endured the wrath of God for us. Who can estimate the worth of all He did and suffered? III. Those who have learned Christ to the saving of their souls have learned the design of Christ. That design was to prepare a people for His Father. IV. Those who have truly learned Christ are conscious of new desires. The glory of God is now their aim and ambition. V. Those who have learned Christ properly will be deeply interested in the glory of Christ. (H. Allen, M. A.)Scholars of Christ In the school of Jesus Christ it is not always the oldest or the cleverest who are the best scholars. In other schools the scholar must be naturally clever, or, at least, most industrious, if he is to gain a high place, and win a prize. In Christ’ s school there is a place and a prize for the dullest, and he will succeed very well if only he wants to learn. I want you all to come to Christ’ s school today, old and young, clever and dull, and to hear some of the lessons which that school teaches. I. We must learn to hate our own sins. Like David, like St. Peter, like every penitent, when we think of the past we abhor ourselves, and sit down among the ashes of humiliation. II. We must learn to know our own weakness, and our need of a saviour. The world will not give us that lesson. III. Another of the lessons we must learn is to conquer ourselves. The world gives a great many instructions about conquering difficulties, beating down obstacles, overcoming enemies; but it is Christ’ s school alone which can show us how to conquer ourselves. You have probably noticed the change in a young country lad after he has enlisted for a soldier, and gone through his drill. Whereas he was a high-shouldered, slouching, ungainly figure, now he has learnt to carry himself like a soldier, he has conquered the old bad habits which he acquired by lounging in the lanes, or plodding along the furrows. My brethren, we have all got our bad habits, our ugly tempers, our sharp tongues, our discontented feelings, and it is only the drill of Christ’ s soldiers, and the teachings in Christ’ s school, which will make us get the better of them. And we shall learn in Christ’ s school to be brave. The world’ s school can teach us a certain kind of courage, but not the highest, nor the best. The world can teach us how to resent an injury, not how to forgive one. It is in Christ’ s school only that true heroes are made. The world can make such soldiers as Caesar, or Napoleon, but the school of Christ alone can make a Havelock or a Gordon. I have read of a poor boy who came to school with a patch on his clothes. One of his schoolmates singled him out for ridicule and insult; and the boy answered: “ Do you suppose I am ashamed of my patch? I am thankful to a good mother for keeping me out of rags, and I honour my patch for her sake.” All the noble army of martyrs, of every rank and kind, learnt the secret of their courage in the school of Christ, and have left us an example to follow. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)Learning Christ There is, then, somewhere, a school where Christ is taught, and Christ is learnt. There are a great many schools where Christ is not taught; where almost everything is taught except Christ; where religion is taught, but it is not Christ’ s; where even Christ is taught, but it is not the Christ of the Bible. Where, then, is the school of Christ? What is it? How is the instruction carried on? Who is the teacher? What are the lesson books? What is required of the scholars? How are they classified? What do they pay? Are there prizes? First, it is obvious, that if it be a school, the attainment of the knowledge which is taught there must be progressive, and whoever the teacher may be, there is required, on the part of the learner, earnestness, patience, fag. For it is a school. You say, “ But it is hard work.” True; but the work wants doing.1. In this school, who is the Master? Christ; only Christ. “ The Master!” Not a master--“The Master.” In this school, then, of sacred lore, the one and only Teacher is the Lord Jesus Christ. There are human instructors, such as the Sunday school teacher, or a pious friend, or a parent, or a minister: but only as Christ is in them, and uses them. May not the cause why you have made no better progress be this, that you have not sufficiently recognized this fundamental principle?--for observe the line of thought how it runs on. You see the position is absolute. You must have “ heard Him, and been taught by Him.” 2. How? What are the lesson books in that School of Christ? Of course, chiefly the Bible. For we have two words, a Living Word, and a written Word; and the written Word is the visible embodiment of the Living Word. It is when the Living Word is felt in the written Word, that the written Word becomes God’ s Word indeed. But Christ can, and does, make everything His representative teacher. A providence--an object in nature--He is there: and therefore it can teach. He who can see and learn Christ anywhere, can see and learn Christ everywhere. The whole world becomes the primer. II. Now, what is taught in this school? I answer, primarily, and in one word, Christ. The Teacher Himself is the subject. We have the highest authority for saying, “ In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” Therefore, really to know Christ, is to know all things--all things that may serve our present peace, our present holiness, and our happiness forever. For observe, the whole Law embodied itself in Christ. He kept it for us, even to the law of death. There lies our safety. All nature--with all its beauties, and all its grandeur, and all its hidden mysteries--is the work of Christ. It is the mind of Christ; it is the development of Himself. So that no man knows creation till he knows the mind of the Creator. We shall best know the kingdom if we know the King! O wonderful and happy school! where the Infinite and All-loving and Almighty Teacher pours Himself into the learners, and as He does so, opens their understanding to understand it; softens their hearts to receive it; strengthens their memory to retain it; and enables their lives to exhibit it. O wonderful and happy school! where Omnipotence gives the will, the capacity, and the power to know and do what Omniscience teaches. III. What are the prizes? The great reward--in this school of Christ--is that every learner, as he advances, is placed nearer and nearer to his Master’ s side. He becomes more conscious of his Master’ s love. These are the rewards now. What by and by? “ Eye hath not seen nor ear heard.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The schools of Christ It is a remarkable expression--“ Learning Christ.” We learn a science, or we learn a language, or we learn a subject--but what is it to learn a person? We do not learn a person by hearing about him, or reading about him; we must know him. Now remember, that to “ learn” implies effort, study, perseverance, progress. You do not learn by intuition. You do not learn by simply being told a thing. There must be patient earnestness. Now I wish to inquire, What are the schools in which Christ is most taught?1. And I say first, and emphatically, the nursery. Perhaps in no part of our lives have we truer views of Christ than the views of our early childhood. The Scriptures is made for childhood. Even before a child can understand anything, it can understand Jesus. It is the basis of a good education. It meets a child’ s intellect. It draws out a child’ s thoughts. It is a child’ s philosophy. 2. The next best school, perhaps, is affliction. Life is more still. The day is not so crowded. The heart is more open. We are more impressible to holy lessons. 3. But affliction will not do much if it do not lead us to a further and most important school, the school of our own closet, By three teachings we chiefly learn Christ--prayer, the Bible, and meditation. If either be wanting we shall miss our lesson. 4. Another school of Christ and an eminent one, should be this place. What is this pulpit for but to teach Christ? All our theology begins and ends there. Christ the basis--Christ the sum and substance--Christ the end and object--of all true knowledge. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)As the truth is in Jesus. Truth in Jesus The portion of our text on which we would fix mainly your attention is, the description of truth as made known by revelation. Now, we shall take truth under two principal divisions, and compare it as it is in Jesus with what it is out of Jesus. We shall refer, first, to those truths which have to do with God’ s nature and character; secondly, to those which have to do with man’ s condition. I. We turn, then, to the truths which have to do with the nature and character of God. We begin with the lowest element of truth, namely, that there is a great First Cause, through whose agency hath arisen the fair and costly fabric of the visible universe. But take the truth of the existence of a God as it is out of Jesus, and then take that truth as it in Jesus, and let us see whether in the two cases the same truth will not bear very different aspects. Apart from revelation, I can believe that there is a God. I look upon the wonder workings by which I am encompassed; and I must sacrifice all that belongs to me as a rational creature, if I espouse the theory that chance has been parent to the splendid combinations. But what can be more vague, what more indefinite, than those notions of Deity which reason, at the best, is capable of forming? The evil which is mixed up with good in the creation; the disordered appearances which seem to mark the absence of a supreme and vigilant government; the frequent triumph of wickedness, and the correspondent depression of virtue; these, and the like stern and undeniable mysteries, will perplex me in every attempt to master satisfactorily the unity of the Godhead. But let me regard Jesus as making known to me God, and, straightway, there succeeds a calm to my confused and unsettled imaginings. He tells me by his words, and shows me by his actions, that all things are at the disposal of one eternal and inscrutable Creator. Putting forth superhuman ability, alike in the bestowment of what is good, and in the removal of what is evil, He furnishes me with the strictest demonstration that there are not two principles which can pretend to hold sway in the universe; but that God, a Being without rival, and alone in His majesties created whatsoever is good, and permitted whatsoever is evil. Thus, the truth, the foundation truth, of the existence of a God takes the strength, and the complexion, of health, only in the degree that it is truth as it is in Jesus. II. Let us turn, now, from the nature of God to His attributes. We take, for example, the justice of God. We night obtain, independently on the scheme of redemption, a definite and firm-built persuasion, that God is a just God, taking cognizance of the transgressions of His creatures. What, then, shall we do with this truth of God’ s justice? We reply, we must make it truth as it is in Jesus. We send a man at once to the cross of Christ. We bid him gaze on the illustrious and mysterious Victim, stooping beneath the amazing burden of human transgression. We ask him whether the agonies of the garden, and the terrors of the crucifixion, furnish not a sufficient and thrilling demonstration that God’ s justice, when it takes in hand the exaction of punishment, does the work thoroughly--so that no bolt it too ponderous to be driven into the soul, no offence too minute to be set down in the reckoning? So, then, we may count it legitimate to maintain that the truth of God being a just God is appreciated truth, and effective truth, only in the degree that it is truth as it is in Jesus; and we add, consequently, new witness to the fact, that the definition of our text describes truth accurately under its influential and life-giving forms. We may pursue much the same line of argument in reference to the truth of the love of God. We may confess that he who looks not at this attribute through the person and work of the Mediator, may obtain ideas of it which shall, in certain respects, be correct. Yet there is no property of the Creator concerning which it is easier to fall into mistake. We have no standard by which to estimate Divine affections, unless one which we fashion out of the results of the workings of human. So that, whilst we have not before us a distinct exhibition of God’ s love, we may fall naturally into the error of ascribing an effeminate tenderness to the Almighty, and reckon, exactly in proportion as we judge the love amazing, that it will never permit our being given over to torment. Hence, admitting it to be truth, yea, most glorious and blessed truth, that the creature is loved by the Creator, this truth must be viewed through a rectifying medium, which shall correct the distortions which a depraved nature produces. Now, we maintain again that this rectifying medium must be the person and work of the Saviour. In other words, we must make the truth of God’ s love truth as it is in Jesus, and then, at one and the same time, we shall know how ample is the love, and be guarded against abusing it. III. We proceed, further, to affirm, in reference to the condition of man, that truth, if rightly understood, or thoroughly influential, must be truth as it is in Jesus. Man’ s moral disability is not to be described, or understood, theoretically. We want some bold, definite, and tangible measurements. But we shall find these only in the work of Christ Jesus. I learn the depth to which I have sunk, from the length of the chain let down to updraw me. I ascertain the mightiness of the ruin by examining the machinery of restoration. Thus the truth of human apostasy, of human corruption, of human helplessness, how shall this be truth understood and effective? We answer, simply through being truth as it is in Jesus. We add, that the law of God, which has been given for the regulation of our conduct, is a wonderful compendium of truth. There is not a single working of wickedness, be it the lightest and most secret, which escapes the denouncements of this law; so that the statute book proves itself truth by delineating, with an unvarying accuracy, the whole service of the father of lies. But who knows anything of this truth, unless acquainted with the law as expounded and fulfilled by Christ? Christ in His discourses expanded every precept, and in His obedience exhibited every demand. Knowledge of the law would crush a man, if unaccompanied by the consciousness that Christ obeyed the law in his stead. So that truth as it is in Jesus, this is knowledge, and this is comfort. And, finally, for we must hurry over ground where there is much which might tempt us to linger, look at the context of the words under review, and you will find that truth, as it is in Jesus, differs from truth, as it is out of Jesus, in being a sanctifying thing. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The truth in Jesus learned by His disciples I. Let us glance at the truth in Jesus.1. The life of Jesus opposed and contradicted that which was false and wrong; and in this respect the truth was in Jesus. Ask ye me--“ And what was false and wrong?” We answer, Christ scarcely found anything true and right. Himself was in perpetual collision. 2. Jesus embodied the truth of truth’ s symbols. Certain ordinances from the day of Abel were symbols of truth. Jesus Christ was that which these symbols signified. There had been offerings for sin--the blood of bulls and of goats--of lambs and calves--the ashes of heifers. These sacrifices were the figures of the true. He abolishes old carnal sacrifices by being Himself the real sacrifice. And thus the truth of Sacrifice is in Jesus. 3. Jesus spake truth--that which, on account of its importance to man, is The Truth. This will appear in the following circumstances. (1) The truth that is in Jesus is eternal. Eternal truth--that was within God before there was a creature to be spoken to by God. (2) The truth in Jesus is also in harmony with all truth, and with the whole nature of Him who created all things, and by whom all things consist--it is in accordance with the one Infinite Mind that is expressed on the star and on the flower, by the Seraph and by the insect. (3) It is universal truth. And truth worthy of all acceptation--so attractive to angels that they stretch their faculties to look into it, and so important to man that, sown broadcast on the earth, it will change the wilderness into a fruitful field. (4) Almighty truth--a hammer that will break a rock, and a fire that will burn all before it as stubble; and living truth--the incorruptible seed of a new birth, and the principle of an eternal life. II. Let us show what cannot be learned by those who have only heard and been taught by Christ.1. Nothing childish can be learned of Christ. And the becoming a little child does not mean becoming weak and little. What Christ here enforces is modesty, teachableness, candour, simplicity, freedom from lawless ambition, a loose hold of surrounding objects. 2. A shifting and accommodating creed is not learned of Christ. His doctrines are not like inconstant, changeable gusts of wind, or even like steady trade winds. They are light, not wind--knowledge of truth arising in the midst of the darkness of ignorance, and shining brighter and brighter unto day. 3. Pious frauds are not learned of Christ. Truth is in Jesus; and ye have not learned to use artifice, cheating, and deceit in religion, if ye have heard and been taught by Him. 4. A literal and carnal interpretation of Christ’ s laws is not learned of Christ. 5. Truth framed according to system is not learned of Christ. 6. Nothing contrary to the God-like can be learned of Christ. The doctrines Christ taught were Divine. The works Christ performed were Divine. The life Christ lived was Divine. All notions and ideas received from Him are light of God’ s light. The character which His influence forms is in the likeness of God. The course of conduct which He marks out is an embodiment of the will of God. (S. Martin, D. D.)Learning Christ changes the nature If you have learned Christ as the truth is in Him, you have so learned Him as to put off the old man and to put on the new. Faith works by love, even as the tree has both its leaf and fruit. And as if a tree should be changed from one kind to another, the leaves and fruit should likewise be changed; as if a pear tree should be made an apple tree, it would have leaves and fruits agreeing to the change made in it; so man by faith having his heart purified, made a tree of righteousness, he has his leaves and fruits; leaves of profession, fruits of action. So again, a man, as a new tree set into and growing out of Christ, bears a new fruit, he converses in holiness and newness of life. Thus you see how those that are faithful are also saints, because by faith their heart is purified, their profession and conversation are sanctified. (P. Bayne.)The school of Christ The direct and immediate purpose of these words is to show the irreconcilable contradiction between a course of life, such as that of other Gentiles, and the Christian discipline and instruction which these Ephesian believers had received. I. It is here distinctly affirmed that the living voice of Christ Himself is our teacher. “ Ye have heard Him.” The New Testament everywhere represents Christ as still working and teaching in the world. He has pledged Himself to send that teaching Spirit of truth, in whose coming He Himself comes, and all whose illuminations and communications are imparting to us the things of Christ. II. Those who are in Christ receive continuous instruction from Him. “ And have been taught by Him.” These words seem to imply the conditions and the gradual process of Christ’ s schooling. His teaching is not one act, but a long, patient discipline. III. The theme of the teaching is the teacher. “ Ye have not so learned Christ.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Effects produced on the character by reception of the truth as it is in Jesus I. If we have learnt the truth as it is in Jesus it has at once taught us to renounce all dependence on any works of our own, and at the same time put us on a course of holy action. II. “ The truth as it is in Jesus” is at once a source of great anxiety--and to the same person, on a more intimate view of it, of great consolation. III. The truth as it is considered in Jesus, produces a very great humility of mind, and at the same time, a new and elevated sense of dignity. Nothing produces such humility of mind, so permanent and universal in its operation, as the reception of “ the truth as it is in Jesus.” Hence, then, the real Christian begins to enlarge the view of his own dignity; he considers himself as born to immortality. And being now reconciled to God, and being made a member of Christ and heir to His promises, he feels in himself a new sort of worth and value. IV. “ The truth as it is in Jesus,” whenever it takes place in the heart, is a source of real happiness. It is a light-giving truth; it not merely enlightens the understanding, but it touches the sensibilities of our nature; it comes into contact with the sensitive part of our frame; it produces a goodness of heart, and peace and tranquility of mind, and an elevation of hope, that no other system produces. V. If we are partakers of “ the truth as it is in Jesus,” we shall be united in heart and affection with all those that embrace the same truth. This truth has an uniting quality. It binds together in the ties of amity all its disciples. It produces such a change in the character that it qualifies them for the closest degree of intercourse and friendship. (F. J. Judkin.)Need of distinctive Christly teaching The longer you live, if you keep in a healthful spiritual atmosphere, the more deeply you will feel the utter unreality, and blankness of help or comfort, of all religious teaching which is not saturated through and through with Christ, with special Christian doctrine: the more deeply will you feel the moral paralysis of all moral truth, but truth as it is in Jesus. The living, experimental Christian will turn away from all that is not such, just (though the similitude be homely) as an animal rejects the food which does not suit its nature. “ I don’ t say,” will be the living Christian’ s feeling, “ I don’ t say but all that may be true; but it is not the truth for me!” And I do not mean Christ merely; but Christ as seen in the great Atonement. When one hears a great deal about the beauty of Christ’ s character; and about His sympathy with us; and about looking to Him as our Example; but nothing of His atoning sacrifice and His regenerating Spirit; I refuse to receive that as gospel truth, the truth as it is in Jesus! I revolt, as much as any from the stupidity of those who would count how often Christ’ s Name occurs in a discourse; as if that were a test how far the discourse is leavened by His Spirit. But I remember how one, chief among apostles, said to dear friends, “ I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” “ We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness: But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) Ephesians 4:22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.Morality the basis of piety A Christian life, here, is regarded as it were from the latent similitude of raiment. As a beggar puts off his rags--his tattered and torn habiliments--and is clothed like an honoured man; so we are to put off the old man and his deeds--clothing, as it were--and put on the new man, created in righteousness and true holiness. Or, as one that has been in an infected port must lay aside the garments that have in them the seed of disease, and be clothed afresh, so that he shall neither carry it for himself, nor contagion for others; so we are to put off the old, and put on the new. But you will observe that there are in this passage which I have read inculcations of certain fundamental morals, as precedent to the full work of God in the soul. Truth, in opposition to lies; honesty, in opposition to craft and stealing; purity, in opposition to all manner of corrupt desires; general integrity and uprightness--these are inculcated as the indispensable prerequisites of Christian life. Taking them in their inverse order, by “ purity” I understand the dominance in the soul of the higher affections and sentiments over the lower appetites and passions. It is the term that antagonizes with a life of lust and of salacious desire. We mean by “ purity,” the predominance of the affections and of the moral sentiments. By “ fidelity,” one means, in a general way, the absolute faithfulness of men to trust reposed in them--that tendency in a man which makes it sure that he will be faithful in his relations to others, and in all his trusts. By “ honesty,” I mean righteous, equitable dealing in all relations between man and man--not what the law requires, but what is, according to man’ s best light, right between man and man. By “ truth,” is meant the inward love of that which is, and the disposition to use the truth of fact and the truth of relation, just as they are, in all our representations among men. These qualities must exist in controlling strength in every worthy character. As it is in the matter of truth, so it is in the matter of honesty. “ Is he an honest man?” Oh! I do not think he would steal.” “ But is he an honest man? Would he knowingly take advantage?” “ Well, it is not for me to say.” It’ s for you to say. You have said it. Not to be able to say the contrary is to say that. And are there not hundreds of thousands of men who hold their heads up very well as they move in society, who are for the time being prosperous, and of whom those that know them say, “ They will take every advantage they can; they need watching; they need all that the Church gives them, and all that the customs of society give them, to keep them from dishonesty.” A man’ s reputation always tracks him, and follows him; and if it is in him to be dishonest, it is in ether people to know it. Your reputation is only the shadow that your character throws. Now, on character and reputation a man’ s prosperity depends in this world, largely. The man who has the goodwill and the good nature of the men among whom he lives, of the society in which he dwells, is like a craft that has the wind astern, and is helped thereby. Truth, honesty, fidelity, and purity win confidence. And there is this capital for a young man. These qualities, too, simplify the working forces of life. A crafty, plotting man always has a tangled skein in his hand. He has to think, “ What did I say yesterday?” and he forgets. He has to think, “ Let me see; did I, or did I not, cheat on this or that occasion?” A dishonest man has to keep a journal, or he will be perpetually running across his own tracks. No man’ s memory is good enough journal for such a purpose as that. Men are made safe, too, by these simple and sterling virtues. He certainly is safe, who, whether he be at the top or at the bottom, alike is prosperous; but when a man’ s prosperity turns largely upon his actual manhood, his manhood does not depend upon his relative position in regard to wealth. There is the man of the Island, Garibaldi, just making the ends meet; just gaining his raiment and food; refusing bribes, refusing gifts, refusing all overtures of greatness that are in the lower sphere; a man that lives with a magnificent ambition of patriotism and a perpetual sacrifice of himself. When all the stuff that we can call men in our day--the buyable, the bribable, stuff--is washed away in the sewer, such men as these will stand, and their names shall be held in everlasting remembrance. The memory of the wicked shall rot. The name of the righteous shall shine brighter and brighter until the very perfect day. In application of these views and reasonings I remark--1. How few can stand an examination on these fundamental points, if they take the law of God as their light and their test! 2. Not, less, perhaps more, is required of women than of men. Their relations to society, their relations as wives and mothers, make it peculiarly desirable that they should be fountains and models of virtue. 3. These simple moralities, in our circumstances in life, and under the temptations which are brought to bear upon us, will necessitate a determined battle. Some men conquer easier than others. I believe in hereditary tendencies. Men like gilded characters and silvered characters; but they do not like gold nor silver in character. And there is a prevalent impression that a man stands in his own way if he is too rigorous. You shall hear it said, “ What does a man want to be such a fanatical fool for, as to always tell the truth? What is the use of a man’ s breaking his own back by being so honest as that? Great are the forces that are ready to pull you down; but if you did but know it, greater are they that are for you than are they that are against you.” (H. W. Beecher.)Putting off the old man, and putting on the new I. The apostle’ s description of holiness. It is putting off the old man, or the corrupt nature so called, which hath spread its influence throughout the whole man, the soul (Ephesians 4:17-20), and the body (Romans 6:13; Romans 6:19); and which, like a man, consists of various parts. The deeds of the old man are very vigorous and strong, though old: mighty deeds (Galatians 5:19-22; Ephesians 4:25-29); each member acts its part: unbelief, like the heart causing the blood to circulate through the whole body, influences all the other members: pride produces contention, contumely, strife, etc.; self-will leads to murmuring, disobedience, presumption, etc. This must be put off: the metaphor is borrowed from an old worn-out or unclean garment, which we would cast off with abhorrence. We must also be “ renewed in the spirit of our minds,” in the faculties of the soul, by obtaining an enlightened understanding, rectified will, pure and well-regulated affections. We must “ put on the new man,” a new creature: so called because it influences the whole man, soul and body (text, and 1 Thessalonians 5:23; 1 Corinthians 6:20). And it consists of different parts--the soul in which God dwells, and which He animates, influences, directs, actuates, commands (1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:22; Romans 8:9-14; the body and its members (Colossians 3:12-17; Galatians 5:22); holiness, righteousness, viz., faith, humility, self-denial, love, meekness, gentleness, patience, etc. The deeds of the new man, are all vigorous, strong, active. It is “ the image” of God, “ created” by Him, “ renewed in knowledge.” This must be put on as a “ robe of righteousness.” II. The importance of taking this advice of the apostle. If we take it not, our Christianity is but a name or profession, and will only render us more guilty. We cannot glorify God, as being unlike to Him, and at enmity with Him. Nor can we set a good example, and thereby edify others, for the corrupt tree will “ bring forth corrupt fruit.” We cannot be happy ourselves, for this old man is corrupt, like an old, threadbare, ragged, and dirty garment, which cannot cover us, which exposes us to shame, and is offensive, hurtful, encumbering, and entangling. All the evil dispositions of it are productive of misery. Its lusts or desires are foolish, unreasonable, violent, insatiable, deceitful; promising, but not yielding satisfaction. We are not fitted for, and cannot enter heaven without the new man. III. How to attain this holiness. It is the gift of God: He “ creates” it; but not without our cooperation; He works on us as upon rational creatures, not superseding but directing and assisting us in the use of our faculties, and has appointed certain means to be used by us. We are to “ hunger and thirst after righteousness” ; and in order to this, should consider frequently, nay continually, the nature and necessity of it, our want of it, the great worth of it, God’ s willingness to give it, and cultivate a spirit of prayer. (J. Benson, D. D.)That ye put off the old man.--Putting off I. Christian life begins with renunciation. “ Put off concerning the former conversation--the old man” --the corrupt self that has been fostered under the influence of worldly, carnal views.1. This renunciation must be profound. “ The old man,” i.e., our former unconverted self. We must be careful that we do not confound this personal repudiation with any ecclesiastical rite or relationship. The purity demanded of us is inward, spiritual, moral. It is one thing to stand right with the Church, to be blameless concerning its ordinances, to be acknowledged by its authorites, to be fortified by its sacraments; it is another thing to renounce sin and embrace righteousness before Him who is a Spirit, and who judgeth not according to the outward appearance, but according to the heart. 2. This renunciation must be complete. The “ old man” is the personification of our whole sinful condition before regeneration, and the “ old man” is not to be maimed, some fragments of the mutilated personality to be rejected, some to be retained, but he must be crucified, killed, put away once and forever. There must be, as we have seen, the thorough rejection of evil in our heart, even the evil we have loved longest and best. People sometimes say, “ Well, there is nothing wrong in the thing itself; no harm in the thing itself.” Now “ the thing in itself” is a fine theme for metaphysicians, but such a phrase may seriously mislead in practical life. What do we know about things in themselves? The theatre, intoxicating drink, cards, music, fiction, and a hundred other things--we know nothing of these things in themselves; we only know them relatively, the company into which they bring us, the influence they exert upon us, the habit of mind they tend to foster. Do not stay to determine what things are in themselves, inquire only what is their influence upon you, direct and indirect, and if that influence be not altogether pure and helpful, let such things go; be more afraid of sin than of puritanism. 3. This renunciation must be immediate. Daniel said to the king, “ Break off thy sins by righteousness” (Daniel 4:27). Our sins are not to be tapered off, or rounded off, but broken off short and sharp. It may be a dangerous thing suddenly to change our physical habits, but there is no danger in suddenly changing our bad habits for good ones; the danger is not to change them suddenly. II. The success of our Christian life largely depends upon the thoroughness of the renunciation in which it begins. Putting off comes before putting on, and we can only put on the new man in the measure of the depth and determination with which we have put off the old. If there is any defect in our renunciation, it will infallibly betray itself, and greatly hinder us.1. On the completeness of such renunciation depends our future health and soundness of spirit. If our repentance does not go deep, if the grace of God does not search and purify the very grounds of our life, we shall never enjoy soundness and strength. If any of the vicious element is left, it will work and spoil the sweetness of our soul. 2. On the completeness of this renunciation depends our future freedom and happiness. It is essential to the freedom and peace of our life that we should break utterly with the world. 3. On the completeness of this renunciation depends the full attainment of spiritual beauty of character. Stephen Grellet, the Quaker preacher, said once to an assembly of his brethren, “ You are starched before you are washed.” That is a bad thing indeed, for however much starch may be used, the original dirt will show through and disgrace the well-got-up robe. It is thus with character, as the graphic preacher taught. Some do not in conversation get rid of original weaknesses of character, and these show through raiment that the cleverest fuller has done his best to make dainty. 4. On the completeness of this renunciation largely depends our future safety. We all know people who have contracted vicious habits, who have suffered deeply in social respect, who have become linked in with a set they cannot renounce, and such people often feel, and their friends feel, that if they are ever to recover themselves and lead a new life, they must leave this country altogether and begin again with new scenes and associations; so these unfortunate ones often succeed in putting the ocean between themselves and the scene of their fall and misery, and so doing ofttimes proves their social salvation. So the safety of the new convert depends upon putting a whole ocean between his regenerate self and his old self. Whether we go to America or Australia or not, let us be sure, by God’ s grace, that a great gulf is fixed between our present spirit and our past, between our new manner of life and our past, between our new manner of life and our past conversation. It has proved a fatal error to thousands not to have put away the old man as thoroughly as might be. (W. L. Watkinson.)The new man driving out the old How often do we see a tree well covered with the early shoots and young leaves, but yet with many of last year’ s dead leaves still hanging on to the branches, intermixed with the latest and best of the summer growth, as if to remind one that even this tree, fresh in the glory of its summer clothing, was but a little while ago unsightly with dead and useless leaves. Nor will the tree rid itself of these till the full tide of sap has filled the branches with full-grown verdure, when the old leaves will drop to the earth, and no longer be cumbersome. The Christian, like the tree, bears fresh leaves of a new heart, and even the good fruit of a godly life, and seems at first to be all but faultless; but how often, on nearer view, do evil ways, bad habits, and wicked passions, come to view, and disfigure the beauty of the Christian man or woman, so that companions are reminded of the late winter of an unrenewed life, of the remainders of evil old leaves not yet all stripped off or blown away by the breath of the Divine chastisement. Nor will the Christian stand in perfect clothing, and without any evil thing, till the Divine influence has permeated every part of the soul, and driven from it the remaining traces of the old Adam. (Austen.)Religion and human nature Some years ago, the great country of India was in a ferment of wild rebellion against British rule. During that time of rebellion most sad evils were introduced into the nation; the national spirit and sentiment were debased, and vile passions let loose for rioting. That rebellion was crushed; our Queen was set upon the throne, and peace was proclaimed. But the evils which that rebellion had brought in have not even yet been removed. It has taken the direct labours of a succession of India’ s governors, and the indirect efforts of a multitude of India’ s friends, to root out some of those evils, and restore to their power some of the old obediences and virtues. It is thus with our nature. The rebellion of the soul brought evils upon it and into it; and when, for any one of us, the king of grace is restored to His throne, there is yet hard work to do to crush out these relics of evil, and free our natures from their degrading influence. And this is the work to which we are called upon the admission of our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. (R. Tuck, B. A.)The old man By this figure we understand the depravity of man. I. His dwelling place. Sin has its seat in the heart. Every disposition to evil comes directly from the heart. The body is but the machine of the man” Depravity is in us, dwells in the secret place of the temple. II. His disposition. Loves darkness, thirsts after the gratification of every evil desire; hates the light, turns with loathing from the light of purity, whether seen in man or God. And he is subtle--deceives those in whom he dwells, so successfully that they disbelieve in his presence. III. His influence. Pervades every part of the man. Sears the conscience, affects the will, defiles the passions, perverts the mind, hinders the body. IV. His achievements. At his instigation every vile deed was done that defaces the page of history. V. His longevity. In the hearts of some he will dwell forever. The lost sin on, although they suffer as they sin. In the case of believers, though put off, still he will seek to gain his old ascendency, or be the cause of bitterness until they reach the grave. In conclusion: Let each ask(1) Who is this “ old man” ? He is your former self--the self that loved sin and hated God. (2) How can I put him off? Ask God to give you a new nature, and then the “ new man” will struggle with the old, and at last triumph. (R. A. Griffin.)Deceitful lusts These lusts are “ lusts of deceit,” inasmuch as they seduce and ensnare under false pretensions. And they are numerous, for present gratification is the absorbing motive of the old man. There is the lust of gain, sinking into avarice; of power, swelling into ruthless and cruel tyranny; of pleasure, falling into beastly sensualism. These lusts have the mastery of the old man, and, whether more gross or more refined, they are not the less the manifestations of moral corruption. Every strong passion that fills the spirit to the exclusion of God is a “ lust.” It may be a lust of proficiency in mental, physical, political, or mechanical science, but if it engross the soul, it is a result and characteristic of the old man. Alas I this deceit is not simply error. It has assumed many guises. It gives a refined name to grossness, calls sensualism gallantry, and it hails drunkenness as good cheer. It promises fame and renown to one class, wealth and power to another, and tempts the third onward by the prospect of brilliant discovery. But genuine satisfaction is never gained, for God is forgotten, and these desires and pursuits leave their victim in disappointment and chagrin. “ Vanity of vanities,” cried Solomon, in vexation, after all his experiments on the summum bonum. “ I will pull down my barns, and build greater,” said another, in the idea that he had “ much good laid up for many years,” and yet, in the very night of his fond imaginings, his soul was required of him. Belshazzar drank wine with his grandees, and perished in his revelry. The prodigal son, who for pleasure and independence had left his father’ s house, sank into penury and degradation, and he, a child of Abraham, fed swine to a heathen master. Chalmers felt literary ambition to be in itself a lust of the old man, and a hollow vanity, till it was chastened and sanctified by the grace of God. The pretentious delusions of the old man must be weighed in the balances of the sanctuary. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Putting off sin As the beggar puts off his rags, as the master puts off his bad servant, as the porter puts off his burden, as the serpent his slough, or as the captive maid, when she was to be married, put off the garments of her captivity (Deuteronomy 21:18). (J. Trapp.)Sin a deceitful lust It hath many secret ways of insinuating; it is like a Delilah; it is like Jael to Sisera. Sin is a sweet poison, it tickleth while it stabbeth. The first thing that sin doeth is to bewitch, then to put out the eyes, then to take away the sense and feeling. As Joab came with a kind salute to Abner, and thrust him under the fifth rib, while Abner thought of nothing but kindness, so sin comes smiling, comes pleasing and humouring thee, while it giveth thee a deadly stab. (Anthony Burgess.) Ephesians 4:23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind Renewal in the spirit of the mind The renewal takes place not simply in the mind, but in the spirit of it. It is the special seat of renewal. The mind remains as before, both in its intellectual and emotional structure--in its memory and judgment, imagination and perception. These powers do not in themselves need renewal, and regeneration brings neither new faculties nor susceptibilities. The organism of the mind survives as it was, but the spirit which inhabits and governs it is entirely changed. The ruling and motive power is renovated. The memory, for example, still exercises its former functions, but on a very different class of subjects; the judgment still discharging its old office, is occupied among a new set of themes and ideas; and love retaining all its ardour, attaches itself to objects quite in contrast with those of its earlier preference, and pursuit. The change is not in mind psychologically, either in its essence or in its operation, neither is it in mind, as if it were a superficial change of opinion, either on points of doctrine or of practice; but it is “ in the spirit of the mind,” in that which gives mind both its bent and its materials of thought. It is not simply in the spirit, as if it lay there in dim and mystic quietude; but it is “ in the spirit of the mind,” in the power which, when changed itself, radically alters the entire sphere and business of the inner mechanism. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The progressive renewal It is only living things that grow; and all living things do grow. Be it the lichen that clings to the rook, or the eagle that has her nest on its craggy shelf, or man that rends its heart with powder and draws the gold from its bowels--from the germ out of which they spring, they grow onwards to maturity; in the words of my text, they “ increase more and more.” These words are as true of spiritual as of natural life. According to heathen fables, Minerva the goddess of wisdom and daughter of Jupiter, sprung full-grown and full-armed from her father’ s head. No man thus comes from the hand of the Holy Spirit, in sudden, mature, perfect saintship. There is nothing in the spiritual world which resembles this: no, nor even what the natural world presents in the development of the insect tribes. During their last and perfect stage, in the condition, as it is called, of the imago, be their life long or short, they undergo no increase. So soon as the green worm that once crawled on the ground and fed on garbage, bursting its coffin shell, comes forth, a creature with silken wings, to roam in the sunny air, to sleep by night on a bed of flowers, and by day banquet on their nectar, it grows no mere--neither larger nor wiser; its flight and faculties being as perfect on the day of what may be called its new birth, as when, touched by early frosts or drowned in rain, it dies. Here, indeed, we have a symbol of the resurrection body as it shall step from the tomb; in beauty perfect, in growth mature; to undergo henceforth, and through eternal ages, neither change nor decay. It is otherwise with the renewed soul. Before it, in righteousness, and knowledge, and true holiness, stretches a field of illimitable progress--upwards and onwards to what it shall be forever approaching, yet never reach, the throne of God. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)The new and the old nature There are a great many men who are like one of my roses. I bought a Gloire de Dijon. It was said to be one of the few ever-blooming roses. It was grafted on a manetti stalk--a kind of dog rose, a rampant and enormous grower, and a very good stalk to graft fine roses on. I planted it. It throve the first part of the summer, and the last part of the summer it grew with great vigour; and I quite gloried when the next spring came, in my Gloire de Dijon. It had wood enough to make twenty such roses as these finer varieties usually have; and I was in the amplitude of triumph. I said, “ My soil suits it exactly in this climate; and I will write an article for the Monthly Gardener, and tell what luck I have had with it.” He I waited and waited and waited till it blossomed; and behold! it was one of these worthless, quarter-of-a-dollar, single-blossomed roses. And when I came to examine it I found that it was grafted, and that there was a little bit of a graft down near the ground, and that it was the manetti sprout that had grown to such a prodigious size. Now, I have seen a great many people converted, in whom the conversion did not grow, but the old nature did. (H. W. Beecher.)Renewal more than repair A builder was called in to repair some houses. The contract stated that any doors, window sashes, etc., which should be renewed would be paid for. The work proceeded, certain door panels, window frames, and sashes proved to be imperfect and decayed. The defective panels, beadings, and pieces of framing were made good. In due course the painting, graining, and finishing work was completed. I was present when the work underwent examination. The builder’ s account had been rendered, and an item appeared of so many pounds for renewing doors, sashes, etc. “ Certainly not,” said the architect on being appealed to; “ to repair is one thing, to renew quite another.” In vain the builder expostulated. How well I remember the architect’ s words--“ No, sir, your contract comprehends all repairs. Go and get your dictionary and see what the word renew means. Had you taken away the old doors and window sashes, and brought new ones, we would have paid you for them. Such in the meaning of the terms of your contract, and no amount of repairing will renew that which is old.” (Henry Varley.) Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.Putting on Observe-- I. That Christian life begins in renunciation, but does not finish there. It is a great mistake to imagine that Christian life ends with renunciation, or that renunciation constitutes the sum of that life. Great, however, as that mistake may be, it very largely prevails, and works much mischief. It is felt that Christian life is chiefly occupied with sacrifice and resistance; what we forego is the main matter, the great idea being that of renunciation throughout. Out of this negative view, constantly set forth and exaggerated, sprung great evils.1. One unfortunate result of this view of Christian life is disappointed experiences. It is no uncommon thing to find Christian people with a sense of disappointment in the life they are striving to live; they do not experience all the satisfaction and joy the New Testament obviously promises. A lady told the present writer, that on returning from India with her little daughter, when the cliffs of England first came into view she lifted the child to catch sight of the welcome land. The child had heard much, of course, of England, of its wonderful scenes and stories, and seeing the cold coast in the grey mist, she was much disappointed and murmured, “ Is that England? It does not look much!” No; England does not look much from that particular point of view; you must land; you must penetrate it; you must wander on the banks of the Wye, by the lakes of Cumberland, on the hills of Derbyshire; you must see the ferns and flowers of Devonshire; the gardens of Kent, the orchards of Gloucestershire, rivers, mountains, parks, landscapes, cities, cathedrals; and then England will grow upon you, and you shall acknowledge the half has not been told. Many are similarly disappointed with religion, simply because they have not gone on to realize its treasures and blessings. They have understood that Christianity means renunciation rather than appropriation; and whilst they have given up the false and base, whilst they have left the far country and returned to their fatherland, they have known little more than its grey cliffs, and feel the sense of keen disappointment. For all that we give up for Christ’ s sake, a new world opens to us of fresh interests, activities, and pleasures, and this world we must forthwith claim and realize. We put off not that we may be found naked and comfortless, but that we may put on--put on beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 2. Another unhappy result of this negative view of Christian life is found in poverty of character. It is not enough that we are free from old vices; we must put new virtues in their place, equally living and bold; and we suffer when this view is not fully entertained. Carlyle has a pregnant passage on this subject: “ Washington is another of our perfect characters, to me a most limited uninteresting sort. The thing is not only to avoid error, but to attain immense masses of truth.” There are many such as Washington--perfect characters so far that they refuse evil and avoid error, and yet limited, uninteresting, because they have not gone on to attain fulness of knowledge, depth of feeling, strength and richness of character. Simply to renounce error and evil will leave us neutral characters, without attractiveness or force; we must attain immense masses of truth, immense masses of purity, immense masses of kindness, immense masses of whatever is lovely and of good report. As in the springtime the old withered leaves are expelled by new buds and replaced by unfolding blossoms, so the old evil characteristics of our life must be rejected and supplanted by the new radiant graces and joys which spring from the Spirit of God renewing the spirit of our mind. 3. Another unhappy result of this negative view of Christian life is found in many painful lapses. The Christian life begins with renunciation, but renunciation leading to possession--possession of higher and nobler qualities and characteristics. The ground is cleared of the thorn, that the green fir tree may disport itself; of the brier, that the fragrant myrtle may fill the air with sweetness; and if the fir and myrtle do not speedily spring forth, the wild growths of the wilderness again shoot and bear their fruits of bitterness. II. That the good of the Christian life is the assumption of sublimest character. We are to aspire to a Divine moral likeness, to be “ perfect, even as our Father who is in heaven is perfect.” Some say they cannot believe in God, the God of the Bible, because He is only “ a magnified man.” Well, and what special difficulty is there if that were so? What is a true man? The best we know! and that magnified can be no bad thing. What could be more admirable than the genius of Shakespeare indefinitely magnified, the charity of Howard, the righteousness of Paul, the gentleness of John? We might have the conception of a worse God than that; could we easily have a better? What about God being a magnified man, if man is first a minified God? Here is the truth: there is more of the Spirit of the Universe in us than some think. We were made in the image of God, our nature in its depths bears the likeness of God, and it is our calling to strive until we put on that glorious personality which after God’ s image is created in righteousness and holiness. But where shall we acquaint ourselves with this “ new man,” so utterly glorious and Divine? The truth for us is “ the truth as it is in Jesus,” and all the glorious features of our great ideal are definite in Jesus Christ. (W. L. Watkinson.)The new man I. New thoughts. Formerly chaos; now light. II. New motives. The glory of God and the welfare of fellow man take the place of selfish and sinful motives. Order and beauty dislodge confusion and fruitlessness. III. New dispositions. The blood of Jesus has washed away the corrupting inclinations of the heart. IV. New enjoyments. The surroundings are new, the experiences are also new, and consequently the heart has new joys. The new man is immortal. (The Weekly Pulpit.)Moral renewal I. The great purpose of the gospel is our moral renewal. II. This moral renewal, is a creation in the image of God. III. This new creation has to be put on and appropriated by us. IV. The means of appropriating this new nature is contact with the truth. (Homiletic Hints.)Spring clothing At this season of the year many living things around us are daily putting on a new appearance. The grass, which, dining the winter, has worn the dullest green, is now putting on the brightest verdure. The shrubs, which have been clothed in raiment of leaden hue, are now putting on their beautiful garments. The trees, which put off their foliage for the dark and cold months of winter, are now again putting on their new and shiny leaves in harmony with the lengthened days and with sunny skies. Seeds and roots, which, during many weeks, have been hid in the soil, are putting off the old man of the unquickened and undeveloped state, and are putting on the new man of germ life, and of plant life, and of bloom life. The effect of all these changes around us is to produce corresponding changes in the spirits, and in the health, and in the habits of the people. This extends to things both small and great. All, who have the means, lay aside the raiment which spring suns show to be threadbare and soiled, and attire themselves in clothing which will bear the manifestation of light; while those whose poverty prevents such changes, try to make all things new, by making all things clean. The changes to which we refer in the vegetable kingdom, are the result of newness of life. Under the influence of vernal light and heat, the seed germinates, the sap rises in the shrub, and in the tree, and circulates through every branch, and bough, and stem; and the improved appearance of all things in the vegetable kingdom, is the result of an increased power of life. The changes, too, which men make at this season are partly the result of an increase in the animal spirits and in physical energy. No such changes as those we have been speaking of, pass however upon that which is artificial. The grass, and the shrubs, and the trees, in the landscape of the painter, change not with the season. The true Christian has a new man to put on. The mere formalist, like a stuffed animal, or like an artificial flower, or like a painting from the life, is now what he was in the beginning. There can be no change, no satisfactory change even in the outer life, just because there is no religious or spiritual vitality in the soul. The new man which, according to this precept, we are to put on, and which is of God, is, as the very words indicate, outside the man. The reference here is not to the inner man which God alone sees, but to the outer man, which is the only part of our being that our fellow men can see. There are precepts which require attention to the inner man, as for example, “ Keep thy heart with all diligence,” and it is useless to attend to the outer man, unless we give first and commanding attention to the inner man; but the outer man--the character which a Christian has among his fellow Christians, and which he has in the world--is of immense moment--of such immense moment that God gives us directions like the text, “ Put on,” He says, “ the new man.” Now, the outside man consists, as you well know, of words, looks, demeanour, behaviour, actions, the company which a man keeps, the occupation he adopts and pursues, the connections he forms, his pleasures and recreations, and especially his habits. Well, this outside man, we say again, is of importance, for this is the only part of the man that is really seen--by his fellow men. Hereby, therefore, is the man judged, judged in the Church, and judged in the world. The influence of a man upon his fellows, and the services he renders them, are dependent entirely upon the outward life. And then, this new man is to be put on in connection with a new heart and with a renewed heart. Sometimes, when men are describing hypocrisy, or describing conduct which they resent, they say of certain behaviour, “ it is put on.” Now there is a putting on which is of course sinful and to be deprecated, but there is a putting on which becomes a duty. The artiste in the theatre puts on a certain attire for the sake of acting, for the sake of mere play. But a man in ordinary circumstances, puts on raiment for the sake of covering, for warmth and health, for convenience and preservation of life. Now, because some clothe themselves in peculiar attire simply for the purpose of play, we do not condemn the putting on of suitable clothing for the purposes of work. Just so with reference to outward character. There is an outward character which it is the duty of every man to study. If a man neglect his outward character, he is decidedly committing sin; he is breaking such distinct and positive commandments as that which we are now considering--“ put on the new man.” But then this new man is to be put on in connection with a new heart and with a renewed heart. Now the characteristic of the new man is, of course, godliness, and its distinctive features are righteousness and true holiness. Hence, following the text, you find the words, “ which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” The apostle names some of the things in which this righteousness and true holiness consist. It is very remarkable that he should mention such things as he does here speak of. For example, he goes on to say, “ Putting away lying, let every man speak truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another,” recognizing truthfulness as a part of righteousness and true holiness, and lying as the opposite of righteousness and true holiness. Again we find him saving, “ Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” Now, you know, brethren, that there are people who think that righteousness and true holiness consist principally in making prayers, and in coming to places of worship, and in taking the Lord’ s Supper, and in tallying godliness and religion from morning to night; and you find that such people will lie, and they will not blush when charged with lying; you find they will Steal and even justify theft; you find they will walk in a path that many an upright worldly man will not dare to put his foot upon. Now, all these cursed opinions, with their hellish fruit, require to be driven away. People sometimes justify the retention of that which Paul calls the “ old man” by saying, “ Such a thing is my habit, or my temper, or my temperament, or my constitution, or my nature” ; but you know this is no justification for continuance in evil. It is absurd to talk about evil feelings being your temper or temperament, or constitution, or nature; you, Christian, are a new creature, and there is a new man to put on. Others justify the repression of very much that is within them by saying “ I feel it, although I do not express myself. I am kind to that man in heart, but I do not show it.” Look here, what does our text mean? “ Put on the new man.” If God has changed that heart of yours, turned out the wrath and enmity, and put kindness there, you must put on the new man. It is of no use, though you may have kind feelings within, to show on the outside the angry man; you must show on the outside the kind, considerate, and compassionate man. Then, we say again, what have you in daily wear as spiritual attire? Do you speak of religious subjects in the same tone, and in the same phrases, and with no more intelligence, sagacity, and feelings, than you did, say ten years ago? Does your countenance show only as much interest in spiritual things as when you first gave heed to them? Is your walk through life upon the same incline as when you first moved heavenward? (S. Martin, D. D.) Ephesians 4:25 Wherefore, putting away lying.Lying I. Lying is an abominable habit.1. To lie is diametrically opposed to truth, therefore to the whole Diving law, and not to one commandment only, as other sins. 2. Truth is a perfection of the Godhead, while lying is the sin of the devil. 3. Lying is very detrimental to human society. The greatest blessing in the world is the intercourse--the communion--of man with man. If this blessing be taken away, the whole world would be turned into chaos. Such would be the inevitable result, if all men were addicted to lying; and it is partly so now. II. Lying is a habit which is punished here on earth.1. Telling lies degrades a man in the estimation of his fellow men. If a lie were not a foul blot in a man, why are even bad men so cautious not to be caught in a lie? 2. God will punish the liar (Psalms 5:7). 3. If God hates and punishes lying so severely, how great will be His hatred of perjury, which is lying confirmed by oath! The confirmation of testimony by oath has been ordained by God Himself (Deuteronomy 6:18). An oath is for confirmation. For men it is the end of all controversy. It follows that the perjurer, as far as in him lies, abolishes the last means of ascertaining the truth. Shall not God avenge? (Zechariah 5:4.) (J. B. Campadelli.)Christian truth I. This precept assumes a preliminary condition: “ putting away lying.” This touches the root of the matter. It points to the entire and thorough abandonment and renunciation, not in outward speech only, but in the inmost heart, of all falsehood. You put away the thing that is false, all false dealing in your inmost mind and spirit with any person or any thing. We must connect this with what goes before. At Ephesians 4:22, we are exhorted to put off the old man, which is corrupt after the lusts of deceit, i.e., to put away the lusts of deceit in which its corruption consists. Here we are assumed to put away the deceit itself to which the lusts belong, and by means of which they wield their corrupting influence. II. The injunction itself. The condition and the precept are closely connected. And the connection is natural. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. If there is no falsehood in the heart, it may be anticipated that there will be truth in the lips. And the converse holds good. So far, generally, the connection here indicated is clear enough. I am persuaded, however, that this is not all. Bear in mind what putting away falsehood really means. It describes a state or frame of mind, a character of the inner man, peculiar to the real Christian, the true believer. If so, it would seem to follow that by speaking truth every man with his neighbour, is meant a habit or mode of speech also peculiar to such a one. The true speaking must correspond to the putting away lying with which it is associated; out of which, in fact, it springs. They are both of them Christian graces and attainments, and not common virtues; excellences of which the renewed man is capable, but which are beyond the reach of the old. III. The reason annexed to this precept. Christians are formed into one body, having a common Head; from whom they all derive a common life, and in whom they all are one. There are not, therefore--there cannot be, if they realize and act out this great ideal--separate interests among them. They are not isolated from one another, and independent of one another. Nor are they simply a community of individuals, voluntarily associated together for certain common ends. On either of these suppositions there might still be room for concealment and caution on many points there might be some apology for reticence and silence. But believers are a divinely constituted, a divinely created corporation. Their unity is of the Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Ghost. They are more intimately bound and knit together in one than are the limbs of man’ s corporeal frame. They have absolutely, in the highest sense, all things in common. There is one body, etc. Surely, in such a society, there might be expected to be the most outspoken freedom of utterance; the fullest and frankest speaking of the truth. As members one of another, you should have no secrets to keep from one another. There ought to be no cold reserve; no jealousy; no suspicion; none of that wary prudence, that wise doubting of your neighbour, which prompts the keeping back of the truth from him, and the leaving of him in ignorance or in error. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)On truth Not only is the Second Person in the adorable Trinity revealed to us as the Son and the Word of God, but He is also exhibited as the archetypal Verity. “ I am the truth,” saith our Lord of Himself, and when He was made flesh He dwelt among men, “ full of grace and truth.” That inherent attribute which had been in God from the beginning, which had been exercised in the beneficent act of creation , was in the last days shown forth to mortal eyes in the lowly guise of the Carpenter of Nazareth, as their God in truth and in righteousness (Zechariah 8:8). Now if truth be thus--not only a part of that righteousness in which God constituted all things--but actually a form and mode of the Divine Being Himself; if it be, not only that, in which God caused all things to be according to their law, but the manifestation of Himself in His Blessed Son; it will follow that anything contrary to this truth will be of the most abominable nature. If truth be the exhibition of the Son of God Himself, we shall not wonder at the whole constitution of the world being founded in it. The condition on which society holds together is perfect truth. The nearer we approach to perfect truth in any society, the more perfect is the credit, and the more sure is the basis on which that society stands. I. The opposite of truth is a lie; and in order to get at our duty on this head, it may be well to inquire into its nature and kinds. The common division of lying is into pernicious lies, those that are said with an evil intent--officious lies, those that are said to screen a fault or with other less culpable object--and lastly, lies of jesting, which may be dismissed in one word of the apostle--that they are--“ not convenient,” being at best of a very low style of wit, and always dangerous. But I think that a fuller and more complete distinction of these may not be without advantage.1. The first and most heinous of all lies are those that are perpetrated in religion. A falsehood concerning God is the worst form of this sin. 2. And connected with this--is the heinous iniquity of what are called “ pious frauds,” where a religious system is propped up by deceit of any kind, false miracles, false legends, and the like. 3. The next most heinous form of deceit is the lie of malignity, where a falsehood is told with the deliberate purpose of injuring the happiness of another. Remember you have no right to spread any report till you have taken, some means to test its authenticity. If you give currency and fresh importance to a false report, you commit a great sin, and owe a heavy debt to the person you have helped to calumniate. The law prevents our being lied out of property, but who can arrest the evil effects of backbiting? who can restore the friendship it has broken? 4. The next kind of lying is that lying for lying’ s sake, which we find sadly prevalent among certain individuals and certain nations. 5. We now come to the case where the lie is told to obtain some immediate or eventual good. It is a very wide subject, because from the simple lie to serve an immediate purpose up to the difficult question of casuistry, whether a man may tell a lie to save life or reputation, the circumstances and degrees are various to infinitude. Of course we affirm broadly that a man may not tell a lie to obtain for himself any good, and that if suffering follows on telling the truth, a man must be contented to suffer. The whole question turns on this: Is there anything more valuable than the soul? if there be, you may lie to obtain it; but if God has said that He “ will destroy all such as speak leasing,” it is clear that we may not commit that sin for anything which the world can give. It is staking our eternal welfare against our temporal good. The matter becomes more difficult, when the object for which a lie is told is a fine or noble one, like the faithful servant well known in Scottish history, who perjured himself before the judges to save his master’ s life. Yet even here the same law of distinction comes in, which is the more valuable--this world or the next? St. Augustine maintains that you may not say what is untrue, even if that untruth were to save a friend’ s life, because your friend’ s temporal life is less valuable than your own eternal life forfeited by the lie. If persons in pursuit of one who has thrown himself upon your mercy for concealment, demand of you where he is, you may not deny that you have seen him, but you may refuse to answer; you may throw the pursuers off the scent by any ingenious escape, but you may not say what is untrue, even in such an extreme case. You will recollect that noble fiction in which a person of low estate refuses to save a sister’ s life at the expense of a lie, and afterwards obtains her pardon under circumstances of unparalleled energy and exertion. The morality here is perfect. It is best to leave the issue of things in the hand of God, and not to do evil that good may come. 6. We next proceed to a less heinous sort of lying, that which arises from the desire to please man--the lie of polite society. Here no one is injured, very deep interests are not affected--the subjects lied about are trifles--the motives are amiable or innocent--and yet here is positive sin. A desire to shine in society may not be wrong, but it must not be compassed by such means. Or the love of society may take the shape of boastful falsehood. 7. A more excusable form is that lying which comes from fear of offending those we live with. This is the special sin of some weak natures, and belongs rather to cowardice of character than to actual deceit. It often arises from the injudicious severity of parents, and the rough discipline of a public school, or from that feeble temperament which never should have been sent there. It is as much a misfortune as a fault, and is to be met by strengthening the moral character generally, and by seeking to bring out in the disposition all those habits of self-respect, which, under the Divine blessing, give dignity to man. 8. The last and most venial form of falsehood consists in those slight inaccuracies which slip out in the haste and thoughtlessness of conversation. These can hardly be called lies, because they are not uttered with the deliberate intention of deceiving, and are intellectual rather than moral faults. Some have very incorrect memories, others have quick minds which lead them to speak before they think, or even without thinking at all. Some persons find it impossible to repeat a thing exactly as they heard it, and without conscious deceit convey a different impression in their narration. Many of strong imagination unconsciously colour facts which in other respects they rightly describe. In short, there is a large region on the confines between truth and falsehood which requires some vigilance on our parts. People should be cautious about this inaccuracy, because like all bad habits it is apt to increase. II. And now that we have defined these different sorts of lying, let us think of their gratity and their cure. The record of the sacred Scripture is very strong against this sin. Nothing but the presence of the Blessed Truth, which is Christ Himself, in the heart, can give that pellucid and crystal soul which will bear the light at every angle. He who speaks the truth from worldly motives is only careful about that which the world censures, and in cases where the conventional morality of society allows of false vows and protestations, has no feeling about these; but the true Christian, while he is not over-scrupulous about trifles, has a conscience which ever announces the approach of fraud, for he is stayed on God, who is the immutable Truth, who cannot be deceived. (Bishop A. P. Forbes.)On the nature of lying I. The nature of a lie. A lie, strictly and properly so called, is such a manner of speaking, wherein, according to the ordinary signification of words, a man signifies that to another as true which he himself either certainly knows or believes to be false, and that, with a design of imposing upon him. II. Several kinds of lies. Much needs not to be said concerning that sort of lying, which yet is of all others the most generally practised; namely, those mean ways of deceiving and over-reaching one another, which are so frequently used in traffic and bargaining. I shall proceed now to the consideration of such cases, wherein many even learned men have pleaded with very plausible reasons, in justification and defence of the use of divers manners of falsifying. And--1. In the case of those, to whom we have openly and justly declared ourselves enemies, as in the case of a lawful and necessary war. 2. In the education of children; that is, of such as are already arrived to some, though not a perfect, use of their reason. To these, the persons I am speaking of, conceive, we are not obliged to speak the truth; not because they have no right to truth, or have lost that right by any forfeiture, but because they are not capable of receiving and judging of it; so that because they are not come to a full use of their reason and judgment. 3. The last case, wherein falsehood has been by many thought justifiable, is when some public benefit is thereby promoted; in which case they fancy they may presume upon men’ s consent, that they are willing to be deceived; that they would give up their right by which they might exact truth of us, did they know the reasons that moved us to deceive them. These are the chief cases in which some have thought falsehood allowable, or at least excusable. Whether they had any just and sufficient reason to do so, will best appear by inquiring first into the nature of truth, and the foundation of our obligation to speak always what we think agreeable to it; and their applying it to the particular cases. Now they who think a lie, properly so called, to be in several cases lawful; consider truth merely as a civil compact. They look upon truth as a matter of private concern, as if one man laid upon another all the obligation he has to it, and consequently could release him from that obligation either by his fault, or his incapacity, or his consent. Thus truth becomes merely one and the same thing with justice; and falsehood ceases to be a fault, unless when it is joined with manifest injury and wrong. From hence it follows, that, since when a man has forfeited or voluntarily receded from his right to anything, it may without injustice be withheld from him; in such cases as those, according to this notion, a lie will seem to be no longer blameworthy. But now that we are, on the contrary, really under an obligation to truth, distinct from, and independent on that of mere justice, may appear from the following considerations.1. That every man’ s conscience naturally convinces him that he is under an obligation to truth, distinct from all other considerations; so that it will not without reluctance suffer him to deceive his neighbour with a lie, even though he does not foresee any real injury or damage that will there upon accrue to him. 2. That our obligation to truth is distinct from that of merely not injuring our neighbour, appears further from this consideration, that in our notion of the supreme and most perfect Being, veracity and justice are two distinct perfections or attributes. It remains that after what has been said, I make a practical observation or two, and so conclude. And--1. “ Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,” saith Solomon (Proverbs 12:22; and Proverbs 6:16. etc.). 2. As lies are thus abominable in the sight of God, so are they also to all good men (Proverbs 13:5). 3. This sin of lying tends in its own nature to the destruction of all civil society. (S. Clarke, D. D.)The virtues which have truthfulness for their basis The quality of truthfulness, or of allegiance to truth, in the character, extends far beyond the point of scrupulously avoiding untrue statements. A person may never tell what would usually be called a falsehood, and yet may have a thoroughly insincere, hypocritical, or artificial character.1. And may I not mention first, as worthy of being in general avoided, the quality of dissimulation, or the concealment of our real opinions, which has been contrasted with simulation, or the pretending to be, or to think, something other than the reality. It has been laid to the charge of Cromwell that he was a dissembler, who allowed others to interpret his silence as they would, and then surprised them by acting otherwise than they expected. His most favourable biographers have defended him on the ground that he told no lies, and that being in the midst of dangerous plotters, he was unable to save himself or his cause in any other way. I will not dispute the justice of the defence, but I notice the instance as showing how men confound dissembling with falsehood, and therefore how these must border on one another; and as showing also that a high religionist like Cromwell, by his dissembling, gave colour to the charge that his religion was insincere. 2. Next to dissimulation I mention “ pretence,” which implies an intentional concealment of the reality by something false or feigned offered to the inspection of others. Thus a merchant who has no capital makes a false impression on others in regard to his pecuniary ability, that he may obtain a loan of money; or a sciolist pretends to have learning, when he is ignorant; or a libertine to be moral when he is immoral; or a hypocrite in religion to be a believer or a good man when he is neither. 3. There is a less obvious kind of pretence into which we are all apt to fall, which, however, cannot stand on its defence, when tried by the laws of truth. It is what is called “ cant” ; a word which denotes the aping of others in expressions of feeling and opinion, by the use of set, stereotyped words which pass current in a certain circle of religion, fashion, or taste. 4. We mention next, as closely bordering on the vice of character already named, “ insincerity,” especially in professions of regard and in the bestowment of praise. When a person puts on the semblance of friendship for another, expressing it in warm terms to his face, while he laughs at him behind his back, we call this hypocrisy of a black dye. But some insincere ways of making another believe that you are his friend are not so obviously wicked as this. You thus present yourself to others as ready to do for them what is beyond your intention, and when the test comes and you fail, they are wounded, and feel that they have been falsely dealt with. Most of such insincere professions are the refuges of selfishness ashamed to come to the light and putting on the forms of goodwill. 5. We pass on next to the faults of character opposed to “ simplicity.” This word denoted at first the quality of being unfolded, as contrasted with that which was folded together, and so simplicity in a moral sense and duplicity are moral opposites. But the word has a wide application; when used in reference to taste it denotes the avoidance of the artificial, the overwrought, the overloaded with ornament, the pretentious. When used in reference to our purposes it denotes that two motives, as self-interest and goodwill, are not mixed in producing the same act, or that we aim at truth rather than at impression. As a moral quality it denotes the absence of guile, a character without artifice. 6. Another and a kindred fault opposed to a spirit of truthfulness is inaccuracy in representation and reports. 7. Another of the truthful virtues is “ candour,” which partakes of the nature also of justice. It admits the weight of what makes against ourselves and confesses this with readiness. It acknowledges mistakes out of a spirit of fairness. In argument it gives an impartial view of the reasons urged by the opposite side. (T. D. Woolsey.)The evil of lying Wherein lies the evil of lying? We observe--1. That a lie is the nearest thing possible to suicide, being a denial of the personality which God has given us, and calculated to reduce the order of God’ s creation to confusion. 2. It is contrary to the nature and use of language, and the purpose of God Himself in giving us the organs of speech. 3. It makes men like devils, and destroys all confidence in human society. Two men give each other the lie, and you have a duel; one mob gives another the lie, and there is a riot; two nations give each other the lie, and you have war; our race gave God the lie in paradise, and we have the Fall--the heaven and the earth in conflict with each other. Such are the effects of a lie! 4. We add that the liar is shut out from the kingdom of heaven by the authority of God, being both by nature and practice unfitted for the heavenly home. (W. Graham, D. D.)Various kinds of lies There are thousands of ways of telling a lie. A man’ s whole life may be a falsehood, and yet never with his lips may he falsify once. There is a falsehood by look, by manner, as well as by lip. There are persons who are guilty of dishonesty of speech, and then afterward say “ may be,” call it a white lie, when no lie is that colour. The whitest lie ever told was as black as perdition. There are those so given to dishonesty of speech that they do not know when they are lying. With some it is an acquired sin, and with others it is a natural infirmity. Misrepresentation and prevarication are as natural to them as the infantile diseases, and are a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. Then there are those who in after life have opportunities of developing this evil, and they go from deception to deception, and from class to class, until they are regularly graduated liars. At times the air in our cities is filled with falsehood, and lies cluster around the mechanic’ s hammer, blossom on the merchant’ s yardstick, and sometimes sit in the doors of churches. They are called by some fabrication, by some fiction. You might call them subterfuge, or deceit, or romance, or fable, or misrepresentation, or delusion; but as I know nothing to be gained by covering up a God-defying sin with a lexicographer’ s blanket, I shall call them, in plainest vernacular, lies. I. First of all, I speak of agricultural falsehoods. There is something in the presence of natural objects that has a tendency to make one pure. The trees never issue false stock. The wheat fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out in the night, not paying for the place they occupy. Corn shocks never make false assignments. Mountain brooks are always current. The gold of the wheat fields is never counterfeit. But, while the tendency of agricultural life is to make one honest, honesty is not the characteristic of all who come to the city markets from the country districts. Milk cans are not always honest. II. I pass on to consider commercial lies. There are those who apologize for deviations from the right and for practical deception by saying it is commercial custom. In other words, a lie by multiplication becomes a virtue. A merchant says: “ I am selling these goods at less than cost.” Is he getting for these goods a price inferior to that which he paid for them? Then he has spoken the truth. Is he getting more? Then he lies. A merchant says: “ I paid $25 for this article.” Is that the price he paid for it? All right. But suppose he paid for it $23 instead of $25? Then he lies. But there are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. A customer comes in and asks: “ How much is this article?” “ It is five dollars.” “ I can get that for four somewhere else.” Can he get it for four somewhere else, or did he say that just for the purpose of getting it cheap by depreciating the value of the goods? If so, he lied. There are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. A man unrolls upon the counter a bale of handkerchiefs. The customer says: “ Are these all silk?” “ Yes.” “ No cotton in them?” “ No cotton in them.” Are those handkerchiefs all silk? Then the merchant told the truth. Is there any cotton in them? Then he lied. Moreover, he defrauds himself, for this customer coming in from Hempstead, or Yonkers, or Newark, will, after awhile, find out that he has been defrauded, and the next time he comes to town and goes shopping he will look up at that sign and say: “ No, I won’ t go there; that’ s the place where I got those handkerchiefs.” First, the merchant insulted God; and secondly, he picked his own pocket. III. I pass on to speak of mechanical falsehoods. I am speaking now of those who promise to do that which they know they will not be able to do. They say they will come on Monday; they do not come until Wednesday. They say they will come on Wednesday; they do not come until Saturday. They say they will have the job done in ten days; they do not get it done before thirty. IV. I pass on to speak of social lies. How much of society is insincere! You hardly know what to believe. They send their regards; you do not exactly know whether it is an expression of the heart or an external civility. They ask you to come to their house; you hardly know whether they really want you to come. We are all accustomed to take a discount from what we hear. “ Not at home,” very often means too lazy to dress. I was reading this morning of a lady who said she had told her last fashionable lie. There was a knock at her door, and she sent down word, “ Not at home.” That night her husband said to her, “ Mrs. So-and-so is dead.” “ Is it possible?” she said. “ Yes; and she died in great anguish of mind. She wanted to see you so very much; she had something very important to disclose to you in her last hour; and she sent three times today, but found you absent every time.” Then this woman bethought herself that she had had a bargain with her neighbour that when the long protracted sickness was about to come to an end, she would appear at her bedside and take the secret that was to be disclosed; and she had said she was “ not at home.” Social life is struck through with insincerity. They apologize for the fact that the furnace is out; they have not had any fire in it all winter. They apologize for the fare on their table; they never live any better. They decry their most luxuriant entertainment to win a shower of approval from you. They point at a picture on the wall as a work of one of the old masters. They say it is an heirloom in the family. It hung on the wall of a castle. A duke gave it to their grandfather. People that will lie about nothing else will lie about a picture. On small income we want the world to believe we are affluent, and society today is struck through with cheat, and counterfeit, and sham. V. I pass on to speak of ecclesiastical lies, those which are told for the advancement or retarding of a Church or sect. It is hardly worth your while to ask an extreme Calvinist what an Arminian believes. He will tell you an Arminian believes that man can save himself. An Arminian believes no such thing. It is hardly worth your while to ask an extreme Arminian what a Calvinist believes. He will tell you that a Calvinist believes that God made some men just to damn them. A Calvinist believes no such thing. VI. Let us in all departments of life stand back from deception. “ Oh!” says someone, “ the deception that I practise is so small it don’ t amount to anything.” Ah! my friends, it does amount to a great deal. “ Oh!” you say, “ when I deceive, it is only about a case of needles, or a box of buttons, or a row of pins.” The article may be so small you can put it in your vest pocket; but the sin is as big as the Pyramids, and the echo of your dishonour will reverberate through the mountains of eternity. (Dr. Talmage.)Commercial untruthfulness Closely akin to the grossest form of dishonesty, comes that commercial untruthfulness of which we hear so much in the world of business. The selling of adulterated goods as genuine, the advertising of useless nostrums as specific remedies, the daily issue of prospectuses of investments offering more interest for the money than any sane and honest investment can really produce, seem, when described in simple language, undistinguishable from gross deception. And yet newspapers are full of them: every post delivers some of them. We dare not think that they are all the handiwork of cunning rogues. No; they are not. They can justify themselves by the assertion that the exaggerations of their statements are a fashion of speech, a trick of trade; that the purchaser of the adulterated goods buys at his peril, and knows, or ought to know, that he cannot have the genuine thing at so cheap a rate; that the advertisement is part of a joke; that the prospectuses, to be read at all, must be read with an amount of discount that will turn the policies into puffs, and categorical statements into probabilities or chances; that the promises of gain are not intended to deceive, but to call attention to the thing proposed; and that, at all events, it is the duty of the investor to ascertain the truth of them before he invests, or to complain only of his stupidity if he is deceived. And yet, although they who do such things must know that they are shutting their eyes to their own crime; that they do deceive the unwary; that they ruin the poor; that they tantalize and aggravate the miseries of the sick; that they take an unfair advantage, primarily, of those who cannot help themselves; still they persist, and are greatly offended if personally they are stigmatized by the name they deserve. If they do not live by deceit they live by gain purchased by deceit, and it takes a good deal of self-deceit to enable them to fancy that they can see the difference. (Bishop Stubbs.)The palace of truth I remember reading a story when I was a child, which struck me very forcibly even then as illustrating the deceit and wickedness of the human heart. The writer describes a place into which every person who enters is bound by a certain spell, so that they speak actually the thoughts of their hearts, whatever they be, while at the same time, they are not at all conscious of the power that influences them, or of the words they utter, but imagine they are saying what they would intend to say, in the ordinary language of the duplicity or compliment of the world. Therefore, when friends meet friends, and relatives meet relatives, while they are carrying on the farce which in too many instances they do carry on in social life, expressing, as they imagine, regret or kindness, compliments or pleasure, they are really giving vent to the genuine feelings of their heart. When they are brought into the test of the palace of truth, the mask is there torn off, and all the vain fantastic mockery of kindness, of regard, or of affection, they had once professed, is new exchanged for the genuine expression of envy, malice, hatred, or disgust, and all the other passions which really possess their breasts. Then they are manifested in their true character to each other, and consequently all these evil passions produce their natural result, in severing almost all the ties of social and domestic life. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)Truth-speaking Christians are to speak the whole truth without distortion, diminution, or exaggeration. No promise is to be falsified--no mutual understanding violated. The word of a Christian ought to be as his bond, every syllable being but the expression of “ truth in the inward parts.” The sacred majesty of truth is ever to characterize and hallow all his communications. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The mutual dependence of Christians on one another forbids falsehood Christians are bound by reciprocal ties and obligations, and falsehood wars against such a union. Trusting in one God, they should, therefore, not create distrust of one another; seeking to be saved by one faith, they should not prove faithless to their fellows; and professing to be freed by the truth, they ought not to attempt to enslave their brethren by falsehood. Each is bound up with the other, and lying recoils upon him who deviates from fact. Truthfulness is an essential and primary virtue, and the opposite vice is mean and selfish. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Social unity forbids lying Let not the eye lie to the foot, nor the foot to the eye. If there be a deep pit, and its mouth covered with reeds shall present to the eye the appearance of solid ground, will not the eye use the foot to ascertain whether it is hollow underneath, or whether it is firm and resists? Will the foot tell a lie, and not the truth as it is? And what again if the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot? (Chrysostom.)Need of speaking the truth The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is one of the best characteristics of the Christian conversation. The reason is, “ For we are members one of another” --that is, we all belong to the same body of Christ--to the same human family--to the same universe of God, and the life that pervades it all is truth, the circulating medium in the celestial corporation. In speaking lies you vitiate the blood by the infusion of a foreign, poisonous element, and, as it flows through the whole, it will weaken the whole. A hint, an innuendo, uttered in the privacy of the tea-table, may ruin the character at the distance of thousands of miles. We are wonderfully knit together in the wide-spreading, entangled, many-coloured web work of humanity; and the great bond of union is the truth, is the true one, in whom, as a centre, all that is truthful, and beautiful, and serene, find their resting place and their home! (W. Graham, D. D.)Penalty of lying When martial law was proclaimed in Devonshire and Cornwall in 1549, there was a miller who had been out with Arundel, and, expecting inquiry, had persuaded a servant to take his place and name. Sir Anthony Kingston, the provost Marshall, came riding up to the door one day. “ Are you the miller?” said he. “ If you please, yes,” was the unsuspecting answer. “ Up with him,” said Kingston. “ He is a busy knave; hang him up.” In vain the poor man called out then that he was no miller, but an innocent servant. “ Thou art a false knave, then,” said the provost-marshall, “ to be in two tales; therefore hang him” --and he was hanged forthwith. Love of truth A ragged little nine-year-old boy, stowed away on board a steamer bound for New York, was discovered and questioned by the mate of the vessel. The little fellow’ s story was that his stepfather had smuggled him on board, so that he could get out to an aunt living in Halifax, who was well off. The mate, in spite of the lad’ s sunny face and truthful-looking eyes, doubted his tale, thinking he had been brought on board and fed by the sailors, and handled the little fellow rather roughly. He was questioned and requestioned, but always with the same result. At last the mate, wearied by his persistence, seized him one day by the collar, and told him that unless he told the truth in ten minutes from that time he would hang him from the yard arm. He then made him sit down under it on the deck. All around him were the passengers and sailors of the midday watch, and in front of him stood the inexorable mate with his chronometer in his hand. When eight minutes had fled the mate told him he had but two minutes to live, and advised him to speak the truth and save his life; but he replied, with the utmost simplicity and sincerity, by asking the mate if he might pray. The mate said nothing, but nodded his head, and turned as pale as a ghost, and shook with trembling like a reed shaken with the wind. And there, eyes turned on him, the brave and noble little fellow, this poor waif whom society owned not, and whose own stepfather could not care for him--there he knelt with clasped hands and eyes upturned to heaven, while he repeated audibly the Lord’ s prayer, and prayed the dear Lord Jesus to take him to heaven. Sobs broke from strong, hard hearts as the mate sprang forward to the boy and clasped him to his bosom, and kissed him and blessed him, and told him how sincerely he now believed his story, and how glad he was that he had been brave enough to face death and be willing to sacrifice his life for the truth of his word. The power of truth How simply and beautifully has Abd-el-Kadir, of Ghilon, impressed us with the love of truth in his childhood! After stating the vision which made him entreat of his mother to go to Bagdad and devote himself to God, he thus proceeds:--“ I informed her what I had seen, and she wept; and taking out eighty dinars, she told me, that as I had a brother, half of that was all my inheritance. She made me swear, when she gave it to me, never to tell a lie, and afterwards bade me farewell, exclaiming, ‘ Go, my son; I consign thee to God; we shall not meet until the day of judgment.’ I went on well till I came near Hamandnal, when our Kafillah was plundered by sixty horsemen. One fellow asked me what I had got. ‘ Forty dinars,’ said I, ‘ are sewed up under my garments.’ The fellow laughed, thinking I was joking. ‘ And what have you got? ‘ said another. I gave him the same answer. When they were dividing the spoil I was called to an eminence where the chief stood. ‘ What property have you got, my little fellow?’ said he. ‘ I have told two of your people already,’ I replied. ‘ I have forty dinars sewed in my garments.’ He ordered them to be ripped open, and found my money. ‘ And how came you,’ he said, in surprise, ‘ to declare so openly what had been so carefully concealed?’ ‘ Because I will not be false to my mother, to whom I have promised I would never tell a lie.’ ‘ Child,’ said the robber, ‘ hast thou such sense of duty to thy mother at thy years, and am I insensible, at my age, of the duty I owe to God? Give me thy hand, innocent boy,’ he continued, ‘ that I may swear repentance upon it.’ He did so. His followers were all alike struck with the scene. ‘ You have been our leader in guilt,’ said they to their chief; ‘ be the same in the path of virtue.’ And they instantly, at his order, made restitution of their spoil, and vowed repentance on his hand.” Speaking the truth During the Chartist agitation many of Kingsley’ s friends and relations tried to withdraw him from the people’ s cause, fearful lest his prospects in life might be seriously prejudiced; but to all of them he turned a deaf ear, and in writing to his wife on the subject he says--“ I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. My path is clear, and I will follow in it.” (Alex. Bell, B. A.)Members of each other When the knitter has completed the sock, there is no part of it in which the yarn, in and of itself, is of great value; and yet, take away any thread of it and you leave a hole. So in life things are important not according to their individual measurement or emphasis, not according to their report to the eye or to the ear, but according to ,their relationship to the multitude. Singly they are like grains of sand, but united they are vast as the shore. The shore cannot spare its sand. Human life makes itself by its little deeds, and becomes great by the sum of all its minute things; but there is a universal contention of men to seek great things. Ephesians 4:26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.Dissuasive from anger I. A general principle. It must keep clear of sin “ be ye angry, and sin not.”1. Unjust anger is clearly wrong. 2. Excessive anger comes under the same condemnation. 3. Personal anger is scarcely ever without sin; yet this is the character of the greater number of cases. We are angry with the person, rather than with his misconduct. 4. Selfish anger may always be suspected of sin. II. A special rule. “ Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” III. An awful motive. “ Neither give place to the devil.” There are two characters which the devil sustains towards us: he is our accuser, and our tempter. In both these characters he gains an advantage over us by means of sinful anger.1. It furnishes him with a charge against us. Dream not that angry words are mere idle breath: “ By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” 2. It assists his temptations of us. Everyone must know what a pitiable creature he is, who gives way to unbridled anger. Only work on his passion, and you may make him believe anything--say anything--do anything. And the man unconsciously “ gives place” to his enemy. While proudly resolving not to give way to a fellow creature, whose ill-will could do him little injury, and might have been disarmed by gentleness or yielding: he throws himself into the arms of one who seizes the occasion for promoting the destruction of both body and soul in hell. (J. Jowett, M. A.)Anger not to be sinfully indulged I. Anger kept within its due bounds. I shall consider this as in holy anger. And there is in it--1. A commotion of the spirit, which ariseth from the apprehension of a real injury; for if it be only imaginary it is sinful. This is necessary to stir up a man’ s desire to see the wrong rectified. 2. There is hatred in it, not at the persons but at their sins, whether they be our own sins or others. In this respect it is called “ indignation” (2 Corinthians 7:11). This is most desirable, when it is kept purely on this object. That is not the part where we are in hazard of excess, seeing we are commanded to abhor that which is evil. 3. There is grief in it (Mark 3:5). This naturally follows on hatred of the thing, which likewise ariseth from a just apprehension of the evil of it in a gracious soul. And from both ariseth-- 4. A desire of the vindication of the right and honour of the party injured. II. Sinful anger condemned. We are to consider it in its rise, and the passion transgressing due bounds, which makes it sinful, however short, while it lasts. Now, for clearing of what this sinful anger is, we must consider the due boundary of holy and just anger, and what is beyond these is sinful.1. The grounds of holy anger are just and weighty, such as God’ s dishonour by our own sins, and the sins of others (2 Corinthians 7:11; Exodus 22:9). It must, then, be sinful anger, when it is without a just ground. 2. The degree of holy anger is proportioned to the fault. When the anger, then, in respect of degrees, exceeds the measure of the offence, and men are carried so far beside themselves, as to turn about the cart wheel on the cummin that might be beat out with the rod, then it is sinful anger. 3. The end of holy anger which it is directed, is the glory of God and the good of our neighbour (Proverbs 13:24; John 2:16-17). Sinful, then, it must be, when it is a fire lighting on others, to make them sacrifices to cursed self, to satisfy the desires of a proud heart (Proverbs 27:25), which will never think it gets enough from others. 4. The effects of holy anger, directly and indirectly, are just and good, for the man has rule over his own spirit, and no holy affection is inconsistent with another. It fits him for his duty to God and men, as may be seen in the case of Moses praying for the people (Exodus 3. The anger, then, must be sinful when its effects are hellish, as when it breaks out in clamour and evil speaking (Ephesians 4:31). III. The reason why the sinful passion is condemned. “ Neither give place to the devil.” That is, and give not place to the devil. It refers--1. To the rise of sinful anger. To give place to it is to admit the devil. 2. It refers to the progress and continuance of it. The more it is harboured, the devil is the farther admitted. He loves to fish in muddy water. When he has got the fire kindled, he employs his bellows to blow it up, and always to make the flame greater and greater, to the destruction of ourselves and others. Doctrine I. Men not only may, but ought to be angry where there is just ground for it. We know no just ground for anger but the things which are sinful. Reasons.1. Because in that case, the love and respect which we owe to God, who is dishonoured, require it. 2. The love which we owe to ourselves or others who are injured, requires it. Doctrine II. Men should beware that the fire of sinful auger kindle not in their breasts. Reasons.1. Because it is evil in itself, and dishonourable to God; being the vomit of a proud heart and an unmeekened spirit. 2. Because it is not only evil, but a mother of evil; and is not only an inlet to many mischiefs to ourselves and others, put drives men to them to act with vigour. An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression. Doctrine III. If sinful anger do enter our breasts, we must endeavour to extinguish it quickly, and beware of nourishing it. Doctrine IV. That the admitting and lodging of sinful anger in our hearts is a giving place to the devil. For remedies--1. Let us consider our own vileness and unworthiness, and how often we are provoking the Lord, and so turn our anger against ourselves. 2. Let us consider these things with which we are so ready to be hurried away, are the trials of our patience, and we are on our trial for heaven. 3. Let us propose to ourselves the example of the meek and lowly Jesus. “ He suffered, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.” Lastly--Out of a sense of our utter inability to resist the least temptation, look to Jesus for strength, and by faith draw strength from Him. (T. Boston, D. D.)A dissuasive from violent passion I. Some rules to distinguish the nature and the degree of anger when it becomes criminal.1. Man having been created susceptible of anger, to enable him to repel with courage the evil which encompasses, or to surmount with activity the calamity which threatens him, it is evident that whoever unnecessarily provokes him is to a certain degree culpable. 2. Since every impulse should be proportionate to the power of the motives which produce it, it is no less evident that all anger, and every emotion carried to excess--that is, which exceed the bounds prescribed by reason, are criminal. 3. It will also be hateful in the sight of God, when through indulgence it degenerates into hatred or malice, into resentment or a desire of revenge. 4. Anger becomes a sin of more aggravated nature, when by continual indulgence it resumes, as it were, a constitutional property. 5. Anger is always criminal, when, either in its nature or attendant circumstances, it, in any manner, is injurious to reason and religion, or involves, in its consequences, either ourselves or other men in trouble. II. I now proceed, under the second head, to propose some considerations to engage you to regulate this passion.1. Nothing is more indecent, disgraceful, and contemptible than the character of a passionate and violent man. Rage always supposes weakness; hence children, sick people, and women, are the most subject to it. 2. blot only is the anger of which I am speaking contemptible, odious, and criminal in itself, but it is also melancholy and criminal in its effects and consequences. A man, by frequent transports of rage, impairs his health. Add to this, that a man who is master of himself has, in all circumstances of life, an infinite advantage over a violent person. At every turn he gives some advantage to his adversary. 3. Besides, a man of an outrageous temper is almost always unhappy; he is always exposed to chagrin, occasioned by his own irritability. Rage is to the soul what fever is to the body: as a fever throws the whole animal economy into disorder, rage, in like manner, so agitates the soul as to bereave it of peace. (P. Bertrand.)Godlike anger I. What is the sort of anger here allowed or enjoined? Evidently it must be anger of such a sort as shall be in keeping and in harmony with the sphere in which it works, viz., the sphere of the truth as it is in Jesus, in contrast to the deceit or lie of which the devil is the father. The anger of the new man is, in one word, sympathy with God; intelligent, confiding, loving sympathy with God. II. What are the conditions annexed to the allowance or injunction?1. It must be sinless. Remember that anger too readily allies itself to that self-love in you which is the real root and ground, the source and spring, of the anger of the old man, which is altogether sinful, and of whatever is sinful in the anger of the new man. God’ s anger, on the contrary, is absolutely holy. For He is never angry on His own account, or for injury done to Him. What makes Him angry, however it may be opposed to His nature and will, does not really touch His essential glory and blessedness. 2. It must be short. If a moment suffice for the anger of God, surely a day may be more than enough for yours. If His righteous and holy wrath endureth but for a moment, yours may well subside ere sundown. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)The warning against anger We ought to mind this warning against anger, because if we give way to angry feelings, it will have a bad effect upon us in three ways. I. If we give way to anger, it will interfere with our comfort. An angry man can never feel comfortable. Anger in our hearts or minds is just like a storm at sea. That storm, while it lasts, disturbs everything. As long as that storm continues it interferes, most seriously, with the comfort of all on board the vessel, which is exposed to it. Most of the passengers will be made seasick, and be obliged to go to bed, and their comfort will be wonderfully interfered with while that storm lasts. And just as a storm at sea acts on a vessel that is exposed to it, so anger acts on the soul where its influence is felt. It upsets and disturbs all our thoughts and feelings, and interferes entirely with our comfort. II. The second reason for minding this warning against anger is because it will interfere with our duty. Suppose I should wake up some morning, and on looking at my watch to see what time it was, should find that it had stopped, and was keeping time no longer. The mainspring is not broken. It was not run down, for I wound it up last night before I went to bed. But still the watch has stopped. It will not keep time. I cannot tell what is the matter with it. After breakfast I take it to the watchmaker, and ask him to examine it, and find out what the trouble is. He opens the watch, and putting on one of his magnifying glasses, he looks carefully into it. Presently he lays it down, and says, “ I see what the trouble is. A little grain of sand has got in among the works, some how or other, and that interferes with the working of the watch and makes it stop.” Then he goes to work and removes that grain of sand, and after this is done the watch goes on keeping time as usual. Now, our souls are like watches in some respects. Our thoughts, and feelings, and desires are very much like the wheels, or works of a watch. While our feelings and tempers are all right, the wheels will go on, and the watch will keep good time. But, if we give way to a wrong feeling or temper, like anger, it will be like the grain of sand in the works of the watch. It will stop them from going on, and the watch will not be able to keep time. When George IV was King of England he desired one day to receive the sacrament of the Lord’ s Supper, and he sent for the Bishop of Winchester to come and administer it to him. The messenger who was sent on this errand was very slow in his movements, and loitered along the way. This caused a long delay before the arrival of the bishop, and the king got very impatient about it. When the bishop came he stated that he started immediately on getting the message, but that the servant had been very slow in coming to him. This made the king angry. He rang the bell and called for the messenger. When he entered the room the king reproved him very sharply, dismissed him from his service, and told him to leave the palace at once. As soon as he was gone the king turned to the bishop, and said, “ Now, my lord, we will go on with our service.” But the bishop, with great mildness, and yet very firmly, said, “ Please your majesty, I cannot do that. The temper just displayed is not a fit preparation for this solemn service.” The king saw that he had done wrong, and made a suitable apology to the bishop. Then he sent for his servant, asked his pardon for speaking so angrily to him, and told him, in the pleasantest possible way, that he should keep his position in the king’ s employ. III. And the third reason for minding this warning against anger is, that it will interfere with our safety. If we do what we know is wrong; if we let the sun go down upon our wrath, and give way to anger, then we are doing that which will interfere with our safety. Our shield and armour will be taken away, and we shall be exposed to all sorts of dangers. (Dr. Newton.)The damager of anger The angry man is compared to a ship sent into the sea, which hath the devil for its pilot. (T. Adams.)Description of anger Anger sets the house on fire, and all the spirits are busy upon trouble, and intend propulsion and defence, displeasure and revenge; it is a short madness, and an eternal enemy to discourse, and sober counsels, and fair conversation; it is a fever in the heart, and a calenture in the head, and a fire in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over. It hath in it the trouble of sorrow, and the heats of lust, and the disease of revenge, and the bodings of a fever, and the rashness of precipitancy, and the disturbance of persecution. If it proceed from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so it is always terrible or ridiculous. It makes a man’ s body deformed and contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the face pale or fiery, the gait fierce. It is neither manly nor ingenuous, and is a passion fitter for flies and wasps than for persons professing nobleness and bounty. It is a confluence of all the irregular passions. There is in it envy and scorn, fear and sorrow, pride and prejudice, rashness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil, and a desire to inflict it. (Bp. Jeremy Taylor.)Foolishness of anger To be angry is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves. (Pope.)To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and Divine. (Dr. Watts.)Short continuance of anger The English, by command of William the Conqueror, always raked up their fires and put out their candles when the curfew bell was rung; some part of which laudable custom of those times remaineth yet, in the ringing of our eight or nine o’ clock bell. Let it then mind us thus much, that the sun go not down upon our wrath; let it not carry news to the antipodes in another world of our revengeful nature, but rather quench all sparks of anger, rake up all heat of passion that may arise within us. (Spencer.)Anger--without sin One of the late Dr. Spencer’ s parishioners in Brooklyn, New York, met him hurriedly urging his way down the street one day; his lip was set, and there was something strange in that gray eye. “ How are you today, doctor?” he said, pleasantly. He waked as from a dream, and replied, soberly, “ I am mad!” It was a new word for a mild, true-hearted Christian; but he waited, and with a deep, earnest voice went on. I found a widow standing by her goods thrown in the street; she could not pay the month’ s rent; the landlord turned her out; and one of her children is going to die; and that man is a member of the Church! I told her to take her things back again. I am on my way to see him!” Be angry and sin not The easiest charge under the hardest condition that can be. He that will be angry and not sin, let him be angry at nothing but sin. (J. Trapp.)Anger must be brief Plutarch writeth that it was the custom of Pythagoras’ scholars, however they had been jarring and jangling in their disputations, yet, before the sun set, to kiss and shake hands before they departed out of the school. Leontias Patricius was one day extremely and unreasonably angry with John, Patriarch of Alexandria. At evening the patriarch sent a servant to him with this message: “ Sir, the sun is set,” upon which Patricius reflecting, and the grace of God making the impression deep, he threw away his anger, and became wholly subject to the counsel of the patriarch. (J. Trapp.)Anger hinders religious duties My grandfather, who was a very affectionate, but a passionate man, one Friday fell out with his brother, and both went home in a rage. Toward evening (the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath), his wife made her preparations for keeping holy time, but noticed that he did not light the customary lamp. She addressed him, but he paced the room in silence and evident distress of mind. “ See,” said my grandmother at length, “ the stars are already in the Lord’ s firmament, and our Sabbath lamp is still dark.” My grandfather then took his hat and staff, and with visible perturbation hurried out of the house; but in a few minutes he returned with tears of joy in his eyes. “ Now, my beloved Rebecca,” cries he, “ now I am ready.” He offered up the prayer, and with evident feelings of delight kindled the lamp. He afterwards made known his dispute in the morning, adding, “ it was not possible for me to offer up the prayer and light the lamp before I was reconciled with Isaac” (that was his brother’ s name). “ But how came it to pass that you returned so quickly?” “ Why,” said he, “ Isaac, like me, could not rear--it was with him as it was with me--he also could not enter upon the Sabbath without being reconciled. We met each other in the street--he was coming to me, I was going to him--we fell into each other’ s arms, weeping.” (Dr. Capadose.)Anger to be speedily got rid of If we have eaten poison, we seek forthwith to vomit it up again with all speed; and if we be fallen into any disease, we use the means we can to provide a remedy; so, likewise, when we feel any unruly motions of anger, and the fiery flames thereof be once kindled in our hearts, we must be careful to repress them, as we would be to quench the fire in our houses. (Cawdray.)Silent anger If anger arises in thy breast, instantly seal up thy lips, and let it not go forth; for, like fire when it wants vent, it will suppress itself. It is good in a fever to have a tender and smooth tongue; but it is better that it be in anger; for if it be rough and distempered, there it is an ill sign, but here it is an ill cause. Angry passion is a fire, and angry words like breath to fan them together; they are like steel and flint, sending out fire by mutual collision. (Bp. Jeremy Taylor.)Anger kept too long Anger in itself is no sin, but it has a tendency to become so rapidly if it be harboured too long. Like the manna, it corrupts and breeds worms if kept over night in the close chamber of the heart. Then it will appear in the morbid shapes of spite, malice, revenge. The Christian rule is to throw it all away before the fermentation commences. (Dean Goulburn.)The folly of anger The choleric man is like one that dwells in a thatched house, who, being rich in the morning, by a sudden fire is a beggar before night. How foolish is the bee that loses her life and her sting together. She puts another to a little pain, but how dearly does she pay for it. (T. Adams.)The folly of meeting anger with anger Like as if a man join fire to fire, he maketh the flame the greater; even so, if a man think to suppress another man’ s anger by being angry himself, he shall both lose his labour, and rather increase the other man’ s anger. (Cawdray.)A mad dog that bites another makes him as mad as himself; so, usually the injuries and reproaches of others foster up our revenge, and then there is no difference between us. (T. Manton, D. D.)Forgiveness before sundown Forgiveness before sundown! He who never feels the throb of indignation is imbecile. He who can walk among the injustices of the world inflicted upon himself and others, without flush of cheek, or flash of eye, or agitation of nature, is either in sympathy with wrong or semi-idiotic. It all depends on what you are angry at, and how long the feeling lasts, whether anger is right or wrong. Life is full of exasperations. Saul after David, Succoth after Gideon, Korah after Moses, the Pasquins after Augustus, the Pharisees after Christ, and everyone has had his pursuers, and we are swindled, or belied, or misrepresented, or persecuted, or in some way wronged, and the danger is that healthful indignation shall become baleful spite, and that our feelings settle down into a prolonged outpouring of temper displeasing to God and ruinous to ourselves, and hence the important injunction of the text, “ Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” No, no; I think of five reasons why we should not let the sun set before our temper sets.1. Because twelve hours is long enough to be cross about any wrong inflicted upon us. Nothing is so exhausting to physical health or mental faculty as a protracted indulgence of ill-humour. It racks the nervous system. It hurts the digestion. It heats the blood in brain and heart until the whole body is first overheated and then depressed. Besides that, it sours the disposition, turns one aside from his legitimate work, expends energies that ought to be better employed, and does us more harm than it does our antagonist. Paul gives us good, wide allowance of time for legitimate denunciation, from six o’ clock to six o’ clock, but says: “ Stop there!” Watch the descending orb of day, and when it reaches the horizon, take a reef in your disposition. Unloose your collar and cool off. Change the subject to something delightfully pleasant. Aye, you will not postpone till sundown forgiveness of enemies if you can realize that their behaviour towards you may be put into the catalogue of the “ all things” that “ work together for good to those that love God.” Suppose, instead of waiting until this evening, when the sun will set, you transact this glorious work of forgiveness before meridian. 2. We ought not to let the sun go down on our wrath, because we will sleep better if we are at peace with everybody. Insomnia is getting to be one of the most prevalent of disorders. To relieve this disorder all narcotics, and sedatives, and chloral, and bromide of potassium, and cocaine and intoxicants are used, but nothing is more important than a quiet spirit if we would win somnolence. How is a man going to sleep when he is in mind pursuing an enemy? Why not put a boundary to your animosity? Why let your foes come into the sanctities of your dormitory? Why let those slanderers who have already torn your reputation to pieces or injured your business, bend over your midnight pillow and drive from you one of the greatest blessings that God can offer--sweet, refreshing, all-invigorating sleep. Why not fence out your enemies by the golden bars of the sunset? 3. We ought not to allow the sun to set before forgiveness takes place, because we might not live to see another day. The majority of people depart this life in the night. Between eleven o’ clock p.m. and three o’ clock a.m. there is something in the atmosphere which relaxes the grip which the body has on the soul, and most people enter the next world through the shadows of this world. Perhaps God may have arranged it in that way, so as to make the contrast the more glorious. I have seen sunshiny days in this world that must have been almost like the radiance of heaven. Shall we then leap over the roseate bank of sunset into the favourite hunting ground of disease and death, carrying our animosities with us? 4. We ought not to allow the passage of the sunset hour before the dismissal of all our affronts, because we may associate the sublimest action of the soul with the sublimest spectacle in nature. It is a most delightful thing to have our personal experiences allied with certain subjects. There is a tree or river bank where God first answered your prayer. Some of you have pleasant memories connected with the evening star, or the moon in its first quarter, or with the sunrise. Because you saw it just as you were arriving at harbour after a tempestuous voyage. Forever and forever. Oh, hearer, associate the sunset with your magnanimous, out-and-out, unlimited renunciation of all hatreds and forgiveness of all foes. I admit it; is the most difficult of all graces to practise, and at the start you may make a complete failure; but keep on in the attempt to practise it. Shakespeare wrote ten dramas before he reached “ Hamlet,” and seventeen before he reached the “ Merchant of Venice,” and twenty-eight before he reached “ Macbeth.” And gradually you will come from the easier graces to the most difficult. Besides that, it is not a matter of personal determination so much as the laying hold of the Almighty arm of God, who will help us to do anything we ought to do. Remember that in all personal controversies the one least to blame will have to take the first step at pacification, if it is ever effective. The contest between AEschines and his rival resounds through history, but his rival, who was least to blame, went to AEschines and said: “ Shall we not agree to be friends before we make ourselves the laughing stock of the whole country?” And AEschines said: “ Thou art a far better man than I, for I began the quarrel, but thou hast been the first in healing the breach,” and they were always friends afterwards. So let the one of you that is least to blame take the first step towards conciliation. The one most in the wrong will never take it. We talk about the Italian sunsets, and sunset amid the Apennines, and sunset amid the Cordilleras, but I will tell you how you may see a grander sunset than any mere lover of nature ever beheld; that is, by flinging into it all your hatreds and animosities, and let the horses of fire trample them, and the chariots of fire roll over them, and the spearmen of fire stab them, and the beach of fire consume them, and the billows of fire overwhelm them. 5. We should not let the sun go down on our wrath, because it is of little importance what the world says of you or does to you when you have the affluent God of the sunset as your provider and defender. People talk as though it were a fixed spectacle of nature and always the same. But no one ever saw two sunsets alike, and if the world has existed six thousand years, there have been about two million one hundred and ninety thousand sunsets, each of them as distinct from all the other pictures in the gallery of the sky as Titian’ s “ Last Supper,” Rubens’ “ Descent from the Cross,” Raphael’ s “ Transfiguration,” and Michael Angelo’ s “ Last Judgment” are distinct from each other. If that God of such infinite resources that He can put on the wall of the sky each night more than the Louvre and the Luxembourg galleries all in one, is my God and your God, our Provider and Protector, what is the use of our worrying about any human antagonism? If we are misinterpreted, the God of the many coloured sunset can put the right colour on our action. (Dr. Talmage.)Sundown There was a very holy patriarch of Alexandria, called John. The Governor of Alexandria had imposed a tax on the city which fell with peculiar severity on the poor, whilst the rich got off with comparative ease. The patriarch went to the Governor, whose name was Nicetas, and remonstrated with him. Nicetas was furious. He stormed against the bishop, and pursued him to his own house and inner chamber, using fierce abuse. He had completely lost control over himself, so great was his anger at the prelate’ s interference. John was much agitated and distressed. He waited all the afternoon, praying for a reconciliation, but not another word had he with the Governor. As the evening drew on, he became still more uneasy. He felt he could not sleep with bitterness subsisting between them. So he wrote on a slip of parchment the words, “ The sun is setting,” and sent it to Nicetas, who, recalling the maxim of St. Paul, was moved to regret his violence, and he hasted to the patriarch’ s residence, asked his pardon, and their broken friendship was restored. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.) Ephesians 4:27 Neither give place to the devil. The defeat to be dreaded I. The devil strives to gain the mastery over man. He comes into actual contact with us, even against our will. He studies our character. When Napoleon entered fresh territory, he spread a map upon the ground, and upon his knees he pondered it until he made himself familiar with all its features; he knew the rivers with their bridges and fords, the villages and their position in relation to adjacent towns: he then planned his modes of attack. Our dread spiritual adversary has his wiles and stratagems. He watches his victim, acquaints himself with his constitutional infirmities, his temper, appetites, propensities; then constructs his assaults accordingly. In this collision of foeship he sternly resolves to conquer. II. Man is to successfully resist the devil. He has the intercession of Christ, and the help of the Holy Spirit--two mighty forces. III. The issue of the conflict.1. If the devil gain the day, it means ruin to the soul.2. Think of the importance of the strife, and strain every nerve for conquest. (J. D. Tetley.)Danger of giving place to the devil The devil is no myth nor bugbear to frighten bad children with, but a real being, and powerful. Most plausible and smooth of tongue, the devil makes the largest promises, but he is a poor paymaster. Old King Canute, the Dane, offered to make him the highest man in England who should murder his hated rival, King Edmund. The bloody deed was done, and the guilty wretch was hanged on the highest tower in London. So Satan promises to bestow upon his wining dupes anything and everything they ask, and the honour which they look for in return proves only shame, and the happiness ends in torment. “ Who is the most diligent bishop in all England?” asks old Hugh Latimer, in one of his quaint sermons. “ I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all others; he is never out of his diocese; he is ever applying to his business. His office is to hinder religion, to set up idolatry.” It is well for us to remember that the Arch-Deceiver is the same that he always was, and he was never more to be dreaded than now. He has access to us in various ways, and he knows how to make the best of his opportunities. The devil is not omnipresent, but carries on his evil work by his countless agents. Here are some of the ways in which people give place to the devil.1. The soul that is not filled with good thoughts and desires is left empty for the enemy to enter. One night, as St. Anthony sat in his cell, he heard a knocking at the door, and going to see who was there, he beheld a man of terrible aspect, and the monk asked, in alarm, who he was. The stranger answered, “ I am Satan; and I come to inquire how it is that thou and thy disciples, whenever ye stray into sin, or any evil befall ye, lay the blame on me, and load me with curses?” St. Anthony answered, with some spirit, “ Have we not cause? Dost thou not go about seeking whom thou mayest devour, and tempt and torment us?” The demon retorted, sharply, “ It is false; I do none of those things of which men accuse me; it is their own fault. They allure each other to sin; they torment and oppress each other; they go about seeking occasions to sin, and then they weakly lay the blame at my door. Since God came upon earth, and was made man to redeem man, I have no arms, no dwelling place. Let men complain of themselves, not of me.” Ah, how mortifying the truth, my friends, that we as often tempt the devil as he tempts us! 2. Another way in which people put themselves in the power of the Great Adversary is by yielding to spiritual indolence. Industry and watchfulness distinguish all real Christians. As soon as they become indolent, they cease to be on their guard against the enemy of souls. Among the disciples of Hillel, the wise teacher of Israel, was one who gave himself up to idleness. The good rabbi was grieved, and resolved to cure him of it. He accordingly took him to the valley of Hinnom, by Jerusalem, where was a standing pool, full of loathsome reptiles, and covered with muddy weeds. “ Here,” said Hillel, “ let us rest.” “ Not here,” cried the youth; “ dost thou not see what poisonous vapours it exhales?” “ Thou art right, my son,” replied the rabbi; “ and this bog is like the soul of the slothful!” This is as true of things spiritual as of things temporal. “ Because iniquity shall abound,” says our blessed Lord, “ the love of many shall wax cold” (Matthew 24:12). “ The atmosphere of sin is poisonous to everything sacred; but the first thing which it especially acts upon is love. Love is the tenderest of all plants of heaven.” 3. Another favourable opportunity which Christians too often give to Satan to do them serious mischief, is the absorbing attention which they pay to their worldly business. “ I have just seen a beautiful picture,” said one business man to another, after the cares of the day were done. “ What was it?” “ It was a landscape. The conception is most beautiful, and the execution well nigh perfect. You must be sure to go and see it before it is removed.” “ And so have I seen a fine picture today,” said the other. “ Indeed! What was it?” “ I received notice this morning that there was great suffering in a certain family, and as soon as I could leave my business, I went to see what could be done. I climbed up to the garret where the poor family was sheltered, and as I was about to knock at the door, I heard a voice in prayer. When it ceased, I entered the wretched apartment, and found a young merchant, whose store I had just been in, and whose business I knew to be very pressing. Yet he had left it, and spent some time in personal labours for the comfort of the sick and suffering, and when I arrived, he was praying with the family, preparatory to his taking his leave. I asked him how he could afford the time, at such a busy season, to engage in these merciful offices, and he told me that the ease of these poor sufferers had been made known to several professing Christians, who had given no heed to it. ‘ It is not absolutely necessary,’ he added, ‘ that I should make money; but it is necessary that the honour of Christ should be maintained.’“ I dare say you have seen some fine pictures in the attractive windows of our print shops, but have you observed one finer than this? Oh, my friends, you who, by your absorbing devotion to worldly business, are, in fact, “ giving place to the devil,” I pray you take time to examine this picture well, and if you admire it, try to furnish one like it. Dr. Judson once sent for a poor Christian convert, in India, who was about to engage in some enterprize which he feared would not be for her spiritual good. “ Look here,” he said, snatching a ruler from the table, and tracing a crooked, zigzag line upon the floor, “ here is where you have been walking. You have been out of the path half the time, but then you have kept near it, and not taken to new roads, and you have, to a certain extent, grown in grace; and now here you stand. You know where this path leads. You know what is before you: some struggles, some sorrows, and, finally, eternal life and a crown of glory. To the left, branches off another very pleasant road, and along the air floats rather temptingly a pretty bubble. You do “ not mean to leave the path you have walked in for so many years; you only purpose to step aside, and catch the bubble, and think you will come back; but you never will!” The lesson proved effectual in her case, and oh, my brethren, holding your eternal destiny in the balance, I pray God that it may not be unavailing in yours! (J. N. Norton, D. D.)Hero to resist the devil “ Neither give place to the devil.” How, then, can we most effectually resist him?1. Think of the promises of your heavenly Father; the purpose of His eternal love; the perfect and glorious attributes of His nature, all of which are engaged in your behalf. 2. Think of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the wondrous work which He has done and is still doing for you. These thoughts will strengthen your resolutions to resist the devil. 3. Prayer should be your defence in the hoar of trial. 4. Then, think finally on the cruelty, malignity, and final destiny of the devil. (W. Graham, D. D.)One sin makes room for more One sin keeps up the devil’ s interest; it is like a nest egg left there to draw a new temptation. (T. Manton, D. D.)By allowing one sin, we disarm and deprive ourselves of having a conscientious argument to defend ourselves against any other sin. He that can go against his conscience in one, cannot plead conscience against any other; for if the authority of God awes him from one, it will from all. “ How can I do this, and sin against God?” said Joseph. I doubt not but his answer would have been the same if his mistress had bid him to lie for her, as now when she enticed him to lie with her. The ninth commandment would have bound him as well as the seventh. Hence the apostle exhorts “ not to give place to the devil.” Implying, by yielding to one, we lose our ground, and what we lose he gains; and let him alone to improve advantages. The little wimble once entered, the workman can then drive a great nail. One sin will widen thy swallow a little, that thou wilt not so much strain at the next. (W. Gurnall.)One sin inclineth the mind to more. If one thief be in the house, he will let in the rest, because they have the same disposition and design. (R. Baxter.)On yielding to the devil 1. We may be sure of this, that the devil never means good, but always evil. 2. The more we yield to the influence of Satan, the further he will press his authority, and the more complete will be his dominion over us. 3. No one is obliged to yield to him. We can conquer if we will. (Homiletic Hints.)Resist the beginnings of temptations The Arabs have a fable to this effect. A miller was one day startled by a camel’ s nose thrust through the window of the room where he was sleeping. “ It is very cold outside,” said the camel; “ I only want to get my nose in.” The nose was let in, then the neck, finally the whole body. Presently the miller began to be inconvenienced at the ungainly companion he had obtained, in a room certainly net large enough for both. “ If you are inconvenienced, you may leave,” said the camel; “ as for myself, I shall stay where I am.” Ephesians 4:28 Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.Divers sorts of stealing There is the low and coarse species of stealing; there is also a refined species, which is quite as evil. The tradesman who knows that his expenditure is more than the profits of his business will cover, and yet continues to live, as long as he possibly can, on the capital and goods of his creditors, is a thief. “ Let him steal no more, but let him labour,” and live, like an honest man, on the result of his labour. How many widows and elderly people in our day have been robbed of their all by joint-stock, thieving companies! We blush and fear for our country as often as we think of the lying prospectuses, the loud pretensions and the bold front (like their architecture) of our thieving gentry. Leave your fine houses, strip you of your fine clothes, and inquire by what honest labour you can serve the commonwealth, and earn your own bread. Labour is handsome, but polite thieving is dastardly, infamous. “ Thou shalt not steal,” neither in the rudest, nor in the politest manner. Steal not thy neighbour’ s character by private slander. If thou dislikest thy neighbour express it not, lest thou shouldst rob him of the goodwill of him who hears thee. Steal not thy neighbour’ s time. If you are not concerned to fill up your own time with good works, why should you hinder another? If you steal the time of diligent man, you rob him, and the world too, of a benefit. Steal not the good thoughts of thy neighbour by occupying his attention with thy vain thoughts. Steal not the chaste affections of thy neighbour by leaving upon him the taint of thy foul passion. And before thou allowest thyself by a glance, a touch, or a word, to draw to thee the heart of any creature, inquire whether thou meanest to be true and faithful to that creature for all time? Instead of theft, every species of which is ignoble, the apostle commends to us the nobility of labouring for the benefit of others. Labour that you may have something to give. If you labour for money that money may make you great, money will degrade and ruin you. If you labour for money that you may have money to give to those who need it, you will labour temperately, and never be the slave of money. (J. Pulsford.)Honesty in bargains Some years ago it was proposed to the Duke of Wellington to purchase a farm in the neighbourhood of Strathfieldsaye, which lay contiguous to his estate, and was therefore a valuable acquisition, to which he assented. When the purchase was completed, his steward congratulated him upon having had such a bargain, as the seller was in difficulties and forced to part with it. “ What do you mean by a bargain?” said the duke. The other replied, “ It was valued at £1,100, and we have got it for £800.” “ In that case,” said the duke, “ you will please to carry the extra £300 to the late owner and never talk to me of cheap land again.” (Raikes.)Theft of various kinds I. Robbers of their neighbour’ s property.1. Almost impossible to enumerate all subdivisions of this class of men. (1) Those who commit theft directly. (a) All those who cheat in measures, weight, quality, or value of goods. (b) Those who violate the right of their neighbour, such as the advocates of unjust lawsuits and unjust judges. (c) Those who inconsiderately contract debt, and dishonest bankrupts. (d) Usurers, etc. (2) Indirectly. (a) Superiors and officers who do not prevent the infliction of damages if they can prevent it. (b) All hired men who take their pay without performing the amount of work contracted for. (c) All who try to extort from mechanics, hired men, etc., some deduction from the stipulated wages. (d) All dishonest finders. (e) All idlers, squanderers, and feigned beggars. 2. Their responsibility. We read in the life of St. Medardus that, when his cow was stolen the bell attached to her neck continued ringing, although the thief hid it in a box, and then buried it in the ground, until the cow was restored to her owner. Like this bell, goods unjustly acquired cry incessantly, “ Pay what thou owest!” (1) The duty of restitution is in the highest degree obligatory.(2) Indispensable. II. Robbers of their neighbour’ s good name.1. Different kinds of these. (1) Detractors.(2) Calumniators.(3) Listeners. 2. The guilt. This is manifest, for a man’ s good name is one of his most precious possessions (Proverbs 22:1). 3. The obligation of restitution it incurs is-- (1) Urgent.(2) Exceedingly difficult. In regard to the object; for, who can check the notoriety of vices once divulged, who repair the damage sustained? In regard to the hearers, who, according to human nature, are inclined to believe the evil rather than the good. In regard to yourself, since you must everlastingly confess yourself to be a liar and calumniator. III..1. Such are Robbers of God’ s glory principally the robbers of souls. (1) Those who give scandal by bad example, by words of double meaning, lascivious songs, shameful pictures, books, etc. (2) Seducers who, like Satan, make it their business to ruin souls by commandment, counsel, etc. (3) Negligent superiors and parents, who, like Eli, neglect their duty, and thus bring on the ruin of souls confided to their care. 2. How great is the responsibility! Eye for eye, etc. What will justice require of him who has been the means of casting into hell an immortal soul purchased at an infinite price? Soul for soul! (Venedien.)The transforming power of truth In Ephesus many lived by stealing. In Homer’ s time, 850 B.C., theft was not discreditable, being ascribed to heroes and gods. The old Spartans taught their boys to steal; the disgrace was in being caught. In low civilizations, now, thieving is common, and in low parts of a high civilization, and, indirectly, by no means uncommon all about us. For instance, in trade, when your milkman gives scant measure, or diluted milk; when shoes are made with paper soles, goods are sold as English, for a higher price, that never saw England. In working, where workmen take six days to do that which ought to be done in three--smoke and discuss politics while paid for working. A young man steals who exhausts himself by amusement or dissipation at night, so as to be unfit for work by day; who drinks, and so confuses his brain that he cannot render fit service; whose body is weary, brain muddled, or mind filled with thoughts of other things, so he can’ t render full value for pay received. Paul’ s Christian teaching will push all that out. “ Let the stealer steal no more.” It demoralizes the stealer. No man can long wrong his fellows without suffering most himself. It demoralizes society, is a constant drain upon the resources and strength of the honest and hard-working. It is not enough to stop stealing; that is but negative. The powers that were perverted must be used positively. The need for food and clothing is perpetual, and if a man can’ t meet them by stealing, he must by working. Let this same man who lived by his wits now work. The stealer becomes self-supporting. Instead of lessening the common fund for his own support, he adds to it, if he does no more. One by one the powers will fail. Man ought to provide for the days of weakness. On the Fitchburgh road lamps are lighted before the tunnel is reached, but prepared before starting. Get ready for the tunnel of old age and poverty. “ Go to the ant, thou sluggard; learn of her and be wise.” Out of each harvest should come seed corn as well as food. The Christian man is there to work, not only for self-support and for wife and family--this is binding upon man as such--but beyond this, “ that he may have to give to him that needeth.” The Christian motive for working, then, is to give or distribute. This should be the purpose, the aim, the end of work. Supplying of present need, preparing against future want, clothing, feeding, housing wife and children, and educating children--these motives build up civilization; but Christianity goes deeper, and claims more, puts as the motive of all labour this living principle--ministering to the needy. Some men toil and save and amass for the sake of the money! others for the power, or social standing, or luxuries money gives; others for the wife and children. Christian men ought to work and save for the simple purpose and end of giving to those who have need. Paul’ s consecration to Christ shaped all his life. The captain lays his course, and crosses the ocean with Liverpool in his thought. Coal is consumed and machinery driven night and day for that one purpose. Christians on the sea of life ought to subordinate all work to this one grand purpose, “ To give to him that needeth.” Some prefer to give as they get, and die poor. Some save up to endow great institutions. The purpose is the same. It is said of Peabody that he never spent more than three thousand dollars a year on himself. All that is needed is simply enough to keep the body and mind as the producing and distributing centre at the highest working point; anything more burdens and distracts. The reasons are two for this line of life.1. It does the greatest good to the greatest number, ministers to the enjoyment of the worker by bringing self-forgetfulness--the highest point of happiness always--and helps the needy. 2. It makes life Divine, Christ-like, God-like. “ God so loved the world that He gave His only- begotten Son,” etc. (O. P. Gifford.)Stealing Probably the most singular funeral sermon ever heard was that which the eccentric Rowland Hill once delivered in London over the remains of his favourite servant, Roger. “ Many persons present,” remarked the preacher, looking around on the anxious faces turned towards him, “ were acquainted with the deceased, and have had it in their power to observe his character and conduct. They can bear witness that for a considerable number of years he proved himself a perfectly honest, sober, industrious, and religious man, faithfully performing, so far as lay in his power, the duties of his station in life, and serving God with constancy and zeal. Yet this very man was once a robber on the highway.” You may readily imagine what astonishment these words produced, and amidst what profound silence the preacher thus went on: “ More than thirty years ago he stopped me on the public road, and demanded my money. Not at all intimidated, I argued with him; I asked him what could induce him to pursue so iniquitous and dangerous a course of life. His answer was, ‘ I have been a coachman; I am out of place, and I cannot get a character; I am unable to find any employment, and am therefore obliged to do this or to starve.’ I told him where I lived, and asked him to call and see me. He promised he would, and he kept his word; I talked further with him, and offered to take him into my own service. He consented, and ever since that period he has served me faithfully, and not me only, but he has faithfully served his God. Instead of finishing his life in a public and ignominious manner, with a depraved and hardened heart, as he probably would have done, he died in peace, and we trust, prepared for the society of just men made perfect. Till this day the extraordinary circumstance I have now related has been confined to his heart and mine. I have never mentioned it to my dearest friend.” The practice of stealing prevails in all pagan communities. You will find many curious instances of dexterity in theft in such books as “ Cook’ s Voyage,” and others of more recent date. We ought to learn to call things by their right names. If a poor, half-starved fellow in his shirt sleeves, shivering on a cold day, slyly takes a fustian coat worth five dollars, which is hanging out in front of a clothing store, it is spoken of by everyone as stealing, and the culprit enjoys a few years of retirement in prison to remind him of his dreadful breach of the law. On the other hand, let a so-called gentleman in broadcloth run away with fifty thousand dollars from some institution in which he had an office, and how does the world regard him? As a thief? By no means. He is only a defaulter! And yet can you see any difference between the two cases, except it be this, that the thief in broadcloth is the worst? Many acts of theft are committed out of pure thoughtlessness. Those boys who went up the river in a boat, last summer, and stopped at a watermelon patch and took a good many, and destroyed a good many more, what were they but thieves? I cannot think of a better way of applying this important subject, than to relate a little circumstance which once happened in the Sandwich Islands. A good missionary had preached a sermon on the sin of dishonesty, hoping it might not be lost upon his hearers. The very next morning, on opening the door of his bamboo hut, he was surprised to see a great many of the islanders seated on the ground, waiting for him. The missionary kindly asked why they had called upon him so early, when one of them replied, “ We have not been able to sleep all night, after hearing what you said yesterday. When we were pagans, we thought it right to steal if we could do it without being found out. Yesterday you told us that God commanded people not to steal, and as we wish to mind Him we have now brought back all the things we ever took.” One man then lifted up an axe, a hatchet, or chisel, and exclaimed, “ I stole this from the carpenter of such a ship,” naming the vessel; others handed back a saw or knife, and a great variety of other things, making the same candid confession. Then they insisted that the missionary should take these stolen goods, and keep them until he might have an opportunity of returning them to the owner. (J. N. Norton, D. D.)Honesty and work I. As to the prohibition, “ Let him that stole, steal no more.” By this we are forbidden the use of all such means, for our own maintenance and support, as are injurious to our neighbour. II. Thing to be considered in the text, “but rather let him labour.” We generally say that God has made nothing to no purpose; and yet, pray tell me what the rich man is made for, if his business be only to eat and drink, and spend his estate? Can you justify the wisdom of Providence in sending such a creature into the world? There is work cut out for all creatures, from the highest to the lowest; all things in nature have their proper business, and are made to serve some wise end of God. III. I proceed now to the third thing, which is the limitation, by which we are confined to work only the things which are good, foregoing all unlawful means of supporting ourselves. From hence it follows that you must be confined to some work which may answer to the wants or desires of life. Now the things which men want are either the necessaries, or conveniences, or pleasures of life; and all trades or callings are subservient to one or other of these. The next thing to be considered is, what is the measure of this duty; whether we are obliged to labour merely to supply our own wants and necessities, or whether there be any other duties incumbent on us, which must likewise be answered by our labour and toil? This the apostle has settled in the IV. and last place, enjoining us to labour “that we may have to give to him that needeth.” So that the end we ought to aim at by our labour and industry is to enable us, not only to support ourselves and our families, but to be contributors likewise to the wants and necessities of such as are not able to work and labour for themselves. Charity has no measure but the wants of others and our own ability. And hence it appears that by the apostle’ s rule you are bound as well to thrift and frugality as to labour; and therefore, such as work hard and spend freely all they get are highly to be blamed, and may be found at last to have spent out of the poor’ s stock, since by squandering their own they come at last to a necessity of living upon charity, by which means others are straitened that they may be supplied. (Bishop Sherlock.)The purpose of work The idle members of a community are its greatest curses. I. The wrong idea of work.1. It is wrong idea that work is wholly a curse, to be escaped if possible. See the folly of no work. (1) Powers wasted.(2) Time wasted.(3) Temptations strengthened. 2. It is a wrong idea that the end of work is to amass wealth: (1) For show.(2) For personal pleasures and gratifications. Is not this the Widely prevalent, if not predominant thought in our day? II. The sight idea of work.1. To produce something beneficial to man: “ Working with his own hands that which is good:” “ that which belongs to the category of what is good and honest … There may, perhaps, be also involved the notion of what is beneficial, and not detrimental to others.” A statue, a picture, a poem, a book, an article of clothing honestly made--all this is “ making with our hands something good.” 2. To obtain the satisfaction of imperative personal needs. 3. To give of our superfluity to the wants of others, whether bodily or spiritual. (Clerical World.)Earning a livelihood It is a singular circumstance that this stealing is put in antithesis to work: as if there were a strong implication that some men do not work, and do not get an honest livelihood. Those, whatever may have been their course, who have been obtaining a livelihood in an improper way, are enjoined to obtain it in a proper way. And what is that proper way? “ Labour: earn your livelihood; work with your hands that which is good.” Consider what earning one’ s livelihood implies; what thought more and more, as competition makes it necessary; what ingenuity, that is schoolmaster to man himself; what patience; what faith in the future; what promptness; what punctuality; what exactness; what truth; what honesty; what self-denial. Earning a man’ s livelihood in the competitions of modern society is not so easy a thing. It is that which is to be accomplished by bringing into exercise almost every one of the manly virtues: virtues on the lower plane, to be sure, but virtues none the less. The necessity of earning one’ s livelihood is also an effectual guard, in the greatest number of instances, from those temptations which come with leisure; with abundance; with what are called “ fortunate circumstances” in life. For, although with labour there may be rudeness, and although with the leisure which labour has there may be gross indulgence, the tendencies are towards such an equilibrium of the animal spirits and the mental condition, that it is easier for a man that works to avoid evil. Not only is he healthier--and health itself is a condition of morality; not only is he happier--and happiness is a co-labourer with virtue; but he is defended from many of those temptations which come from indolence. Not having enough to do to tire himself out heartily, has been the ruin of many and many a young man. It is a matter of great complaint, often, that one has to rise with the sun, or before it, in winter; that he hardly has time to eat; and that at night he is so tired that he is glad to seek his couch and fall asleep. There may be too much of that, to be sure; but too little of it has sent ten thousand young men to the pit. The necessity of a man’ s earning his own livelihood is one of those great natural, moral educations which is established in nature. (H. W. Beecher.)The worship of work Let me illustrate my meaning by some examples. What can be more secular than painting, sculpture, or architecture? yet many painters, sculptors, and architects have sanctified their brush, their chisel, their mallet, by employing them in the service of God. Some have sanctified their voices by singing the gospel as much as others in preaching it. And what is more secular or earthly than money? yet many have sanctified it by employing it in the service of God and for the good of souls. Ah! it is not merely the thing we do, but the end for which, and the spirit in which, we do it, that makes it religious, or an act of worship. Now let us remember that whatever our work may be, whether we be servants or masters, God is our Employer. He has appointed our work. (W. Grant.)A definition of industry Industry doth not consist merely in action, for that is incessant in all persons; our mind being like a ship in the sea, if not steered to some good purpose by reason yet tossed by the waves of fancy, or driven by the winds of temptation some-whither; but the direction of our mind to some good end, without roving or flinching, in a straight and steady course, drawing after it our active powers in execution thereof, doth constitute industry. (I. Barrow, D. D.)The joy of industry Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure; for nothing is so opposite to the true enjoyment of life as the relaxed and feeble state of an indolent mind. He who is a stranger to industry may possess, but he cannot enjoy. It is labour only that gives a relish to pleasure. It is the indispensable condition of our possessing a sound mind in a sound body. Idleness is so inconsistent with both, that it is hard to determine whether it be a greater foe to virtue, or to health and happiness. Inactive as it is in itself, its effects are fatally powerful. Though it appears a slowly flowing stream, yet it undermines all that is stable and flourishing. It is like water, which first putrefies by stagnation, and then sends up noxious vapours, filling the atmosphere with death. (H. Blair, D. D.) Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.Conversation Well might the holy Bishop of Mona add to these words, “ Preserve me, O God, from a vain conversation.” For this is no isolated passage (see Psalms 141:3; Ephesians 5:4; Proverbs 10:19; Matthew 12:36-37; James 3:8). How is it, then, that in that which is of all most dangerous we are least guarded? No doubt one cause of this carelessness is the difficulty of the work; but another is disbelief in its necessity. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that words are acts. To witness a good confession saves. I. Words are acts in two ways.1. They are results: the completion and effect of certain passions and states of feeling. When a passionate man has spoken out he is relieved; he has fulfilled his anger; and in this way words manifest a man. Being outward, they come forth, and show what was inward. 2. Words are acts, as being causes of something beyond. Effects of passion, they produce passion. They quiver on through the air; endlessly waking up harmony or discord, in regions and in generations yet unknown. II. Rules for the improvement of conversation.1. To learn silence, the best security. By this means persons would constantly be saved form unintentionally joining in what they really disapprove. By this also they would learn to govern their tongue. By this too they would find time for thought, and would escape vanity and unreality. 2. That they may not be gloomy and unsocial, yea, and may have the privilege of doing something more for society than merely abstaining from its faults, persons can frequently turn a conversation to objects of real interest; to higher and more improving topics. 3. But when we have once launched into conversation, we must double the guard at the gate of our mouth. We must watch that nothing be said for our own glory, nothing to the disrepute of our neighbour, nothing light or unbecoming a strict profession of religion; and, should religious conversation commence, let us not join in it, unless prudently to correct some great misstatements, and unless it be “ seasonable,” i.e., when men are like to be the better for it. Not in promiscuous company; not mixed with sports, hurry, business, or with drink. And take we heed that we join a good life to our religious conversation; and never contradict our tongue by our deeds. (W. E. Heygate, M. A.)Bad results of corrupt communications Can we not all remember some wrong and foolish saying of our elders, which has done us harm for life? some idle tale, or joke, some passionate or irreverent word? And if we can remember some, how many have we not forgotten? Were we uninfluenced by all those foolish praises, with which men and women poison the young? Were we unhurt by all that was said of a fine spirit, or of its being manly to give blow for blow? Did we never drink in, to our injury, the worldly conversation which was not meant for our ears; conversation implying that success is the great object of life; that this world is everything; or the admiration bestowed upon the covetous and hard and irreligious, because they were noble in rank, or successful, or clever, or agreeable? Alas! sinned against, and sinning, one generation of men defiles another by its words. And words are not only acts going forward, marring God’ s glory, and injuring souls; but acts affecting ourselves, turning back upon the speaker. It is wonderful how we persuade ourselves by our own words; work ourselves up; talk ourselves into anger and vanity. How often have we not thought it necessary to support one extreme statement by another until we have gone beyond the limits of moderation and of truth! How often have we not begun with mild reproof, and gone on into indignation and anger! This, indeed, is one secret of the warmth and power of great speakers. What they say carries them on farther and farther, step by step, until they get beyond themselves in zeal, fire of spirit, and high principles, so that we admire them as beings above ourselves, when all the while they are equally above themselves also, unnatural and unreal. Thus we elate ourselves, or depress ourselves: we exasperate ourselves; flatter ourselves into vanity; deceive ourselves, by our words. If a man wishes to check his evil tendencies, let him not discourse of them, except in confession, or confidential intercourse; nor be led into discourse by them. (W. E. Heygate, M. A.)Gentlemen here An American general was standing with his back to the fire, when a young subaltern came in, and having looked round the room, said, “ Oh! there are no ladies here. I’ ve such a capital story to tell you, I’ m glad to see there are no ladies.”--“ No,” said the general, in a moment, “ no, sir, there are Gentlemen.” (Colonel Everitt.)Bury your own corruption Corruption should always be covered and buried. If you speak it out, let it be in groans of self-loathing to God, that it may wither and die under the breath of His holiness. The root that is allowed to put forth leaf and branch, strengthens itself thereby. If you desire a root to die, suffer it not to put forth its life. Suppress, and persist in suppressing the manifestation of its life, and in due time, it will have no life to manifest. It will be a dead root. You cannot, therefore, over-estimate the wisdom of the apostle’ s counsel, “ Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.” To talk of corruption is to diffuse it from soul to soul. Let your tongue be sacred to that which is innocent, beautiful, and good. Why should you not rather have a multitude of friends, in the judgment, who shall honour and bless you for the good which you did them by your tongue? For the grace which you minister to them by your tongue now, they will minister to you their love in eternity. And in eternal life, he will be richest and happiest who is loved most. (John Pulsford.)The advantages of good discourse I. A prohibition. Under the forbidden head we are to rank all profane, irreligious, or immodest discourses. Another sort of discourses I would here mention as forbidden by the apostle, are such as are injurious to our neighbour. II. A positive direction. The subjects that should employ our conversation, we are told, are such as are good to the use of edifying, and which may minister grace to the hearers. III. An exhortation.1. I know nothing can be more justly charged with that visible decay of true zeal and piety we observe and lament in the world, than the disuse of serious and instructive discourse in conversation. It is a very great, and, in its consequences, a very fatal point gained by the libertine, when he could not prevail on men of virtue and sobriety wholly to give up their religion, yet to persuade them to confine it to the temple or the closet; to limit it to set times, to certain and those narrow bounds out of which it should be improper and ridiculous, for when once men had banished religion from so large a share of their time as is taken up in conversation, the more solemn returns of it not only grew burdensome and disaffecting from the intermission; but the vicious and profane liberties, which assumed its place in discourse, left such a stain on the minds of men, as indisposed them for the good effects of our public assemblies; and by degrees introduced in some a total disregard of all religion, and in many debased the remains of it with such a mixture of vicious habits and principles, as rendered it no better than a superficial pretence, unacceptable to God, and ineffectual to the great ends proposed in the gospel. 2. To which let me here add, that if religion were restored to its proper share in our conversations, that secret confidence of the sinner that others are as wicked as himself, though better concealed, and which perhaps is the greatest support to infidelity, would be entirely taken off. 3. Let us remember, that God is present in all our assemblies, that He remarks and treasures up against the day of our account every word and expression, and every circumstance of our behaviour in them. 4. And lastly, let it not be thought that religion is too barren or too melancholy a subject for the entertainment of a Christian. (J. Rogers, D. D.)A rule for conversation The abuses of speech and the faults committed in conversation are numerous.1. Our discourse ought at all times to be free from profaneness, from speaking contemptuously of God and religion, from ridiculing things serious and sacred, from excusing, praising, and encouraging vice and immorality. 2. Another fault from which our conversation ought to be free, is immodest language. 3. In conversation, swearing is to be avoided, under which may be included curses and imprecations on ourselves and others. 4. In our conversation, lying is to be avoided, that is, an endeavour to deceive others, by making them to believe that to be true which we know or think to be false. 5. Our speech ought also to be free from railing and abusive language. 6. Our conversation should be free from slander and defamation. 7. Another defect in conversation consists in a compliance with the faults of others. 8. Another defect in conversation is to confine it to discourses which are vain, trifling, and altogether unprofitable. 9. Another fault from which our speech ought to be free, is ill-nature and pride, and that arrogance, positiveness, vain boasting, and rude contradiction which flow from these bad dispositions. 10. Another fault in conversation is garrulity, or that talkative humour which engrosses all the discourse to itself. 11. Another fault to be shunned is flattery, a fault by which we abase ourselves, and do hurt to those whose conceit and self-love we soothe and increase. 12. Another fault, in some respects like that before mentioned, is a perfidious insincerity, making great professions of esteem and friendship to persons whom we value not, and never intend to serve. 13. Lastly, there is a thing called banter and ridicule, which enters much into some conversations, and which whosoever shall condemn, runs the risk of provoking a malicious sort of people. Let us consider, then, what are the proper subjects of our discourse.1. There are many subjects which relate not directly to virtue and piety, and yet deserve not to be called trifles, subjects taken from our own affairs, from the common occurrences of life, from the various studies and employments which make the honest and innocent occupations of men. 2. There is moral and religious discourse which certainly agrees with the spirit of Christianity, but which the world generally dislikes and avoids as dull and unfashionable. (J. Jortin, D. D.)Unprofitable speech Madame Antoinette Sterling, when asked to go on the operatic stage, replied, “ I cannot. I stand by every word I utter when I sing, and I feel I must to the death. It is not alone song with me--melodious sounds; it is the lesson inculcated: hope in the future, bright joys to come, the mercy of an all-wise God. I would not sing a wicked or a frivolous word before an audience for anything on earth.” (Francis Hay.) Ephesians 4:30 And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.Grieve not the Holy Spirit It is a very clear proof of the personality of the Holy Spirit that He can be grieved. Our text, moreover, reveals to us the close connection between the Holy Spirit and the believer; He must take a very tender and affectionate interest in us, since He is grieved by our shortcomings and our sins. I. The astounding fact that the Holy Spirit may be grieved.1. The loving grief of the Holy Ghost may be traced to His holy character and perfect attributes. It is the nature of a holy being to be vexed with unholiness.2. But it is mainly for our sakes that He is grieved.3. Doubtless also for Jesus Christ’ s sake.4. For the Church’ s sake. II. Secondly, let us refer to deplorable causes which produce the grief of the Holy Spirit. The context is some assistance to us.1. We learn that sins of the flesh, filthiness, and evil speaking of every sort, are grievous to Him. “ Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.” In Noah’ s day, the dove found no place for the sole of its foot on all the carcasses floating in the waste; and even so the heavenly Dove finds no repose in the dead and corrupt things of the flesh. 2. It appears, from the thirty-first verse, that the Holy Ghost is grieved by any approach to bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking, and malice. 3. I have no doubt it greatly grieves the Spirit to see in believers any degree of love of the world. His holy jealousy is excited by such unholy love. If a mother should see her child fender of someone else than of her; if she should know that it was more happy in the company of a stranger than when in the bosom of its own parent, she would feel it a very hard trial to bear. Now, the Spirit of God gives to us believers celestial joys and abounding comforts; and if He sees us turn our back upon all these, to go into worldly company, to feed greedily upon the same empty joys which satisfy worldlings, He is a jealous God, and He takes it as a great slight put upon Himself. 4. The Spirit of God is greatly grieved by unbelief. What would grieve you more, than to have your child suspect your truthfulness? 5. The Spirit is doubtless grieved by our ingratitude. 6. And by pride we sorely grieve the blessed Spirit. 7. Another thing which grieves the Spirit is a want of prayer. 8. The indulgence of any known sin. III. The lamentable result of the Spirit’ s being grieved.1. The loss of all sense of His presence.2. Loss of Christian joy.3. Loss of power.4. Loss of assurance.5. Loss of usefulness. Let a Church grieve the Spirit of God, and oh, the blights that shall come and wither her fair garden! IV. Lastly, there is one personal argument which is used in the text to forbid our grieving the Spirit--“ Whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” What does this mean? There are many meanings assigned by different commentators: we shall be content with the following.1. A seal is set upon a thing to attest its authenticity and authority.2. Once more, a seal is used for preserving, as well as for attesting. The Eastern seals up his money bags to secure the gold within, and we seal our letters to guard the enclosure. A seal is set for security. Grieve not, then, that Spirit upon whom you are so dependent: He is your credentials as a Christian; He is your life as a believer. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Grieving the Holy Spirit Anger begets anger; but grief begets pity, and pity is next akin to love; and we love those whom we have caused to grieve. Now, is not this a very sweet expression--“ Grieve not the Holy Spirit” ? I. The love of the spirit. The love of the Spirit!--how shall I tell it forth? Surely it needs a songster to sing it, for love is only to be spoken of in words of song. The love of the Spirit.1. Let me tell you of His early love to us. He loved us without beginning. 2. Was it not He who guided you to Jesus? 3. Since then, how sweetly has He proved His love. Not only in His first strivings, or after quickenings; but in the sequel, how much have we owed to His instruction. 4. Forget not, also, how much we owe to His consolation. 5. Remember how much He loves us, when He helps our infirmities. 6. Another token of His love, is His indwelling in the saints. II. It is by the Holy Spirit we are sealed. The Spirit Himself is expressed as the seal, even as He Himself is directly said to be the pledge of our inheritance. The sealing, I think, has a three-fold meaning.1. It is a sealing of attestation or confirmation. No faith is genuine, which does not bear the seal of the Spirit. No love, no hope can ever save us, except it be sealed with the Spirit of God, for whatever has not His seal upon it is spurious. Faith that is unsealed may be a poison, it may be presumption; but faith that is sealed by the Spirit is true, real, genuine faith. 2. It is a sealing of appropriation. When men put their mark upon an article, it is to show that it is their own. The farmer brands his tools that they may not be stolen. The shepherd marks his sheep that they may be recognized as belonging to his flock. The king himself puts his broad arrow upon everything that is his property. So the Holy Spirit puts the broad arm of God upon the hearts of all His people. 3. Again, by sealing is meant preservation. Men seal up that which they wish to have preserved, and when a document is sealed it becomes valid henceforth. Now, it is by the Spirit of God that the Christian is sealed, kept, preserved, unto the day of redemption. III. The grieving of the Spirit. How may we grieve Him--what will be the sad result of grieving Him--if we have grieved Him, how may we bring Him back again?1. How may we grieve the Spirit? I am now, mark you, speaking of those who love the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin is as easy as it is wicked. (1) You may grieve Him by impure thoughts. He cannot bear sin. (2) We grieve Him yet more if we indulge in outward acts of sin. Then is He sometimes so grieved that He takes His flight for a season, for the Dove will not dwell in our hearts if we take loathsome carrion in there. (3) Again, if we neglect prayer, if our closet door is cobwebbed, if we forget to read the Scriptures, if the leaves of our Bible are almost stuck together by neglect, if we never seek to do any good in the world, if we live merely for ourselves and not to Christ, then the Holy Spirit will be grieved. (4) Again, the Holy Spirit is exceedingly grieved by our unbelief. 2. Now, suppose the Holy Spirit is grieved, what is the effect produced upon us? (1) When the Spirit is grieved first, He bears with us. He is grieved again and again, and again and again, and still He bears with it all. (2) But at last, His grief becomes so excessive, that He says, “ I will suspend My operations; I will be gone; I will leave life behind Me, but My own actual presence I will take away.” Our graces are much like the flower called the Hydrangia, when it has plenty of water it blooms, but as soon as moisture fails, the leaves drop down at once. And so when the Spirit goes away, faith shuts up its flowers; no perfume is exhaled. Then the fruit of our love begins to rot and drops from the tree; then the sweet buds of our hope become frostbitten, and they die. Oh, what a sad thing it is to lose the Spirit. 3. It is a mercy to know that the Spirit of God never leaves His people finally; He leaves them for chastisement, but not for damnation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Grieving the Spirit If we may speak it reverently of One so far above, out of the reach of all human language, the Holy Ghost is a Being with the tenderest of feelings. We all know the sensitiveness of the affections, the delicacy of thought, the exquisite accuracy of the moral touch, which are required for the sweet offices of consolation. In what an infinite measure, then, must those properties be combined in Him who is characteristically and exclusively “ the Comforter” of the Church! Essentially He loves us.1. Whenever you grieve the Holy Spirit you do then, in the first instance, cause sorrow--it is God’ s own word--to Him to whom you are bound by every generous feeling to give only happiness. 2. But have you considered, further, that every time you grieve the Spirit, you weaken the seals of your own security? 3. For there are few of us, I trust, who have not long since learnt that the secret of all true comfort and satisfaction in the world, is to carry within us the sunshine of God’ s love, which is peace and joy. And what is that sunshine but the unclouded indwelling of the Holy Ghost? 4. For mark it yet once more. There are four deep downward steps in the path to death: to grieve the Spirit is the first--to resist the Spirit is the second--to quench the Spirit is the third--to blaspheme the Spirit is the fourth. No one of these is ever reached but by going through that which is previous to it. Consider, therefore, first in everything you do or say--in the pleasures you allow, the friendships you form, the thoughts you indulge--how will this affect the Holy Spirit? remembering always His exceeding sensitiveness, that if you grieve Him He will leave you, till you have not feeling enough to grieve that He is gone; but if you please Him, you will more and more forever find a satisfying pleasure in Him who so graciously condescends to please Himself in you. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The grieving of the Spirit It is a very important question--“ How is the Holy Spirit grieved with us?” The great instrumentality of the Holy Ghost is conscience. Only here take care; to refuse the encouraging voices of conscience is as bad as to neglect the reproving ones. To have sinned, and to doubt the forgiveness of the sin, after you have confessed the sin, “ grieves the Holy Spirit” quite as much as the sin itself. He is “ Spirit,” --therefore material religion,--a materialistic view of spiritual things,--“ grieves” Him. He is “ the Holy Spirit” ; therefore everything which trifles with holy things--irreverence, levity on religious subjects, undevout familiarity with sacred subjects, low views of God--these things “ grieve” Him very much. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Grieving the Holy Spirit There are different ways in which you may grieve a person. If the person hate you, and wish you ill, then you may grieve and vex him by taking the course which will make you good and happy. If the person be a bad person, then you may grieve him by doing what is right. What greater stimulus to duty, than this?--“ Now, you will be industrious, and honest, and good; and make them all happy at home!” And what healthier consideration in an hour of temptation to do wrong, than that which comes first and most natural: “ Oh, you will not do that, and break your mother’ s heart!” My Christian friends, it hath pleased God, in the words of my text, to appeal to us with just that homely consideration. “ Grieve not” --the words are spoken to all of us--“ the Holy Spirit of God.” I. And first, mark who it is we are asked not to grieve. You have seen how completely it turns upon the character of the person grieved, what the kind of things shall be that are to grieve him. The Person we are asked not to grieve is the Holy Spirit of God: the blessed Comforter. He is the kindest and best: He is our warmest well-wisher. And what kindness and consideration there are in the way in which the text shows us our duty I It is our own good that the Holy Spirit is desiring to work out: and we are asked not to vex Him by obstructing Him in doing what? II. And now, looking at this precept--1. We may be very sure that we grieve the Holy Spirit, by restraining prayer, or by heartless prayers. 2. A second way in which we shall especially grieve the Holy Spirit, by especially slighting His office and work, will be by refusing to allow Him to comfort us in sorrow. 3. There is a third way in which we shall specially grieve the Holy Spirit; and this is by resisting Him when He is seeking to lead us to Christ; by refusing to turn in penitence from sin to God; and then to grow in grace and holiness. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)Grieving the Holy Spirit I. Who, then, are they, who are told not to grieve the spirit of God? It must needs be those with whom He has already taken up His abode. We may anger a stranger, but we grieve a friend. II. But let us consider is what ways the believing Christian may grieve God’ s Holy Spirit.1. If we give way to any sin in thought, word, or deed, we are then grieving the Holy Spirit. 2. But it is not only thus that we are in danger of grieving the Spirit of God; it is not only by what we do amiss, but by what we leave undone. 3. Another way of grieving the Holy Spirit is by neglecting those means of grace by which God is pleased, to work in our souls. III. What are the consequences of grieving the Spirit of God?1. We thereby become guilty of great ingratitude. 2. We also hinder our own advance in holiness and goodness. 3. And, in so doing, we lose the comforts of religion. 4. Once more: by grieving God’ s Holy Spirit, we unfit ourselves for doing good to men, and so adorning the gospel. (E. Blencowe, M. A.)The warning against grieving the Spirit Just what the heart is to the body; what the eyes are to the head; what the mainspring is to the watch; what the steam is to the locomotive; or what the rudder is to the ship, just this, and more, the Holy Spirit is to us, in trying to get to heaven. I. And in the first place, we ought to mind this warning, because grieving the Spirit will injure our knowledge. Of ourselves, we have no knowledge of the way, to heaven, and never could tell how to get there. It is the Holy Spirit alone who can give us this knowledge, but if we grieve the Spirit we shall never get this knowledge. Suppose that you and I were travelling through a strange country, like Switzerland. We should have no knowledge of the right way to travel in, so as to get safely through the country. And this would make it necessary for us to have a guide to show us the way. I remember when the Rev. Dr. Cooper of this city, and myself, were, travelling through Switzerland some years ago, an incident occurred which may come in as a good illustration of this part of our subject. We were stopping at an inn in the beautiful valley of Interlachen, and had made arrangements one evening to go on foot the next day over a high mountain, called the “ Wengern Alp,” to the valley of Lauterbrunnen, on the other side. We had engaged a guide to show us the way, and were to take an early start the next morning. There was an English traveller staying at the same inn with us. He was travelling alone, and wanted to take the same journey. He spoke to one of the guides about going with him. But he thought the man asked too much money. They could not agree about the price; so he refused to take the guide, and said he was sure he could find the way himself. He started all by himself the next morning, a good while before us. When we had got nearly half way over the mountain our guide stopped. He pointed to a dark looking little object, far off from the path in which we were walking, and said: “ There’ s the gentleman who would not have a guide. He has lost his way. He never can get out of the mountains in that direction. If he doesn’ t come back he’ ll lose his life.” Then the guide climbed up on a high piece of ground, and putting his hands to his mouth, he called out as loudly as he could, “ Come back! come back!” We could not tell whether the lost man heard him or not, or what became of him. But in refusing to take a guide to show him the way that man was injuring his knowledge, just as we do when we grieve the Holy Spirit. II. The second reason why we ought to mind this warning is because grieving the Spirit will injure our happiness. When David was speaking of the happy effect which follows from our acquaintance with the truth of God, he said--“ Blessed are the people which know the joyful sound.” This blessedness refers to the happiness which God’ s people find from knowing Him. And here we see how the knowledge of God, and the happiness which springs from it, both go together. This knowledge is like a fountain; and this happiness is like the stream which flows from the fountain. III. The third reason why we should mind this warning is because grieving the Spirit will injure our usefulness. If you are an errand boy in a store, and your duty is to carry parcels or messages, wherever you are sent, then if anything should make you lame, so that you could not walk, this would interfere with your usefulness. Suppose you have a position on one of the stations of the Pennsylvania railway. Your duty there is to watch the signals, which tell when a train is coming; and then to give notice of it by ringing a bell. And suppose that something should happen to your eyes, so that you could not see; this would at once injure your usefulness, and unfit you for the duties of your position. Or suppose that your mother is a very skilful seamstress, and is supporting her family by the diligent use of her needle. She has an attack of rheumatism, which settles on her right hand, making her fingers so stiff that she cannot use her needle. That would injure her usefulness. And it is just so with us, in trying to serve God. If we listen to the voice of the Spirit, when He speaks to us, and mind what He says, then He will show us what our duty is, and help us to do it. And that will make us useful. I have one other illustration for this part of our subject. We may call it “ Sorely Tempted.” It shows us how a boy was kept from injuring his usefulness, by not grieving the Spirit, but by listening to His voice. The boy’ s name was Tommy Wright. He was about fifteen years old, and the only son of his mother, who was very fond of him. Mrs. Wright had got a situation for him in a merchant’ s store. When he was about leaving home to begin work in this new place, his mother said to him, “ Now, Tommy, before you go, there are two promises I want you to make me.” “ What are they, mother?” he asked, looking fondly into her loving face, which was always so calm and peaceful. “ Promise me first, that you will always, wherever you are, no matter how busy, read one or more verses in the Bible every day; and then promise me next that you will never take a penny that is not your own.” “ The first is easy enough, mother dear,” said Tommy; “ but I don’ t like the second at all. It seems almost like an insult. You know very well I have not been brought up to be a thief. Surely you don’ t imagine for a moment that I would ever steal?” “ Give me the promise, Tommy dear,” said his mother, “ and I will pray for you, as you must pray for yourself, that God will give you grace to keep your word. These are terrible times that we are living in. Men who stand high in honour are often known to do very mean and dishonourable things. The fairest reputations are blighted. The city is full of snares, and I don’ t know what temptations you may meet with. You will need God’ s help every day to keep you from going wrong.” So Tommy made the promise, and then his mother kneeled down with him, and in her simple earnest words, asked the Lord to go with her dear boy, and help him to do his duty in the new position he was about to occupy, and to keep him from ever doing what was wrong. For some time after entering on the duties of his new position Tommy got on very well. He read every day at least one verse from the Bible. Sometimes he would read a number of verses, and occasionally a whole chapter. But after a while he began to be careless about it. Occasionally he would omit his reading in the morning, intending to do it at night, and at night deferring it till the next day. Then he would forget to pray. The next wrong step was his going with bad companions. His anxious, loving mother, up at the old farm, felt sure that he was not doing well, for his letters were few and short. But she kept on praying for him with increasing earnestness. At last he got into debt, and was at a loss to know what to do. One day he was left alone at the close of the day, in a room where there was an unlocked drawer, with a large sum of money in it, in notes and silver. Just then Satan came and tempted him. He said to him, “ Why can’ t you take some of this money and get out of debt? Mr. Courtney, your employer, will never find it out. And when you get your wages, if you like, you can pay it back.” Tommy made up his mind to do this. He went to the drawer and took a handful of silver; but just as he was about to put it into his coat pocket he was startled by what seemed like someone whispering in his ear. The quiet voice seemed to say “ Tommy Wright! Tommy Wright! Take care! Remember the promise you made to your mother.” In a moment he put the money back in the drawer and went home. On arriving there, he went straight up to his little room, and kneeling down in great distress and with many tears, he confessed his sin to God, and asked to be forgiven. Then he prayed that God would help him to resist every such temptation in the future, and always do what was right. Now it was the Spirit of God who whispered those warning words in Tommy’ s ear. He listened to the Spirit’ s voice, and that kept him from doing wrong.. But if he had not minded those whispered words he would have grieved the Spirit. And then he would have gone on from one sin to another, till he lost his situation, and so he would have injured his usefulness. And here we see that the third reason why we should mind this warning is, because grieving the Spirit will injure our usefulness. IV. The fourth reason why we should mind this warning is because grieving the Spirit will cause the loss of our souls. “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God--whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” To seal the soul unto the day of redemption is to make its salvation sure. This is what the Spirit will do for those who listen to His voice. See, there is Noah’ s ark just finished. God told Noah and all his family to come into the ark. They listened to His voice. They all went into the ark; and when the flood came they were saved. But suppose now they had not minded what God had said to them, and had refused to go into the ark; that would have been like grieving the Spirit; and the result would have been that when the flood came they would all have been destroyed. And so if we go on grieving the Spirit, it must certainly result in the loss of our souls. (Dr. Newton.)On grieving the Holy Spirit There are several ways in which more especially the Spirit may be said to be grieved. Thus, for example--1. When His office is dishonoured. This is the case whenever the spirituality of Divine worship is called in question or practically ignored. “ God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 2. Again, the Spirit may be said to be grieved whenever His sovereignty is limited. The Spirit is a free agent. He acts as He will, dividing unto every man severally according to His own good pleasure. 3. The Spirit may further be said to be grieved when His prerogative is infringed. If, for example, He is to any extent defrauded of His title as the supreme and only infallible interpreter of the written Word, if, in place of seeking earnestly and humbly to be guided by Him into all truth, we seek to human wisdom or guidance for the interpretation of the inspired Word, if we forsake His guidance--this is to grieve Him. 4. Again, the Holy Spirit is grieved whenever His influence is persistently withstood. This is a case, it is to be feared, of not infrequent occurrence under the ministry of the gospel. (Bishop R. Bickersteth.)The sin and folly of grieving the Holy Spirit I. What is here meant by the “ Holy Spirit of God,” and now He seals us to the day of redemption. II. What is implied in grieving him, and how this is generally done. III. The sin, folly, and miserable consequences of grieving the Holy Spirit.1. The sin of it. It is an act of undutifulness and injustice. 2. The folly of it. It may be compared with the folly of grieving a friend, whose direction and help we continually want; a father, on whom we are dependent; a husband, without whom we cannot live happy. 3. The miserable consequences of sin. So far as we grieve Him, we remain ignorant, sinful, guilty, depraved, weak, and wretched. (J. Benson, D. D.)Influence of, and opposition to, the Holy Spirit I. It is here supposed that there is a Divine influence necessary to the salvation of fallen men. II. The influence of the Holy Spirit is expressed in scripture by a great variety of phrases. Christians are said to be born of the Spirit; renewed, sanctified, and led by the Spirit; to be anointed and filled with the Spirit; and to be the temples in which the Spirit dwells. Here they are said to be “ sealed” by the Spirit--i.e., the Divine image is impressed on the believer’ s heart. III. Believers are said to be sealed unto the day of redemption.1. The sealing or sanctification of the Spirit is a necessary preparation for heaven. 2. An evidence of our title to heaven. IV. The Spirit is grieved when we act in opposition to His influence. V. A solemn caution against grieving the Spirit of God.1. Indifference and carelessness in religion is opposition to the grace of God. 2. Spiritual pride grieves the Divine Spirit. 3. The Spirit is grieved when we neglect the means appointed for obtaining His influence. 4. Opposition to the strivings of the Spirit is another way in which He is often grieved. 5. There are some particular kinds of sin which are, in an eminent and peculiar sense, opposite to the work of the Spirit. (1) Among these may be reckoned impurity, intemperance, dissipation, and all the vices of sensuality.(2) The indulgence of malignant passions grieves the Spirit.(3) Contentions among Christians are opposite to the Spirit.(4) Men grieve the Spirit when they ascribe to Him those motions and actions which are contrary to His nature. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Duties relating to the Holy Spirit I. Inquire what duties are incumbent upon us, relating to the Spirit of God. According to the general rule of interpreting negative precepts, the charge not to grieve the Spirit implies more than is expressed; it carries an obligation to a contrary duty, and that is to behave in a becoming manner toward Him.1. He is to be owned and glorified as a Divine Person. 2. We should entertain honourable thoughts of the Spirit of God, with regard to the peculiar part He bears in the work of salvation. 3. We should be earnest in our desires and prayers for the Spirit, to all the purposes for which we need Him. 4. It is our duty to make use of all the means of grace which God has appointed and owns for vouchsafement of His Spirit. 5. We should seriously attend to all the Spirit’ s motions upon our souls. 6. We should live under His influence, in such a manner as is pleasing to Him, and answerable to His holy design upon us. 7. It should heartily grieve us that the Spirit of God is so much grieved. II. Consider the several arguments contained in our text, to enforce these duties.1. The authority of God demands these duties to be paid to His Spirit. It is God, by the apostle, that charges us in our text not to grieve His Spirit, but to carry it well toward Him; for all Scripture is given by inspiration of God (2 Timothy 3:16). 2. He to whom these duties have a special reference is the Spirit of God. It is not a man like thyself, it is not thine equal, not any created Spirit, but one infinitely above thee, and above all angels and archangels; it is the uncreated Spirit of God, who is Himself God. And canst thou dare to offend and provoke, or to behave undutifully toward Him? 3. He is the Holy Spirit. His nature and will, ways and works are holy, all the tendencies of his operations are to holiness, and all their effects, where they prevail, are holiness; there is no iniquity in Him or them. With what reverence and caution then shouldest thou behave in the sight and presence of such a Holy One. 4. The nature and design of the Spirit’ s work is to seal us. Hath he hitherto preserved you and engaged to preserve you still, even to the day of complete redemption? And shalt thou not carry it well to such a kind indulging Friend as this? 5. This sealing work of the Spirit is unto the day of redemption. The Spirit in His sealing work is giving you the sweetest and surest earnests of this blessed day. And is not all this happy and delightful work for you? would you do anything to put a cheek upon it? 6. If we don’ t behave dutifully toward the Spirit, He will certainly be grieved. (J. Guyse.)A fountain sealed I. What it is to grieve the spirit. The Holy Ghost cannot properly be grieved in His own person, because grief implies a defect of happiness in suffering that we wish removed. It implies a defect in foresight, to prevent that which may grieve. It implies passion, which is soon raised up and soon laid down. God is not subject to change. It implies some want of power to remove that which we feel to be a grievance. And therefore it is not beseeming the majesty of the Spirit thus to be grieved. We must therefore conceive of it as befitting the majesty of God, removing in our thoughts all imperfections.1. We are said to grieve God when we do that which is apt of itself to grieve; as we are said to destroy our weak brother when we do that which, he taking offence at, is apt to mislead him and so to destroy him. 2. We grieve the Spirit when we do that whereupon the Spirit doth that which grieved persons do; that is, retireth and showeth dislike and returns grief again. 3. Though the passion of grief be not in the Holy Ghost, yet there is in His holy nature a pure displeasance and hatred of sin, with such a degree of abomination, as though it tend not to the destruction of the offender, yet to sharp correction; so that grief is eminently in the hatred of God in such a manner as becomes Him. 4. We may conceive of the Spirit as He is in Himself in heaven, and as He dwells and works in us; as we may conceive of God the Father, as hidden in Himself and as revealed in His Son and in His Word; and as we may conceive of Christ as the Second Person and as Incarnate. So likewise of the Holy Ghost as in Himself and as in us. God, in the person of His Son, and His Son as man and as minister of circumcision, was grieved at the rebellion and destruction of His own people. The Holy Spirit as in us grieveth with us, witnesseth with us, rejoiceth in us and with us; and the Spirit in Himself and as He worketh in us hath the same name; as the gifts and graces and the comforts of the Spirit are called the Spirit; even as the beams of the sun shining on the earth are called the sun, and when we let them in or shut them out, we are said to let in or shut out the sun. We may grieve the Spirit, when we grieve Him as working grace and offering comfort to us. II. Particulars wherein we specially grieve the Spirit. It is the office of the Spirit to enlighten, to soften, to quicken, and to sanctify. When we give content to Satan it puts the Holy Ghost out of office. Where the Holy Ghost hath not only set up a light, but given a taste of heavenly things, and yet we, upon false allurements, will grow to a distaste, it cannot but grieve the Spirit. Upon divers respects some sin may grieve more or less than another. As the Holy Ghost is a Spirit, so spiritual sins grieve most--as pride, envy--imprinting upon the soul, as it were, a character of the contrary ill spirit. Carnal sins, whereby the soul is drowned in delight of the body, may more grieve the Spirit in another respect; as defiling His temple, and as taking away so much of the soul. The office of the Spirit is to set out Christ, and the favour and mercy of God in Christ.1. When we slight Christ in the gospel, the ordinance and organ of working good in us, the Holy Ghost is slighted and grieved. 2. The Holy Spirit is grieved when ye have a corrupt judgment of things, not weighing them in the right balance, nor value them according to their worth. 3. This grieves the Holy Spirit also, when men take the office of the Spirit from Him; that is, when we will do things in our own strength and by our own light, as if we were gods to ourselves. 4. Besides grieving God’ s Spirit in ourselves, there is a heavy guilt lies upon us for grieving the Spirit in others, which is done many ways. First, By neglecting the grace of God in them, or despising them for some infirmities which love should cover. Contempt is a thing which the nature of man is more impatient of than of any injury. We likewise grieve the spirit of others by sharp censures, and the greater our authority is, the deeper is the grief a censure inflicteth. Again, Those that are above others grieve the spirits of those under them by unjust commands; as when masters press their servants to that which their conscience cannot digest, and so make them sin, and offer violence to that tender part. Again, We grieve the spirit of others, when those that are inferior show themselves untractable to those above them in magistracy or ministry, when they make them spend their strength in vain. IV. What course we should take to prevent this grieving of the spirit.1. Let us give up the government of our souls to the Spirit of God. 2. Study to walk perfectly in obeying the Spirit in all things. 3. If we would not grieve the Spirit, let us take heed of being wanting to the Spirit’ s direction. 4. When the Spirit suggests good motions, turn them presently into holy resolutions. Let us not give over till these motions be turned into purposes, and those good purposes ripened to holy actions, that they be not nipped in the blossom, but may bring forth perfect fruit. 5. Let the Spirit have full scope, both in the ordinances, and in the motions stirred up by the ordinances. This is the way to make the ordinances and the times glorious, but the liberties of the gospel are contrary to the liberties of the flesh. 6. When we find the Spirit not assisting and comforting as in former times, it is fit to search the cause, which we shall find some slighting of holy motions, or the means of breeding of them. 7. Take heed of little sins, which we count lesser sins perhaps than God doth. “ The Holy Spirit by which ye are sealed.” The Holy Ghost delighteth to speak in our own language. We cannot rise to Him, therefore He stoopeth to us. The persons sealed are, first, Christ, and then those that are given to Christ. I, Christ is sealed.1. By the Father (John 6:27). 2. He was sealed by the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in flesh, abased and exalted for us; so as His flesh is the flesh of the Son of God, and His blood the “ blood of God” (Acts 20:28). 3. Sealed by a testimony from heaven of all three persons: by the Father, “ This is my well-beloved Son” ; by the Holy Spirit descending like a dove; by Himself to His human nature dwelling in all fulness in it. 4. In being justified in the Spirit, being raised from the dead, and “ declared thereby to be the Son of God mightily with power” (Romans 1:4); and then advanced to the right hand of God, that through Him our faith and trust might be in God (2 Peter 3:14). II. As Christ was sealed and fitted for us, so we are sealed and fitted for Christ, Many are the privileges of a Christian from this his sealing, as the use of a seal in man’ s affairs is manifold.1. Seals serve for confirmation and allowance. To that purpose measures are sealed. God is said to seal instruction (Job 33:16). Confirmation is either by giving strength, or by the authority of such as are able to make good what they promise, and also willing; which they show by putting to their seal, which hath as much strength to confirm him to whom the promise is made, as he hath will and power to make it good that hath engaged himself. 2. The use of it likewise is for distinction from others that carry not that mark. So the sealing of the Spirit distinguisheth a Christian from all other men. 3. The use of a seal is likewise for appropriation. Merchants use to seal their wares they would not have others have any right unto. 4. Again, we use to set our seal only upon that we have some estimation of. “ Set me as a seal,” saith the Church in the Canticles, “ upon Thy right hand” (Son 8:6); have me in Thy eye and mind as a special thing Thou valuest. 5. Seals likewise are used for secrecy, as in letters, etc. So this seal of the Spirit is a secret work. God knoweth who are His (Revelation 2:17). “ Our life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). 6. Hence, likewise, the use of a seal is to show that things should be kept inviolable. Hereupon the Church is as a “ sealed fountain” (Song of Solomon of Solomon 4:12). Sealing shows a care of preservation from common annoyance. Hereupon likewise it is that sealing is the securing of persons or things sealed from hurt. “ Whereby you are sealed.” Now there are divers degrees of the Spirit’ s sealing.1. Faith: “ He that believes hath the witness in himself” (1 John 5:10). The seal and first discovery of election is manifested to us in our believing. 2. The work of sanctifying grace upon the heart is a seal. Whom the Spirit sanctifieth He sayeth. “ The Lord knoweth who are His” (2 Timothy 2:19). But how shall we know it? By this seal: “ Let everyone that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity,” not only in heart and affection, but in conversation; and that shall be a seal of his sonship to Him. “ To the day of redemption.”1. There is a double redemption: redemption of the soul by the first coming of Christ to shed His blood for us; redemption of our bodies from corruption by His second coming. 2. Secondly, full redemption is not yet. But there is a “ day” appointed for it. Consolatory thought! “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” From the consideration of all that hath been formerly spoken of, the sealing of the Spirit to the day of redemption, there ariseth these four conclusions:1. For the first, we may know we are in the state of grace (1) because the apostle would not have used an argument moving not to grieve the Spirit from a thing unknown or guessed at. It is an ill manner of reasoning to argue from a thing unknown. (2) Again, sealing of us by the Spirit is not in regard of God, but ourselves. God knoweth who are His, but we know not that we are His but by sealing. (3) The scope of the Scriptures indited by the Spirit is for comfort. The apostle saith so directly; and what comfort is in an uncertain condition, wherein a man knows not but he may be a reprobate? 2. The second conclusion: We may, upon the knowledge of our present estate in grace, be assured for the time to come, for this sealing is to the “ day of redemption” ; that is, till we be put into full possession of what we now believe. 3. The third conclusion is this, that the Spirit doth seal us. This cannot be otherwise; for who can establish us in the love of God but he that knows the mind of God towards us? and who knows the mind of God but the Spirit of God? 4. The fourth conclusion is, that the sealing of the Spirit unto salvation should be a strong prevailing argument not to grieve the Spirit; that is, not to sin, for sin only grieves the Spirit (see Titus 2:11-12). Even the consideration of the benefits of Christ that are past, such as came with Christ’ s first coming; but that is not all (verse 13, “ Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” ) The second coming of Christ enforceth likewise the same care of holiness: “ Our conversation is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20), and not as theirs, spoken of in the former verse, whose end is damnation, whose belly is their god, who mind earthly things. No. We mind heavenly things. And these heavenly desires, from whence sprung |hey but from the certain “ expectation of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies” ? etc. (Philippians 3:21); that is, shall redeem us fully, even our bodies as well as our souls. (1) It is an argument of force whether we be not yet sealed, or be sealed. If not sealed, then grieve not Him whose only office is to seal; entertain His motions, that He may have scope and liberty of working. (2) For those that have been sealed by the Spirit, and yet not so fully as to silence all doubts about their estate: those should, out of that beginning of comfort which they feel, study to be pliable to the Spirit for further increase. The Spirit sealeth by degrees. As our care of pleasing the Spirit increaseth, so our comfort increaseth: our light will increase as the morning light unto the perfect day. (3) For those that the Holy Spirit hath set a clearer and stronger stamp upon, that do not question their condition, they of all others should not grieve the Spirit. To conclude this discourse, let Christians therefore be careful to preserve and cherish the work of assurance and sealing in them. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)Grieving the Holy Spirit I. Let us first consider some truths which appear to be implied in the statement here made.1. It is plainly implied that the Holy Spirit is a Person. 2. A second truth implied in the text is, that not only is the Holy Ghost a Person, but that He is a Divine and holy Person. 3. But the third thing implied in this text is, that the Spirit of God so dwells within us, as that the indulgence of angry tempers, or a walk of ungodliness and sin, will cause distress to this Divine inhabitant. II. Now, having considered those truths which seem to be implied in the text, let us proceed to consider what is contained in the exhortation itself: “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”1. And, first, wherein are we most prone to “ grieve” the Spirit? Grief, in the sense of offence taken by one person against another, arises from the offering of some supposed indignity, whether in the omission of some customary respect, or in the offer of some admitted slight, or in ungrateful requital for certain benefits received, or in some open contrariety to the mind and wish of our benefactor. Thus, look at the Spirit of God in some of those gracious offices and relations which He sustains towards us. Is He the enlightener, the guide, the counsellor of man in all the parts and duties of a godly life? What greater indignity can we offer to Him than taking counsel with flesh and blood--leaving the directions of a friend, to follow the advice of an enemy. 2. But observe, secondly, the special aggravation of this grieving--“ Whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” Now, the point of all this, you will perceive, is that sin becomes more than ever sin, when it is committed against received light and knowledge-that grief against the Holy Spirit of God becomes double grief, when we have been made partaker of His gifts already. 3. And now, brethren, look at the text as it is a tender, affectionate, fatherly appeal to your gratitude. It is asked--“ If God the Spirit has done this for you, if God the Spirit will continue to do these things unto your lives’ end, how have you received Him?” (D. Moore, M. A.)The Holy Spirit sealing believers, yet grieved by them I. And, first, of the agent here spoken of--the Holy Spirit of God--and the peculiar office, which He is said to execute on behalf of believers. The figure used in my text--that of “ grieving the Spirit” --leads us to the acknowledgment of the personality of that blessed Spirit. The use of seals to signify appropriation was a very early practice; the patriarch Judah, you know, had his seal; and ministers of state had their seals of office in very ancient times; and you read, in the Book of Esther, these words, “ Write in the king’ s name, and seal it with the king’ s ring, for the writing which is written in the king’ s name, and sealed with the king’ s ring, may no man reverse.” But again, under this head, I observe, that it is the office of the Holy Spirit, not merely to seal believers, by an eternal designation to God, but at times--at times, we say--as to His infinite wisdom and grace may seem fit--it is the office of the Holy Spirit, to bear witness to their spirits that they are thus called. But I proceed, furthers to observe, that wheresoever this sealing to God, known at all times to Him--this sealing of appropriation from eternity--known to believers themselves, in the degree in which God sees it to be good for them--wheresoever this sealing takes place, it is always accompanied by an outward seal, by which believers are more or less discernible to the world around them. For seals, as you know, my brethren, are not merely used to signify appropriation, but are also used to make an impression. The seal stamps its own impression. And the Holy Spirit of God seals believers as His own, by making His own impression of holiness upon them--by diffusing His graces over their souls. Let us, then, consider some of the ways in which believers may be said to “ grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”1. Among these we may rank, my brethren, the sin of ingratitude--a sin, of which all believers are more or less guilty, and apt thereby to grieve the Holy Spirit. 2. And, again, I would observe, that the Holy Spirit is grieved by resisting His operations in the soul, by turning a deaf ear to His friendly warnings and His friendly remonstranees. 3. Again, I observe, that the Spirit of the Lord trains up believers for “ redemption” in the school of affliction: and we “ grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” when we do not endeavour, at least, to see the hand of God in those trials, and when we rebel against that rod, wherewith He chastens us for our good. 4. And, again, my brethren, I would observe, that the Holy Spirit is grieved by the indulgence of unhallowed tempers and of sinful dispositions. 5. Allow me, once more, to add” grieve not the Holy Spirit of God” by running in the way of temptation. And as to the fearful consequences of grieving Him, or of causing that blessed Agent to withdraw, what, my brethren, can be said, or what need be said? In that moment when He is withdrawn, the means of grace become useless. Our salvation, be it remembered, depends entirely upon the agency of the Holy Spirit; and to forfeit that agency is to cut off ourselves at once from all hope. (Norman Macleod, D. D.)The sealed ones I. The sealing. They were sealed in their sonship. Moreover, as sons, they were sealed for the purpose of separation, that they should be a distinct people, and hence the prediction concerning them was put forth in a very early period in the history of the Church on earth. Moreover, they were sealed in this secret compact between the persons of Deity for sanctification, set apart for that purpose. Now, what is the first thing that you and I should do in sealing, to keep literally to the expression? Suppose we seal a letter, or seal a will or testament, or seal any document or covenant among mortals? Why, the first thing is to melt the wax, or whatever we are about to impress. There is the efficiency, and there is a need of fire for that. My hearer, when we are baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, it is melting work. Moreover, in this sealing work there is an elevation of character--a dignity stamped upon it. You know, in olden time, when letters were written, as by Ahasuerus and others, and said to be sealed with the king’ s seal, there was a dignity and importance stamped on the documents; it elevated them above the scale of the subjects of the realm, for it was the monarch’ s own impression, the monarch’ s own authority, the monarch’ s own command and injunction. So with the Lord’ s family. Just go on to mark that they are sealed apparently and manifestly, so as to be known before men. Pass on to mark that, according to my text, It is a lasting seal. Ah! there are some seals that you may break or deface--they are not lasting; but here is a seal that shall last till the day of redemption. II. The exhortation given to the sealed ones. “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” Let everything in the shape of sin be loathed and abhorred; that, although it dwells in old Adam, and sometimes strives for the mastery, it shall be crucified, mortified, put off, denied, and kept under, that the Holy Spirit may not be grieved. Again, “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God” by opinions which are heterodox. All those things which tend to grieve one another, to separate brother from brother, and Church from Church, and create schism in the Body of Christ, grieve the Spirit of God. (J. Irons.) Ephesians 4:31-32 And be ye kind one to another.The temper for the times I. The extent of the duty enforced. It is not enough to abstain from acts of an unfriendly or hostile nature, but we should ever cherish that mild and amiable disposition which looks upon all men as friends till by their ingratitude or moral delinquency they have shown themselves to be unworthy of our friendship or good esteem.1. One who is kindly disposed, either by nature or by grace, will be at all times ready to do a good action for another, if it should lie in his power. 2. Kindliness of disposition will be evidenced in all classes by a prevailing tone of mind which indisposes us either to think evil, or to speak evil of our neighbours. 3. We may beneficially carry out the precept of the text, by adopting a kind and courteous tone of language in all the relations of daily life. II. The precept of the text may further be urged.1. From the consideration of that precious love which our Saviour exhibited in dying for us. 2. From the remembrance of that supreme mercy and compassion which our heavenly Father manifests, when for Christ’ s sake He freely forgives us all the multiplied sins which we have committed against Him. (F. F. Statham, B. A.)Remedies for evil speaking The longer I live the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules I have laid down for myself in relation to such matters.1. To hear as little as possible to the prejudice of others.2. To believe nothing of the kind till I am absolutely forced to it.3. Never to drink in the spirit of one who circulates an ill report.4. Always to moderate, as far as I can, the unkindness which is expressed toward others.5. Always believe that, if the other side were heard, a very different account would be given of the matter. Defective kindness The kindness of some is too much like an echo; it returns exactly the counterpart of what it receives, and neither more nor less (Matthew 5:46-47). (G. S. Bowes.)Kindness defined Kindness is civil behaviour, favourable treatment, or a constant and habitual practice of friendly offices and benevolent actions. (C. Buck.)It may be defined as “ lighting our neighbour’ s candle by our own,” by which we lose nothing and impart something. (Anon.)Different kinds of kindness One man has kindness deep within him; and when the occasion comes, the rind or shell is cracked, and the kernel is found. Such a man’ s heart, too long clouded, like a sun in a storm-muffled day, shoots through some opening rift, and glows for a period in glory. But there are other natures that are always cloudless. With them, a cloud is the exception, shining is the rule. They rise radiant over the horizon; they fill the whole heavens with growing brightness, and all day long they overhang life, pouring down an undiminished flood of brightness and warmth. (H. W. Beecher.)Memory of kindness Among the Alps, when the day is done, and twilight and darkness are creeping over fold and hamlet in the valleys below, Mont Rosa and Mont Blanc rise up far above the darkness, catching from the retreating sun something of his light, flushed with rose colour, exquisite beyond all words or pencil or paint, glowing like the gate of heaven. And so past favours and kindnesses lift themselves up in the memory of noble natures, and long after the lower parts of life are darkened by neglect, or selfishness, or anger, former loves, high up above all clouds, glow with Divine radiance and seem to forbid the advance of night any further. (H. W. Beecher.)Origin of the word “ kindness” The very word kindness comes from the cognate word, kinned, that is, one of the same kin or race; acknowledging and reminding us of the fact that all men are brethren--all of the same blood--and therefore they should all act as brethren. All who are of the same kindred should be kind. (G. S. Bowes.)The power of kindness A horse passing down the street in a stage suddenly stood still, and refused to go. He put down his forefoot and became as stubborn as a mule. The driver beat him with great severity, but the animal still refused to go. Finally, a respectable person, a passer-by, picked up a little hay and put it before the horse. He ate it, and the friend kindly patted him on the neck and coaxed him. In a minute or two the stubbornness was gone, and the horse, with driver, were on their way. So let parents, masters, teachers, ministers, try the hand and food of kindness with all stubborn souls with whom they may have to do. (John Bate.)The influence of a kind spirit I remember once a valued friend of mine, a barrister, now passed away, who spent his Sundays in visiting an hospital. He told me that on one occasion he sat down by the bedside of one of the very poorest, the most ignorant, and, without using the word in any offensive manner, one of the very lowest men he had ever seen in his life--a man whose English, had it been taken down, would have been the most complete and perfect dislocation of the Queen’ s English that he ever heard. No word seemed to be in its right place. It seemed as if that which should have been a jointed and vertebrated sentence had been separated at every joint, and thrown together anyhow. My friend was a man of the most tender spirit--a man whose tender spirit radiated from one of the most striking faces I ever saw; and I can well understand how he looked when he sat down by that poor man’ s bed. He began first, as all should who visit She sick, to break ground on temporal matters, to sympathize with them on that which they can understand so well--their bodily sufferings--to show that we are not indifferent to what they are suffering as men; and then, after speaking a few kind words, he was proceeding to say something further for his Master, whom he so dearly loved, when he saw the man’ s face begin to work convulsively. The muscles quivered, and at last, lifting up the sheet, and drawing down his head, he threw the sheet over his face, burst into a violent flood of tears and sobbed aloud. My friend wisely waited till this store of grief was passed, and then the poor fellow emerged from under the clothes, his face bearing the traces of tears that had flowed down it. When he was able to speak, my friend asked him--“ What is it that has so touched you? I hope that I have not said anything that was painful to you. What can have moved you so much?” And as well as the man could sob out, he sobbed out these words: “ Sir, you are the first man that ever spoke a kind word to me since I was born, and I can’ t stand it.” (Champneys.)The priest and the surgeon Dupuytren was a famous surgeon, but brusque and unpolished. One day, as he re-entered his house, he found installed in the anteroom an old priest, who had long been waiting his return. “ What do you want of me?” growled Dupuytren. “ I wish you to look at this,” meekly replied the priest, taking off an old woollen cravat, which revealed upon the nape of his neck a hideous turnout. Dupuytren looked at it. “ You’ ll have to die with that,” he coolly remarked. “ I thank you, doctor,” simply replied the priest, replacing his cravat, “ and am much obliged to you for warning me, as I can prepare myself, as well as my poor parishioners, who love me very much.” The surgeon, who was never astonished at great things, looked upon this priest, who received his death sentence unmoved, with amazement, and said: “ Come tomorrow, at eight o’ clock, to the Hotel Dieu and ask for me.” The priest was prompt. The surgeon procured for him a special room, and in a month’ s time the man went out cured. When leaving he took out of a sack thirty francs in small change. “ It is all I have to offer you, doctor,” he said; “ I came here on foot from R--, in order to save this.” The doctor looked at the money, smiled, and drawing a handful of gold from his pocket, put it in the bag with the thirty francs, saying, “ It is for your poor,” and the priest went away. Some years later the celebrated doctor, feeling death to be near, bethought him of the good priest, and sent for him. He came, and Dupuytren received from him the “ last consolation,” and died in his arms. A kind deed “ Now, boys, I will tell you how we can have some fun,” said Charlie to his companions, who had assembled one bright moonlight evening for sliding, snowballing, and fun generally. “ What is it?” asked several at once. “ You shall see,” replied Charlie. “ Who’ s got a wood saw? I have.” “ So have I,” replied three of the boys. “ Get them, and you and Freddy and Nathan each get an axe, and I will get a shovel. Let’ s be back in fifteen minutes.” The boys separated to go on their several errands, each wondering of what use wood saws, and axes, and shovels could be in the play. But Charlie was a favourite with all, and they fully believed in his promises, and were soon assembled again. “ Now,” said he, “ Widow M. has gone to a neighbour’ s to sit up with a sick child. A man hauled her some wood today, and I heard her tell him that unless she got someone to saw it tonight, she would not have anything to make a fire of in the morning. Now, we could saw and split that pile of wood just as easy as we could make a snow man on her doorstep, and when Mrs. M. comes home she will be most agreeably surprised.” One or two of the boys objected, but the majority began to appreciate his fun, and to experience that inward satisfaction and joy that always results from well-doing. It was not a long and wearisome job for seven robust and healthy boys to saw, split, and pile up the widow’ s half-cord of wood, and to shovel a good loath. And when they had done this, so great was their pleasure and satisfaction, that one of them, who objected at first, proposed they should go to a neighbouring carpenter’ s shop, where plenty of shavings could be had for the carrying away, and each bring an armful. The proposition was readily acceded to; and, this done, they repaired to their several homes, more than satisfied with the “ fun of the evening.” And the next morning, when the weary widow returned from watching by the sick bed, and saw what was done, she was pleasantly surprised; and afterwards, when a neighbour (who had, unobserved, witnessed the labours of the boys) told her how it was done, her fervent invocation, God bless the boys!” was of itself, if they could have heard it, reward enough. For Christ’ s sake This is the great argument of awakened sinners, when they seek mercy at God’ s hands. I. God’ s argument for mercy. He forgives us “ for Christ’ s sake.”1. Let us consider the force of this motive by which God is moved to forgive sinners. (1) The first thing which will move us to do anything for another’ s sake is his person, with its various additions of position and character. The excellence of a man’ s person has often moved others to high enthusiasm, to the spending of their lives; ay, to the endurance of cruel deaths for his sake. In the day of battle, if the advancing column wavered for a single moment, Napoleon’ s presence made every man a hero. When Alexander led the van, there was not a man in all the Macedonian ranks who would have hesitated to lose his life in following him. For David’ s sake the three mighties broke through the host, at imminent peril of their lives, to bring him water from the well of Bethlehem. Some men have a charm about them which enthralls the souls of other men, who are fascinated by them and count it their highest delight to do them honour. How shall I, in a fitting manner, lead you to contemplate the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, seeing that His charms as far exceed all human attractions as the sun outshines the stars! Yet this much I will be bold to say, that tie is so glorious that even the God of heaven may well consent to do ten thousand things for His sake. He is Almighty God, and at the same time all-perfect Man. In the surpassing majesty of His person lies a part of the force of the plea. (2) A far greater power lies in near and dear relationship. The mother, whose son had been many years at sea, pined for him with all a mother’ s fondness. She was a widow, and her heart had but this one object left. One day there came to the cottage door a ragged sailor. He was limping on a crutch, and seeking alms. He had been asking at several houses for a widow of such-and-such a name. He had now found her out. She was glad to see a sailor, for never since her son had gone to sea had she turned one away from her door, for her son’ s sake. The present visitor told her that he had served in the same ship with her beloved boy; that they had been wrecked together and cast upon a barren shore; that her son had died in his arms, and that he had charged him with his dying breath to take his Bible to his mother--she would know by that sign that it was her son--and to charge her to receive his comrade affectionately and kindly for her son’ s sake. You may well conceive how the best of the house was set before the stranger. He was but a common sailor; there was nothing in him to recommend him. His weather-beaten cheeks told of service, but it was not service rendered to her; he had no claim on her, and yet there was bed and board, and the widow’ s hearth for him. Why? Because she seemed to see in his eyes the picture of her son--and that Book, the sure token of good faith, opened her heart and her house to the stranger. Relationship will frequently do far more than the mere excellence of the person. Our God had but one begotten Son, and that Son the darling of His bosom. Oh, how the Father loved Him. (3) The force of the words, “ For Christ’ s sake,” must be found deeper still, namely, in the worthiness of the person and of his acts. Many peerages have been created in this realm which descend from generation to generation, with large estates, the gift of a generous nation, and why? Because this nation has received some signal benefits from one man and has been content to ennoble his heirs forever for his sake. I do not think there was any error committed when Marlborough or Wellington were lifted to the peerage; having saved their country in war, it was right that they should be honoured in peace; and when, for the sake of the parents, perpetual estates were entailed upon their descendants, and honours in perpetuity conferred upon their sons, it was only acting according to the laws of gratitude. Let as bethink ourselves of what Jesus has done, and let us understand how strong must be that plea--“ for Jesus’ sake.” (4) If any stipulation has been made, then the terms, “ for His sake,” become more forcible, because they are backed by engagements, promises, covenants. (5) It tends very much to strengthen the plea “ for Christ’ s sake,” if it be well known that it is the desire of the person that the boon should be granted, and if, especially, that desire has been and is earnestly expressed. No, beloved, if I anxiously ask for mercy, Christ has asked for mercy for me long ago. There is never a blessing for which a believer pleads, but Christ pleads for it too; for “ He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” 2. Pausing a minute, let us enumerate some few other qualifications of this plea by way of comfort to trembling seekers. (1) This motive, we may observe, is with God a standing motive; it cannot change. (2) Remember, again, that this is a mighty reason. It is not merely a reason why God should forgive little sins, or else it would be a slur upon Christ, as though He deserved but little. (3) Then, brethren, it is a most clear and satisfactory, I was about to say, most reasonable reason, a motive which appeals to your own common sense. Can you not already see how God can be gracious to you for Christ’ s sake? We have heard of persons who have given money to beggars, to the poor; not because they deserved it, but because they would commemorate some deserving friend. On a certain day in the year our Horticultural Gardens are opened to the public, free. Why, why should they be opened free? What has the public done? Nothing. They receive the boon in commemoration of the good Prince Albert. Is not that a sensible reason? Yes. Every day in the year the gates of heaven are opened to sinners free. Why? For Jesus Christ’ s sake. Is it not a most fitting reason? If God would glorify His Son, how could He do better than by saying, “ For the sake of My dear Son, set the pearly gates of heaven wide open, and admit His chosen ones.” (4) This is the only motive which can ever move the heart of God. II. The believer’ s great motive for service.1. We begin with a few hints as to what service is expected of us. (1) One of the first things which every Christian should feel bound to do “ for Christ’ s sake” is to avenge His death. “ Avenge His death,” says one, “ upon whom?” Upon His murderers. And who were they? Our sins! our sins! (2) Then, next, the Christian is expected to exalt his Master’ s name, and to do much to honour His memory, for Christ’ s sake. You remember that queen, who, when her husband died, thought she could never honour him too much, and built a tomb so famous, that though it was only named from him, it remains, to this day, the name of every splendid memorial--the mausoleum. Now let us feel that we cannot erect anything too famous for the honour of Christ--that our life will be well spent in making His name famous. Let us pile up the unhewn stones of goodness, self-denial, kindness, virtue, grace; let us lay these one upon another, and build up a memorial for Jesus Christ, so that whosoever passes us by, may know that we have been with Jesus, and have learned of Him. (3) And above all, “ for Jesus’ sake” should be a motive to fill us with intense sympathy with Him. He has many sheep, and some of them are wandering; let us go after them, my brethren, for the Shepherd’ s sake. 2. A few words, lastly, by way of exhortation on this point. Clear as the sound of a trumpet startling men from slumber, and bewitching as the sound of martial music to the soldier when he marches to the conflict, ought to be the matchless melody of this word. Review, my brethren, the heroic struggles of the Lord’ s people, and here we turn to the brightest page of the world’ s annals! Think of the suffering of God’ s people through the Maccabean war! How marvellous was their courage when Antiochus Epiphanes took the feeblest among the Jews to constrain them to break the law, and found himself weak as water before their dauntless resolve. Aged women and feeble children overcame the tyrant. Their tongues were torn out; they were sawn asunder; they were broiled on the fire; they were pierced with knives; but no kind of torture could subdue the indomitable spirit of God’ s chosen people. Think of the Christian heroism of the first centuries; remember Blandina tossed upon the horns of bulls and set in a red-hot iron chair; think of the martyrs given up to the lions in the amphitheatre, amidst the revilings of the Roman mob; dragged to their death at the heels of wild horses, or, like Marcus Arethusa, smeared with honey and stung to death by bees; and yet in which case did the enemy triumph? In none! They were more than conquerors through Him that loved them! And why? Because they did it all “ for Christ’ s sake,” and Christ’ s sake alone. Think of the cruelty which stained the snows of the Switzer’ s Alps, and the grass of Piedmont’ s Valleys, blood red with the murdered Waldenses and Albigenses, and honour the heroism of those who, in their deaths, counted not their lives dear to them “ for Christ’ s sake.” Walk this afternoon to your own Smithfield, and stand upon the sacred spot where the martyrs leaped into their chariot of fire, leaving their ashes on the ground, “ for Jesus’ sake.” In Edinburgh, stand on the well known stones consecrated with covenanting gore, where the axe and the hangman set free the spirits of men who rejoiced to suffer for Christ’ s sake. Remember those fugitives “ for Christ’ s sake,” meeting in the glens and crags of Scotia’ s every hill, “ for Christ’ s sake.” They were daunted by nothing--they dared everything “ for Christ’ s sake.” Think, too, of what missionaries have done “ for Christ’ s sake.” With no weapon but the Bible, they have landed among cannibals, and have subdued them to the power of the gospel; with no hope of gain, except in the reward which the Lord has reserved for every faithful one, they have gone where the most enterprizing trader dared not go, passed through barriers impenetrable to the courage of men who sought after gold, but to be pierced by men who sought after souls. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Forgiveness made easy The heathen moralists, when they wished to teach virtue, could not point to the example of their gods, for, according to their mythologists, the gods were a compound of every imaginable, and, I had almost said, unimaginable, vice. Many of the classic deities surpassed the worst of men in their crimes: they were as much greater in iniquity as they were supposed to be superior in power. I. The first word to think about is, “for Christ’ s sake.” We use these words very often; but probably we have never thought of their force, and even at this time we cannot bring forth the whole of their meaning. What does it mean?1. It means, surely, first, for the sake of the great atonement which Christ has offered. 2. God has forgiven us because of the representative character of Christ. God for Christ’ s sake has accepted us in Him, has forgiven us in Him, and looks upon us with love infinite and changeless in Him. 3. Now go a little further. When we read, “ for Christ’ s sake,” it surely means for the deep love which the Father bears Him. 4. God forgives sin for the sake of glorifying Christ. Christ took the shame that He might magnify His Father, and now His Father delights to magnify Him by blotting out the sin. II. What it is that has been done for us, for Christ’ s sake. “ God, for Christ’ s sake, hath forgiven you.”1. Pardon is not a prize to be run for, but a blessing received at the first step of the race. 2. This forgiveness is continuous. 3. It is most free. 4. It is full. 5. Eternal. God will never rake up our past offences, and a second time impute them. 6. Divine. There is such a truth, reality, and emphasis in the pardon of God as you can never find in the pardon of man; for though a man should forgive all you have done against him, yet it is more than you could expect that he should quite forget it; but the Lord says, “ Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more forever.” If a man has played you false, although you have forgiven him, you are not likely to trust him again. But see how the Lord deals with His people, e.g., Peter, Paul. III. A point of practice. “ Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’ s sake hath forgiven you.” Now, observe how the apostle puts it. Does he say “ forgiving another” ? No, that is not the text, if you look at it. It is “ forgiving one another.” One another! Ah, then that means that if you have to forgive today, it is very likely that you will yourself need to be forgiven tomorrow, for it is “ forgiving one another.” It is turn and turn about, a mutual operation, a cooperative service. (C. H. Spurgeon.)A forgiving spirit God’ s pardon of sinners is full and free and irreversible, all sin forgiven--forgiven, not because we deserve it; forgiven, every day of our lives; and, when once forgiven never again to rise up and condemn us. Now, because God has pardoned us, we should cherish a forgiving spirit, and be as ready to pardon others as He has been to remit our trespasses. His example at once enjoins imitation, and furnishes the pattern. And thus the offences of others are to be pardoned by us fully, without retaining a grudge; and freely, without any exorbitant equivalent; and when pardoned, they are not to be raked out of oblivion, and again made the theme of collision and quarrel. According to the imagery of our Lord’ s parable, our sins toward God are weighty as talents, nay, weighty and numerous as ten thousand talents; while the offences of our fellows toward ourselves are trivial as pence, nay, as trivial and few as a hundred pence. If the master forgive the servant so far beneath him such an immense amount, will not the forgiven servant be prompted by the generous example to absolve his own fellow servant and equal from his paltry debt? (Matthew 18:23-35). In fine, as God in Christ forgives sin, so believers in Christ, feeling their union to Him, breathing His Spirit, and doing homage to His law of love, learn to forgive one another. (J. Eadie, D. D.)The forgiveness of God The literal meaning of the words of the text in the original is, “ as God, in Christ, hath forgiven you.” This is exactly what they say, and this gives us the right idea of the forgiveness of God, of God revealing Himself in Christ. Now, God’ s forgiveness in Christ does not stand alone; but must be a part of that whole revelation of God which we have in Christ. Christ came to reveal God’ s fatherhood, God’ s love, God’ s righteousness, God’ s forgiveness--all as parts of one great whole, and all for the one high purpose of reconciling men to God, of bringing back to Him in love and faith those who had sinned against Him. In each part of the whole there is the reconciling element, which gives its character to the whole. In each there is something, the knowledge of which should bring us to God in love and trust. And this in forgiveness can only be its freeness and fulness. This character pervades all that Christ teaches us about forgiveness in His spoken words: it pervades all that He exemplified in His own deeds, down to that last hour when He said, with His failing breath, “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” What is the object of all forgiveness? It is not to smooth over the sin, and make it of little account. It is not to remove the natural penalty or consequence from the sin, so that you may sin and yet not suffer. It is to gain the sinner; to win him back from evil to good, from the devil to God. It is for this end God forgives--forgives because of His eternal desire to save men from sin, and lead them to holiness. His forgiveness is not a new power or new aspect of character, evoked in Him by His Son’ s life or death or sacrifice. It is an eternal element of His Divine nature, revealing itself to us, through Christ, in whom all His will for our salvation was revealed. To anyone capable of amendment of life, in whom the powers of the endless life are not quenched, nothing can appeal so strongly, nothing can exert so quickening an influence, as the consciousness of being freely forgiven for past errors, as the knowledge that these at least are not kept up as a barrier between him and the Father to whom he would fain return. Let us lay hold of this free and full forgiveness, brethren. Let us not be occupied with the mere selfish anxiety to be delivered from the penalty of our sin; but let us rather be filled with the earnest hope to be reconciled to our Father, against whom we have trespassed; and, through the consciousness of His goodwill towards us, to be animated with such gratitude, love, and trust, as shall strengthen us against all temptation, and restrain us from all transgression. (H. R. Story, D. D.)Forgiving one another “ Kindness” and “ forgiveness” may be, and often are, natural virtues. But you at once take them out of the natural, and elevate them into the spiritual--you Christianize them, and the old commandment becomes the new--when you make this both the reason of the exercise and the measure of the degree--“ as God in Christ hath forgiven you.” Now take care that you read this verse aright. I have often heard it quoted--I have read it often in books--“ as God for Christ’ s sake will forgive you.” But that is not the basis from which the apostle’ s argument here, and his argument everywhere, springs. “ Even as God for Christ’ s sake hath forgiven you.” So that if you are not a “ forgiven” man, the argument drops. How can a machine go, if you take out the mainspring? How can love in the heart of a man move aright, without its motive power? And what motive power can move a man to bear all he has to bear, and to do all he has to do, in such a world as this, but love? And where is love if you are not forgiven?” Nobody really knows God till he is “ forgiven” ; and how shall a man practise love till he knows God? Is not all love, God? Here, then, we take our beginning. As a mathematician claims a certain first principle, and assumes it is granted, and calls it his axiom, so we make it our axiom, “ You are forgiven.” I cannot carry on my reasoning a single step without that. Now, in the character of this “ forgiveness” --which is the elementary principle of all religion--there are three points, which I would ask you to look at in detail.1. It was originating. I mean, it was not you went forth to it; but it went forth to you. It was ready before you thought of it. It was ready before you were born. It sought you. At the best, you can do nothing but accept it. 2. It is universal. It cannot, in the nature of things, be partial. I mean, there is no such thing as being “ forgiven” for one sin, while, at the same time, you are not “ forgiven” for another sin. It is all or none. The blood of Christ never washes one sin out. The robe of Christ never covers one part of a man. Everything is “ forgiven.” 3. The “ forgiveness” is absolute. There is not a vestige of displeasure. There is no resurrection of “ forgiven” sins. They shall never be mentioned any more. They are “ cast into the depths of the sea.” O brethren! what an atmosphere of love we ought all to be living in, as many of you as know Christ. What a practical rule and measure we have, by which to draw our line, every day, into thousands of little acts and thoughts. It is simply this--“ How did God act to me, when He stood in a corresponding relation to me?” But I ask, Is any one of us living up to that standard? I think not. Therefore let us now look at our measurement. “ You see there are three things God tells us to be: kind; tender-hearted; forgiving. I am not sure that I know the exact distinction which is intended between those three words; but, I think it is something like this:--“ Kindness,” is an affectionate feeling, always going out into action. The Greek word used has something o! “ using” or “ serving” in it. A “ tender heart,” is a soft, impressible state, which predisposes to think and act kindly. And “ forgiveness” is that loving spirit, which, preferring to suffer rather than to pain, sees no fault in another because it is so conscious of its own. It is important to notice that the “ tender heart” is placed between “ kindness” and “ forgiveness” --the keystone of the little sacred arch. Everything depends upon it--a soft, “ tender” state of “ heart.” Need I remind you, that everything in the world, every day, is tending to brush off the bloom, and leave the substance underneath hardened? But whoever wishes to be a real Christian must, at all times, and in all places, be jealously watchful to keep his heart “ tender.” The great business of life, it seems to me, is to keep the heart “ tender.” But how is it that we are not all “ kind,” “ tender,” and “ forgiving” ? There are many causes; but they resolve themselves into one--pride! pride! (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Forgiveness, for Christ’ s sake “ What great matter,” said a heathen tyrant to a Christian while he was beating him almost to death--“ What great matter did Christ ever do for you?” “ Even this,” answered the Christian, “ that I can forgive you, though you use me so cruelly.” The necessity of a forgiving spirit In the Middle Ages, when the lords and knights were always at war with each other, one of them resolved to revenge himself on a neighbour who had offended him. It chanced that, on the very evening when he had made this resolution, he heard that his enemy was to pass near his castle, with only a very few men with him. It was a good opportunity to take his revenge, and he determined not to let it pass. He spoke of his plan in the presence of his chaplain, who tried in vain to persuade him to give it up. The good man said a great deal to the duke about the sin of what he was going to do, but in vain. At length, seeing that all his words had no effect, he said, “ My lord, since I cannot persuade yon to give up this plan of yours, you will at least come with me to the chapel, that we may pray together before you go?” The duke consented, and the chaplain and he kneeled together in prayer. Then the mercy-loving Christian said to the revengeful warrior, “ Will you repeat after me, sentence by sentence, the prayer which our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught to His disciples?…I will do it,” replied the duke. He did it accordingly. The chaplain said a sentence, and the duke repeated it, till he came to the petition, “ Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” There the duke was silent. “ My lord duke, you are silent,” said the chaplain. “ Will you be so good as to continue to repeat the words after me, if you dare to do so: ‘ Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’ ?” “ I cannot,” replied the duke. “ Well, God cannot forgive you, for He has said so. He Himself has given us this prayer. Therefore you must either give up your revenge or give up saying this prayer; for to ask God to pardon you as you pardon others is to ask Him to take vengeance on you for all your sins. Go now, my lord, and meet your victim. God will meet you at the great day of judgment.” The iron will of the duke was broken. “ No,” said he; “ I will finish my prayer. My God, my Father, pardon me; forgive me as I desire to forgive him who has offended me; ‘ lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.’” “ Amen,” said the chaplain. “ Amen,” repeated the duke, who now understood the Lord’ s Prayer better than he had ever done before, since he had learned to apply it to himself. (Preacher’s Lantern.)Power of forgiveness Some years ago a missionary was preaching in a chapel to a crowd of idol-loving Hindoos. He had not proceeded far in his sermon when he was interrupted by a strong native, who went behind the desk, intending to knock him down with his stick. Happily the blow aimed at the minister fell on his shoulder, and did him little, if any, injury. The congregation of hearers were, however, very angry with the offender, and they seized him at the very moment he was attempting to escape. “ Now, what shall I do with him?” said the missionary to the people. “ Give him a good beating,” answered some. “ I cannot do that,” said he. “ Send him to the judge,” cried others, “ and he will receive two years’ hard labour on the road.” “ I cannot follow your advice,” said the missionary again, “ and I will tell you why. My religion commands me to love my enemies, and to do good to them who injure me.” Then turning to the man, he said, “ I forgive you from my heart; but never forget that you owe your escape from punishment to that Jesus whom you persecuted in me.” The effect of this scene upon the Hindoos was most impressive. They wondered at it, and, unable any longer to keep silence, sprang on their feet and shouted, “ Victory to Jesus Christ! Victory to Jesus Christi” (J. Pulsford.)Complete forgiveness It was said of Archbishop Cranmer, that the way to have him as one’ s friend was to do him an unkindness. Conquered forgiveness Samuel Harris, of Virginia, shortly after he had begun to preach, was informed by one of his debtors that he did not intend paying him the debt owed “ unless he sued him.” Harris left the man’ s presence meditating. “ What shall I do?” said he, for he badly wanted the money. “ Must I leave preaching and attend to a vexatious lawsuit. Perhaps a thousand souls may perish in the meantime.” He turned aside into a wood and sought guidance in prayer. Rising from his knees, he resolved to hold the man no longer a debtor, and at once wrote out a receipt in full, which he sent by a servant. Shortly after the man met him, and demanded what he meant. “ I mean,” said Harris, “ just what I wrote.” “ But you know I never paid you,” replied the debtor. “ True,” Harris answered; “ and I know you said that you never would unless I sued. But, sir, I sued you at the court of heaven, and Christ has entered bail for you; I have therefore given you a discharge.” “ But I insist matters shall not be left so,” said the man. “ I am well satisfied,” replied the other; “ Jesus will not fail me. I leave you to settle the account with Him at another day. Farewell!” This operated so effectually on the man’ s conscience that in a few days he came and paid the debt. (H. T. Williams.)John Wesley had a misunderstanding with his travelling companion, Joseph Bradford, which resulted in his saying overnight that they must part. In the morning Wesley inquired of him, “ Will you ask my pardon?” “ No,” said Bradbury. “ Then I will ask yours,” said the great preacher. This broke Bradbury down, who melted under the speech and wept like a child. (Life of Wesley.)A Christian’ s forgiveness After the death of Archbishop Tillotson a bundle of libels was found among his papers, on which he had written--“ These are libels; I pray God forgive the authors, as I do.” Forgiveness and restoration I call to mind an occasion when the son of a Christian man was guilty of an act of disobedience in the home. Hearing of it, the father quietly but firmly said, “ Son, I am pained beyond measure at your conduct.” “ How well,” said that father, “ I remember his return from school at mid-day, his quiet knock at the study door, his clear tremulous utterance, ‘ Father, I am so ashamed of myself by reason of my conduct this morning.’ Refuse to restore him!” said that father. “ Unhesitatingly I confess that I never loved my boy more than at that moment, nor did I ever more readily implant the kiss of forgiveness than at that instant. Refuse to restore him: disown him, have him leave the house, take another name, say that he had no place in the family--not my child!” What blasphemy against humanity is this! And shall we dare to attribute such conduct to the Holy Father in heaven, “ who spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all?” (Henry Varley.)Power of kindness I have read that one of Dr. Guthrie’ s admirers was an old Scotch judge, who contributed a large sum to build a new church. But when the doctor left the Established Church, with the Free Church party, the judge was so much displeased that he ceased to call on him, and even refused to recognize him in the street. Twice the good doctor lifted his hat on meeting, but the judge gave no sign of recognition. The doctor said cheerily to himself, “ One more lifting of the hat, my lord, and then we are quits.” One day a woman called at Dr. Guthrie’ s, begging for a seat in his church. The doctor said it was impossible to obtain one; all were engaged, and more than a score of applicants were waiting for a vacancy. She pleaded hard, but he saw no way to help her. At length she mentioned that she was housekeeper for Judge “ That changes the case,” said the doctor. “ I would like to do him a favour for all his kindness to me in past days. You shall have a seat in my own pew.” The woman left, after a profusion of thanks. The next morning there was a knock at the study door, and the judge entered. He came to thank the doctor for the kindness to his housekeepers after his own shabby behaviour, and to beg pardon for his foolish anger. Ephesians 5:1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.Imitators of God The apostle urges us to give and forgive. If ye be imitators of God, give, for He is always giving. I. Consider the precept here laid down--“ Be ye imitators of God, as clear children.”1. I note upon this precept, first, that it calls us to practical duty. In this instance there can be no cavil at the too spiritual, sentimental, or speculative character of the text; there can be no question as to the eminently practical character of the exhortation--“ Be ye imitators of God, as dear children,” for it points to action. “ Be ye imitators” --that is, do not only meditate upon God, and think that you have done enough, but go on to copy what you study. 2. Next, this precept treats us as children, treats us as what we are; and if we are lowly in heart we shall be thankful that it is worded as it is. If you are not His children you cannot imitate Him, and you will not even desire to do so. 3. Observe next, that while it thus humbles us, this precept ennobles us; for what a grand thing it is to be imitators of God! It is an honour to be the lowliest follower of such a Leader. Time has been when men gloried in studying Homer, and their lives were trained to heroism by his martial verse. Alexander carried the Iliad about with him in a casket studded with jewels, and his military life greatly sprung out of his imitation of the warriors of Greece and Troy. Ours is a nobler ambition by far than that which delights in battles; we desire to imitate the God of peace, whose name is love. In after ages, when men began to be a less savage race, and contests of thought were carried on by the more educated class of minds, thousands of men gloried in being disciples of the mighty Stagyrite, the renowned Aristotle. He reigned supreme over the thought of men for centuries, and students slavishly followed him till a greater arose, and set free the human mind by a more true philosophy. To this day, however, our cultured men remain copyists, and you can see a fashion in philosophy as well as in clothes. Some of these imitations are so childish as to be deplorable. It is no honour to imitate a poor example. But, oh, beloved, he who seeks to imitate his God has a noble enterprize before him: he shall rise as on eagle’ s wings. O angels, what happier task could be laid before you? 4. While it ennobles us, this precept tests us. (1) It tests our knowledge. He who does not know God, cannot possibly imitate Him. (2) It tests our love. If we love God, love will constrain us to imitate Him. We readily grow somewhat like that which we love. (3) It tests our sincerity. If a man is not really a Christian he will take no care about his life; but in the matter of close copying a man must be careful; a watchful care is implied in the idea of imitation. (4) It tests us as to our spirit, whether it be of the law or of the gospel. “ Be ye imitators of God, as dear children” : not as slaves might imitate their master, unwillingly, dreading the crack of his whip; but loving, willing imitators, such as children are. You do not urge your children to imitate you; they do this even in their games. See how the boy rides his wooden horse, and the girl imitates her nurse. You see the minister’ s little boy trying to preach like his father; and you all remember the picture of the tiny girl with a Bible in front of her and an ancient pair of spectacles upon her nose, saying, “ Now I’ m grandmamma.” They copy us by force of nature: they cannot help it. Such will be the holiness of the genuine Christian. Holiness must be spontaneous, or it is spurious. 5. While it tests us, this precept greatly aids us. It is a fine thing for a man to know what he has to do, for then he is led in a plain path because of his enemies. What a help it is to have a clear chart, and a true compass! Creatures cannot imitate their Creator in His Divine attributes, but children may copy their Father in His moral attributes. By the aid of His Divine Spirit we can copy our God in His justice, righteousness, holiness, purity, truth, and faithfulness. 6. Another blessing is that it backs us up in our position; for if we do a thing because we are imitating God, if any raise an objection it does not trouble us, much less are we confounded. He who follows God minds not what the godless think of his way of life. 7. This precept is greatly for our usefulness. I do not know of anything which would make us so useful to our fellow men as this would do. I have heard of an atheist who said he could get over every argument except the example of his godly mother: he could never answer that. A genuinely holy Christian is a beam of God’ s glory, and a testimony to the being and the goodness of God. 8. A close imitation of God would make our religion honourable. The ungodly might still hate it, but they could not sneer at it. II. Secondly, I invite you, dear friends, as we are helped of God’ s Spirit, to weigh the argument. The argument is this, “ Be ye imitators of God, as dear children.” First, as children. It is the natural tendency of children to imitate their parents: yet there are exceptions, for some children are the opposite of their fathers, perhaps displaying the vices of a remoter ancestor. Absalom did not imitate David, nor was Rehoboam a repetition of Solomon. In the case of God’ s children it is a necessity that they should be like their Father; for it is a rule in spirituals that like begets its like. I say to any man here who bears the name of Christian and professes to be a child of God, either be like your Father or give up your name. You remember the old classic story of a soldier in Alexander’ s army whose name was Alexander, but when the battle was raging he trembled. Then Alexander said to him, “ How canst thou bear the name of Alexander? Drop thy cowardice or drop thy name.” Be like Christ, or be not called a Christian. The argument, then, is that if we are children we should imitate our Father; but it is also said “ as dear children.” Read it as “ children beloved.” Is not this a tender but mighty argument? How greatly has God loved us in that He permits us to be His children at all. III. Next, I desire to suggest encouragements.1. God has already made you His children. The greater work He has Himself done for you; that which remains is but your reasonable service. 2. God has given you His nature already. It only remains for you to let the new nature act after its own manner. 3. The Lord has given you His blessed Spirit to help you. 4. The Lord allows you to commune with Himself. If we had to imitate a man, and yet could not see him, we should find it hard work; but in this case we can draw nigh unto God. You know the Persian story of the scented clay. One said to it, “ Clay, whence hast thou thy delicious perfume?” It answered: “ I was aforetime nothing but a piece of common clay, but I lay long in the sweet society of a rose till I drank in its fragrance and became perfumed myself.” IV. Certain inferences.1. God is ready to forgive those who have offended Him. 2. God is an example to us, therefore He will surely keep His word. He must be faithful and true, for you are bidden to copy Him. 3. Another inference--only a hint at it--is, if you are told to be “ imitators of God, as dear children,” then you may depend upon it the Lord is a dear Father. 4. Lastly, when the text says, “ Be ye imitators of God,” it bids us keep on imitating Him as long as we live: therefore I conclude that God will always be to us what He is. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The deity of believers to imitate God I. We are required to imitate God.1. We were originally created in the Divine image and likeness; and it is God’ s design to restore us to it. 2. Several things must precede this. (1) We must be convinced of sin.(2) We must be pardoned and purified.(3) We must have the spirit of adoption bestowed upon us. 3. There are some great and important points in which we never shall resemble God--in which it would be impiety even to attempt it. (1) We shall never resemble Him in form.(2) Nor in His independence.(3) Nor in His majesty and greatness. 4. Still there are several points in which we may, and must, resemble God. (1) In knowledge. The Lord is a God of knowledge; and His people are to be a wise and understanding people. It is the will and pleasure of God that we should examine, investigate, and explore; and the more we know of truth and wisdom the nearer do we approximate to His own infinite intellect and understanding.(2) In purity of heart.(3) In love of truth.(4) In justice and rectitude of mind.(5) In mercy, beneficence, long suffering.(6) In tranquillity.(7) In love.(8) In holiness. II. The manner in which this is to be accomplished.1. There is God’ s part in this matter. He must give us grace; and He has promised to do so. 2. Our part. (1) We must contend with the evil passions and principles of our corrupt nature.(2) We must aim at this imitation.(3) We must look at our Model--the Lord Jesus Christ.(4) We must use the appointed means of grace. (James Stratten.)Followers of God First, if we are followers of God, we have perfect trust in Him, “ we know in whom we have believed.” Next, if we are His followers, we must expect to be led sometimes into a path of sorrow and trial. Then again, if we are followers of God, we must expect to pass through the wilderness of temptation and self-denial. Again, we are bidden to be followers of God, “ as dear children.” What does that imply? Surely it means obedience, simplicity, purity. Then, following God, as dear children, means purity. The child who goes out with his father feels it a privilege and an honour, and so he is washed and clean, and wears his best clothes. My brethren, if we are followers of God, we shall strive to keep ourselves pure. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)Following God I. The duty enjoined--“ Be ye followers of God.” The word “ follower” does not merely mean one in the retinue--an attendant. It means more--an imitator. It is applied to those who personate others, and appropriate their looks, manners, and gait. From the original word we have our English translation, “ mimic,” which, although often used in a ludicrous sense, here is to be understood in a very solemn and important signification. Wherein then can we imitate God?1. In character. So far as revealed to us, we may imitate the character of God. 2. In desire. We may be actuated by the same desires as actuate the Almighty. 3. In feeling. God hates sin. To follow is more than to profess. It is carrying into action the principles of Christian life. It must be-- (1) invariable;(2) persevering;(3) faithful;(4) sincere. II. The plea by which it is urged--“ as dear children.”1. Children will follow their parents from love and respect. 2. Children will follow their parents from a desire to gain their approval. 3. Children follow their parents in order that they may fit and prepare themselves, when grown up, for the same sphere and position of life. So with the Christian. He is looking forward to the period of his maturity when he shall be like his. Father in heaven. (Preacher’s Analyst.)The duty of imitating God Let us illustrate the spirit in which the exhortation before us ought to be obeyed.1. The spirit, therefore, in which such men ought to comply with the exhortation is, in the first place, the spirit of reverence and humble subjection to the Divine law. 2. But, I observe, that the spirit expressed in the text--the spirit in which we should comply with the exhortation, is the spirit of grateful, cheerful compliance with the will of God, as dear and beloved children. The love of children to an earthly father is always conjoined with admiration of the virtues of the father, and a desire to imitate him. 3. In the last place, the spirit in which the exhortation ought to be obeyed is the spirit of humble dependence for grace from God to help us. The spirit or disposition of children is the spirit of conscious weakness and dependence. (P. McFarlan, D. D.)Christians must resemble God I. Wherein we are to resemble Genesis The context mentions one thing in particular, viz., pardoning and forgiving the wrongs done us by others. We need not confine our thoughts, however, to that only. In Scripture we are pressed to follow God in two things--in holiness and mercy. Well, then, let us now state the matter.1. Negatively. This following and resembling of God standeth not in His natural, but moral perfections. God doth not say, Be ye strong, as I am strong, or, Be ye happy, as I am happy; but, Be ye holy, as I am holy; merciful, as I am merciful. Our loss by sin is more in point of goodness than of power and knowledge. 2. Positively. The chiefest excellencies are-- (1) His holiness.(2) His goodness. “ God is love.” 2. He hath given us the example of Christ, or God in our nature, who came for this end and purpose, that we, who cannot fathom the unsearchable depth of the Godhead, might see the Divine perfections shining forth in the human nature of Christ, who was the character and express image of His Divine glory (Hebrews 1:3): Christ was “ holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26). They that cannot directly look on the sun may see the motion of it in a basin of water. To express an image, there must be similitude or likeness, and a means of deduction or conveying the likeness. II. What provision God hath made that we may be followers of Him.1. He hath given us His Word to stamp His image upon our souls. 2. He hath given us the example of Christ, or God in our nature. 3. He hath given us His spirit to change us into the likeness of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). None else is able to renew us to the image of God, there being such an averseness in man’ s heart, which cannot be cured by our bare thoughts. III. I prove the point by these reasons.1. This image of God was our primitive glory and excellency. “ Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26). 2. This is the effect, of our new creation and regeneration; for it is said (2 Peter 1:4), that to us are given exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature, Nothing so like Him as the new creature. 3. This is that which we hope shall be completed in heaven, and therefore it must be endeavoured here. “ We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2; Psalms 17:15). The heaven that we look fro’ is such a vision as maketh way for assimilation, and such an assimilation to God as maketh way for complete satisfaction and blessedness in Him. 4. We must not omit the argument of the text--“ as dear children” ; wherein two things are considerable. (1) The relation;(2) The love that accompanieth it. 1. The relation. Ye are children. Children usually resemble their parents, either by nature, in the lineaments of their face, or by institution and education, in the quality of their minds. It may fail there, but it always holdeth good here; for none are God’ s children but those that are like Him. 2. The love that accompanieth and goeth along with this relation--“ as dear children.” (1) There was a great deal of love showed in giving us our new nature in regeneration, and taking us into so near a relation to Himself as that of children (1 John 3:1). (2) There is a great love and tenderness exercised towards those that are in this relation. They are His “ dear children,” and they shall know it by His fatherly dealing with them. (3) The more like to God we are, the more dear we are to Him, and the more amiable in His sight; so that you are not only loved, but lovely. (4) Our chief worship of God consists in imitation; not in contemplation or admiration only, or in bare praise and adoration, but in imitation, when we study to be like Him. Now to this end-- 1. Get a due conception of God. 2. Esteem these things as amiable. We can neither praise, nor love, nor imitate, what we do net esteem. Is holiness the glory of God? and will you either scorn it in others, or neglect to get it yourselves? 3. Desire God to change your natures, that you may bear the image of the heavenly One (1 Corinthians 15:49). 4. Bewail your imperfections, and come nearer to your Pattern every day. (T. Manton, D. D.)Imitators of God in wisdom and power I. The imitation of God’ s wisdom. It is written--I take one example--it is written, “ No man knoweth the Son but the Father” ; they, therefore, who are studying the Son under the Father’ s teaching, are in the most direct way imitating God Himself in the matter of knowledge. Again, we may imitate God in the knowledge of human nature. II. The imitation of God in power. This would seem, like the other, to be almost an unintelligible precept till we begin to ponder it more thoughtfully. Then we must be struck with several passages of Scripture which represent power as one of the characteristic Christian endowments, as when St. Paul says, “ Ye received not a spirit of fear, but ye received, when ye became Christians, a spirit of power” ; or our Lord, “ that ye receive power, in that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” ; or St. Paul again, “ I can do all things,” or, more literally, “ I have strength for all things, through Christ which enableth me” ; or St. John in the opening verses of the Apocalypse, “ He hath made us kings” ; “ I appoint unto you a kingdom as My Father hath appointed unto Me.” We must dismiss altogether the first idea of power as a selfish or personal ascendency over a multitude of subjects or inferiors. If we examine it we shall find that the power in which we are to be imitators of God consists in two things--the one a power over ourselves, and the other an influence over others, both alike due to the same cause--the ever-present help and strength of the Holy Spirit. We are forever misreading and miscalling power. We look for it, we seem to see it, in some form or other of the self-strength. We call a man powerful who by the force of intellect, or of eloquence, or of station, can overbear his opponents, enthral his hearers, or make a nation bow down to him. In all these workings of power it would be ridiculous, it would be irreverent, to see any approach, however infinitely distant, to the imitation of God. But it is otherwise when we come into successful conflict, however insignificant may seem to be the form of it, with God’ s one foe, which is the power of evil. And yet once more, and finally, the imitation of God’ s power in conquering a sin passes on into the imitation of God’ s power in the exercise of influence. That marvellous word influence, which is the flowing in into one soul of a mysterious something out of another soul; is it not the very highest of God’ s operations and power? Is it not that which quickens dead men out of the sleep of death? Is it not that which changed Saul of Tarsus into the blessed apostle and evangelist St. Paul? Is it not that which even in these late days of the earth is every day bringing some new wicked rebel into the gracious obedience of Jesus Christ? Is it not just that flowing in of the Holy Spirit into the spirit that is in man? And is there any exercise of God’ s power quite so wonderful as that? (Dean Vaughan.)Following as children This figure of following may be drawn from any of several sources. A soldier follows his leader; and sometimes in Holy Scripture following is set forth by that figure. Scholars, also, according to the Oriental method of instruction, where the teacher walks in some shaded garden, follow their instructor. The Rabbi, in Palestine, with a band of disciples, moved from village to village, teaching the people; and so this, too, is a Scriptural figure. But the image we have here is that of little children following after their parents; and no picture could be more charming than that which rises to the imagination of everyone who has been blest in his childhood’ s home--the figure of little children watching their mother, running after her if she leaves the room, crying for her, clinging to her, asking to be lifted by her, dependent, seeking their own little liberty always within the scope of her eye. Now, we are to “ follow God as dear children” ; and He, therefore, is to be to us of necessity a Father, or we cannot follow Him as children. If, to our conception, therefore, He is a God of fate, whose decrees are fitful coercions: if our conception of God is that of one in whom is all power, and all will, and a rightful wilfulness, it is impossible for us to follow such an ideal of God as dear children. Or, if He be to our imagination intellectualized into an abstract God of perfect purity, with such a revulsion from evil, and discord, and sin that he cannot for a moment tolerate it in the universe, but sits conscious of His own everlasting purity, demanding purity in everyone inexorably, you cannot follow such an aspect of God as dear children. A child can follow a smiling mother or a benignant father; but you cannot persuade a child to follow a stern-browed stranger, nor anyone that stands in the attitude of a judge, whose face is clothed with frowns. Children flee from such a face. It is not in nature that they should be attracted to it. We may follow God by veneration, by a worshipful emulation; but it must be in such a way as dear children can follow. For there are, or have been, I doubt not, to every one of us, moments in which the goodness of our mother and the superiority of our father have acted back upon us, and we have been made to feel how inferior we are to them; and we look up to them, and we rejoice in that greatness which maker us feel how inferior we are. And so, a loving child of God may rejoice in his own sense of abasement and inferiority, because he loves God; and out of love there may come veneration, humiliation, and prostration of soul. The whole system by which men are meant, through a sense of their own sinfulness, to be humble and prostrate before God, is not only derogatory to the supreme idea of manhood, but is degrading to the sense of man; and men who are all the time looking at their own imperfections and sins, and studying them, and, as it were, stewing them in their own consciousness, and living upon a perpetual sense of their inferiority--such men are not wholesome-minded. That is not the way that dear children live at home. You would not let them. As little as you have of the Divine nature in you, you are conscious that that could not be the proper aspect of the experience of children at home; and that, if they love you and feel the warmth of your love, they cannot forever be abiding in a morbid consciousness of their own weakness, imperfections, and misdoings. There must be the upspring of hope, and faith, and trust, and love, or the child cannot be a dear child at home. And still less is fear compatible with following God as dear children. There is a filial fear. There is nothing more solicitous than love. The child, anxious to please, looks with waiting expectancy to see if its task has pleased father or mother. The child that is learning to write, or that is studying art, and, making sketches, brings them to the teacher or to the parent, comes with a kind of trembling apprehension lest they should not be approved. That is honourable. That has the approval of affection itself, and it is ennobling. But the fear of anger, the fear of penalty, the fear of our own suffering and loss, is admirable only in very remote degrees, and occasionally, when other motives fail. And yet, there is a filial fear, a love fear, which not only is permissible, but is honouring and uplifting. (H. W. Beecher.)Two methods of imitating God There are two ways of imitating a person; the one making that person our model, the other our example. The first does the exact deeds, lives in the same way, dresses in the same colours, without regard to the differing circumstances; and this always leads to error. The other way is to imbibe the same spirit, to have the same character, and thus do what our example would have done in our circumstances. Almost nothing is said of what things Christ did as a boy, or how He lived, lest we make Him only a model. But we are shown His spirit of obedience, and goodness, and growth, that we may take Him for our example. (S. T. S. Nonich.)Imitators of God Literally: “ Become ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children.” These words may be regarded as indicating the great subjective object of our lives. God’ s purpose concerning us is to conform us to the image of His own blessed Son. Our purpose concerning ourselves in our own life and conversation should be to become “ imitators of God as dear children.” Man was originally created in the image of God; but observe, in His image potentially rather than actually--just as the child is the image of the man, or, as we may say, the acorn contains potentially the image of the oak, inasmuch as it contains within itself that which will develop into the oak. Man was made innocent and pure, and so far in the image of God. But the positive attributes and qualities which are God’ s highest glory, and by which His glory is to shine forth through humanity, could not be exhibited till man had been submitted to a probation. Jesus Christ not only died, but lived--lived a life of perfect and complete obedience--in order that by that life He might bring within our view the image of God displayed in a truly perfect man. Thus the Divine image lost in the Fall has been restored to humanity in all the completeness of its moral beauty in the Incarnation, and as we contemplate it we learn to admire it, and become enamoured of it. In that revelation we have an opportunity of seeing both what God is and what man is designed by Him to become. As we have endeavoured to show, then, we need to have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the object to be imitated, in order to imitate it; and then, when this is granted, we need carefully to study it. You cannot imitate the productions of a great painter unless you give your whole attention to that painter’ s style. It is not sufficient for you to have a general idea of the characteristics of his genius; you have to study the details of the works of art proceeding from his pencil; and only when you have made yourself acquainted with the various peculiarities of his style and the features of his work, are you in a position to become an imitator of that painter. And as with painting, so with every other art: we all know this. My friends, it is even so with our spiritual life. If we are to become imitators of God, as dear children, we first need to have a model set before us in such a form as that we can comprehend it, and next we need to study the model so set before us. And we have reason to thank God that the Divine model is brought down within reach of our finite powers of contemplation. If God had never been incarnate, and if Jesus had not come down to show Him to us, we might have been left to barren speculations about the Divine character and attributes, as were the ancient heathen philosophers. “ Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself; but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” And this is surely the true answer to that dreary doctrine of the incomprehensibility of the Absolute--preached some time ago by an eminent thinker amongst ourselves, a Christian philosopher of no small repute--a doctrine which, if carried to its ultimate and practical issue, must be destructive alike of all true religion and morality. It was advanced by this author that because God is absolute, He is unknowable by the finite, and because He is unknowable, therefore His moral qualities may be totally different in kind from all that we understand by terms employed to indicate them; that the “ justice” of God, for example, may be a totally different thing from what we understand as justice, and His goodness a totally distinct thing from what we understand as goodness, and so on with each moral attribute in particular. This position, as I have said, seems to me subversive of all true morality, while it strikes at the root of all reasonable religion. For if God’ s qualities are different in kind from what I understand by the terms employed, why may not the greatest criminals be nearer the standard of Divine perfection than the worthiest of mankind? And how is it possible for me to admire, love, and, above all, trust a Being, of the nature of whose moral attributes I know practically nothing? Atheism itself were a relief as against the possibility of having to deal with such an unknown God. But the answer to such an appalling deduction of a pitiless logic is to be found in the fact that the perfections of the Absolute are presented to us in a concrete form in the Person of Jesus Christ. As we gaze upon Him we see what God is, and what He desires us to think and know of Himself. And we find here that God’ s moral perfections are identical in kind with those qualities which we recognize as such, and after which we aspire; that the justice of God is the same as that which we understand by the word justice; that the love, the purity, the truth, the faithfulness, which we regard as attributes of Deity, are the same in kind, though fuller in degree, as those virtues which bear these names amongst ourselves. For we observe that never were these so perfectly exhibited as in the life, character, and teaching of Him who completely revealed to us the image of God. Let me say, therefore, do not trouble yourselves because God seems so vast that you cannot comprehend Him, or because His attributes are so infinite that your imagination cannot grapple with them. Do not allow yourself to lose hold of the Divine Personality in the attempt to recognize His infinity. But to become closely acquainted with this model, and to be able to imitate it, we need not only to have it, but to study it. And hence the necessity of the careful, painstaking contemplation of the Christ of the Gospels. But to have the Model and to study it is not all that is required to render our imitation of God in Christ all that it should be. We must be careful not only to imitate the one true Model, but to imitate it in the proper way. And the true evangelical method of imitation is indicated to us in these suggestive words, “ Be ye imitators of God, as dear children.” It is in the nature of things that the child should imitate its parent. As a matter of fact, children for the most part do imitate their parents. The child of a carpenter will probably never be happier than when he can get a hammer and a few nails and make as much noise with them as possible, while he is endeavouring to imitate the skill of his parent, although with very poor success. The child of the soldier will naturally select the toy sword or gun or a noisy drum for its plaything. The child of the clergyman will delight in addressing an imaginary congregation, or perhaps a congregation of chairs and stools, with much vehemence, if with no great amount of intelligence. But why multiply illustrations? It is a fact we are all familiar with, that the child imitates the parent, not because it is constrained to do so, but because it finds a pleasure in doing so, and that just because it is, as we say, its father’ s own child. We may learn a great deal from this. The child receives a certain disposition by his hereditary relationship with his parent, and this disposition has a tendency to exhibit itself in his future conduct. How important it is, then, that in our own personal experience we should watch over all within us that seems to come from God--watch over it with such care as the horticulturist would expend on some lovely flower--some rare and beautiful exotic in his greenhouse. These holy aspirations and purer instincts of which we are conscious have been introduced to our nature by Divine grace; they come not of earth, they have their home in the very heart of God Himself; and hence as tender exotics they need to be guarded and protected against the cold breath of the blighting frosts of this wintry world of ours, which would kill and destroy if possible every flower of Paradise. Give place at once to all that you have reason to believe comes from God, and respond at once to those inward impulses and instincts which are of a Divine origin. These are the motives of sonship, and by surrendering ourselves to these we shall fulfil the direction of our text, “ Be ye imitators of God, as dear children.” But there is something more than this suggested to us by the words. It is not merely that there are certain hereditary instincts which descend from the father to the child, but it is also the tendency of the close relationship which exists between the son and the father to strengthen these instincts, and to develop them into habits of life. In the first place this relationship usually evokes on the part of the child a feeling of admiration for the father. A little boy naturally thinks his father the greatest man in the world. If the Queen of England were introduced into his home, he would regard her as altogether a less important person than his parents. There is nobody so great in the eyes of a little child as his father or mother; and it is well that this should be so. And if we are the children of the Most High God, is it not more natural still that our whole being should be under the influence of a feeling of admiration for the great Father of spirits, from whom we derived our existence originally, and from whom we have received that new spiritual life--that life by virtue of which we live indeed? This feeling of admiration yields an additional stimulus to those instincts of imitation to which I have already referred. With what interest does the little child look on while his father engages in his ordinary employment. What a wonder of skill it all seems to him! And this admiration prompts those unskilful little hands to attempt an imitation, however feeble. I cannot help thinking that it is possible for us to exhibit in our spiritual experience something like a servile imitation of God, when we only endeavour to imitate Him because we think it is our duty to do so, and we may bring punishment upon ourselves if we do not endeavour to fulfil this our appointed task. This servile imitation must lead us into the region of mere legality, and when this is the case our imitation will be a travesty rather than a copy; for when this is our motive one essential characteristic of a true imitation will necessarily be absent--the element of joyous spontaneousness which makes the imitation so specially well-pleasing in the great Father’ s eyes. If therefore we desire the true imitation of God let us see to it that we imitate Him as children, and as dear children. But, as I have said, imitation requires to be carried out in detail, and we have to study the work imitated in all its various parts if we would produce anything really resembling it. In the present passage, however, St. Paul calls attention to some of the more prominent features of the Divine character, in respect of which we are to be imitators of God; and we will confine ourselves to a very brief consideration of these. First he speaks of that kindness and tenderness which were so characteristic of Jesus Christ: “ Be ye kind,” he says, “ one to another, tender hearted.” It is not enough that we should abstain from being unkind. There is scarcely anything in the life of Jesus that impresses us more than this. As He goes through the world, amidst all its sickening sights and sounds, He never seems to lose His quick sensibility. The next feature of the character of God mentioned here is His Divine readiness to forgive--“ Forgiving one another, as God for Christ’ s sake has forgiven you.” This leads us to the third point in which St. Paul teaches us here to imitate God as revealed to us in Jesus; and it is the grandest feature of all in the Divine character that is brought before us here. Nay, rather it is the common element in which all other perfections meet; for “ God is love.” “ Walk in love,” exclaims the apostle, “ as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.” Kindness lies on the surface of our lives, and has to do mainly with our outward manner and conduct; but love is of the heart, its domain is within, where it lifts us from our native selfishness, and developes the Divine. It is the genial warmth of that life blood that floweth forth from the heart of God into ours, and makes us live indeed! Of love we can say no less than St. John has said of it: “ He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” ; for “ God is love.” It is the very essence of Deity, and he who has most of it imitates God the best. Walk in love. Well, how shall we do it? How shall we become imitators of God in this respect? We cannot create love by a mere effort of our will; but we may expose ourselves to influences favourable to its development; we may foster and cherish it, or we may check and hinder it--a thing which I fear too many Christians do. The instincts of love naturally exist within those who are born of God, because we inherit the Father’ s characteristics; and the disposition to feel a new love for all with whom we have to do is an instance of that hereditary imitation to which I have already referred. But love grows, and is developed by exercise. If instead of checking these early impulses we encourage them, and go on to love, not “ in word or tongue, but in deed and in truth,” our disposition to love will be strengthened by loving deeds and words performed or spoken in obedience to the instincts of love. We may foster love negatively also by watching against the narrowing instincts of selfishness, or against anything that tends to render us self-absorbed, for charity seeketh not her own; and to seek our own is to strangle the life of love at its very birth. It is well, too, ever to endeavour to look at the lovelier side of human character, for most men have a lovelier side, and in Christian men this is the Divine element. The mention of Christ’ s gift of Himself brings us to the last point referred to here in which it is possible for us to imitate God. Let us become imitators of God in self-sacrifice. For self-sacrifice, wonderful to say, would seem to be the law of the Divine benevolence. Be imitators of God in this. Selfishness is no attribute of Deity, though for Him all exist. He fulfils His will in His creatures by making them partakers of His own blessedness, and nothing less than this will satisfy Him. Men seek for greatness in self-assertion, in pushing their own fortunes, and advancing their social status. But the Divine secret of true greatness lies in self-denial and self-forgetfulness, in the willing and cheerful surrender of our own rights and comforts and pleasures for the good of others. (W. H. Aitken, M. A.) Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God.Walking in love I. I gather out of these words something calculated to touch the heart.1. There are many of our fellow creatures who have found but little love from man. To them this would have been a cold, cheerless place. To them the love of God, revealed in the gospel, comes as a strange and startling thing. It transforms life when thoroughly realized and embraced. 2. There are others who have known the value of human affection, and have lost it. A dark cloud has settled down upon their once happy homes and hearts. The gospel announces that all they have lost, and far more, they may find again in Christ. When anyone shall not only hear it, but grasp it--not only understand it, but try it--then life will wear a new aspect, and under the influence of Christ the whole soul expands. II. I find here something to satisfy the conscience. What should we do in the presence of our sins, if we had no such truth as this to trust to? III. I find here something to regulate life.1. Walk in love as in an atmosphere of bright sunshine, bathing your soul in a consciousness of God’ s love for you. It is your privilege, let it be your joy. 2. Walk in love as an apparel. It is a beautiful sight to see a man clothed with humility. It is a cheering sight when you look at a servant of Jesus in the armour of light, and a worshipper of God in the garments of salvation. It is a glorious sight when you see a holy man putting on zeal for a cloak. But above all these things put on charity or love, for it is the bond of perfectness. In this world of sorrow the Christian should be conspicuous for love. It was the prominent feature in Christ; it should be prominent in Christ’ s followers. 3. Walk in love, as the appointed path in which God would have His children found. The walk of love will lead you into ways which you never once thought to find. It often turns aside from the more crowded thoroughfares of life, and runs through scenes where sorrow and shame have crept out of sight to weep and endeavour to forget. But there are some of the keenest experiences of human joy to be found in this lowly path. To stand, e.g., in the presence of despair, and watch how hope begins again to brighten a brother’ s eye; to whisper some holy truth in the ear of grief, and then receive the rich reward of a smile of thankfulness; to put the cup of cold water to the parched lip, and then listen to the gurgle of a new joy as some poor sufferer drinks down what refreshes soul and body both--oh, this comes only in the lanes and the by walks of the path of love. Sometimes the path descends into the darker regions of trial and temptation, when the believer himself needs sympathy; and I know nothing more sweet, nothing more soothing, than in such an hour of one’ s own sorrow to experience the sympathy which Christ shows in the tenderness of His insight into all our need, and to feel that the world is better than we thought it to be when some brother man comes in the warmth of his own regenerated heart and testifies that all is not cold, all is not barren. But sometimes the walk of love rises among the upland scenery of grace and godliness, and then, when we climb from height to height of God’ s great mystery of redemption, as we look down and back upon all the way in which goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our life, as we look around on the vastness and variety and beauty and blessedness for which our Father has given us an eye and a heart, and as we look above into that cloudland overhead and up to those greater worlds of glory which enable us to think what the universe must be and what the great Governor of that universe can do, why then the walk of love rises into a sublimity which a man can feel but cannot describe, and the climax upon earth is reached, and beyond it nothing further can go till this winged soul of ours shall have broken the silver cord that tied it to the body, and found the expansion of her wing feathers causing her to sear away into the presence of God, where are fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore. It is a great bright world that is yet known to few. Some have landed upon its shore--a great continent of joy. They know but the fringe of flower and fruit which the search of a few short days has found. But go through the length and breadth of the land, wander among its hills and valleys, drink of the deep fountains of love, swim over its inner seas, and you will never again return to the haunts of sin and the ways of shame, for the love of the higher and the purer and the more perfect will swallow up every meaner passion, and absorb every fainter light, and the passion, the privilege, the prerogative, the pleasure of the sinner saved by grace, is to walk in love. (John Richardson.)The duty of walking in love The doctrine is that Christ showed so much love in giving Himself for a propitiatory sacrifice to God for us, that thereby all true Christians are bound to walk in love. I. Let me open the example and pattern here set before us. And there I begin--1. With the principle--“ Christ also loved us.” That was it which moved and inclined Him to so strange an undertaking as to die for our sins. 2. The act--“ He gave Himself for us.” Where you have the giver, the gift, and the parties interested. (1) The Giver, Christ. He voluntarily first assumed a body and then parted with His life for this use. (2) The Gift was Himself. And both put together show that Christ was both Priest and Sacrifice; as God the Priest, as man the sacrifice: “ He offered up Himself to God through the eternal Spirit “ (Hebrews 9:14). (3) The parties interested--“ for us.” II. The nature of the duty thence inferred, or what it is to “ walk in love.” To walk in love signifieth not one act or two, but the perpetual tenor of our lives; our whole life should be an exercise of love. But what love doth He mean? Either love to God and Christ, or love to men? I answer--I cannot exclude the former totally, for these reasons.1. Love to men is of little worth unless it flow from love to God. 2. Because it is a genuine product of this great love of Christ to us: “ We love Him because He loved us first” (1 John 4:19). To God Himself; we beat back His own beam and flame upon Himself first, and then to all that belong to Him. 3. Because not only the direct improvement of the love of Christ, but so much of the Christian life dependeth on the love of God, that it should not be excluded when we are discoursing of it (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). The sense of this love should work in us certainly a great fervour of love to God, that may level and direct all our actions to His glory, and make us study to please Him. Well, then, if we take it in this sense, how are we to walk in love? I answer--1. That love is to be at the bottom of all our actions and duties, that our whole religion may be but an acting of love, “ Let all your things be done with charity” (1 Corinthians 16:14). If we pray, let us act the seeking love; if we praise God, let us act the delighting love; if we obey God, let us act the pleasing love. 2. Let us walk in love, all will be nothing else; but let us continue constant to the death in the profession of the Christian faith; for vehement pure Christian love casteth out all fear in danger. If we love Christ, we will run all hazards for His sake. III. I come now to show you how we are bound to do so by the example of Christ’ s love. And here I shall show you that it is both a motive and a pattern.1. It is a motive to excite us to love Him, because the great thing that is remarkable in Christ’ s giving Himself as a sacrifice for us is love. You may conceive it by these considerations. (1) To suffer for another is more than to do or act for him, for therein is more self-denial. (2) To suffer death for another is the greatest obligation that we can put upon him (John 15:13). (3) This is the highest expression of love to friends, but Christ did it for enemies, for the ungodly sinful world (Romans 5:7-8). (4) To suffer for the faults of another is the greatest condescension. (5) Because this is not fit to be done among mankind, that the innocent should suffer capital punishment for the guilty. This was the wonderful act of God’ s grace to find such a strange and unusual sacrifice for us. (6) That He should suffer to such ends, or that the consequent benefits should be so great, as the remission of sins and eternal life. (7) That, with respect to the end, God and Christ took such pleasure in it (Isaiah 53:10). 2. It is a pattern which we should imitate. (1) In the reality of it (1 John 3:18). (2) In the freeness of it. He was not induced to it by any overture from us, but by His own love only (Ephesians 5:25). (3) In the constancy of it. He was not discouraged when it came to push of pike (John 13:1). (4) In the self-denial and condescension of it (Matthew 20:28). But because we cannot pursue all, two things I shall commend to you from this love of Christ. (a) The kind of the love; it was a love of souls. (b) The greatness and degree of this love. We must be ready to lay down our lives for the Church of God. Use1. This love of Christ must be firmly believed. 2. It must be closely applied for our good and benefit, till we are duly affected with it, so as to make suitable returns to God; partly by devoting ourselves to Him (Romans 12:1), and partly by rendering our thank offerings of charity towards others (Hebrews 13:17). (T. Manton, D. D.)The nature, properties, and acts of charity I. “ Loving our neighbour” doth imply that we should value and esteem him: this is necessary, for affection doth follow opinion; that is not amiable, which is wholly contemptible; or so far as it is such. II. Loving our neighbour doth imply a sincere and earnest desire of his welfare, and good of all kinds, in due proportion: for it is a property of love, that it would have its object most worthy of itself, and consequently that it should attain the best state whereof it is capable, and persist firm therein; to be fair and plump, to flourish and thrive without diminution or decay; this is plain to experience in respect to any other thing (a horse, a flower, a building, or any such thing) which we pretend to love: wherefore charity should dispose us to be thus affected to our neighbour. We should wish him prosperous success in all his designs, and a comfortable satisfaction of his desires; we should wish him with alacrity of mind to reap the fruits of his industry; and to enjoy the best accommodation of his life. III. Charity doth imply a complacence or delightful satisfaction in the good of our neighbour; this is consequent on the former property, for that joy naturally doth result from events agreeable to our desire. Charity hath a good eye, which is not offended or dazzled with the lustre of its neighbour’ s virtue, or with the splendour of his fortune, but vieweth either of them steadily with pleasure, as a very delightful spectacle. IV. Correspondently, love of our neighbour doth imply condolency and commiseration of the evils befalling him: for what we love, we cannot without displeasure behold lying in a bad condition, sinking into decay, or in danger to perish; so, to a charitable mind, the bad state of any man is a most unpleasant and painful sight. Is any man fallen into disgrace? charity doth hold down its head, is abashed and out of countenance, partaking of his shame; is any man disappointed of his hopes or endeavours? charity crieth out alas, as if it were itself defeated; is any man afflicted with pain or sickness? charity looketh sadly, it sigheth and groaneth, it fainteth and languisheth with him; is any man pinched with hard want? charity, if it cannot succour, it will condole; doth ill news arrive? charity doth hear it with an unwilling ear and a sad heart, although not particularly concerned in it. The sight of a wreck at sea, of a field spread with carcasses, of a country desolated, of houses burnt and cities ruined, and of the like calamities incident to mankind, would touch the bowels of any man; but the very report of them would affect the heart of charity. It doth not suffer a man with comfort or ease to enjoy the accommodations of his own state, while others before him are in distress; it cannot be merry while any man in presence is sorrowful; it cannot seem happy while its neighbour doth appear miserable: it hath a share in all the afflictions which it doth behold or hear of, according to that instance in St. Paul of the Philippians: “ Ye have done well, that ye did communicate with (or partake in) my afflictions” ; and according to that precept, “ Remember those which are in bonds, as bound with them.” V. It is generally a property of love to appropriate its object; in apprehension and affection embracing it, possessing it, enjoying it as its own; so charity doth make our neighbour to be ours, engaging us to tender his case and his concerns as our own; so that we shall exercise about them the same affections of soul (the same desires, the same hopes and fears, the same joys and sorrows), as about our own nearest and most peculiar interest. So charity doth enlarge our minds beyond private considerations, conferring on them an universal interest, and reducing all the world within the verge of their affectionate care; so that a man’ s self is a very small and inconsiderable portion of his regard. VI. It is a property of love to affect union, or the greatest approximation that can be to its object. VII. It is a property of love to desire a reciprocal affection; for that is the surest possession and firmest union which is grounded on voluntarily conspiring in affection; and if we do value any person, we cannot but prize his goodwill and esteem. Charity is the mother of friendship, not only as inclining us to love others, but as attracting others to love us; disposing us to affect their amity, and by obliging means to procure it. VIII. Hence also charity disposeth to please our neighbour, not only by inoffensive but by obliging demeanour; by a ready complacence and compliance with his fashion, with his humour, with his desire in matters lawful, or in a way consistent with duty and discretion. IX. Love of our neighbour doth imply readiness on all occasions to do him good, to promote and advance his benefit in all kinds. X. This indeed is a property of charity, to make a man deny himself, to neglect his own interest, yea to despise all selfish regards for the benefit of his neighbour. To him that is inspired with charity, his own good is not good, when it standeth in competition with the more considerable good of another; nothing is so dear to him, which he gladly will not part with on such considerations. XI. It is a property of love not to stand on distinctions and nice respects; but to be condescensive, and willing to perform the meanest offices, needful or useful for the good of its friend. He that truly loveth is a voluntary servant, and gladly will stoop to any employment for which the need or considerable benefit of him whom he loveth doth call. So the greatest souls, and the most glorious beings, the which are most endued with charity, by it are disposed with greatest readiness to serve their inferiors. XII. Charity doth regulate our dealing, our deportment, our conversation toward our neighbour, implying good usage and fair treatment of him on all occasions; for no man doth handle that which he loveth rudely or roughly, so as to endanger the loss, the detriment, the hurt or offence thereof. Wherefore the language of charity is soft and sweet, not wounding the heart, nor grating on the ear of any with whom a man converseth; like the language of which the wise man saith, “ The words of the pure are pleasant words” ; such as are “ sweet to the soul, and health to the bones” ; and, “ The words of a wise man are gracious.” Such are the properties of charity. There be also farther many particular acts, which have a very close alliance to it.1. It is a proper act of charity to forbear anger on provocation, or to repress its motions; to resent injuries and discourtesies either not at all, or very calmly and mildly. 2. It is a proper act of charity to remit offences, suppressing all designs of revenge, and not retaining any grudge. 3. It is a duty coherent with charity, to maintain concord and peace; to abstain from contention and strife, together with the sources of them, pride, envy, emulation, malice. 4. Another charitable practice is, being candid in opinion, and mild in censure, about our neighbour and his actions. 5. Another charitable practice is, to comport with the infirmities of our neighbour; according to that rule of St. Paul, “ We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves” ; and that precept, “ Bear one another’ s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” 6. It is an act of charity to abstain from offending, or scandalizing our brethren. (I. Barrow, D. D.)Christ’ s love But how doth it appear that Christ loves us?1. By amorous expressions. Read His love songs and see how affectionately He sets out the beauty of His beloved (Son 4:1; Son 4:3, etc.). 2. By His thoughts. Thoughts and affections are mutual causes one of another. Thoughts give life to affection, and affection begets thoughts. Christ’ s thoughts of us are many and high. He had thoughts of love to us from eternity, and we were never one moment out of His mind since then (Isaiah 49:15). 3. But this flame, where it is, cannot be confined to the breast and thoughts, but will break forth into action. And so does the love of Christ appear to us, by what He has done for us. He has made us rich, fair, honourable, potent, yea, one with Himself. 4. The love of Christ appears by what He has given us; His love tokens. Whatever we have, for being or well-being, spring from His love. Take a survey of heaven and earth, and all things therein; and whatever upon sure grounds appears good, ask it confidently of Christ; His love will not deny it. But we are not yet come to the height of Christ’ s love. These unspeakable, inconceivable, unsearchable favours are but streams or drops of love; Christ has given us the fountain, the ocean: these are but sparks and beams; He has given us the sun, the element of love. The love of Christ gives us interest in the glorious Trinity. And now, what is there in heaven and earth that the love of Christ has not made ours? 5. Take an estimate of the love of Christ from His sufferings. Consider how and what He suffers by us, with us, for us. (1) His love makes Him patiently suffer many things by us.(2) This love makes Him willing to suffer with us. “ In all our afflictions He is afflicted.”(3) His love made Him willing to suffer for us. But further, to set out this love of Christ, consider some properties by which the Spirit describes it.1. Christ loves us freely. He loved us when we had neither love nor beauty to attract His affections. 2. It is unchangeable (John 13:1). No act of unkindness or disloyalty of ours can nonplus it.3. It is an incomprehensible love (Ephesians 3:19). 1. Consider whom he loves. How unfit, unworthy, unlovely. (1) How impotent! Man can do nothing to engage or deserve love, nothing to please or honour such a lover; and was so considered when Christ had intentions of love, therefore it is admirable. (2) How poor! No such poverty as man’ s. (3) How deformed! Poverty alone cannot hinder love, especially if there be beauty; but who can love deformity? (4) How hated! Not only hateful, but hated; hated of all. Who would love him whom none loves, who has no friends, who can meet with none in the world but enemies? The whole creation is at enmity with man. He cannot meet any creature, but harbours a secret hatred, and would be ready to manifest it at God’ s command. What a wonder that Christ will love that which all hate! (5) What enmity! Man is not only hateful and hated, but a hater of Christ, with such a hatred as would exclude all love from the breast of any creature; a hatred so extensive, that he hates Christ and all that is His, all that is like Him; all His offices, especially that which is most glorious, His royal office; keeps Christ out of His throne as to himself, and would do it in others. (6) How pre-engaged to his deadly enemies, sin and Satan. Who will love one for a wife who is contracted to another, given her heart and self into his possession, and has long continued so? Such is a man’ s state, married to sin, in league with Satan, and brings forth fruit, not unto God, but unto them. Here is the wonder of Christ’ s love, that it does fix upon the worst of creatures, man, yea, and upon the worst of men in some respects. (7) How powerful. “ All power is given to Him in heaven and earth” (Matthew 28:18), that as Mediator; but as God, He is coequal with His Father, and so omnipotent. (8) How absolute. The sovereignty of Christ makes His love a wonder. 2. How Christ loves man. (1) Christ loves men more than the best of men love one another. (2) Christ loves man more than man loves himself. The love of Christ is more than self-love in man; therefore it is wonderful. (3) Christ loves man more than He loves the angels, in divers respects. It is evident in that distinction His love has made betwixt both fallen by sin. Not one of the fallen angels have, or ever shall taste of His love; but innumerable companies of men are restored to His favour. (4) Christ loves man more than heaven and earth, more than the kingdom of heaven, more than all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of both, more than the whole world. (5) Christ loves man as Himself, in some respects more. Christ loves man more than Himself, as man. I do not say Christ as God, or absolutely; but as man, and in some respects. He advances them to the like state with himself, so far as man is capable. He bestows upon them all things that Himself hath, so far as they are communicable. The same natures. He consists of Divine and human, and so does man in some sense. That Christ might be like them, He took human nature; that they might be like Him, He communicates the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Not that it is altogether the same, but that it most resembles it. Did not Christ get much glory by the work of redemption? Was not this the most glorious administration that ever the world was witness of? Yes. Yet the glory the Son of God got hereby was an inconsiderable advantage to Him, compared with the benefits thereby purchased for man. The Son of God had lost nothing if He had wanted this; this did not add any degree of glory to that which He enjoyed from eternity. He was infinitely glorious before the foundation of the world, and nothing can be added to that which is infinite. (D. Clarkson, B. D.)Christ’ s sacrifice 1.He gave. Gifts are expressions of love. We judge of love by the quality or value of the gift. Now, what did Christ give? 2. He gave Himself, nothing less than Himself; and that is more, incomparably more, than if He had given all the angels in heaven, all the treasures on earth for us; more than if He had given all the works of His hands. The small dust of the balance is as nothing to the universe, and the universe is as nothing compared with the Son of God. 3. How did He give Himself? He did not give Himself as we are wont to give, nor did He give Himself as He gives other things. He gave Himself, not in the common way of giving; but, as the text shows, His giving was an offering of Himself. “ He gave Himself an offering for us.” But then-- 4. How did He give Himself as an offering for us? There are several sorts of offerings mentioned in Scripture. Offerings that were not sacrifices. Such were the persons and things which were devoted or dedicated unto God for the service of the tabernacle and of the temple. Thus the vessels and utensils given up and set apart for the service and ministration under the law are called offerings (Numbers 7:10), and those offerings are specified (verse 13, etc.). Silver chargers, bowls, and spoons; and not only things, but persons are called offerings when set apart; for thus the legal ministry (Numbers 10:10-11; Numbers 10:13). The other sort of offerings were sacrifices, such as were offered so as to be consumed and destroyed, and to be deprived of life, if they were things that had life. So that there is a great difference betwixt these offerings: the former were offered so as to be preserved, the latter were offered so as to be killed or consumed. For that is the true notion of a sacrifice; it is an offering daily consumed. And such an offering was Christ, such an offering as was a sacrifice, as the text shows. He gave Himself to be sacrificed for us. “ He was led as a lamb to the slaughter.” Christ offered Himself a sacrifice of expiation for His people. To give you distinctly the evidence which the Scripture affords for this great and fundamental truth, take it in these severals.1. “ He offered Himself” (Hebrews 7:27); “ He offered up Himself” (Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 9:28). 2. “ He offered Himself a sacrifice” (1 Corinthians 5:7; Hebrews 9:26). (1) The person offering was to be a priest; it was the peculiar office of the priest under the law (Hebrews 5:1). So Christ, that He might offer this sacrifice, was called to that office, and made a high priest (verses 5, 6, 10). (2) The things offered were to beef God’ s appointment, otherwise it had been not a true and acceptable sacrifice, but will-worship. (3) That which was offered for a sacrifice was to be destroyed. This is essential to a sacrifice; it is an offering daily consumed. Those things that had life, that they might be offered as sacrifices, they were killed, and their blood poured out; and the other parts of them, besides the blood, were burned, either wholly or in part. Thus was Christ sacrificed; His dying and bleeding on the cross answered the killing and bloodshed of the Levitical sacrifices, and His sufferings were correspondent to the burnings of the sacrifices (Hebrews 13:12-13); His sufferings without the gate are held forth here as answering the burning of the sacrifices without the camp. (4) The person to whom they were offered was God, and Him only. 3. He offered Himself a sacrifice of expiation. (1) He suffered. He was a man of sorrows and sufferings; His whole life was a state of humiliation, and His humiliation was a continued suffering. But near and in His death He was made perfect through sufferings; there was the extremity of His sufferings, there He became a perfect sacrifice (Hebrews 2:9-10; Hebrews 5:9). (2) What He suffered was penal; it was that which sin deserved, and the law threatened. (3) Thirdly, He suffered this in our stead. (4) The sacrifice pacified, appeased, the Lord, made atonement, turned away His anger. (D. Clarkson, B. D.)Christ’ s sacrifice I. Christ’ s sacrifice was voluntary. There was no external compulsion brought to bear upon Christ which He could not have successfully resisted; but with an entire concurrence of His will, He gave Himself up. II. Christ’ s sacrifice was vicarious. It was in the room and place of others--of us all. His sufferings, though voluntary, were, in this sense, necessary to accomplish the end He had in view. III. Christ’ s sacrifice was of infinite valve and sufficiency. He gave Himself. IV. The sacrificial dedication of Christ for man was perfectly pleasing to the father. (Dr. Drummond.)The sacrifice of Christ Let us consider-- I. The interposition of Christ on behalf of His people: “ He hath given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.”1. He is represented as our Priest. The offering of sacrifices, unquestionably had its origin in the earliest ages of the world. This mode of worship may be traced back, not only to the era of giving the law from Sinai, but to the days of the ancient patriarchs. Its Divine origin is not less evident than its antiquity. We read, indeed, of the practice, before we read of the precept enjoining it; but from the former, we may fairly infer the latter. Since, then, the offering of sacrifices was enjoined by the Supreme Lawgiver, and was practised in the Church from the beginning, for what end was it appointed? What could move the eternal Majesty to require that sacrificial oblation should, for so many ages, form an essential part of His worship? My brethren, ye know the sublime explanation! Ye know that it was to prefigure the offering up, in the fulness of time, by Jesus Christ. 2. Christ is also represented as the sacrifice of His people. Let us, then, contemplate this stupendous sacrifice. In it we behold a sacrifice at once perfectly suitable, and infinitely valuable. Christ, I say, in giving Himself, gave a sacrifice that was perfectly suitable. Being independent, His life was entirely at His own disposal; being a partaker of flesh and blood, He was allied to His people, and was thus qualified to make satisfaction in the same nature that had offended; and, being at the same time supernaturally conceived and born of the Virgin, He was exempt from the penalty which Divine justice had attached to the violation of the first covenant, and immaculately pure--and was thus altogether fitted for being a true and proper sacrifice in the room of His people. But the sacrifice which Christ gave was not only perfectly suitable, it was also infinitely valuable; for, mark the force of that wonderful expression, “ He gave Himself.” It was not simply His blood, or His life, or abstractly His human nature, but Himself that He gave an offering and a sacrifice for us. We now proceed to consider-- II. The satisfaction and delight with which this interposition of Christ on behalf of His people is regarded by God. His sacrifice is to Him “ for a sweet-smelling savour.” In this expression the allusion is clearly to the wine and oil, or rather, to the precious perfumes that were wont to be sprinkled on the sacrifices under the law, in order to counteract the offensive savour of that bloody service. The apostle represents the fragrance of such sweet perfumes as arising to God from the propitiatory sacrifice of His beloved Son, to intimate the supreme satisfaction and pleasure which He has in that sacrifice. When the magnificent work of creation was finished, Jehovah is represented as resting from all His work which He had made, and surveying it with delight. But from no part of creation, even although retaining its original purity and loveliness, does there arise so sweet and grateful a fragrance to Him as from the altar of the Saviour’ s sacrifice. If you inquire on what grounds that sacrifice is so peculiarly and supremely delightful to God, the following considerations may serve to illustrate the subject: It is a sacrifice of God’ s own appointment; it is in itself a sacrifice of transcendent worth and efficacy; and it is in consequence of these things the means of eternal salvation and happiness to countless thousands of His immortal creatures, and the source of glory to Himself in the highest. (W. Duncan.)Christ’ s redeeming love I. The love of Christ, as the source of our redemption. II. The sacrifice of Christ, as the means by which our redemption was accomplished.1. It is evident from these words that we had incurred some penalty which we must have endured personally, had not the love of Christ induced Him to interpose on our behalf. 2. But the text intimates that Jesus Christ did interpose on our behalf, and “ hath given Himself for us.” 3. Our text intimates that it was the person of Christ which rendered His sacrifice efficacious, and that because “ He gave Himself for us.” His substitution was acceptable to God, and available to the salvation of man. 4. The text intimates that this offering and sacrifice was acceptable to the Father to whom it was presented, for it is said to be “ a sweet smelling savour” to Him. III. Walking in love, as the effect which this redemption is intended to produce.1. Let us walk in love to Christ.2. Let us walk in love to Christians.3. Let us walk in love to all mankind. (J. Alexander.)Christ’ s sacrifice, a sweet-smelling savour I. In the first place, let us consider, that as the offering and sacrifice, the burnt offering and burnt sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ is especially “ a sweet-smelling savour” to God.1. Consider the dignity of His Person. 2. Look at the purity of His sacrifice. Look at the faith that never gave way; look at the patience that never was exhausted; look at the courage that never flinched; look at the love that never wasted; look at the zeal for God that was always on fire; look at the tenderness for poor, perishing, lost and ruined sinners. 3. Look we at the work itself--look we at those for whom He was all this. II. But observe the many proofs that have been given and are still given, that this sacrifice is “ a sweet-smelling savour “ before God. Four thousand years before that sacrifice was offered, there came forth the first promise in all its fragrancy. Whence that cry of victory--“ It is finished” ? Why was it the stone was rolled away? why did the body ascend? why did the Conqueror go up? why did the Spirit descend? why was it, on the Day of Pentecost, that the timid became brave, that blasphemers stood forth as real penitents before God? Why was all this? Because the sacrifice went up as a “ sweet-smelling savour,” and a descending Spirit was the mark of God’ s infinite and eternal approval of it. But, beloved, perhaps now the savour of it has passed away. More than 1,800 years have passed away since it was offered. Kingdoms have risen and fallen since then. But the fragrancy of that offering has in no sense passed away. It has not lost one iota of its acceptance before a holy God. But, beloved, there is one point more in reference to this sweet savour--it will cast its fragrancy throughout eternity. It fills heaven with its odour. III. And now let us consider a few practical bearings of our subject.1. In the first place, if all this be true, then how awful is that man’ s state, that can hear of this atonement and find fragrancy in everything else except that one thing that is fragrant before God! The things that God hates he can delight in. 2. Let me give one word of tender caution to those whose conscience has been awakened by the blessed Spirit to feel a real concern for salvation. If they go to other sacrifices, they have still to seek sweetness elsewhere. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Christ’ s sacrifice I. The design of the Saviour’ s interposition. “ He gave Himself a sacrifice for us.” He had given us many things before. He had given us the sun to cheer us, the air to brace us, the rain to refresh us, and made the earth to bring forth and to bud; and at last He gave us Himself. He gave Himself for us long before His incarnation; and “ when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” II. The acceptableness of the sacrifice. “ An offering and sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savour.” Go back to the time of the flood. Here we are informed that “ Noah builded an altar unto the Lord,” and offered sacrifices; “ and the Lord smelled a sweet savour: and the Lord said, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’ s sake.” So God delighted in the sacrifice of His Son, and said, “ This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” You may be reconciled to a servant, and you may admit him to a place in your house; still it may not be easy to admit him to a place in your affections. But we never can be so dear to God as when clothed with the righteousness of Christ, and sprinkled with His precious blood. III. The principles that actuated him. “ He loved us, and gave Himself for us.” That which cannot be known perfectly may be known preeminently.1. His love is magnified in His gift.2. It is magnified in the greatness of His sufferings.3. It is magnified because He was acquainted with every part of His sufferings before He engaged to suffer.4. It magnifies His love because we were unworthy of its exercise.5. It magnifies His love because He did not wait to be asked. He did this not only without our desert, but without our desire.6. It magnifies His love by the number of blessings to be derived from it. IV. We have now to draw some inferences from this subject.1. What is enjoined? “ Walk in love.” Strive to excel in it. We read of men walking in pride. He is lofty; he swaggers as he walks; he answers those beneath him roughly. Pride is his region; it is the air in which he breathes. So is it with love: you are not only to walk in love, but to live in it. 2. For whom is this enjoined? It is to be exercised towards Himself. 3. To whom is this enjoined? “ Walk in love.” It was to the Ephesians. But are you blameless here? 4. How is it enjoined? “ Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.” (1) As the model of our love. Thus our love must resemble His. And are you to exercise no self-denial? His love was a constant love; is yours to be changeable and varying? (2) But the apostle means that we should make the love of Christ the motive as well as the model of ours. “ We love Him, because He first loved us.” By this motive be led to present your bodies “ a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (W. Jay.)The love of Christ As God is incomprehensible in His eternity, His power, His immensity, His knowledge, and His wisdom; so is He in His love.1. The first thing which strikes us as wonderful in this love of God is, that it should have sinners as its objects. 2. Another thing which is incomprehensible in the love of Christ to sinners is, that among men, all of whom were equally lost and helpless, it should select a certain number as its objects and leave all the rest under condemnation and depravity, as they were before. 3. A third characteristic of the love of Christ is its degree of intensity, which is unparalleled. 4. As this love did not originate in time, but, from eternity, the delights of the Son were with the children of men; so it will never have an end. 5. The love of Christ to His people is manifested by the revelation which He has made for their instruction; by all the institutions of His Church for their edification; and by all the dispensations of His providence, whether afflictive or prosperous. But, especially, the love of Christ toward His chosen people is evinced by the gift of His Spirit, the Comforter, to abide with them forever. 6. Finally, the love of Christ to His disciples is tender, condescending love. He deals with them as a mother with a child; carries tern in His bosom, and gently leads them in the right way. (A. Alexander, D. D.)The voluntariness of Christ’ s death His love was antecedent to His shedding His blood, and our being washed in it. Love renders any work delightful. I. Propositions for explaining it.1. The Father’ s appointing Him to be a sacrifice, doth not impair His own willingness in undertaking. The Father is said to send Him and deliver Him (John 3:34; Romans 8:32). The Father is said to deliver Him, because the first motion of redemption is supposed to arise from the will and motion of the Father; yet the love of Christ was the spring of all mediatory actions, and His taking our nature on Him; and therefore He is no less said to give Himself, than the Father is said to give Him to us and for us. His engagement was an act of choice, liberty, and affection. 2. The necessity of His death impeacheth not the voluntariness of it. Many things are voluntary which yet are necessary; there are voluntary necessities. God is necessarily yet voluntarily holy. II. Wherein this voluntariness of Christ’ s death appears.1. He willingly offered Himself in the first counsel about redemption to stand in our stead. 2. The whole course of His life manifests this willingness. His will stood right to this point of the compass all His life. Many enter the lists with difficulties out of ignorance, but the willingness of our Saviour cannot be ascribed either to ignorance or forgetfulness. III. Why this voluntariness was necessary.1. On the part of the sacrifice itself. He was above any obligation to that work He so freely undertook for us. Nor could He be overruled to anything against His own consent. 2. Necessary on the part of justice. 3. Necessary in regard of acceptation. Christ’ s consent was as necessary as God’ s order. In vain had we hoped for the benefit of a forced redemption. IV. Use. 1. The way of redemption by a sacrifice was necessary. 2. The death of Christ for us was most just on the part of God. Christ did willingly submit to, God might justly charge upon Him as a due debt. 3. How wonderful was the love of Christ! 4. How willingly then should we part with our sins for Christ, and do our duty to Him! (S. Charnock, B. D.)The love of Christ seen in His best gift I. Christ giving Himself for us, is the utmost which He could devote to our service and to our use. He does employ, for the use and service of those who trust in Him, all things. He hath all things under His feet, all things that are in heaven and on earth. If Christ see that an angel can serve one of His disciples, He gives some angel a commission to serve that disciple. Here is a case of self being given. Not the purse only; not the hand merely, or the eye, or the ear, in an occasional service; but the whole being. And, in this sense, Christ gives to His disciples Himself. In giving Himself for us, Christ gives us all that pertains to His original nature; the Divine qualities of His nature as the manifested God; His knowledge, His wisdom, His power; all that is involved in His goodness, and He gives the qualities of His woman-born nature, as the Word made flesh. For example, His sympathy. ‘ Moreover, in giving Himself for us, Christ gives us all that pertains to His position as Lord of all. II. But, brethren, He gave Himself for a special purpose--“ an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.” He gave Himself for us--what to be? If we only wanted teaching, He would have given Himself as a teacher. If we only wanted leading, He would have given Himself to us as a leader. But a starving man wants something more than instruction about food, or information about digestion, or instruction as to the laws of life and death; and a criminal who is under a capital sentence wants something more than discussions about rewards and punishments, or about human governments and human laws; and if anything is to be done for sinning man, you must do something more than present to him a teacher. If you are sick, you do not send for your medical attendant to give you, at the side of your sick bed, a lecture on anatomy or physiology. You want the medical man to do something for you as well as to say something to you. And Christ gave Himself, not to be my teacher, or nay leader chiefly, but, in the first instance, He offered Himself to be a sacrifice. III. Now, “ herein is love” ; not self-love, but outloving love; not the love that is shut up within a man, as wafer in a sealed fountain, but the love that flows forth from a being as water from an open spring. “ Herein is love” ; not complacent love, the love of delight in another because that being is delightsome, but benevolent love. “ Herein is love” ; not merited love; but undeserved love. “ Herein is love” ; not expected love, but surprising love. “ Herein is love” ; not love of friendship, but mercy, and compassion, and pity. “ Herein is love” ; not ordinary love, but unequalled love, love to which there is no parallel, and to which there never can be. Brethren, there are just two things more I want to say to you.1. This love of Christ is our refuge. The heart of Christ is the refuge we need. 2. The love of Christ is our refuge, but this love is also our pattern. We are to love as Jesus loved. I do not wonder at people saying this is impossible. It does seem impossible, and it would be utterly impossible, if we were required to attain to such love at once, but we are to grow into it. If you were unacquainted with the oak, and a full-grown tree were pointed out to you, and if you were then shown an acorn, and were told that out of that little thing would spring forth the monarch of the forest, you would not believe the statement, or you would say, if this happen it certainly will be a miracle, (S. Martin, D. D.)The sweet-smelling sacrifice I. That in His redeeming work the self-sacrificing love of Christ reached its climax--its last and highest point. II. That this self-sacrificing love of Christ was not intended to produce any change in God, but rather to affect the relations and the destinies of our humanity. III. That in this self-sacrificing love of Christ there was something peculiarly acceptable and well-pleasing to God. IV. That it is only as man is brought to replace his dependence on God through the mediation of Jesus Christ as the Helper and Redeemer of our race, that he can rise into the enjoyment of the great salvation. (R. Ferguson, LL. D.)The acceptableness of Christ’ s death The sacrifice of Christ was acceptable to God and efficacious for men. I. I shall premise two things for the explication of it.1. God was not absolutely bound to accept it for us. He might have rejected every sacrifice but that of the offender. 2. As the acceptation of it depended upon the will of the Lawgiver and Rector, so the acceptableness of it depended upon the will of the Redeemer. The merit of His death depended not upon His mere dying, or upon the penal part in that death, but upon His willing obedience in it, in conjunction with the dignity of His person; without this, He might have breathed out His soul without being a victim. II. That this sacrifice is acceptable to God and efficacious for us will appear in several propositions.1. God took pleasure in the designment and expectation of it. 2. The highest perfections of God’ s nature had a peculiar glory from this sacrifice. All His perfections, not discovered before to the sons of men, are glorified punctually according to His intentions and resolves for their discovery. Not a tittle of His nature which was to be made known to the sons of men, but is unveiled in this sacrifice to their view in a greater glory than the creatures were able to exhibit Him. 3. Compare this sacrifice with the evil for which He was sacrificed, and which had invaded the rights of God, and the sweet savour of it will appear, as also the efficacy of it. 4. It is so acceptable to God, that it is sufficient sacrifice for all, if all would accept of it, and by a fixed faith plead it. 5. The effects of this sacrifice show the acceptableness of it to God. As the effect of Adam’ s disobedience demonstrates the blackness and strength of his sin, so the fruit of this sacrifice evidenceth the efficacy of it. What was it that rendered this sacrifice acceptable to God, and efficacious for us?1. The dignity of His person. 2. As the dignity of the person, so the purity of the sacrifice renders it fragrant to God, and efficacious for us. 3. The graces exercised in this sacrifice rendered it fragrant in the account of God. (1) His obedience. (2) His humility (Philippians 2:8). (3) His faith. This resolution of trust He brought with Him, and this resolution He kept--“ I will put my trust in Him” (Hebrews 2:13), cited out of Psa 18:2. (4) In regard of the full compensation made to God by this sacrifice, and the equivalency of it to all the demands of God. His obedience was fully answerable to the law: His active answered the perceptive part, and His passive the penalty. (5) In regard of the glory Christ by His sacrifice brought to God. The glory of God was that which He aimed at, and that which He perfected. Needs must that be fragrant to God that accomplished the triumph of all His attributes. III. Use. 1. If this sacrifice be acceptable to God, it is then a perfect oblation. 2. All popish doctrines of satisfaction, and all resting upon our own righteousness and inherent graces, are to be abandoned. 3. It is a desperate thing to refuse this sacrifice, which is so sweet to God. (1) It is a great sin. (2) It will end into a great misery. 4. It administers matter of comfort to the believer. It is a comfort to a diseased hospital that a physician is chosen and accepted by the governors that is able to cure every disease; it is no less a comfort to a guilty soul that there is a sacrifice sufficient to expiate every sin. (1) If once acceptable to God, then it is forever acceptable; if once sweet, it is always sweet. God cannot be deceived in His estimations, nor change His value of it, nor can the sacrifice ever become noisome. (2) From this ariseth pardon of sin. (3) Hence, then, there can be no condemnation to them that are in Christ. (4) Here is a sufficient ground for peace of conscience. This only can give a repose to our spirits, turn our fears into hopes, and our sorrows into songs. (5) Here is a full ground of expectation of all necessary blessings. Let those that believe, continually apply and plead it. (S. Charnock, B. D.) Ephesians 5:3 But fornication, and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints.The sin of impurity Consider the hatefulness of this sin. I. By its inner nature.1. This sin, however loathsome in the sight of God and of human nature transformed by His grace, is nevertheless most seductive to the lower fallen nature of man. As a check to it, God has implanted in us the noble sense of shame, so that the Christian, who has not returned like a dog to his vomit, abhors whatever is unchaste. (1) Thoughts. How deeply ashamed you would be if your fellow men could perceive your impure thoughts and desires, though they be involuntary! Happy is he who, when merely thoughts cross his mind, listens to the warning voice of nature. (2) Words. St. Stanislaus fainted at hearing, by chance, an expression of ambiguous meaning. Even ordinary virtue will blush in confusion at the gibes of immodesty; only habitual shamelessness will laugh at them. (3) Deeds. Is not the whole nature set in an uproar? Who is so base as to commit impure actions before witnesses? Yet, when you are alone, the All-knowing God, and the holy angels, witness your deeds. 2. It is repugnant to the higher nature of man. Man--the image and likeness of the Triune God--by his impurity reviles (1) God the Father, who created our limbs in honour;(2) God the Son, whose members we are;(3) God the Holy Ghost, of whom our body is the temple. 3. It is an abomination before God. II. Its consequences.1. Ruin of earthly happiness. Lewdness works destruction (1) on the body;(2) on temporal welfare. 2. Ruin of the soul. (1) The reasoning faculty is weakened.(2) The will becomes perverted.(3) Conversion becomes almost impossible. 3. Eternal damnation. (1) Reflect on the loss of everlasting joys, where nothing defiled can enter.(2) Reflect on the torments of hell. Sodom and Gomorrah are set for a warning example. The unchaste are threatened with “ their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone.” (Le Jeune.)Forbidden sins I. To fix the sense. First: The manner and degree of forbidding--“ Let it not be once named among you.” You will think this over-strict; and how can it be reproved if it be not named? But let us consider the sense.1. The apostle speaketh thus to express the height of detestation; for things that we utterly detest we will not name. “ Never let these foul practices get the least admission among you.” 2. Some sins are more catching than others; the very mention of them may revive and stir the motions of them in an unmortified heart. And uncleanness and fornication are of this nature, because they tend immediately to please the flesh; other sins more remotely. 3. There is a naming of these things which is very sinful, and that two ways. (1) When it is done in such a brood and coarse way, or nasty language, as doth invite rather than rebuke sin. (2) When we seek to palliate foul deeds with handsome and plausible names, and so speak of these things with allowance and extenuation, and not with extreme detestation. Secondly, the reason--“ As it becometh saints” ; that is, Christians or believers; all of them are saints, or should be saints.1. Some are so only by external dedication and profession; as by baptism they are set apart for God as a clean and holy people. 2. Others are saints by internal regeneration, as sanctified and renewed by the Holy Ghost (Titus 3:5). Now these things are contrary to the disposition and spirit of saints, or to the holy, new, and Divine nature which is put into them. II. What purity and cleanness of heart belongeth to Christians. In the Scripture they are everywhere described by it, “ With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure ‘“ (Psalms 18:18); “ Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3); “ Surely God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart” (Psalms 73:1); “ Separate yourselves from the unclean thing, and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17); and in other places. Let us see what obligations lie upon us to be clean and pure.1. We are consecrated to the service of a holy God. 2. We profess the most holy faith; this obligeth us also, whether we took to the laws of God, which are the rule of our duty, or the promises of God, which are the charter of our hopes. 3. Because of our present communion with God and service of God. III. The special impurity that is in such sins, so that holiness must be forsaken, or else these vices so opposite to holiness. What special impurity is there in those sins?1. They defile the body, and are contrary to the dignity of the body, as it is a member of Christ, a temple of the Holy Ghost, or an instrument to be used for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 6:18). 2. Uncleanness corrupts and defileth the mind; for it turneth it from the true pleasure to the false, and that procured on the basest terms of downright sin against God. What need we have to work in Christians a greater abhorrence of fornication and uncleanness, because it is a common sin and a grievous sin.1. It is a common sin; and then it is time to cry aloud and spare not, when persons, both single and married, make so little conscience of this duty. 2. It is a grievous sin. We will endeavour to touch them in the tenderest part that is left, viz., fear. “ Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). Men think it a small matter to satisfy nature, but God will find them out both here and hereafter. There fell in one day twenty-three thousand for this sin (1 Corinthians 10:8). It unfitteth for every holy duty. Holy and sacred things never can be seriously received by sensual minds and hearts. Caution to young men that are not yet taken in the snare. Keep yourselves at a great distance from and great abhorrence of this sin. Therefore, first, avoid occasions (Proverbs 5:8). Advice to all Christians. Upon all occasions, think what will become saints. Let the consciousness of your dedication to God be ever upon your heart. (T. Manton, D. D.)Sinful lusts must be abhorred When Venice was in the hands of the Austrians, those alien tyrants swarmed in every quarter; but the Venetians hated them to the last degree, and showed their enmity upon all occasions. When the Austrian officers sat down at any of the tables in the square of St. Mark, where the Venetians delight on summer evenings to eat their ices and drink their coffee, the company would immediately rise and retire, showing by their withdrawal that they abhorred their oppressors. After this fashion will every true Christian treat his inbred sins; he will not be happy under their power, nor tolerate their dominion, nor show them favour. If he cannot expel them, he will not indulge them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Evil of covetousness Beware of growing covetousness; for, of all sins, this is one of the most insidious. It is like the silting up of a river. As the stream comes down from the land, it brings with it sand and earth, and deposits all these at its mouth; so that by degrees, unless the conservators watch it carefully, it will block itself up, and leave no channel for ships of great burden. By daily deposit, it imperceptibly creates a bar which is dangerous to navigation. Many a man when he begins to accumulate wealth, commences at the same moment to ruin his soul; and the more he acquires, the more closely he blocks up his liberality, which is, so to speak, the very mouth of spiritual life. Instead of doing more for God he does less; the more he saves, the more he wants; and the more he wants of this world, the less he cares for the world to come. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Covetousness decried and yet practised About the time that the Apostle Paul was denouncing the sin (of covetousness) in his Epistle to Timothy, Seneca was decrying the same evil, and composed his Ethics; but, as if to show the impotence of his own precepts, “ he was accused of having amassed the most ample riches” --a circumstance which, though not the ostensible, was no doubt the real, cause of his finally falling a victim to the jealousy of Nero. (Harris.) Ephesians 5:4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.Unseemly conversation “ Filthiness” --impurity of act or speech, “ foolish talking,” and “ jesting,” are to disappear as completely as covetousness and the grosser vices. They are “ not befitting” ; they do not harmonize with the character, the prerogatives, and the destiny of saints. “ Foolish talking” is the talk of a fool, of a man that is insensible to the graver aspects of human life. The great discoveries of God and of eternity, of our own present relations to God and of our future glory, which have come to us through. Christ, exert their power on the mind as well as on the heart and on outward conduct. They give a certain intellectual nobleness even to uncultivated and simple men. They inspire self-respect and dignity. As the pride of the Roman people was justly offended when they saw an emperor descend into the arena with charioteers and gladiators, so the finer feeling of the Christian Church is justly offended when Christian men indulge in buffoonery and play the fool. This is “ not befitting.” It should have no place among Christian people, and to find pleasure in such folly is also below the dignity of those who live near to the throne of God. In condemning “ jesting” Paul does not mean to insist that the conversation of Christian men should be always grave and serious. The mind needs rest as well as the body. There is a time to play as well as to work. Amusement has its legitimate place in the intellectual life; and if the mind is subjected to an incessant strain its strength will be broken down. The bright flashes of wit and the pleasant gleams of a kindly humour may be as beautiful and as harmless as the play of the sunlight among the trees or on the ripples of a mountain stream. The “ jesting” which Paul describes as “ not befitting” is the kind of conversation that reaches its perfection in a civilized, luxurious, and brilliant society which has no faith in God, no reverence for moral law, no sense of the grandeur of human life, no awe in the presence of the mystery of death. In such a society, to which the world is the scene of a pleasant comedy in which all men are actors, a polished insincerity and a versatility which is never arrested by strong and immovable convictions are the objects of universal admiration. The foulest indecencies are applauded, if they are conveyed under the thin disguise of a graceful phrase, a remote allusion, an ingenious ambiguity. There is a refinement to which, not vice itself, but the coarseness of vice, is distasteful, and which regards with equal resentment the ruggedness of virtue. This is the kind of “ jesting” that Paul so sternly condemns. It is destructive both of faith and morality. The tongue was made for nobler uses. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Against foolish talking and jesting It may be demanded then, what the thing we speak of is, or what this facetiousness doth import? To which question I might reply as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man, “ It is that which we all see and know” ; anyone better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It is indeed a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale: sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound; sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retorting an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense; sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture passeth for it; sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being; sometimes it riseth from a lucky hitting on what is strange, sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose; often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and proveth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto. I. 1. Such facetiousness is not absolutely unreasonable or unlawful, which ministereth harmless divertisement and delight to conversation. For Christianity is not so harsh, so envious, as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require.2. Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt. When sarcastical twitches are needful to pierce the thick skins of men, to correct their lethargic stupidity, to rouse them out of their drowsy negligence; then may they well be applied. 3. Facetious discourse particularly may be commodious for reproving some vices and reclaiming some persons (as salt for cleansing and curing some sores). It commonly procureth a more easy access to the ears of men, and worketh a stronger impression on their hearts, than other discourse could do. Many whose foreheads are brazed and hearts are steeled against all blame, are yet not proof against derision. 4. Some errors likewise in this way may be most properly and most successfully confuted; such as deserve not, and hardly can bear a serious and solid confutation. 5. This way is also commonly the best way of defence against unjust reproach and obloquy. To yield to a slanderous reviler a serious reply, or to make a formal plea against his charge, doth seem to imply that we much consider or deeply resent it; whereas by pleasant reflection On it we signify the matter only deserves contempt, and that we take ourselves unconcerned therein. 6. So easily without care or trouble may the brunts of malice be declined or repelled. This way may be allowed in way of counterbalancing and in compliance to the fashion of others. It would be a disadvantage unto truth and virtue if their defenders were barred from the use of this weapon; since it is that especially whereby the patrons of error and vice do maintain and propagate them. 7. Furthermore, the warrantableness of this practice in some cases may be inferred from a parity of reason, in this manner: if it be lawful (as by the best authorities it plainly doth appear to be), in using rhetorical schemes, poetical strains, involutions of sense in allegories, fables, parables, and riddles, to discoast from the plain and simple way of speech; why may not facetiousness, issuing from the same principles, directed to the same ends, serving to like purposes, be likewise used blamelessly? 8. I shall only add, that of old even the sagest and gravest persons (persons of most rigid and severe virtue) did much affect this kind of discourse, and did apply it to noble purposes. 9. In fine, since it cannot be shown that such a sportfulness of wit and fancy doth contain an intrinsic and inseparable turpitude; since it may be so cleanly, handsomely, and innocently used, as not to defile or discompose the mind of the speaker, not to wrong or harm the hearer, not to derogate from any worthy subject of discourse, it cannot well absolutely and universally be condemned; and when not used on improper matter, in an unfit manner, with excessive measure, at undue season, to evil purpose, it may be allowed. It is bad objects, or bad adjuncts, which do spoil its indifference and innocence. II. 1. All profane jesting, all speaking loosely and wantonly about holy things (things nearly related to God and religion), making such things the matters of sport and mockery, playing and trifling with them, is certainly prohibited, as an intolerably vain and wicked practice. All injurious, abusive, scurrilous jesting, which causelessly or needlessly tendeth to the disgrace, damage, vexation, or prejudice in any kind of our neighbour (provoking his displeasure, grating on his modesty, stirring passion in him), is also prohibited.3. I pass by that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters. 4. All unseasonable jesting is blamable. 5. To affect, admire, or highly to value this way of speaking, either absolutely in itself, or in comparison to the serious and plain way of speech, and thence to be drawn into an immoderate use thereof, is blamable. 6. Vain-glorious ostentation this way is very blamable. 7. Lastly, it is our duty never so far to engage ourselves in this way, as thereby to lose or to impair that habitual seriousness, modesty, and sobriety of mind, that steady composedness, gravity and constancy of demeanour, which become Christians. We should continually keep our minds intent on our “ high calling,” and grand interest; ever well tuned, and ready for the performance of holy devotions. (I. Barrow, D. D.)Impurity in speech I. That Christians should make great conscience, not only of their actions, but their words also; for after the apostle had dissuaded them from all uncleanness and filthiness in practice, he addeth, “ Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient.” We must make conscience of our words for these reasons.1. We are not absolute proprietors and possessors of our own selves; our tongues are not our own to speak what we please. Exempt any one faculty or member from the jurisdiction of God, and you disown His authority and interest in you, and open a floodgate to let in sin and wickedness into the world. We are not left to run at random in our ordinary discourse, to say and utter what we think good. 2. As we had our tongues from God, so we are accountable to Him for the use of them; and therefore will our actions not only be brought into the judgment, but our words and speeches also (Matthew 12:36-37). 3. Words do much discover the temper of a man’ s heart. 4. Because our tongue is our glory: “ Awake, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp” (Psalms 57:8), “ My heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth” (Psalms 16:9). Compare Acts 2:26 : “ My heart is glad, and my tongue rejoiceth.” So Psalms 30:12 : “ That my glory may sing praise to Thee, and not be silent” ; that is, my tongue. But why is our tongue called our glory? For a double reason, both which are pertinent to the case in hand. (1) Because thereby we can express the conceptions of our minds for the good of mankind. It was not given to us for that use for which the tongues of the brute beasts serve them, to taste meats and drinks only, or to taste our food. No; but to converse with each other. Speech is the excellency of man above the beasts. (2) The other reason why it is called our glory is because thereby we may express the conceptions of our minds, to the glory of God as well as the good of others, “ Therewith we bless God, even the Father” (James 3:9). 5. Because our speeches are regarded by God, and therefore you must consider, not only what is fit for you to utter and others to hear, but what is fit for God to hear. 6. Because the well ordering of our words is a great point of Christianity, and argueth a good degree of grace (James 3:2). II. In making conscience of our words, we should specially take heed of filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting.1. Filthiness is when we speak of obscene things in an obscene manner without any respect to modesty and Christian gravity or sobriety. (1) It is a sin most inconsistent with any reverence and fear of God: “ The fear of the Lord is clean” (Psalms 19:9). (2) It is a grief to the Holy Spirit, as it obstructs that purity and cleanness of heart which He would work in us (Ephesians 4:29-30). (3) You infect others, and corrupt them by filthy discourse. 2. The next word is “ foolish speaking.” This hath so many branches, that it is hard to reckon them up; as-- (1) when they speak of foolish things; (2) when men speak of serious things in a ludicrous and vain manner, and design it for jest; (3) lavish, superfluous speech to no end; (4) rash speech; (5) personal boasting. Now, I shall prove that it is a sin that should be made conscience of. (a) Because it suiteth not with the seriousness of religion, which is the wisdom of God; (b) it suiteth not with the mortified estate of sincere Christians; (c) because it shutteth out better discourse, and so converse with others is rendered unprofitable. Omission of good is caused by it. (d) Because it argueth great emptiness, that we have not a good treasure within us (Matthew 12:35), or have not hid the Word in our hearts (Psalms 119:11), or not taken care that it might dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16). 3. We come now to the third sin enumerated, “ and jesting.” Here we must state this matter. Is all jesting unlawful and misbecoming Christians? In the use of it all due circumstances must be observed; as--1. In the matter. It is a dunghill mirth that must have somewhat unclean to feed it. 2. For the manner. It must be harmless to others, not making sport with their sins or miseries (1 Corinthians 13:6). 3. For the measure. Not excessive wasting the time in vain, especially not habituating the mind to levity; that is scurrility when men accustom themselves so to vain jesting that they cannot possibly be serious; they can as well be immortal as serious. 4. For the time. Not when God calleth us to mourning or more serious employments should it be taken in hand. 5. The end and use must not be forgotten. Our great end is to serve and glorify God, and everything that we do must have respect to it, and be proportioned by it. III. One special means of checking such sins is to consider how much they misbecome Christians; for the apostle saith no more but “ they are not convenient,” or do not agree with that state of grace into which we profess to be called. For three reasons this will hold good.1. Because there are four affections which serve to draw us from and guard us against sin--fear, shame, grief, and indignation. The guilt of sin causeth fear; the stain, shame; the unkindness, sorrow; unsuitableness, indignation. Awaken this, and sin cannot have long entertainment in the heart. Therefore it is enough to a serious Christian: It is not convenient. 2. The unsuitableness mindeth us of our dignity, as being admitted to communion with God. Therefore to talk of filthiness with that tongue which is to be employed in speaking of God, and to God, is a most indecorous thing. 3. This striketh at the root of the temptation. Many think filthiness, foolish speaking, and jesting to be a great grace to them, and affect the reputation of wit at such a rate that they forget honesty. No; these are not an honour and a grace, but a blemish and a blot. IV. That a Christian cannot want mirth as long as he hath such abundant cause to give thanks. (T. Manton, D. D.)Foolish talking and jesting “ Foolish talking and jesting,” than which nothing is more common in the world, are to be held in disesteem by all Christians. They should look upon themselves as a new order among men. Christ redeems us from the shallow mirth of the world, which is the mirth of folly, to the joy of wisdom, which is the joy of God, and which fills heaven, and will fill eternity, with delight and song. (J. Pulsford.)Dangers of jesting It is dangerous to jest with God, death, or the devil; for the first neither can nor will be mocked: the second mocks all men at one time or another; and the third puts an eternal sarcasm on those who are too familiar with him. (J. Beaumont.)Tart jests Jests too tart are not good; bitter potions are not for health. An offensive man is the devil’ s bellows to blow up contention. (J. Beaumont.)Personal jesting Whosoever will jest will be like him that flourishes at a show--he may turn his weapon every way, but not aim more at one than another. It is very unsafe to sling about this wormwood: some noses are too delicate to bear the smell. Some are like tiled houses, that can admit a falling spark; yet others are like dry straw, that with the least touch will kindle about your ears. (J. Beaumont.)A sting in the jest A jest should be such that all shall be able to join in the laugh which it occasions; but if it bears hard upon one of the company, like the crack era string, it makes a stop in the music. (Owen Felltham.)Evil of jesting Solon, who was always willing to hear and to learn, and in his old age more inclined to anything that might divert and entertain, particularly to music and good fellowship, went to see Thespis himself exhibit, as the custom of the ancient poets was. When the play was done, he called to Thespis, and asked him if he was not ashamed to tell so many lies before so great an assembly. Thespis answered, it was no great matter if he spoke or acted so in jest. To which Solon replied, striking the ground violently with his staff, “ If we encourage such jesting as this, we shall quickly find it in our contracts and agreements.” (Plutarch.)Foolish talking to be accounted for The story is well known of the person who invited a company of his friends that were accustomed to take the Lord’ s name in vain, and contrived to have all their discourse taken down and read to them. Now, if they could not endure to hear the words repeated which they had spoken during a few hours, how shall they bear to have all that they have uttered through a long course of years brought forth as evidence against them at the tribunal of God? (Scott.) Ephesians 5:5 For this we know, that no whoremonger nor unclean person.Soul idolatry excludes men from heaven There are thirteen acts of soul worship; and to give any one of them to anything besides the God of heaven is plain idolatry, and those idolaters that so give it.1. Esteem. That which we most highly value we make our god; for estimation is an act of soul worship. 2. Mindfulness. That which we are most mindful of we make our god. 3. Intention. That which we most intend we make our god; for to be most intended is an act of worship due only to the true God; for He being the chief good, must be the last end. 4. Resolution. What we are most resolved for we worship as God. 5. Love. That, which we most love we worship as our god; for love is an act of soul worship. To love and to adore are sometimes both one. Love, whenever it is inordinate, is an idolatrous affection. 6. Trust. That which we most trust we make our god; for confidence and dependence is an act of worship which the Lord calls for as due only to Himself. 7. Fear. If you fear others more than Him, you give that worship to them which is due only to God. 8. Hope. That which we make our hope we worship as God; for hope is an act of worship. Those that make their own righteousness the foundation of their hope, they exalt it into the place of Christ, and honour it as God; and to honour anything as God is evident idolatry. 9. Desire. That which we most desire we worship as our god; for that which is chiefly desired is the chief good in his account who so desires it; and what he counts his chief good, that he makes his god. 10. Delight. That which we most delight and rejoice in, that we worship as God; for transcendent delight is an act of worship due only to God; and this affection, in its height and elevation, is called glorying. 11. Zeal. That for which we are more zealous we worship as our god; for such a zeal is an act of worship due only to God; therefore it is idolatrous to be more zealous for our own things than for the things of God. 12. Gratitude. That to which we are most grateful, that we worship as God; for gratitude is an act of worship. 13. When our care and industry is more for other things than for God. No man can serve two masters. Argument1. Such idolaters are not in covenant with God. It is the covenant of grace alone which gives right and title to the kingdom. Those that are not in covenant have no title to heaven; and those that have no right nor title to it, shall have no inheritance in it. 2. Such idolaters are not yet born again, are not yet converted; and without the new birth, no inheritance in the kingdom; those only are heirs of this kingdom who are born of God, who are born again. Try whether you be guilty of this soul idolatry or no. And to stir you up to this examination, let me premise these two things, the danger and secrecy of this.1. The danger. It is a sin will endanger your loss of heaven, make it exceeding difficult, or altogether impossible. If one should tell you of some mischievous person lurking in your house, with an intent to murder you, or set your house on fire, etc. The apostle tells you of something more mischievous; that which is more dangerous, and nearer to you; that which will endanger the loss of an inheritance, of a kingdom. 2. The secrecy of it calls for diligent search. Nothing more common or more concealed. (D. Clarkson, B. D.)No inheritance for the unclean in God’ s kingdom 1.That there is a kingdom of God. This notion implieth, on God’ s part, His sovereign authority and right to command; and on our part, both duties and privileges. 2. There is no entrance into this kingdom but by coming into the kingdom of Christ. 3. The title or right to the privileges of Christ’ s kingdom is by way of inheritance. “ If a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Galatians 4:7; and Romans 8:17), “ If sons, then heirs, joint heirs with Christ.” 4. By the tenor of the Christian doctrine it plainly appeareth that whoredom and all uncleanness excludeth men from this inheritance. It appeareth plainly by these particulars--1. Because it is contrary to that covenant by which all enter into Christ’ s kingdom. 2. Because of God’ s express exclusion. Surely they are excluded from this inheritance whom God excludes and Christ excludes (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). 3. From the heinous nature of the sin. It is a sin of great atheism and great infidelity. 4. It is idolatry. Primary idolatry is when Divine honours are given to any creature. But howls whoredom and uncleanness idolatry? Because by it men are addicted to some base thing which they prefer before God. “ Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4-5). Because they have not that spirit that should fit them and make them meet for heaven. 6. This exclusion is so absolute and peremptory that it admits no exception but that of sincere repentance, which is both a change of heart and life. No other repentance is true but a quitting and leaving these sins before they leave us. Three things are apt to deceive you.1. Some trouble for these sins while you go on still to commit them. 2. The next thing that will deceive you is some faint resistance or striving against sin, but it groweth upon you. 3. That which will deceive you is a hope to cry God mercy upon your death beds; and so, after an impure life, men hope still to go to heaven. (T. Manton, D. D.) Ephesians 5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.A caution and a commination I. A caution against error.1. That we may not deceive ourselves. Frequent warnings are given against this self-flattery (1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 John 3:7; 1 Corinthians 15:33; Galatians 6:7). Men do what they can to live securely and undisturbedly in their sins, and to guard their hearts against the apprehension of all danger and punishment. 2. That we may not be deceived by others. There were false teachers in those early days, that countenanced profane and licentious Christians; some that taught fornication was an indifferent thing, or at least no such great matter, or not so dangerous. II. A denunciation of God’ s wrath1. The evil denounced, “ The wrath of God cometh” ; meaning by “ wrath,” punishment from God, who is angry and displeased with these sins. 2. The meritorious procuring cause, “ For these things,” fornication, uncleanness, and such like gross sins. God is not severe upon ordinary failings and frailties, but these sins are of another nature. 3. The persons upon whom this vengeance cometh; it shall light upon “ the children of disobedience.” I. What are the vain words or pretences by which they usually harden their hearts?1. That God will not call them to an account, or punish them for their sins. If you think He will not, it is because He hath no right, or no power, or no will to do it. You cannot say no right, because man is His creature, and therefore His subject. You cannot say no power, for our life is in His hands. 2. That God will be merciful to them; though they sin against Him, they shall notwithstanding escape well enough; that He will not be severe against His creatures. But you reflect but upon one part of God’ s nature, His mercy, without His holiness and justice, and so fancy an unreasonable indulgence in God. 3. That they are Christians, and by external profession have received the faith of Christ. But the name will not save you without the power (2 Timothy 2:19). 4. That none is perfect, and the rarest saints have fallen into as great faults, and so are persuaded that these gross sins are but frailties and human infirmities. If David fell, why may not I? was an old excuse in Salvian’ s time. Did not they smart grievously for these sins? and was not their repentance as remarkable as their fall? 5. Others say they are justified, and depend on the righteousness of Christ. You may, if you have a right to it; but “ He that doeth righteousness is righteous” (1 John 3:7). Where Christ is made righteousness, He is also made sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). 6. That if they be in an unjustified state for the present, they hope they shall repent at last, and then they will leave off their sins, and cry to God for mercy. But you live in fiat disobedience to God for the present, whereas the Holy Ghost saith, “ Today,” etc. (Hebrews 3:7). 7. That they do make amends for a course of sin in one kind by abounding in other duties. But God will be obeyed in all things. These are some of the sorry fig leaves by which men hope to cover their nakedness, those sandy foundations upon which they build their hopes. II. The reasons how it cometh to pass that such gross self-flattery can possess their minds. Though it be as plain as noonday that they that live in gross sins shall be damned, yet the most profane have good thoughts of their condition.1. The causes lie in themselves; as-- (1) Self-love, which is very partial, and loath to think of the evil of our condition (Proverbs 16:2). (2) Unbelief el God’ s Word and Divine promises and threatenings. Unbelief and obstinate impenitency always go together. (3) Non-attendance to God’ s warnings, if they are not guilty of express unbelief (Matthew 22:5). (4) Non-application: “ Lo! this, we have searched it; hear it, and know it for thy good” (Job 5:27), “ What nor consider, nor apply, no wonder if self-love carrieth it; and in the greatest soul dangers they flatter themselves into a fool’ s paradise, that they shall do well enough though they live in their sins. 2. The devil joineth with our self-love, and lulleth us asleep in our carnal security and abuse of grace (Genesis 3:4-5). 3. He stirreth up instruments, that, with the charms of false doctrine, he may hinder the sight of sin and fears of judgment, and strengthen the hands of the wicked (Jeremiah 23:17). Let no man deceive you.1. It is sure you are not justified while you are yet in your sins. 2. How much God is concerned to right Himself, the honour of His providence, and the truth of His Word, against such as flatter themselves in their sins (Deuteronomy 29:19-20). It should doter us from wilful and heinous sins to think of the wrath of God that shall come upon those that live in them. First: It is a powerful motive; for God’ s wrath is very terrible. Consider--1. The intension of this wrath. It is compared to a “ consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). It is a fire that burneth, not only to the ground or the surface of the earth, but to the lowest hell (Deuteronomy 32:22). 2. As to extension; the wrath of God compriseth all those evils which are the fruit of sin, be they bodily or spiritual, in life or death, or after death. Secondly: It is a kindly motive. That is a question whether it be so or no; therefore let us state the matter.1. We are principally to avoid sin as sin, and as displeasing to God (Genesis 39:9). 2. We must abstain from it, as it will bring down wrath and judgment upon us. So God urgeth this argument (Ezekiel 18:30). 3. The poena damni, to fear the punishment of loss, is out of question. A man cannot love God and not fear the loss of His favour. 4. The poena sensus, the punishment of sense, is necessary also to quicken men to their duty, and to guard their love, and to show that God doth not make little reckoning of sin (2 Corinthians 5:11). 5. The effect which it must produce is not such a fear as driveth us from God, but bringeth us to Him; not torment, and perplexity, and despairing anguish (1 John 4:18), but flight and caution. 6. Punishments on others are for our warning. When God’ s judgments are upon others for sin, His hand is to be observed with great reverence; as David (Psalms 119:119-120). To teach us in what rank to place principles of obedience. There are several principles by which men are acted and influenced.1. Some are false and rotten; as custom: “ As I have done these so many years” (Zechariah 7:3). Vainglory: “ To be seen of men” (Matthew 6:1). Rapine: “ To devour widows’ houses” (Matthew 23:14). Envy (Philippians 1:15-16). 2. Some are more tolerable; as the hope of temporal mercies (Hosea 7:14). 3. Some are very good and sound; as when duties are done out of obedience to God, upon the urgings of an enlightened conscience, without the bent of a renewed heart; for a regenerate man obeyeth, not only as enjoined, but inclined. The principle is sound in the other, but the heart is not fitted. 4. Some are rare and excellent; as when we love God, not only for His benignity, but holiness, and eye our reward for His sake, and love the glory of God above our own happiness, and can subordinate the happy part of our eternal estate to His glory (Romans 9:3). That their condition is of all most miserable who are not only sinners, but stubborn and obstinate in their sin. The wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience.1. Who are the disobedient? It may be said of two sorts--First of all, men in their natural condition with respect to the law: “ The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” (Romans 8:7). And, secondly, of those that refuse the gospel: “ In flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the gospel” (2 Thessalonians 1:8). “ What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel?” (1 Peter 4:17), viz., those that will not submit themselves to God, or be persuaded to forsake their sins. Now, as to the disobedient sinners. 1. They are slaves to sin (Titus 3:3).2. They are of the devil’ s party (Ephesians 2:2).3. They are rebels to God (Job 24:13). (T. Manton, D. D.)Children of disobedience I. Who are children of disobedience.1. Those who are not only sinners, but stubborn, obstinate, and ignorant sinners; such as are prone to all evil, and are not only indisposed, but averse from all good. 2. This good is either to be determined by the light of nature or the light of the gospel. (1) Wicked men are called “ children of disobedience” because they rebel against the light of nature (Job 24:13). (2) Those that have heard the gospel, and will not suffer themselves to be persuaded to embrace the blessed offers made therein, nor will they give up themselves to the obedience of Christ. Their condition is more terrible, for these are desperately sick, and refuse their remedy (1 Peter 4:17). 3. This obstinacy and disobedience is aggravated. (1) From the person who is disobeyed. It is not our counsel, but God’ s. (2) From the manner of the persuasion, which is by the Word and Spirit. In the Word there are the highest motives to allure, the strongest arguments to persuade, the greatest terrors to scare men out of their sins. (3) From the plenty of offers. God hath called often and long: “ He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). It is dangerous to slight frequent warnings; these are obdurate in their sins. (4) From the concomitant dispensations of providence. When our obstinacy and resolved continuance in sin is not broken by afflictions; as Pharaoh was Pharaoh still from first to last. 4. This disobedience, the longer it is continued, the more it is increased. II. The misery of their condition. It is either matter of sense or matter of faith; of sight, because of present judgments, or foresight, because of the threatenings of the Word.1. It is matter of sight, as God doth inflict remarkable judgments on obstinate sinners in this life, to teach His children to beware of their sins. These judgments are either spiritual or temporal. 2. It is matter of faith and foresight. And so by this wrath of God is meant eternal destruction, which cometh upon them for their disobedience, which is a sin of the highest nature, and a chief cause of their damnation. At death they feel the sad effects of it (1 Peter 3:19-20). III. Why this should deter God’ s people from being partakers with them. Here I shall inquire(1) What it is to be partakers with them. (2) Why God’ s wrath should deter us from this? 1. What it is to be partakers with them. (1) There is a principal sense, and chiefly intended here, that we should not follow their example. (2) There is a limited sense of the phrase, “ Neither be partakers of other men’ s sins” (1 Timothy 5:22). There it signifieth not committing the same sins, but being accessory to the sins of others. (a) By counselling (2 Samuel 13:5). (b) By alluring and enticing (Proverbs 1:10). (c) By consenting (1 Kings 21:19). (d) By applauding or flattering, and lessening the sin (Romans 1:32). (e) Conniving, contrary to the duty of our place (1 Samuel 3:13). 2. Why the wrath of God should deter us from this. (1) Because of the unpartiality of God’ s judgment.(2) Because of the greatness of His mercy. Use--1. To show us that we are not to be idle spectators of God’ s judgments on others, but judicious observers and improvers of them. Observe here-- (1) The use of observing God’ s providences on others.(2) The manner of it. First, The use and benefit of observing God’ s providences is great in these particulars.1. To cure atheism (Psalms 58:11). 2. To make us more cautious of sin, that we meddle not with it. 3. To humble us, and make us more earnest in deprecating the wrath of God, and suing out our pardon in Christ. We see sin goeth not unpunished. Alas! if God should enter into judgment with us, who could stand? (Psalms 143:2). 4. To make us thankful for our mercies and deliverances by Christ, that, when others are spectacles of His wrath, we should be monuments of His mercy and grace. Were it not for the Lord’ s pardoning and healing grace, we had been in as bad a condition as the worst (Romans 11:22). Secondly, the manner of making these observations. This is needful to be stated, because men are apt to misapply providence, and to sit as a coroner’ s inquest on the souls of their neighbours, and so rather observe things to censure others than for their own caution. Rules concerning the observation of God’ s providences towards others.1. Certain it is that judgments on others must be observed. Providence is a comment on the Word, and therefore it is stupidness not to take notice of it. They that will not observe God’ s hand shall feel it. If we will not take the warning at a distance, and by others’ smart and rebuke, there is no way left but we ourselves must be taught by experience. He that will plunge himself into a bog or quagmire, where others have miscarried before him, is doubly guilty of folly, because he neither feareth the threatening, nor will take warning by their example and punishment. Observe we must (Amos 6:2). 2. This observation must be to a good end; not to censure others, that is malice; or justify ourselves above them, that is pride and self-conceit, condemned by our Lord Christ (Luke 13:2-5). 3. In making the observation we must have a care that we do not make providence speak the language of our fancies. (T. Manton, D. D.)Evil effects of bad company We are informed by chemists that one grain of iodine will give colour to seven thousand times its own weight of water. One indulgence in bad company is enough to communicate much of its contagion to your moral being. If you handle pitch with your bare hand it will adhere for days or weeks, so the connection which you may form with bad company, will pollute you in a way which a whole life may not suffice to remove. (John Bate.)Reproving evil company The Rev. John Elliot was once asked by a pious woman who was vexed with a wicked husband, and bad company frequently infesting her house on his account, what she should do? “ Take,” said he, “ the Holy Bible into your hand when bad company comes in, and that will soon drive them out of the house.” (K. Arvine.) Ephesians 5:7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.Fellowship with evil doers I. Illustrate this fellowship in wickedness.1. Not to oppose, in many cases, is to embolden transgressors, and to be partakers with them. 2. We have more direct fellowship with the wicked when we encourage them by our example. 3. They who provoke and incite others to evil works have fellowship with them. (1) This may be done by the propagation of licentious opinions, which confound the difference between virtue and vice. (2) This may also be effected by direct persuasions and enticements. 4. They who explicitly consent to, and actually join with sinners in their evil works, have fellowship with them. 5. To comfort and uphold sinners in their wickedness is to have fellowship with them. 6. There are some who rejoice in iniquity when they have lent no hand to accomplish it. II. Apply the apostle’ s arguments.1. One argument is taken from the superior light which Christians enjoy. 2. Another argument is taken from the grace of the Holy Spirit, of which believers are the subjects. 3. The apostle teaches us that the works of darkness are unfruitful. 4. This is a shameful fellowship. 5. If we have fellowship with sinners in their works we must share with them in their punishment. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)The children of God should not be partakers with others in their sins The marrow of this truth lies in knowing how and in what ways we may be in danger to be partakers of other men’ s sins.1. By practising the like evils. The apostle seems especially to intend this. Commit not the like sins; act not like the children of disobedience. If ye be imitators of them, you are in some sense partakers with them; and so the Lord may justly punish you for them. 2. By concurring. And this in divers ways. (1) By contriving. When sin is contrived, there is concurrence of the head, though not of the hand. Thus David was guilty of Uriah’ s death, though Joab was the actor, and the Ammonites the executioners (2 Samuel 11:15). Thus Rebekah of Jacob’ s dissembling. She contrived it, to defeat Esau, though he was the actor. And if he smarted for it in so many hardships after, she had her share in his chastisement. Whoever effect what thou plottest, though thy hand be not in it, though theft be not seen therein, the Lord, who is the searcher of hearts, will charge the sin upon thy soul. (2) By consenting. Where there is consent to sin, there is a concurrence of the will, though not of the outward man. This consent is always guilty, whether it be free, so Saul was guilty of Stephen’ s death (Acts 8:1); or whether it be extorted, so Pilate was guilty of Christ’ s death, though the Jews seemed to overrule him thereto; or whether it be tacit,, and showed no way but by silence. (3) By inclination. Where there is an inclination to an unlawful act, there is a concurrence of the heart, though the outward man act not. (4) By rejoicing. When a man is glad that an unlawful act is done by others, he concurs in affection, though not in action. Thus was Ahab guilty of Naboth’ s blood. (5) By sentence and vote. Thus Saul was guilty of Christians’ death (Acts 26:10). (6) By assisting. He that contributes anything to the promoting of sin, though he be not the principal actor of it, brings the guilt thereof upon his soul. Thus was Saul also guilty of Stephen’ s death (Acts 7:58). He did not cast stones at Stephen; so far as the relation acquaints us, he only kept the clothes of those that stoned him. Yet, promoting this sin but thus far, he made himself guilty of it. (7) By communicating in the pleasures or profits of sin. Thus panders are guilty of whoredom, and receivers are guilty of theft. 3. By occasioning the sins of others. When we give others occasion to sin, and that may be done many ways. (1) By evil example. One sin of an exemplary person may occasion many. When magistrates, or ministers, or parents, or masters of families, or anyone eminent in the account of others, makes bold with that which is evil, it is a pregnant sin, has many in the bowels of it. One sin may this way bring along with it the guilt of many thousands. (2) By the offensive use of things indifferent. Is it not better not to go so high, than to endanger the ruin of others by following thee? (3) By scandalous sins, either in judgment or practice; for these are not only abominable in themselves, and the occasions of sin in others by example, but also in a more dangerous and dreadful way, by strengthening the hands of sinners, and opening their mouths to blaspheme. (4) By provoking. He that says or does that which provokes another to sin is at least the occasion of it. Hence the apostle advises so often to beware of this (Galatians 5:26; Ephesians 6:4). (5) By ensnaring. Those whose garb, gestures, words, are as snares, may justly be accounted occasions of sin, and so guilty of those iniquities wherein they ensnare others. (6) By leading others into temptations. Thus was Eve guilty, not only of her own, but of her husband’ s sin (Genesis 3:6). (7) By showing opportunities to sin. Thus Judas was guilty of crucifying Christ by showing the Jews an opportunity to apprehend and crucify Him. (8) By affording matter of sin to others, that which they know or suspect will be sinfully abused, hereby occasion their sin, and partake in their guilt: (9) By not removing the occasions of sin. When costly apparel becomes an occasion of pride, or delicate fare an occasion of intemperance, etc. Those that have power, magistrates, parents, should reduce them to necessaries, who abuse superfluities, else they are in danger of a participation in others’ guilt. I might exemplify this in many particulars. (10) By authorising. When those are put into such place and office, as they are not fit, not qualified for, those that are instrumental in calling them thereto are accessory to their sinful miscarriages in the managing thereof. 4. By causing. He that is the cause of another’ s sin, partakes thereof, not only as an accessory, but many times as a principal. Now, one may be the cause of another’ s sin many ways. (1) By commanding.(2) By threatening.(3) By counselling and persuading.(4) By alluring.(5) By deriding.(6) By boasting of sin.(7) By hiring others to sin.(8) By countenancing the sins of others. He that is a countenencer of others’ sins, is a partaker of other men’ s sin; and that sometimes of sins past, sometimes of future sins. Now, ye may countenance the sins of others, and so be accessory to them, many ways.(1) By defending them.(2) By justifying others’ sins.(3) By extenuating of others’ sins.(4) By commending.(5) By conniving.(6) By company.(7) By rejoicing. 6. By not hindering sin. He that hinders not others from sinning is in danger thereby to partake of their sins. He that hinders not others from doing evil, does the evil himself; is guilty of, accessory to it. (1) By not punishing, censuring, correcting, in State, Church, families. (2) By not complaining of sin. He that has not power to punish sin may complain of it to those that have power; and he that complains not is in danger to be accessory to the sin which he conceals. I confess there are many temptations to keep men from the practice of this duty. It is counted odious to be an accuser; and so it is, when it proceeds from spite, malice, and revenge, and not from tenderness to the glory of God and thy brother’ s soul; but against the temptations which may hinder thee from complaining of other’ s sins, set the danger of sin to him, to thee, and the command of God; see how strictly and punctually He enjoins it without respect of persons and relations, how near and dear soever (Deuteronomy 13:6; Deuteronomy 13:8). (3) By not reproving or admonishing sinners. He that rebukes not, nor does not admonish, according to the quality of those who are guilty, makes himself guilty with them (Leviticus 19:17). To reprove another is a thankless office, and carnal men take it as an expression of hatred; but see how the Lord judges of it: “ He that rebukes not his brother does hate him in his heart.” (4) By not mourning for it. He that mourns not for the sins of others is in danger to partake of them. Mourning is a means to hinder the increase of sin; he that bewails not the sins of others does not what he can to hinder them, and so may be accessory to them. (5) By not praying against the sins of others. Prayer is a sovereign means to hinder sin. He that prays not against it is accessory to it, by not endeavouring to hinder it. (6) By not affording means whereby sin may be hindered. He that denies others the means requisite to the avoiding of sin, when it is his duty to afford them, is accessory to the sins of others by not hindering them; e.g., as we say, he that denies a man food, without which death cannot be prevented, is accessory to his death. (7) By not applying severe providences for the hindering of sin. The Lord sometimes speaks from heaven against sin by remarkable acts of providence. (D. Clarkson, B. D.) Ephesians 5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.The children of light and their obligations I. The degradation from which believers have been raised. A state of wretchedness resulting: from ignorance to God and disobedience to His will. II. The nobility to which believers have been advanced. The light of truth has shone into their hearts, and exposed to view all the abominations, all the depravity, that lay concealed in the dark chambers of imagery within. They have learned to know not only themselves, but also God and Jesus Christ, “ whom to know is life eternal.” They are now united to the Lord, and are of one spirit. Christ dwells in them, and they in Him. III. The duties devolving on those who are “ light in the Lord.”1. They are required to walk as children of light; to prove their descent, to show what family they belong to; to act according to the light bestowed, the knowledge attained; to keep themselves unspotted from the world, undefiled by the surrounding contagion. 2. They are bound to “ prove what is acceptable unto the Lord” --to test what is well pleasing unto Him. This can only be known by the revelation of His will, oral or written. 3. They are forbidden all fellowship with the fruitless works of darkness. (J. D’Arcy Sirr, D. D.)The past and the present: an incentive to acceptable walking I. Their former state. “ Darkness” --the darkness of heathendom. Such was the state of all men by nature. The state of nature is a state of “ darkness” ; and I may say of every unregenerate man, “ thou art darkness.” And if this is true of our view of nature in its best form, what shall we say of the life of sin? Utter darkness! everything darkness! Our Lord says, “ he that walketh in darkness, knoweth not whither he goeth;” and the apostle describes them as “ wandering stars” ; going from bad to worse, and from worse to worse, from one sin to another, from one error to another. But there is another description of this state of darkness, besides this: we say, that a state of unbelief is a state of darkness. II. Their present condition. “ Light.” A very strong expression. It is not said, “ ye have some light” ; it is not said, “ there is some light in you” ; but it is positively declared, “ ye are light.” Of course, this can only be taken in a modified sense; because how little is the light that any of the saints of God have! We see only through the “ unveiled face.” “ We see as in a glass darkly” ; “ we know in part.” Alas! how little do we know of the glory of the Saviour in His person! how little do we know of the perfection of the Saviour! how little do we enter into the glory of the atoning blood! how little do our souls enter into the “ sweet savour” of that sacrifice! and how little we realize the perfection of that Perfect righteousness, which is “ unto all and upon all them that believe” ! How little do our spirits enter into the deep and unutterable fulness that there is in Jesus! And yet, though our light be so feeble, still it is “ light.” He never despises that light that comes from the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul of man; however feeble, however faint, He never despises it. Oh! for a word of tender caution; do you never despise it either. III. The exhortation. “ Walk as children of light.” If you ask for a simple view of their “ walking as children of light” --I would say first of all it is to walk in the brightness of that light: to walk in the light of God’ s precious gospel, to walk in the light of God’ s perfections, to walk in the realizing view of His pardoning mercy, to walk in the light of His adoption, to walk as righteous ones, righteous in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. “ Surely the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to behold the sun.”2. He “ walks as a child of light,” beloved, as he walks in the purity of that light. Observe, this is an essential part of the subject--it is the very subject for which the apostle introduced it; “ ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth): proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.” My dear hearers, we are to “ walk as children of light” --only be you thankful and grateful for being thus brought into the light. To be brought into the light, to one that once was blind, would be one of the first things that would fill his heart with joy. What were ye once? I am persuaded too, beloved, that if we are “ children of light,” we shall rejoice that others be made to “ walk in the light” of that same gospel; we shall rejoice to diffuse, as far as in us lies, that gospel around us. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Unconverted sinners are darkness But what is it to be in darkness? What is this unconverted state that the Holy Ghost so often calls darkness? Take it in these four particulars. To be in darkness is(1) to be in sin, the work of darkness;(2) to be under Satan, the prince of darkness;(3) under wrath, the fruit of darkness;(4) near to hell, the place of darkness. The Scripture by darkness ordinarily expresses some or all of these. When an unconverted state is called darkness, we are to understand by it a most sinful and miserable state. The misery of an unconverted state is so great, as even this darkness will discover it. Let us follow the metaphor a little, the better to discern it.1. Darkness is uncomfortable. So is the state of an unconverted sinner. Who would not be weary of his life upon earth, if the sentence of continual darkness should pass upon it? Alas! more miserable is thy condition if unconverted, because the want of spiritual light is a greater misery than the want of sensible light. 2. Darkness is dangerous. He whose way lies near snares and pits, who is to pass over precipices, rocks, the brink of dangerous gulfs, and has no light to direct him, every step is the hazard of his life. No less dangerous is the way of man ever since sin entered into the world. So many snares has Satan laid, so many pits has he digged, so near we walk to the brink of the bottomless pit, as without light we cannot make one step in safety. 3. Darkness is fearful. We read of the “ horrors of darkness“ (Genesis 15:12). What more apt to engender fears than darkness, when dangers are on every side, and nothing visible that may afford confidence! So the state of nature. The condition of a sinner unconverted is a fearful condition. He is encompassed with terrors on every side; such as, if he were sensible of them, would dash all his mirth and carnal jollity. Those whom the Lord has enlightened to see the dreadfulness of that state, they wonder that such can sleep quietly, or take comfort in any enjoyment, while they are not converted. But who are those that are in darkness? How shall we know whether we be in this unconverted state?1. Who walk in the ways of darkness? The children of light do not walk in the paths of darkness. You may know your state by your way; ways of wickedness are ways of darkness: so Solomon: “ The way of the wicked is darkness” (Proverbs 4:19). He that walks in any way of known wickedness, be it drunkenness, etc., neglect of ordinances, etc., he is in darkness. “ By their fruits ye may know them.” 2. Those that want spiritual discerning. He that has eyes and sees not, it is plain he is in darkness; what else should hinder his sight? So they that have the same understanding, the same faculty of inward sight with others, and yet perceive not that in spiritual things, that those discern who are savingly enlightened, it is evident that spiritual darkness overshadows their souls. 3. Those that act not for God. The things of God are at a distance from every unconverted man; he sees not, he knows not how to go about it. 4. Exhortation, to those that are converted, brought out of the woeful state of darkness; let this stir you up to joy and thankfulness for your deliverance. (D. Clarkson, B. D.)Light in the Lord “ For God who commanded … not of us.” We hear much in these days about the electric light. It is much more brilliant than the old-fashioned lamps. I was looking at one the other day, and noticing particularly that the “ candles,” as they are called, are only black, ugly pieces of charcoal. Nothing more. As I looked at them I could not but wonder that things which by their nature were so black, could, when connected with the mysterious power which causes the flame to glow, give out such wonderful light. Truly the light is not in them. It is the unseen but mighty power working in them and through them that enables them to be useful. A tiny flaw may break the connection and stop the light--disconnected for one instant from the source the light dies instantly, and utterly. Change of state demands change of life In the words we have--1. An antecedent.2. A consequent, or an argument and an inference. First: The antecedent, or argument, is taken from their present compared with their past estate, what they are with what they were.1. The grace received--“ Ye are light” ; that is, filled with the light of wisdom and holiness. But can it be used of any mere man liable to such imperfections? (1) It noteth not their perfection so much as the perfection of the dispensation they are under. Not their perfection, as if there were no darkness in them at all, but the clearness of the gospel which then shined brightly to them. There is a difference between the gospel and believers; the gospel is a perfect light, but we do but imperfectly receive it. (2) It noteth some good measure and degree of participation, but not complete fruition. Participation it noteth, for otherwise it could not be said that we are not only enlightened, but light itself; not complete fruition, for those that are said to he “ light in the Lord” are presently called “ children of the light” ; which doth somewhat abate of the expression. (3) It noteth that we have received grace, not only for ourselves, but for the good of others. 2. The author of this grace--“ In the Lord” ; that is, Christ; for there is but “ one Lord,” as well as “ one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5-6); and whatever good we have, we have it from Christ and in Christ. I. Let me speak of the two opposite states, “ darkness” and “ light,” and there show you that the carnal estate is an estate of darkness, and the renewed state is a state of light.1. The carnal estate is an estate of darkness. So the apostle telleth the Ephesians, Ye were not only darksome, but darkness itself, for the greater vehemency of the expression. (1) The darkness of the understanding is ignorance; they are incapable of discerning between good and evil, know nothing of the nature and will of the true God. (2) There is downright and apparent wandering from God. (3) Eternal misery is the issue and close of it (Matthew 25:30; 2 Peter 2:17). 2. The renewed estate is an estate of light. Light is a quality pure and unmixed, and implieth both knowledge, holiness, and happiness. Knowledge, as it discovereth all things; holiness, as it is pure, and can shine on the filthiest dunghill without any stain; felicity, as it is the smile of heaven upon the earth. II. That there is a mighty change wrought in them who are called out of one estate into the other.1. They have a different principle. All things work according to their nature; as fire ascendeth and water descendeth; fishes go to the water, and beasts keep on dry land; it is according to their nature, and that principle of life which they have. The saints have a Divine nature: “ Whereby ye are made partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). 2. As the internal principle of our operation is unlike, so the external rule of our conversations are quite different, viz., the will of God revealed in the word, which they study to know and obey: “ Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10); “ Be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is” (verse 17); “ That ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). III. That it is good often to compare those two estates, and to consider what we are by nature and what we are by grace. First: That we ought frequently to reflect on our former woeful estate. Reasons there are for this.1. To magnify the riches of God’ s mercy in our deliverance from that woeful estate. We wonder at it more when we compare both together (1 Peter 2:9). 2. That we may admire His power in the change (1 Corinthians 6:11). 3. To keep us humble (1 Corinthians 15:9; 2 Corinthians 12:7. 4. It makes us more compassionate to others, we having once had as blind a mind and hard a heart as they (Titus 3:2-3). 5. It makes us more watchful. A man who has escaped a dangerous disease or surfeit is very careful not to lapse into it again. 6. It quickens us to greater fruitfulness for time to come. Was I so zealous for sin, and shall I not do so much for God (Romans 6:19)? Since we set out so late, let us mend our pace. 7. It maketh our conversion more evident and sensible, and so quickeneth us to thankfulness and praise. 8. It increases our confidence and hopes of eternal life. He that could take us with all our faults, and love us, and pardon us, and heal our natures, and reconcile us to Himself, will He not give us eternal life after we begin to obey, love, and serve Him in our measure? (Romans 5:9-10). 9. It puts an argument in our hands against sin (Romans 6:20-21). Secondly: We ought to remember what we were by nature, so as not to deny what we are by grace (Romans 6:17). IV. This change must be manifested by a suitable conversation: “ Walk,” etc. Children of the light may refer to the dispensation we are under, or the grace we have received by it.1. The dispensation we are under, as those that live in the clearness of gospel light are children of the day. Ye are not of the night; walk as children of light, that have the light of the gospel, or becoming that most holy religion which Christ hath taught us. (1) In the light all blemishes are soon discovered, and so our sins are without excuse; whereas people that have not the gospel, or not so fully preached, are more excusable. Men might plead this, that they knew no better; but now they “ have no cloak for their sin” (John 15:22). (2) As they are without sin, so without shame, when they sin in the open light: “ Every morning doth He bring His judgment to light; He faileth not, but the unjust knoweth no shame” (Zephaniah 3:5). (3) Sins are more dangerous and deadly: “ And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil” (John 3:19). 2. The grace received by it. (T. Manton, D. D.)Darkness and light I. This verse is typical of the Christian religion. It is the appeal which the preacher to Christian hearers has to make in very varied forms and at various times all through his ministry. Advent and Lent, the special times appointed by the Church for doing it, in order to ensure its being done. But it is a work for every time; and every mission or other time of revival is a form of doing it. II. The words are used as symbols.1. Light a good thing; needful for our bodily health; needful for our sustenance by the fruits of the earth; without light we could not live. 2. Without light we could not work. We may put forth strength, but cannot direct it. 3. Darkness a bad thing--hurtful if continued, and destructive to animal and vegetable life. In the night crimes of violence are committed; it is their congenial home. III. Light therefore means goodness and darkness sin.1. Light to the soul is when all its powers are directed consciously to right ends, i.e., to holy living, to the worship and the glory of God. Darkness, when either it knows not that right end, or, knowing it, deliberately chooses something else as its purpose. 2. Contrast in these respects between the Christian and the pagan world. IV. Earnest and practical. The personal question, the great question for us all.1. Are you in the darkness or in the light? 2. With all your Christian privileges you should be in the light. Do you prove that you are so by love to God, watchfulness over yourself, tenderness of conscience? No mere words will be acceptable as a proof. “ If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” On the other hand-- 3. Whatever your profession of religion, and whatever your privileges, if you are contented with sin--willingly enduring it, not anxious to overcome it in your own soul and in the souls of others--then you are still in the darkness. 4. Be not satisfied to remain so. Make an effort to break your chain by the help of Jesus. (S. J. Eales, M. A.)Learning to walk I suppose that all you boys and girls think that you know how to walk. You would laugh at the idea of being taught how you are to use your legs now, as you were when you were babies. Well, we will see. You all know how to walk along the country lanes and turnpike roads, but if you were to go to London for the first time, you would find that you did not know how to walk. I have sometimes seen a countryman in one of the crowded streets of the City of London, trying to make his way along, and every minute he would run against some passenger, and get in the way of another, till the busy city folks were quite angry with him. There is a particular way of walking in crowded streets, and, like everything else, it has to be learned. But there is another kind of walking which has to be learned. We hear a great deal about that in the Bible. St. Paul has much to say about how we ought to walk, and he was not writing to little tiny children, but to grown up men and women. Now there are only two roads on which we can walk. One is the broad road which leads to destruction, the devil’ s road. It seems easy to travel on it at first, but it grows harder and rougher as we go on, for “ the way of transgressors is hard.” You know what the other road is? The King’ s highway, the narrow path which leads to life eternal, God’ s way, of which He says, “ Walk ye in it.” Here are some plain rules for you, my children, which will show you how you ought to walk through life as God’ s children, as children of light.1. Then, keep to the right. You will often see these words printed up in the crowded streets of great cities. Your own conscience will tell you what is right, and whenever there are two ways for you to go in, the right or the wrong, be sure to keep to the right. 2. The next rule I give you is, keep your eyes open. If you were to walk along a road with your eyes shut, you would soon stumble or fall, or wander out of the right path; but if you keep your eyes open, you see the rough places over which you might stumble, and the muddy places where you might splash your clothes with dirt, and you can see the finger post showing you the right way. Well, in walking along the path of life you will need to keep your eyes open. There are dangerous places, over which you will stumble and fall, unless you watch for them carefully; there are temptations, like muddy pools, which will stain your white robe, and make it foul, unless you avoid them. If you keep your eyes open, you will see God’ s hand directing you, and you will find that He has placed many finger posts to show you the right way. The Church is one finger post, the Bible is another, your teachers are all pointing out to you the right road. 3. My next piece of advice to you is, push your way. There are sure to be difficulties in your path. You can do one of two things, you can wait for the difficulty to be removed, or you can push your way through it. In large towns, where there are great public buildings, such as banks and offices, you often see a heavy door leading into the building, and on it is written the one word, “ push.” Now, suppose you wished to enter that building; you might pull at that door for hours and not open it; you might ring the bell, or call to someone to open, but everybody would be too busy to listen. There would be only one thing for you to do, you must push, then the door would open. So it is with all difficulties: “ where there’ s a will there’ s a way” ; if you push against the door which is blocking your way, it will open. 4. Take another word of advice, when you meet with your enemy, fight. I don’ t mean an earthly enemy, and I don’ t mean fighting with your fists. As you walk along the roads of life, your enemy, the devil, will often stand in the path to injure you, to turn you out of the way, “ Whom resist, steadfast in the faith.” The ancient Greeks, who were the most famous soldiers of old times, carried a shield in battle. To lose this shield and leave it behind, was the greatest disgrace which could happen to them. When a soldier was killed, or badly wounded, his companions laid him on his shield, and carried him out of the fight. I have read of a Greek mother, who said to her son as he was going to the battle, “ Either return with your shield or upon it.” That meant, “ Either conquer or die.” My children, it would be very sad for us to have to say, after we have met with temptations to sin--“ I have returned again, but I have left my shield behind.” 5. Last of all, take this rule if you would walk rightly, mind the crossings. In London streets it is very difficult and dangerous to cross the road sometimes. If you are not very careful, and quite accustomed to it, you may be knocked down, and run over: or you may take the wrong turning, and lose yourself. So it is with life, we have to cross over a difficult crossing very often, and there is a great crowd of temptations and sins all around us, and if we are not very watchful, we shall be knocked down and run over by some of those temptations. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)Walk as children of light I. Attend to the character applied to the heirs of grace. “ Children of light,” as opposed to the “ children of darkness.”1. On account of their celestial extraction.2. It denotes their spiritual illumination.3. It signifies the purity of their hearts.4. It refers (o the sanctity of their conduct.5. It means that they have an inheritance of this description in heaven. II. The apostle’ s exhortation--“ Walk as children of light.”1. Shine in your conduct towards your minister. Hold him in high reputation. Submit to him, Pray for him. Receive his advice. Provide for him. 2. Shine one towards another. Cultivate unanimity. A spirit of forbearance. Help each other. Preserve a high esteem one for another, and seek to have your affection increased. Conduct yourselves towards each other with the strictest fidelity. 3. Shine in your conduct towards all around you in the world. III. Improvement.1. Be circumspect.2. Be humble.3. Take care of an implacable spirit.4. Be steady in your profession.5. Take the Word of God for your guide.6. Pray that your minister may be faithful. (The Pulpit.)Light in the Lord Light denotes several things in Scripture.1. Spiritual knowledge. Light and knowledge are terms of the same import (2 Corinthians 4:6). Light to discover God in Christ savingly, and to discern the things of God spiritually. 2. Purity and holiness. Sin and corruption is expressed by darkness, holiness and purity by light. In this sense the most holy God is called Light (1 John 1:5), spotless and perfect holiness, in whom there is not the least impurity. And in reference to us (verse 7), such a light as this is life, spiritual life, which consists in the principles of holiness and purity. 3. The favour of God, and the consequent of it, joy and comfort. The favour of God, the manifesting of His loving kindness, is frequently expressed by the light of His countenance (Psalms 4:6), the issue of which is joy and gladness (verse 7). Light and joy explain one another (Psalms 97:11). That which is light in the first clause is joy in the latter. 4. Glory and happiness. Heaven, the seat of it, is described by light (1 Timothy 6:16). It is called the inheritance (Colossians 1:12). Use 1. If those that are converted be light, etc., then those that are not converted are not light in the Lord. This necessarily follows by the rule of contraries. They may be light in appearance, or in respect of natural endowments, or moral accomplishments, or in the account of others, or in their own conceit and apprehensions, but they are not light in the Lord; and this shows the misery of an unconverted state, and it is useful to take notice of it more particularly. If they are not light in the Lord--(1) they are not in the Lord. The phrase implies union; but such are without union to, without communion with, without participation of, without special relation to Him; without His special protection, without His special favour, without His gracious covenant. It may be propounded to them that they have no actual interest in, or right to, the blessings, the mercies of the covenant. (2) They want the saving knowledge of God in Christ, they are not light in this respect. The darkness of ignorance and misapprehensions is upon the face of their souls; the prince of darkness, the god of this world, has blinded their minds (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). Though they may be knowing men in other respects, yet as to spiritual, saving, experimental, effectual knowledge of Christ, and the things of Christ, they are in darkness. (3) They want the favour of God. They are not under the beams of Divine love, the light of God’ s countenance does not shine on them, and so they are not light in the Lord. Those that are unconverted, want that which is the life and joy to the converted soul; that which sweetens all his afflictions and makes all his enjoyments comfortable. (4) They want the lustre of holiness. This is one thing which concurs to make converts light in the Lord. This light shines nowhere on earth but in the hearts and lives of such; those that are unconverted show themselves either strangers or enemies to it. They are carnal, sold under sin, know not what belongs to an holy frame of heart; think heaven may be attained without strictness, holiness, as the Scripture requires, and the lives of the saints there recorded hold forth; jeer, deride, abuse it, under odious names; place all their holiness in some outward performances or observances; holy discourse and employments are wearisomeness to them. (5) They want discoveries of future glory, they are not light in the Lord; they have not so much light as will discover it at a distance; there are no dawnings, no approaches, no appearances of that blessed light. It is midnight with a sinner while unconverted. But how shall we know, who are in this state, whether or no we be light in the Lord? To direct you herein, let us come to-- Use 2. by way of examination. Hereby ye may know whether ye be converted. Every convert is light in the Lord; those, therefore, that are not light in the Lord are not converted; these are so conjoined, as he that knows the one may conclude the other. Examine, then, whether ye be light in the Lord, if ye would know whether ye be converted. In order hereto observe these particulars:(1) Light is delightful.(2) While there is light there is heat. Heat, as philosophers tell us, is an inseparable property of celestial light. We see a concurrence of these in fire; indeed, there may be an appearance of light where there is no heat, as in glow worms, but where there is any real light, there is some degree of heat more or less. Answerably, they that are light in the Lord are zealous for the Lord, eager in following Him, ardent in love to Him and desires after Him, fervent in spirit in serving Him.(3) Light is progressive. The light from its birth grows and increases, till it domes to its full strength, when the sun is in the meridian. Thus it is with those that ale light in the Lord, as Solomon expresses it (Proverbs 4:18). This light is but a spark at first, and often accompanied with much smoke, but by degrees it breaks forth into a flame. Such grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ; they go from strength to strength, and from one degree of holiness and spiritual knowledge to another; this light daily prevailing against the darkness of ignorance and corruption, till at last it be brought forth to victory. There is a growth of knowledge in the extent of it; it discovers one truth after another, unlocks one mystery after another, and daily scatters the clouds of misapprehensions. In the clearness of it, sees gospel truths with more and more evidence, as that blind man’ s sight was restored by degrees (Matthew 8:23-24). In the firmness of it: established in the truth to a full assurance. There is a growth in the spiritualness, the efficacy, the experimentalness, the practicalness of his knowledge. This light has daily a more spiritual and powerful influence upon his heart, to spiritualize it in his motions, intentions, inclinations; upon his conscience, to make it tender; upon his affections, to kindle them to God, and dead them to the world; upon his conversation, to reform and beautify it with more holy and exemplary actings. There is a growth in grace, too, in everyone that is light in the Lord. This light of holiness shines more and more, prevails against inward distempers and outward miscarriages, Dears down the interest of darkness, i.e. of the flesh and of the world. Use 3. Consolation to those that are converted. If thou art a convert thou art light in the Lord, and this light discovers thy condition to be safe, comfortable, glorious, durable.(1) Safe. If thou canst conclude by Scripture evidence, I was sometimes darkness, etc. The Lord has brought thee into a safe condition; thou art freed from those fears and dangers that thy former darkness exposed thee to. (2) Comfortable. Light and joy in Scripture are put one for the other; and Solomon tells us: “ The light of the righteous rejoiceth” (Proverbs 13:9). What cause they have to rejoice who are light in the Lord; who are in Him, united to Him, in covenant with Him, under the beams of His love, under the sweet influences of His loving, kindness! (3) Durable. Not safe, comfortable, happy for a moment, but forever; for it is light in the Lord. If thy light were in thyself, death or other calamities might extinguish it; if thy light were in the world and outward enjoyments, it might go out of itself, for the light hereof is but as the crackling of thorns; if thy light were in wickedness it would certainly be put out (Job 18:5-6). But what can put out that light that is in the Lord? Light in other things is like them, vain and fading; but light in the Lord is as He is, everlasting. Everlasting knowledge, joy, holiness, happiness is the portion of converted souls; because they have all these in the Lord. (4) Glorious. Nothing visible on earth more glorious than light; and these are put one for the other in Scripture (1 Corinthians 15:41). What is their glory but their light? Those who are converted have hereby a double glory, one as they are light, the other as they are light in the Lord, light in the Lord of glory, He is a glory to them, even as a robe of light would be to our body; such, and much more, is the Lord to a converted soul (Isaiah 60:19). (D. Clarkson, B. D.)Walk as children of light I. What is it to be children of light? It denotes several things.1. Descent. They are called children of light who are of the Father of lights. Christ, the light of the world, is formed in them. 2. Propriety. 3. Destination. 1 Samuel 20:31, one who is near to, worthy of, destined to, death; so children of light, because ordained to it. 4. Residence. They abide in the light. 5. Constitution. Their minds, hearts, affections, are of a lightsome, i.e., a spiritual and heavenly temper; spiritual light in their minds, holiness in their wills, joy, delight, hopes of glory in their hearts. 6. Obligation. Those that are converted are in this sense children of light, because they are obliged to walk as those that are enlightened from above; to walk holily, to be followers of God as dear children. There are strong engagements laid upon them, they are bound by covenant thus to walk. II. What is it to walk as children of light?1. To walk at a distance from darkness (verse 11); from sin, which is the work, which is the cause of all those woeful things which the Holy Ghost expresses by darkness. “ What communion has fight with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). He speaks of it as a most absurd, incongruous thing, that those that are light should mingle with darkness. Every degree of darkness is contrary to fight; so every sin, small or great, open or secret, is opposite, contrary, altogether unbeseeming the blessed relation of a child of fight. 2. To walk boldly; to be herein followers of God as dear children. How followers of God? The apostle tells us (1 Peter 1:15-16), the light of holiness should shine in the fives of those that are Christ’ s; holiness both exercised and diffused. Walking denotes motion and activeness. 3. Exemplarily. Children of fight must walk so as to be fight unto others, and this in divers particulars. (1) Unblameably. So as to give no cause of offence to the weak, nor no cause of reproach to the wicked. (2) Their walking should be convictive. It should discover and manifest the sinfulness of those who walk in the ways of darkness. (3) Their walking should be imitable, i.e., worthy of imitation; so order their ways as they may be a pattern unto others; so shine, as others may follow the light, not in affectation of preeminence, or singularity, in unwarranted opinions or practices; but in close following of Christ, and walking exactly according to the rule of holiness. (4) Their walking should be an ornament to their profession. 4. Cheerfully. Being children of light, they are children of joy. That is their portion, they are all Barnabases, sons of consolation, and should walk accordingly. If it be inquired how we may walk as children of light?1. Walk not according to opinion. This can have no better ground than vain opinion, which Moses followed not, when he “ chose rather to suffer,” etc., and “ accounted the reproach of Christ,” etc. (Hebrews 11:25-26). He had not respect to common opinion, but to something else; nor did the apostle regard it, but something of another nature (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). 2. Follow the light of the Word fully. Make use of it to discover the whole will of God concerning the duty of His children, that you may comply with it, and order heart and life by it. Decline no part of it, whatever it be. 3. Walk above the world and earthly things. Children of light are clothed with the sun; the moon, the world is under their feet (Revelation 12:1). It has no high place in their minds or hearts; riches, pleasures, honours, and respect are thrown down in their thoughts, and cast out of their affections, they are not the design of their lives; the world is their footstool everywhere, and serves, does not command them. 4. Walk in the sight of heaven. Children of the fight are the “ children of the kingdom,” heirs of heaven and glory, begotten again to an inheritance, etc. And that is one reason why they are called children of light, because they are heirs of the inheritance of the saints in light. (D. Clarkson, B. D.)Light in daffiness I was in a darkened room, that I might observe the effect produced by the use of what is appropriately called “ luminous paint.” A neat card, on which the words “ Trust in the Lord” were printed, rested upon the bookcase, and shone out clearly in the darkness. The effect fairly startled me. It was the first time that I had seen this simple but interesting effect. How remarkable that, if from any cause the light of sun or day failed to rest upon the card, its luminousness gradually declined, but returned when the sun’ s action infused fresh light! Truly, we also, if hidden from the face of our Lord, cease to shine. “ Ye are light in the Lord: walk as children of the light.” (Henry Varley.)Children of light That deep-lunged, red-blooded preacher, Sydney Smith, used to throw open the shutters to the morning sun, saying, “ Let us glorify the room!” Both conscience and temperament led him, also, to insist on flooding the dark places of the moral world with cheerfulness, which is the sunshine of the spirit. Thus he constantly advocated the wisdom of what he called “ short views” of life. It was obvious, he thought, that the larger part of our worries and perplexities came from the anticipation of evils. He insisted that if we were happy now, or at least not miserable, or even not overborne by the trouble of the hour, we might logically infer--nay, we should even make it a duty to suppose--that tomorrow, or next week, or next year, would also bring its balance of compensation and resistance. Every substantial grief or danger, he used to say, was accompanied by twenty shadows, and most of these are of our own making. Ephesians 5:9 For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.The fruit of the Spirit 1. The author, the Holy Spirit.2. The fruits of His sanctifying operations enumerated, “ All goodness, and righteousness, and truth.” This is the conversation that may be called “ Walking as children of the light.”1. The apostle, for example’ s sake, mentioneth some parts of the holy life, not to exclude, but imply the rest; for there is a secret “ and such like” understood. When he saith, “ This is the fruit of the Spirit,” you must not think it is all. When we bring a sample of a commodity we bring a little to show the quality of the rest, not as if that were all we had to sell: so these graces are mentioned, but not to exclude the rest. 2. He instanceth in such cases as concern the second table, kindness, justice, and fidelity, as is usual in such cases. The world is most capable of knowing and approving these things, but they suppose higher graces; for all our goodness, justice, and truth must come from love and obedience to God, and faith in Christ, as their true and proper principle, or else they are but moral virtues, not Christian graces (Job 1:1; Luke 23:50). 3. These are spoken of as in combination. We must not so follow after one as to neglect the other. 4. I observe that there is a note of universality joined to the word goodness. “ All goodness,” to show this is of chief regard, and that we must not be good in one sort or kind only, but “ fruitful in every good work (Colossians 1:10). A Christian should he made up of goodness; his very constitution and trade must be goodness. 5. I observe that these are called fruit, not only by a Hebraism, who are wont to express the works of a man by the term “ fruit” ; for man is, or should be, a tree of righteousness; but there is a distinction: Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:22, now the “ works of the flesh” are manifest, but “ the fruit of the Spirit” ; so also here compare the text with verse 11, “ Unfruitful works of darkness.” But why is it called “ fruit” ? Partly to show it is the native and genuine product of the Spirit in our hearts, as fruit groweth on a tree; and partly to show that sin is an unprofitable drudgery, but holiness is fruit. 6. All these graces, and duties consequent, are fruits of the Spirit. 7. He speaks of habits, not of acts. When the soul is thus constituted it is hard to do otherwise. 8. These are ascribed to the Spirit for two reasons. (1) Partly because of man’ s incapacity to produce these things of himself. (2) And partly because all the effects carry such a resemblance with the Spirit. (9) This Spirit God has sent us by the preaching of the gospel. We receive the Spirit more plentifully by the gospel than by the law, and we receive it by faith in Christ. Having made this way, I come now to propound a particular point.1. That the Spirit which we receive by the gospel worketh all goodness in the hearts of believers. I. What is goodness? I answer--Goodness is either moral or beneficial.1. Moral goodness is our whole duty required by the law of God, whatever is just and equal for us to perform (Deuteronomy 30:15). 2. There is beneficial goodness, which is a branch of the former, and implieth a readiness to do good to others to the utmost of our capacity; for all good is communicative of itself (Hebrews 13:16). II. That this is the fruit and product of the Spirit by the gospel. First: What the gospel doth to promote this goodness in the world.1. By the laws and precepts of it, or the duties it requireth; it requireth us to be good and to do good. (1) To be good; for we are first made good before we can do good (Luke 6:45). (2) To do good, both as to God and men. (a) As to God, the great duty is love; that we should love Him, and obey Him as our rightful Lord and chief good and happiness. (b) To do good to men (Galatians 6:10). We cannot take delight in all, for some are an offence to the new nature which is in us; but we must do good to all, and seek their happiness. We cannot take pleasure in sinners, but yet must do them good. Suppose they have disobliged us, yet enemies are not excepted (Matthew 5:44). 2. By the discoveries it maketh. The greatest, truest, and fullest prospect of God’ s goodness to mankind we have in the gospel. There “ the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man appeared” (Titus 3:4). 3. The examples it propoundeth to our imitation, not mean and blemished ones, such as we may find among our fellow creatures, but the high and glorious examples of God and Christ Himself. 4. The arguments by which it enforceth this goodness, or the rewards and encouragements which it offereth, which is the supreme blessedness or the chief good. Secondly: Upon what grounds we may expect the Spirit to cooperate herewith.1. Because God worketh congruously, as with respect to the subject upon which He worketh, so with respect to the object by which He worketh. The subject is the heart of man, and therefore He “ draweth us with the cords of a man” (Hosea 11:4). The object is the gospel, a good word, or the good knowledge of God, and therefore a suitable means to work goodness in us. There we have good precepts and good promises, and an account of God’ s wonderful goodness and love in Christ; and “ therefore the fruit of His Spirit is in all goodness.” 2. The Spirit produceth this effect as a witness of the truth of the gospel, which being a supernatural doctrine, needed to be attested from heaven, that the truth of it might be known by the mighty power of God which doth accompany it, working in our hearts effects suitable to the tenor of the word. Whatever doctrine can change the soul of man, and convert it to God, is of God, and owned by God. 3. That thereby God may signify His peculiar and elective love to His people. When He worketh all goodness in their hearts by His Spirit, they come to discern that He loveth them by a special love. 4. God maketh an offer of His grace to invite us to seriousness in attending on this gospel. He excludeth none in the offer, and therefore we must not exclude ourselves. That one choice fruit of the Spirit wrought in the children of light is righteousness. I. What is righteousness? Sometimes it is taken as largely as holiness, for that grace which doth incline us to perform our duty to God and man; for there is a righteousness even in godliness, or giving God His due honour and worship (Matthew 22:21). More strictly it is taken for that grace which doth dispose and incline us to give everyone his due, and is a branch of that love and charity which is the sum of the whole second table (Romans 13:7-8). To evidence which--First: What is the office and part of justice and righteousness? To seek the peace and welfare of the several communities and societies in which we live, or in preferring the public good before our own.2. To give to every man his due; to use faithful dealing in all the duties we owe to others, or in all actions wherein we are employed and entrusted by others. 3. Fidelity in our relations is another part of justice; for all these relations imply a right which is due to others. So we must be just to superiors and inferiors. Secondly: To what a height Christianity advanceth these things.1. Because it deduceth things from a higher principle, the fixed principle of a nature renewed by Christ. There are in it three things -- (1) Another nature put into us, a fixed principle;(2) And this by the Spirit’ s operation, and so it is a supernatural principle;(3) This working after a kindly manner, by faith in Christ, and love to God in Christ, and so it is a forcible principle. 2. Because it measureth and directeth things by a more perfect rule than the law of nature. Our rule is God’ s Word, which is a more pure and perfect rule than so much of the law as remaineth written upon man’ s heart after the Fall. 3. Because it referreth them to a more noble end, which is the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). II. That this is one of the fruits of the Spirit. It must needs be so, because it suiteth with His office and personal operations. The Spirit is to be our guide, sanctifier, and comforter. As our guide, He doth direct and enlighten our minds; as our sanctifier, He doth change our hearts; and as our comforter, He doth pacify and clear and quiet our consciences. Now this fruit of righteousness is conducible to all these ends, or agreeable with these offices. III. It is a choice fruit of the Spirit.1. Because it conduceth so much to the good of human society. 2. Because of the many promises of God, both as to the world to come and the present life. 3. That to make a Christian complete in his carriage towards men, to goodness and righteousness there must be added truth. Let me inquire here-- (1) What is truth.(2) That it must be made conscience of by the children of light.(3) Why truth must be added to goodness and righteousness. I. What is meant by truth? Sincerity or uprightness in all our speeches and dealings with men. But because integrity of life, and uprightness in our commerce and dealings with others, is a great branch of righteousness, therefore here we must consider it as an opposite to falsehood or a lie in speech; yet not excluding either godly sincerity, which is the root of it: “ Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts” (Psalms 2:6); or internal integrity and righteousness (Jeremiah 5:1). The matter of a lie is falsehood, the formality of it is an intention to deceive; the outward sign is speech. Gestures are a sign by which we discover our mind, but an imperfect sign; the special instrument of human commerce is speech. Now there is a two-fold lying--a lying to God, and a lying to men. II. Why must it be made conscience of by the children of light, or those who are “ light in the Lord” ? I answer For these reasons:1. Because it is a sin most contrary to the nature of God, who is truth itself; it is not only contrary to His will but to His nature: Titus 1:2, “ In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” He can do all things, but He cannot lie. 2. Because when God was incarnate, and came not only to represent the goodness of the Divine nature, but also the holiness of it as a pattern for our imitation, Jesus Christ, this God incarnate, was eminent for this part of holiness, for sincerity and truth (1 Peter 2:22). 3. Nothing maketh us more like the devil, who is a liar from the beginning, and the father of lies (John 8:44). 4. It is a sin most contrary to the new nature wrought in the saints, and seemeth to offer more violence to it than other sins. 5. It is a sin most contrary to human society. 6. Lying is a sin very hateful to God, and against which He hath expressed much of His displeasure. A lying tongue is reckoned among those six things which God hateth (Proverbs 6:17). 7. It is a sin shameful and odious in the eyes of men. The more common honesty any man hath, the further he is from it, especially the more he hath of the spirit of grace (Proverbs 13:5). III. Why this must be added to goodness and righteousness.1. Because they cannot be preserved without it. 2. The life of goodness and righteousness lieth in truth, and so they cannot be thoroughly exercised unless truth be added. Sincerity runs through all the graces. (T. Manton, D. D.)The connection between a gracious state and a holy life The scope of the text is to show that there is a necessary connection betwixt a gracious state and a holy life; which are so joined by the appointment of God, and the nature of things, that they cannot be put asunder. The reasoning is founded on that fundamental maxim of practical Christianity, that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Light, abides, acts, and produceth fruit in all the children of light, in all those who are light in the Lord. It is by the communion of His Spirit that we receive of His influences to make us fruitful. The Spirit uniting the soul to Christ, the fountain of light and life, it immediately partakes of the light and life, as a candle is lighted by a burning lamp touching it; but the candle, separated from the lamp, would continue to burn, as having in itself that which feeds the flame. But the creature is empty in itself, and therefore must be fed continually from Jesus Christ, by the communion of His Spirit maintaining the bond of union betwixt Christ and the soul, and taking of Christ and giving to it. So that if it were possible that the Spirit should once totally depart from the child of light, and the union be broken, that moment he would return to his former darkness. Now the fruit of the Spirit, thus abiding and acting in the children of light, is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth; therefore it necessarily follows, that they that are light in the Lord, will walk as children of light. We are now--2. To consider what is said of this fruit of the Spirit. “ It is in all goodness,” etc. There is an ellipsis here of the copulating. Our translators supply the word, “ is.” Some versions supply the word, “ consists.” Whatever be supplied, that seems to be the sense, namely, that the fruit of the Spirit consists in all goodness, etc. Thus we read (Colossians 1:10) of being fruitful in every good work. The fruit of the Spirit is not only in some goodness, righteousness, and truth--though many deceive themselves with parcels and shreds of these things--but it is in all goodness in one’ s self and to his neighbour; in all righteousness towards man; in all truth with respect to God, our neighbour, and ourselves. And these things are interwoven one with another, in the fruit of the Spirit. The goodness is true, and jostles out no sort of righteousness or justice, communicative nor distributive, remunerative nor punitive. The righteousness is true and good; from right principles, motives, and ends. So is the truth, as it is here distinguished, proceeding from a good principle. Meanwhile, this extent of the fruit of the Spirit is to be understood not in a legal, but an evangelical sense; of a perfection of parts, not of degrees. Lastly. Let us show how these are the fruit of the Holy Ghost in the children of light. They are so in three respects.1. He implants them in the soul, giving it a good, righteous, and true inclination and propensity, agreeable to the holy law, according to that, “ I will,” saith the Lord, “ put My law into their minds, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.” 2. He preserves these graces when implanted (1 Peter 1:5), without which they would die out. And-- 3. He excites, quickens, and brings them forth to action, in the heart and life of the children of light (Son 4:16). (T. Boston, D. D.)The fruits of the Spirit, the same with moral virtues I shall briefly explain the importance of these three words, “ goodness, and righteousness, and truth” ; and then proceed to make some observations from the text. I. Goodness. And what that is, the apostle takes it for granted that everybody knows; he does not go about to define it or explain it, but appeals to every man’ s mind and conscience to tell him what it is. It is not anything that is disputed and controverted among men, which some call good, and others evil; but that which mankind is agreed in, and which is universally approved by the light of nature, by heathens as well as Christians; it is that which is substantially good, and that which is unquestionably so. It consists in the following particulars, viz., obedience to our superiors and governors, and a conscientious care of the duties of our several relations; sincere love and charity, compassion, humility, peace and unity, abstaining from wrath and revenge, and rendering good for evil; these are unquestionable instances of goodness, and pass for current among all mankind, are on all hands agreed to be good, and have an universal approbation among all parties and professions, how wide soever their differences may be in other matters. The other two fruits of the Spirit which are added in the text, “ righteousness and truth,” which respect likewise our conversation with men, more especially in the way of commerce, are rather parts or branches of goodness, than really distinct from it. I now proceed to make some observations.1. That the “ fruits of the Spirit” are real and sensible effects, appearing in the dispositions and lives of men. The apostle here speaks of what is visible in the lives and conversations of men; for he exhorts Christians to “ walk as children of the light” ; now walking is a metaphor which signifies the outward conversation and actions of men. For religion is not an invisible thing, consisting in mere belief, in height of speculation, and niceties of opinion, or in abstruseness of mystery. The Scripture does not place it in things remote from the sight and observation of men, but in real and visible effects; such as may be plainly discerned, and even felt, in the conversation of men; not in abstracted notions, but in substantial virtues, and in a sensible power and efficacy upon the lives of men, in all the instances of piety and virtue, of holy and excellent actions. 2. That these “ fruits of the Spirit,” here mentioned, “ goodness, and righteousness, and truth,” are of an eternal and immutable nature, and of perpetual and indispensable obligation. 3. That moral virtues are the graces and “ fruits of the Spirit.” So that grace and virtue are but two names that signify the same thing. Virtue signifies the absolute nature and goodness of these things; grace denotes the cause and principle by which these virtues are wrought and produced, and are preserved and increased in us; namely, by the free gift of God’ s Holy Spirit to us. 4. That since these very things which are called moral virtues, are in their nature the very same with the graces and “ fruits of the Spirit,” therefore they are by no means to be slighted as low and mean attainments in religion, but to be looked upon and esteemed as a main and substantial part of Christianity. They are called “ the fruits of the Spirit” ; that is, the natural and genuine effects of that Divine power and influence upon the hearts and lives of men, which accompanies the Christian religion; or the happy effects of the Christian religion wrought in men by the immediate operation and assistance of the Holy Spirit of God, which is conferred upon all Christians in their baptism, and does continually dwell and reside in them, if by wilful sins they do not grieve Him, and drive Him away, and provoke Him to withdraw Himself from them. (Archbishop Tillotson.)Righteousness in all things Just as the quality of life may be as perfect in the minutest animalculae, of which there may be millions in a cubic inch, and generations may die in an hour--just as perfect in the smallest insect as in “ behemoth, biggest born of earth” ; so righteousness may be as completely embodied, as perfectly set forth, as fully operative in the tiniest action that I can do as in the largest that an immortal spirit can be set to perform. The circle that is in a gnat’ s eye is as true a circle as the one that holds within its sweep all the stars; and the sphere that a dewdrop makes is as perfect a sphere as that of the world. All duties are the same which are done from the same motive; all acts which are not so done are alike sins. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Ephesians 5:10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.The rule of the saint’ s life Darkness implies ignorance, for in deep darkness, where no object is recognizable, movement becomes impossible; as, for instance, in the plague of darkness sent upon smitten Egypt of old, we are told that none moved out of their place for three days. It implies suffering and sadness, and is one of the most familiar images which we unconsciously use to represent our times of sorrow (I was going to say, unconsciously repeating the image), the dark times of our life. But it implies also depravity and crime, for evil hides in the darkness, and has a natural sympathy with it. Who, then, are they who are said by the apostle to be dark? Are they the unlearned and untaught in human knowledge, in contrast with the wise and eloquent of the world? Evidently no. The word is palpably applied to all who are not Christians--those whom he describes in a preceding chapter of the same letter as dead in trespasses and sins. On the contrary, however, all converted men, all true Christians, all real believers in Christ Jesus, are not only enlightened but are light. That they are enlightened we shall all readily admit, for God hath shined in their hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. But the special lesson which is impressed here goes further. It is that they are light--that there is a positive power of light planted within them, capable both of guiding themselves and of being reflected upon others. It is not their own light primarily or meritoriously, but it is the light of God in Christ. I. I ask your attention to the principle involved. It is that the law of a Christian life is to be found in that which is acceptable to God. In other words, our characters and conduct are not to be regulated by the bare outward letter of the law, but by something further. The result of the lesson is no doubt to raise greatly the standard of our Christian life; and who will deny that we need to raise it; who will not be conscious of the abyss of difference between ourselves and the apostles, between what we are, and that model of what we ought to be, contained in the Word of God? II. But from the principle we must pass on to the practical application. How are we to prove what is acceptable to God? What, then, is the test? It is at least three fold.1. There is the test of the Word of God, that sure rule by which everything else must be measured. But I do not mean the letter of the Word only, its direct, positive precepts. It is unnecessary to speak to you of these; whatever they command is of course right, whatever they forbid of course wrong. But I mean the indirect test of the Word. Does any given pleasure, or pursuit, or habit bring us into closer harmony with the Spirit and the mind of God? Then it is acceptable to God. Does it put us out of tune with it, and make it more difficult to keep the plain command? Then it cannot be acceptable to God. 2. The test may be found in the effect which any given course or habit has on our habits of devotion, and the soul’ s loving communion, through the Word and through praise and prayer, with its Father in heaven. 3. Beyond this, I believe there is in a soul in a state of spiritual health, where the reason follows God’ s teaching, where the affections find supreme delight in Him, and where the conscience is sensitive to inconsistency, an instinctive sense of what is right and wrong, a feeling on which aught dishonourable to God jars and is at variance, just as a harsh discord in the midst of a sweet harmony may offend the ear which is not skilled enough to detect its nature. (E. Garbett, M. A.)Proving what is acceptable to the Lord I. The act: “ proving.” So to prove as to approve and practise. II. The object: “ that which is pleasing, or acceptable, to the Lord.” There is a difference between things.1. Some things utterly displease God, as sin (2 Samuel 11:27). 2. Some things are not displeasing unto God, as all natural and indifferent actions, which are not forbidden, but allowed by Him (Ecclesiastes 9:7). 3. Other things are commanded by Him as a positive law, but have no natural goodness in themselves, setting aside God’ s command. 4. There are some things which do most please God, as things eminently good are acceptable to Him in the highest degree; as, for instance, faith in Christ is pleasing to God, but a strong faith is more acceptable than a weak, which needeth props and crutches (John 20:29). That proving what is acceptable to God is one great duty which belongeth to the children of light. I shall explain this point by these considerations--1. Our great end and scope should be to please God, and be accepted with Him. 2. We please God by doing what He hath required of us in His Word. There are certain things evident by the light of nature which belong to our duty; these must not be overlooked (Micah 6:8). The things there mentioned are evident by the light of nature. That we should carry ourselves justly towards men, and with reverence and obedience to the Divine majesty, is evident by the light of nature, as well as Scripture. But the revelation that He hath made of our duty to us by the Word is more clear, full, and certain. 3. If we would know God’ s mind revealed in His Word, we must use search and trial. Δοκιμάζοντες, “ proving,” noteth great diligence and care that we may know the mind of God; for it greatly importeth us, and we are often pressed to it: “ Prove all things, hold fast that which is good” (2 Thessalonians 6:21). If we see but a piece of money that hath the king’ s image stamped upon it, we bring it to the touchstone to see if it be right: do so with doctrines and practices, bring them to the law and to the testimony, see how they agree with God’ s Word (1 John 4:1). 4. We must search and try, that we may walk as children of the light. The night was made for rest; the light is not given us for rest and idleness, but for work. (T. Manton, D. D.)Believers must please God The business of a Christian upon earth is not an independent one; he is not acting on his own account, but he is a steward for Christ. What if I compare him to a commission agent who is sent abroad by his firm with full powers from his employer to transact business for the house which he represents! He is not to trade for himself, but he agrees to do all in the name of the firm which commissions him. He receives his instructions, and all he has to do is to carry them out, his whole time and talent being by express agreement at the absolute disposal of his employers. Now, if this man shall lend himself to an opposition firm, or trade on his own account, he is not true to his engagements, and he has to bear the responsibility of his acts; but so long as he acts for his firm, and does his best, his course is an easy and safe one. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Entire consecration to God That eminent ornithologist, M. Audubon, who produced accurate drawings and descriptions of all the birds of the American continent, made the perfection of that work the one object of his life. In order to achieve this he had to earn his own living by painting portraits, and other labours; he had to traverse frozen seas, forests, canebrakes, jungles, prairies, mountains, swollen rivers, and pestilential bogs. He exposed himself to perils of every sort, and underwent hardships of every kind. Now, whatever Audubon was doing, he was fighting his way towards his one object, the production of his history of American birds. Whether he was painting a lady’ s portrait, paddling a canoe, shooting a raccoon, or felling a tree, his one drift was his bird book. He had said to himself, “ I mean to carve my name amongst the naturalists as having produced a complete ornithological work for America,” and this resolution ate him up, and subdued his whole life. He accomplished his work because he gave himself wholly to it. This is the way in which the Christian man should make Christ his element. All that he does should be subservient to this one thing, “ That I may finish my course with joy, that I may deliver my testimony for Christ, that I may glorify God whether I live or die.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.Renunciation of evil ways 1 Those in whom there is the light of grace and true knowledge must not walk in evil works, nor communicate in them. (1). Not to have fellowship in sin is not to be an agent in sin, in whole, alone, or in part with others, neither in greater or less measure to live in it. (2) Not to be accessory unto the sins of others; as (a) By provoking to sin. (b) By commanding. (c) By counselling. (d) By consenting. (e) By carelessness to prevent sin. (f) By not repressing sin when it has entered. (g) By applauding sin. (h) By not testifying against sin. (3) Not to have fellowship with sin binds us to avoid the appearance of evil. (4) It binds us to turn from it with detestation. 2. The ways of sin bring no good to those that walk in them. 3. Those who walk in light must reprove and convince those who walk in evil. (Paul Bayne.)The duty and manner of Christian reproof I. God’ s people, His children, are a reproving light. They are called out of darkness into marvellous light, that they might reflect the, light of Him who hath “ called them out of darkness into His marvellous light.” But, beloved, there is another quality in light, there are many others indeed, but this one especially here to be noted, which is, that there is a detective and a reproving quality in light. We know not the beauty of an object but as the light unfolds it; we know not its faultiness, we see not its defects, they are to us unknown without the light; but the light reveals them. The Lord’ s people are especially called to stand; not merely as a reflecting light, not merely as a diffusing light, but as a reproving light, reproving the “ darkness “ around them. Whatever there is in a believer peculiar to him as a believer, is a light that reproves the world. Is it the life that he has, the life of faith? It is a reproving light to the world. If we look to the love of the believer, or what he loves; he loves Christ. In this love of Christ we shall see that he is a reproving light to the world. But especially do we see this in the quality of a believer’ s happiness. When a child of God is enabled by the Spirit of God to realize clearly his adoption; when he can look up with humble hope and believing confidence, and say, “ My Father!” when he knows something of the power of this truth, that communion with God, submission to God, and obedience in the ways of God is the very highest element of real enjoyment; when it speaks peace to him and quiets him in the midst of all his troubles, and dries up his tears--oh! what a reproving light is this oft to the world that lieth in darkness. He says, “ I see the effects; I see a real principle, I know not whence it comes, but I see a positive amount of happiness, I have never seen anything like it before. I have seen a man in wealth, but his wealth did not make him happy; I have seen a man in poverty, but his poverty did not make him miserable; I have seen him in health, he saw no brightness in health save only as he was enabled to ‘ live to God’ ; I have seen him in sickness, and in sickness I have seen him peaceful, he knew that joy, that ‘ peace that passeth all understanding’ ; I have seen him in death, I have seen him when called to die, ‘ ready to depart’ --‘ to me to live,’ he said, ‘ is Christ, to die is gain’ ; and I have seen him in the last article of death, but death had no sting, he was enabled to rise above it by faith in Christ Jesus, and say, ‘ O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?’” II. But, observe now, secondly, they are placed in the midst of these unfruitful works of darkness. Ah! dear hearers, we have but poor notions of sin. Every sin is that which deserves God’ s wrath; it has death for its wages, and eternal misery, if unrepented of, for its consummation. Therefore, confine not your minds to gross sins merely, since all sins are the works of darkness. Why are they called unfruitful? I have no doubt that it has especial reference to this darkness, as the very cause of barrenness. Yet, beloved, the saints of God are placed in the midst of these “ unfruitful works of darkness” ; why is it? Could not the Lord God have delivered them and translated them at once to their eternal home? Could He not in the case of Israel of old have taken them to Canaan at once without taking them through the waste howling desert? Who denies it? But should you ask wherefore He does it not, we see it typically unfolded in the eighth of Deuteronomy, at the fifteenth and sixteenth verses--“ Who hath led thee through a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that He might humble thee, and that He might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end.” See, then, wherefore they are placed in the midst of a dying world; see wherefore they are surrounded by these “ unfruitful works of darkness” ; see the great end and object, it is not the result of chance, it is the appointment of infinite wisdom, tenderness, goodness, and love. III. But, beloved, observe now “the exhortation that is given--“ have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Now, observe, it is not said, “ have no fellowship with the unfruitful workers of darkness,” never will you meet with a precept of that kind in God’ s Word, we must needs go out of the world if we try. But there is more than this in the precept--“ but rather reprove them.” Here we come to one of the most difficult paths in the believer’ s walk. There are many ways in which the believer is called upon from time to time to reprove the “ works of darkness.” By diffusing the truth. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Avoidance of sinful works That the children of light should live in a perfect abhorrence of, and stand at a great distance from, the unfruitful works of darkness. I. For the object. We have a general and unlimited expression, “ The unfruitful works of darkness.” But what they are we may collect from the context, “ Uncleanness, fornication, evil concupiscence,” etc.; and (Romans 13:12-13) the apostle reckoneth up other things. These and such like heathen practices are such as the apostle intendeth.1. They are called “ works of darkness” for these reasons-- (1) Because they are done by men in their carnal estate, who are destitute of the Spirit of God, and all saving knowledge of His will. (2) Because they are suggested by the temptations of the devil, who is the prince of darkness, and the ruler of the darkness of this world; and therefore called “ his lusts” (John 8:44); “ his works” (1 John 3:8). (3) Because they cannot endure the light, but seek the veil and covert of secrecy. There is a three-fold light.(1) Natural. They rebel against this light (Job 24:13). (2) Light spiritual, the light of God’ s Word: “ For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved” (John 3:20). (3) There is another light, and that may be called practical, or the light of a holy conversation: “ Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). (4) Because these men are condemned to everlasting darkness; for if they live and die in these sins without repentance, they are unavoidably cast into utter darkness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. 2. These are said to be unfruitful by a μείωσις, that is, damnable; as Hebrews 13:17, “ That is unprofitable for you.” The meaning is, hurtful and pernicious; however, the expression is emphatical. These works produce not only no good fruit, but certainly bring forth evil fruit, and prove bitterness in the end. Mere evil, as evil, cannot be the object of choice; there is some fruit or benefit expected in all that we do, but sin will never make good its word to us. (1) It doth not answer expectation; the sinner looketh for more contentment and satisfaction than he doth enjoy: “ And what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?” (Ecclesiastes 5:16). It is a fruitless enterprise; so that very experience is enough to confute it; and that is one reason why objects of sin are loathed when we have our fill of them (2 Samuel 13:15). (2) It is not valuable; the profit will not counterbalance the loss, nor the pleasure the pain (Matthew 16:25). II. The acts of our duty about it; and they are two.1. That we must have no fellowship with them in evil. To understand that, we must consider how many ways we have fellowship with them. (1) If we do the same things that others do. (2) If we be accessory to the sins of others, which we may be many ways. (a) If we counsel, persuade, allure, or entice others to sins. These are Satan’ s decoys, who being ensnared themselves, draw others into the net. (b) By commanding that which is evil. This is the sin of those that have power over others; as David commanded Joab to set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire from him, that he may be smitten and die (2 Samuel 11:15). (c) By consenting, though we be not the principal actors; as Ahab (1 Kings 21:19). (d) By abetting, aiding, and assisting in the conveyance of the sin; as Jonadab assisted Amnon in getting an occasion to satisfy his lust on his sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13:5). (e) By applauding, approving, or praising the sin, which is the guise of flatterers (Romans 1:32). (f) By carelessness to prevent the sin: “ I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not” (1 Samuel 3:13). So that a culpable omission may make us accessory to their sin. 2. The other duty is, “ But rather reprove them.” Now reprove we may by deed or word. (1) By deed, or the example of a holy life; as “ Noah condemned the world” (Hebrews 11:7). (2) By word, when it may be done with profit; as the apostle saith of the infidel, when he cometh into Christian assemblies, “ he is condemned of all, and judged of all” (1 Corinthians 14:24); namely, as he heareth doctrines there contrary to his practice. III. The reasons of the point.1. Because there should be a broad and sensible difference between the children of light and the children of darkness. 2. This difference is discovered by those actions that are proper to either state; for actions are agreeable to their principle, and in actions must this difference be expressed, or how is it visible? Both show forth the influence of an unseen power, both the children of God and the children of the devil, the children of light and children of darkness. 3. This distinction is to be kept up on the part of the godly, and so conspicuously held forth, that they may either convince or convert the wicked. 4. The children of God are fitted and prepared for this, to abstain from sin (1 John 3:9). 5. The inconveniencies are great that will follow if God’ s children should have any fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness; our pretended communion with God will be interrupted (1 John 1:6-7). To press the two duties in the text.1. “ Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness” ; that is, do not join or partake in the sins of the carnal world, though they seem to be authorized by vulgar and common practice. To this end remember-- (1) You must not do as others do, but do as God requireth. (2) Love God, and love His law, and love His people, and the infection is prevented. Love God (Psalms 97:10). (3) We must eschew all unnecessary and voluntary friendship and familiarity with wicked men (Psalms 26:4; Proverbs 12:11). (4) Your happiness lieth in communion with God, and this we cannot have if we have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness (1 John 1:6-7). 2. “ But rather reprove them,” by deed and word. (1) By deed, spoken of before; as David convinced Saul (1 Samuel 24:17). (2) By word. It is a duty the world cannot bear, but we must perform it (Proverbs 15:12) (T. Manton, D. D.)Evil company is deadly My father once had two Irishmen digging a well, and they dug about five days and then they were paid some money and went off and drank for about a week. When they came back ready for work they uncovered the well and asked for a candle. They got the candle and tied a rope round it and let it down in the well, and when it got near the bottom it flickered and went out, and Pat said, “ We can’ t go down there, there is death down there.” And they went away and got some dry brushwood and built a fire in the well, and thou let down the candle again, and it burnt all right. Before you go into some places, my dear friends, put your light, that is, your God, your preacher, and your Bible down and see how they look. (S. Jones.)Evil is to be avoided The pilot of a United States revenue cutter was asked if he knew all the rocks along the coast where he sailed. He replied: “ No; it is only necessary to know where there are no rocks.” These words suggest a deep moral and spiritual truth. Sermons, lectures, and books abound on the temptations which lie along the life course of the young to eternity. Over the most dangerous ones are lifted the solemn notes of repeated warning. Fellowship defined What is fellowship? It is more than sympathy, although that is the core of it. It is sympathy expressed or manifested in such a way as to draw others toward you in the bonds of brotherhood. Fellowship is making men feel that they are fellows with you; that they are your brethren; that they are related to you; that they are a part of your person, as it were. (H. W. Beecher.)No association with rebels In the rebellion of 1798, the rebels took prisoner a little drummer of the king’ s troops, and they desired him to beat the drum for them. The little boy laid his drum on the ground and leaped into it, smashing the parchment into atoms. “ God forbid,” said he, “ that the king’ s drum should ever be beat for rebels.” The ruffians piked the little hero, but they could not obliterate the remembrance of a deed worthy of a place in the noblest records of courage, loyalty, and fidelity--an example which, if it were imitated in a spiritual sense by the Christian, would best illustrate the fulfilment of the apostle’ s exhortation here. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)Christians must maintain their rank Matthew Wilks once rode by coach with a young nobleman and a female passenger. The nobleman entered upon an improper conversation with the coachman and the woman. At a favourable opportunity Mr. Wilks attracted his attention, and said, “ My lord, maintain your rank!” The reproof was felt and acted upon. Let the Christian ever maintain his rank. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christians must be consistent A distinguished Christian lady was recently spending a few weeks in a hotel at Long Branch, and an attempt was made to induce her to attend a dance, in order that the affair might have the prestige bestowed by her presence, as she stood high in society. She declined all the importunities of her friends, and finally an honourable senator tried to persuade her to attend, saying, “ Miss B., this is quite a harmless affair, and we want to have the exceptional honour of your presence.” “ Senator,” said the lady, “ I cannot do it, I am a Christian. I never do anything in my summer vacation, or wherever I go, that will injure the influence I have over the girls of my Sunday school class.” The senator bowed, and, “ I honour you; if there were more Christians like you, more men like myself would become Christians.” The “ unfruitful works of darkness” to be looked for in our own hearts To dwell on the works of darkness which were done in ancient Greece and Rome would be very unprofitable. What pen would dare to write, what eye endure to read, the things which are done all the year round in Paris and London? No villager need wander from his own village, in order to find works which will not bear the light. Indeed we need not go any whither exploring, we need not leave our own door; we may find within our own breasts more than enough to humble us. Let each of us sit still, and keep watch for a while in the silent house of his spirit: he will find things transpiring there which will suggest self-abhorrence, and clothe him with shame before God. Not only the kingdom of heaven, but the kingdom of darkness also is very nigh unto us, and comes without observation. Let us watch and pray, that we may have grace and strength enough to disown the inward imagery, with which it seeks to fascinate and pollute the heart. Let us hold no fellowship with the thoughts which it stirs in us. Let us drag thorn before the light of God, that they may be made manifest, and reproved there. (J. Pulsford.)The Christian as a reformer I. Negative. “ Have no fellowship.”1. All and every kind of intercourse with evil-doers is not included; for we are commanded to rebuke, and this implies some intercourse. Besides, we are exhorted to do good unto all men, as we have opportunity. 2. All friendly intercourse with even gross sinners is not prohibited. Our Saviour sat at meat with publicans, and sinners, and Pharisees; and Paul instructs Christians how to conduct themselves when invited to a feast by an unbeliever. 3. All business intercourse is not interdicted. In 1 Corinthians 10:25, permission, and even advice is given. 4. The discharge of the relative duties which arise out of the family relation is not included in the prohibition. 5. Civil connection with wicked governments is not forbidden. Subjection to rulers is permitted and directed by the precept of Paul, in Romans 13:1. Joseph held office under the despot of Egypt. Daniel did likewise under the kings of Babylon and Persia, and while so doing was greeted by the angel with the title, “ well-beloved.” 6. Not all ecclesiastical connection with wrong-doers is forbidden. II. Having seen that there are some things which are not to be understood as the fellowship forbidden, let us inquire in what it does consist.1. It plainly includes the direct commission of sin. 2. It occurs in the support of others in the commission of wrong, when we employ them or supply them with the means of some iniquitous purpose. 3. Iniquity is fellowshipped when wrong is justified as right; when sweet as called bitter, and bitter sweet; when darkness is called light, and light darkness. 4. The same thing takes place when men support wrong on the whole. This is done by endeavouring to produce an underestimate of the wrong itself; or by urging its necessity or expediency, as if Providence compelled us to sin. III. Let us now consider our positive duty as enjoined in the text. A proper understanding of the word “ reprove” will furnish us with a clue to guide us to this end. The term implies an appeal to the understanding of the evil-doer--to convince him by proving that his course is one of wickedness and folly--to arouse his sense of right, and not to irritate his sensibility to obloquy and scorn. (E. C. Pritchett.)Influence of bad company What you learn from bad habits and in bad society you will never forget, and it will be a lasting pang to you. I tell you in all sincerity, not as in the excitement of speech, but as I would confess and have confessed before God, I would give my right hand tonight if I could forget that which I have learned in evil society--if I could tear from my remembrance the scenes which I have witnessed, the transactions which have taken place before me. You cannot, I believe, take away the effect of a single impure thought that has lodged and harboured in the heart. You may pray against it, and by God’ s grace you may conquer it, but it will, through life, cause you bitterness and anguish. (J. B. Gough.)Power of bad company Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. (St. Augustine.)Christian conduct in worldly company A pious officer of the army, travelling through the Mahratta country, was asked by Judge D--, a religious gentleman, to accompany him to a public dinner, at which the commanding officer of the district, with all his staff, and various other public characters, were expected to meet. “ I expressed a wish to be excused,” says the officer, “ as I had no relish for such entertainments, and did not think that much either of pleasure or profit was to be derived from them.” His reply was: “ While I feel it my duty to attend on such an occasion, I certainly have as little pleasure in it as you have. But there is one way in which I find I can be present at such meetings, and yet receive no injury from them. I endeavour to conceive to myself the Lord Jesus seated on the opposite side of the table, and to think what He would wish me to do and to say, when placed in such a situation, and as long as I can keep this thought alive on my mind, I find I am free from danger.” A law against bad company An ancient historian, mentioning the laws which Charondas gave the Thurians, says: “ He enacted a law with reference to an evil, on which former lawgivers had not animadverted--that of keeping bad company. As he conceived that the morals of the good were sometimes quite ruined by their dissolute acquaintance; that vice was apt, like an infectious disease, to spread itself and extend its contagion, he expressly enjoined, that none should engage in any intimacy or familiarity with immoral persons; appointed that an accusation might be exhibited for keeping bad company; and laid a heavy fine on such as were convicted of it.” The child of light and the works of darkness I. What is forbidden. “ Fellowship.” This may be produced in several ways.1. By personally committing the sins described, or by joining with others in bringing them about. 2. By teaching wrong-doing, either by plain word or by just inference. 3. By constraining, commanding, or tempting; by threat, request, persuasion, inducement, compulsion, bribery, or influence. 4. By provoking, through exciting anger, emulation, or discouragement. 5. By neglecting to rebuke, especially by parents and masters misusing their office, and allowing known evils in the family. 6. By counselling, and advising, or by guiding by example. 7. By consenting, agreeing, and cooperating. 8. By conniving at sin: tolerating, concealing, and making light of it. 9. By commending, countenancing, defending, and excusing the wrong already done; and contending against those who would expose, denounce, and punish it. II. What is commanded. “ Reprove.”1. Rebuke.2. Convict.3. Convert. III. Why it is commanded to me? It is especially my duty to be clear of other men’ s sins.1. As an imitator of God and a dear child (verse 1).2. As one who is an inheritor of the kingdom of God (verses 5, 6).3. As one who has come out of darkness into marvellous light in the Lord (verse 8).4. As one who bears fruit, even the fruit of the Spirit, which is in all goodness, righteousness and truth (verse 9).5. As one who would not be associated with that which is either shameful or foolish (verses 12, 15). If our fellowship is with God, we must quit the ways of darkness. IV. What may come of obedience to the command. Even if we could see no good result, yet our duty would be plain enough; but much benefit may result.1. We shall be clear of complicity with deeds of darkness.2. We shall be honoured in the consciences of the ungodly.3. We may thus win them to repentance and eternal life.4. We shall glorify God by our separated walk and by the godly perseverance with which we adhere to it.5. We may thus establish others in holy nonconformity to the world. Let us use the text as a warning to worldly professors. Let us take it as a directory in our conversation with the ungodly. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Evil fellowship A member of his congregation was in the habit of going to the theatre. Mr. Hill went to him and said, “ This will never do--a member of my Church in the habit of attending the theatre!” Mr. So-and-so replied that it surely must be a mistake, as he was not in the habit of going there, although it was true he did go now and then for a treat. “ Oh!” said Rowland Hill, “ then you are a worse hypocrite than ever, sir. Suppose anyone spread the report that I ate carrion, and I answered, ‘ Well, there is no wrong in that; I don’ t eat carrion every day in the week, but I have a dish now and then for a treat!’ Why, you would say, ‘ What a nasty, foul, and filthy appetite Rowland Hill has, to have to go to carrion for a treat!’ Religion is the Christian’ s truest treat, Christ is his enjoyment.” Rebuking evil doers On one occasion, travelling in the Portsmouth mail, Andrew Fuller was much annoyed by the profane conversation of two young men who sat opposite. After a time, one of them, observing his gravity, accosted him with an air of impertinence, inquiring, in rude and indelicate language, whether on his arrival at Portsmouth he should not indulge himself in a manner evidently corresponding with their own intentions. Mr. Fuller, lowering his ample brows, and looking the inquirer full in the face, replied in measured tones: “ Sir, I am a man that fears God.” Scarcely a word was uttered during the remainder of the journey. (Memoir of Andrew Fuller.) Ephesians 5:12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.Sinful deeds The practices of the unconverted heathen are set forth by a double brand--1. They are done of them in secret. 2. It is a shame to speak of them, there is such a turpitude and filthiness in them. So that in these words may be observed-- (1) Something concerning the sense and apprehension that men have of sin.(2) Something concerning secret sins. For the first I shall observe that all sense of right and wrong, good and evil, is not wholly extinguished in the heart of man; for here the unbelieving Gentiles, though they did abominable things, yet they did them in secret, which showeth some relics of natural conscience and shame in them.1. Naturally we apprehend a difference between virtue and vice, good and evil; for we apprehend the one as culpable and evil, and the other as honest and commendable. 2. This apprehension is most sensibly betrayed by our affections of shame and fear. 3. This apprehension produceth different effects in the godly and wicked. We have an instance in the text. In the unconverted it produceth hypocrisy, in the converted shyness and abhorrence of sin. In the unconverted pagan Ephesians it produced hypocrisy; they did seek to hide what they would not avoid. Though the things were abominable, and had the marks of nature’ s dislike and improbation upon them, yet they committed them in secret; as many a man’ s heart reproacheth him, yet he goeth on still in his sins, and if he may commit them secretly, without being seen by others, they think themselves safe and secure, and for the present out of gunshot. But here is another sort of men intimated in the text; the apostle, and those like-minded with himself, all children of light, that abhor these deeds of darkness, are ashamed to mention what others are not ashamed to practise. Unbelievers have but a spark of conscience left; they know their practices are abominable, but they do them in secret. These are so far from committing these things, that they count it a shame to speak of them, or to hear them spoken of by others, it cannot be done without blushing. 1. To show us the evil of sin. Two things in the text discover that. (1) It is a deed of darkness. Done in secret.(2) Shameful to speak of it. Much more shameful to act it. 2. It shows how impudent and desperate in sin they are, and how much they have outgrown the heart of a man, and lost all feelings of conscience, that “ declare their sins as Sodom, and hide them not” (Isaiah 3:9). Men grow not to this impudence at first, but by several degrees they lose the apprehension of evil of sin.1. Satan suggests to us some sin, to which he finds us by nature prone, and which he seeks plausibly to insinuate as profitable and pleasant (James 1:14). 2. This suggestion, if it be not presently resisted, breedeth in our minds a certain delectation. It is sweet in his mouth, and he hideth it under his tongue. 3. Delight moveth the lust or concupiscence, and draweth out and engageth our consent (Joshua 7:21). 4. This impelleth and urgeth the will to action: “ And lust, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin” (James 1:15). 5. The act being finished, unless the sinner be corrected by God, or awakened by His Spirit, breedeth security: “ Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death” (James 1:15). 6. Security inviteth us to continue in the sin, as also to make no conscience of other sins (Deuteronomy 29:19-20). 7. This continuance and living in sin taketh away the sight and odiousness of it, and produceth hardness of heart and blindness of mind (Hebrews 3:13). 8. This induration and excecation, this blindness and hardness of heart, is at first partial, concerning this or that sin; but at length general, concerning all sin; and this begetteth that horrid impudence that men are past all shame. 9. That it is the folly and madness of sinners that know the filthiness of sin to commit it secretly, and think themselves secure if they may escape the eye of man. I shall prove it--1. From the evil of secret sins; although to be a bold and open sinner is in some respects more heinous than to be a secret and private sinner, because of the dishonour to God, the scandal of others, and impudence in the sinner himself. (1) Because they are more against knowledge and conviction. (2) This secret sinning, and with security, hath Atheism annexed to it. Atheism is either a denial of God or a contempt of God. (3) The more secret any wickedness is, the more studious and premeditated; the more of deliberation there is in a sin, the greater is the sin. (4) Many times it involveth us the more in sin; and so by seeking to cover one sin, we run into many. (5) Secret sins indulged often bring great mischiefs and inconveniences upon the actors of them. I shall instance only in those two mentioned in Job 24:14-15. 2. It is folly and madness, because God loveth to discover it. Our Lord telleth us (Luke 12:2). (1) Here God discovereth secret sins, and bringeth them to light, as He found out Achan in his sacrilege. (2) At the great day of account and last judgment--‘‘ I will set thy sins in order before thee” (Psalms 50:21; and 1 Corinthians 4:5). It teacheth us to make conscience of secret sins, whether they be sins of omission or sins of commission, or of a mixed nature, when a thing is done which for the matter is good, but a defect in the manner or end. Exhortation, to press you to three duties.1. Take more care to get your sins pardoned than hidden: “ He that hideth his sin shall not prosper; but he that confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). We seek to hide our sins from the world, from ourselves, and from God. 2. Study more to approve yourselves to God than to be concealed from men. Godly simplicity and sincerity will be our comfort (2 Corinthians 1:12). 3. Humble yourselves, not only for open, but secret, sins (Psalms 19:12). (T. Manton, D. D.)Too bad for sight There is a museum at Naples in which are placed the multitudes of curious things found in the two old cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum, when they were dug out. It was found that there were things too foul, too horrible for Christian eyes to contemplate. These have been placed in a room apart, and people are not allowed to go into it without special permission from the authorities. Think what must have been the condition of society when foulnesses of this sort were exposed unblushingly before all eyes, in the streets, on the walls of the chambers, before children from their earliest infancy. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.)Old sins require patience I feel grieved when I hear or read of people who can stand up and talk about what they used to do before they were converted very much in the way in which an old seafaring man talks of his voyages and storms. No, no; be ashamed of your former lusts in your ignorance, and if you must speak of them to the praise and glory of Christ, speak with bated breath and tears and sighs. Death, rottenness, corruption, are all most fitly left in silence, or, if they demand a voice, let it be as solemn and mournful as a knell. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 5:13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light.The light of Christianity reproving the world In the text we have--1. An assertion--“ But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light.”2. The proof of it--“ For whatsoever doth make manifest is light.” 1. An assertion or proposition, where two things are to be considered. (1) Something supposed; that the doctrine of Christianity is the true light or test by which things are to be judged. The way of heathenism being compared with it showeth this is light--“ Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” (Psalms 119:105; so Proverbs 6:23; Proverbs 15:31). (2) That which is asserted is, that all things which are reproved and disallowed are made manifest by the light. The light discovereth itself, and all things that differ from it; that which discovereth truth doth also discover error and falsehood; that which manifests what is right doth also manifest what is wrong. 2. The proof is taken from the common nature of all light, natural and sensible, or spiritual and intellectual--“ Whatever doth make manifest is light.” Natural light maketh manifest things proper to it; so doth spiritual light things that belong to its sphere, things morally good or evil. That the light of Christianity, shining forth in the Word of God and the lives and actions of Christians, is a great means of reproving and convincing the world. That this light shineth forth both in their words and deeds. (1) The doctrine which they profess, hold fast, and adhere to. There is a light in God’ s Word which doth not only show the right way to everlasting life and true happiness, but disproves any contrary course. (2) Holiness of life. Light hath its power as it is held forth in our words, but much more as it shineth in our lives for the illumination and conviction of the world (Matthew 5:16). 3. This then is that which we are to make conscience of, that our light may be a reproving light to the wicked and carnal world; and that for these reasons-- (1) Because of our many and great obligations.(2) Because of the many benefits which come thereby. It informeth us of divers truths.1. That though by the light of nature we have some sense of the turpitude of sin, yet we have not a perfect knowledge of it; the light of Christianity giveth us that. 2. It informeth us that some general sense of the shamefulness of sin will not break the power and force of it. To persuade us to get light. It is a shame to be ignorant of our necessary duty. If a man be asked whether he can paint or carve, he may answer without shame, I am ignorant; that skill is not necessary; but if he be ignorant how to love and please and serve God, then he is brutish, like the horse or mule, that hath no understanding. (T. Manton, D. D.)Light reproves sin A colonial governor of the Bahamas, who was about to return to England, offered to use his good offices to procure from the Home Government any favour the colonists might desire. The unanimous reply was as startling as the demand for the head of John the Baptist in a charger: “ Tell them to tear down the lighthouses; they are ruining the prosperity of this colony.” (The people were wreckers.) (W. C. Church.) Ephesians 5:14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.A call to slumbering souls I. The character of those addressed.1. If you allow yourself in the practice of known wickedness, your conscience is asleep. 2. If you live in the customary neglect of self-examination, you are in a state of slumber. 3. If you have never been in any degree affected with a sense of your guilt, and of your dependence on the mercy of God in Christ, you are among those who are asleep. 4. If you have no conflicts with sin and temptation, you are in a state of slumber. 5. The prevalence of a sensual and carnal disposition is a sign of spiritual death. 6. Stupidity under the warnings of God’ s word and providence, indicates such a state of soul as the Scripture compares to sleep. II. Apply the call.1. This awakening must suppose and imply a conviction of your sin, and a sense of your danger. 2. This awakening from sleep, and arising” from the dead, implies a repentance of sin and turning to God. 3. They who have awoke from their sleep and risen from the dead will experience the properties, and maintain the exercises of a holy and spiritual life. III. The encouragement--“ Christ shall give thee light,” shall shine upon and enlighten thee.1. This may be understood as a promise of pardon and eternal life on your repentance. 2. The words farther import God’ s gracious attention to awakened souls, when they frame their doings to turn to Him. The call is, Awake, arise from the dead, repair to the Saviour. Say not, “ We are unable to discern the way.” Christ will shine upon you and give you light. Say not, “ We are unable to rise and walk.” He will meet you with His grace. Arise, He calleth you. He will guide your steps. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Awake I. Images of the sinner’ s state.1. Sleep. This state, though usually benign and refreshing, is sometimes one of great danger. The traveller who sleeps when exposed to excessive frost, the sailor who sleeps upon the mast, are examples. 2. Darkness. This is emblematical of ignorance, error, and iniquity, and especially of the want of any certain prospect for the future. 3. Death. The insensibility, powerlessness, and immovableness of the corpse are an awful representation of the sinner’ s state. II. Representations of the sinner’ s need.1. Awakening.2. Enlightening.3. Raising to life. The ministry of our Lord Jesus affords us many and striking instances of the exercise of a Divine power in these ways. III. A revelation of the sinner’ s hope.1. A Divine command: Awake! arise! There is something for man to do in order that he may enjoy the blessings of the gospel. 2. A Divine promise: Christ will enlighten thee. (Clerical World.)The Church aroused I. The state of mind into which a Christian may sometimes get.1. The insidious character of it, (1) A Christian may be asleep and not know it. Indeed, if he did know it, he would not be asleep. (2) A man who is asleep may be kept in very good countenance by his neighbours. They may be in the same state, and sleeping people are not likely to be very active in rebuking one another. (3) One who is asleep may have taken care before he went to sleep to prevent anybody coming in to wake him. There is a way of bolting the door of your heart against anybody. (4) A man can do a great deal while asleep that will make him look as if he were quite awake. For instance, some people talk in their sleep, and many professors will talk just as if they were the most active, the most earnest, the most gracious, the most warm-hearted people anywhere. 2. What is the evil itself? It is an unconsciousness of one’ s own state, and a carelessness of such a kind as not to want to be conscious of it. The man takes everything for granted in religion. He seems, too, to be perfectly immovable to all appeals. The best argument is lost on a sleeping man, and then this slumbering spirit spreads itself over everything else. There is a heartlessness in the manner in which everything is gone about. 3. Now, two or three words upon what makes this evil of Christians being asleep a great deal worse. (1) It is this: they are Christ’ s servants, and they ought not to be asleep. If a servant is set to do a certain duty, you do not continue him in your service if he drops off asleep. (2) It is so bad for us to be asleep, too, because it is quite certain that the enemy is awake. You recollect old Hugh Latimer’ s sermon, in which he says that the devil is the busiest bishop in the kingdom. (3) And meanwhile souls are being lost. 4. What is it that sends us to sleep? (1) We are inclined to slumber from the evil of our nature. (2) It is easy to send a man to sleep if you give him the chloroform of bad doctrine. (3) The sultry sum of prosperity sends many to sleep. Fulness of bread is a strong temptation. (4) In some people it is the intoxication of pride. (5) In others it is the want of heart which is at the bottom of everything they do. They never were intense, they never were earnest, and consequently they have such little zeal that that zeal soon goes to sleep. This is the age of the Enchanted Ground. He that can go through this age and not sleep must have something more than mortal about him. God must be with him, keeping him awake. You cannot be long in the soporific air of this particular period of time without feeling that in spiritual things you grow lax, for it is a lax age--lax in doctrine, lax in principle, lax in morals, lax in everything--and only God can come in and help the Pilgrim to keep awake in this Enchanted Ground. II. Christ’ s message to those of His people who are asleep.1. Jesus speaks this in love. He would not say “ awake,” were it not the kindest thing He could say to you. Sometimes a mother’ s love lulls her child to sleep, but if there is a house on fire the mother’ s love would take another expression and startle it from its slumbers; and Christ’ s love takes that turn when He says to you, “ Awake! Awake! awake!” 2. It is His wisdom as well as His love that makes Him say it. He knows that you are losing much by sleeping. 3. It is a voice, too, which you ought to own, for it is backed up by the authority of the person from whom it comes. 4. It is a voice which has been very often repeated. Christ has been saying, “ Awake! Awake!” to some of us many hundreds of times. You were sick, were you, a few months ago? That was Christ, as it were, shaking you in your sleep, and saying, “ Awake, My beloved, awake out of thine unhealthy slumbers!” 5. A personal cry--“ Thou.” Not, “ Awake all of you” ; but, “ Awake thou!” Shall I pick you out one by one? 6. He puts it very pressingly in the present tense. “ Awake! awake now.” Not a few years hence, but now. This moment. III. The promise with which Christ encourages us to awake--“ Christ shall give thee light.” What means this?1. Instruction.2. The light of joy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christ the Spiritual Light I. The characters here addressed. “ Asleep,” “ dead” --expressions applicable to the natural state of man. II. But to such the gracious invitation is given--“ Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” This invitation or command, very naturally divides itself into two branches--the external call of the gospel, and the internal call of the Holy Spirit. III. The promise that is made--“ And Christ shall give thee light.” We have already observed, that sin has darkened the understanding, depraved the affections, and rendered us insensible to every form of moral worth. It is altogether the result of Divine power, therefore, to enlighten the understanding, to purify the heart, and to bring us into subjection to the obedience of Christ. In closing our discourse, we observe--1. That none will be able to urge, at the last clay, that they were compelled to sin, or prevented from forsaking it, by the providential arrangements of God. 2. Nor can you say that you have not sufficient means and opportunities for obtaining the blessings of redemption. 3. None will be able to say that they humbly, earnestly, and perseveringly sought the assistance of the Holy Spirit, without obtaining it. 4. Neither can you plead your inability to obey God, as an excuse for continuing in sin. (A. Gilmour.)The sinner called 1. These words plainly suppose the person to whom they are addressed, to be in a state of darkness. For “ they who sleep,” as the apostle elsewhere observeth, “ sleep in the night.” “ He that followeth not Christ walketh in darkness,” because the light of life shineth no longer upon his tabernacle. 2. The text plainly intimates to us that the sinner, or man of the world, to whom it addresses itself as to one sleeping, is in a state of insensibility. For no sooner has sleep taken possession of anyone, but forthwith all the senses are locked up, and he neither seeth, heareth, smelleth, tasteth, or feeleth anything. Present the most finished and beautiful picture before the eyes of a person asleep; he sees no more of it than if it was not there. 3. It appears from the text before us, that the world is in a state of delusion; for such is the state of them that sleep. And to what can the life of many a man be so fitly compared, as to a dream? “ Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” And first, the sincere penitent, who really and truly turns from sin to righteousness, and from the world to Christ, passes from darkness to light. Secondly, the sinner, by repentance, is brought out of a state of insensibility into one of sensibility. Thirdly, the penitent is translated from a state of delusion to a sound judgment and right apprehension of things, from shadows to realities: even as one awaketh from the romantic scenery of a dream, to behold all things as they really are, and to do his duty in that station in which God has placed him. (Bishop Home.)Of the state of spiritual death and the misery thereof First: The miserable state of the unregenerate, represented under the notions of sleep and death; both expressions intending one and the same thing, though with some variety of notion. The Christless and unregenerate world is in a deep sleep; a spirit of slumber, senselessness, and security is fallen upon them, though they lie exposed immediately to eternal wrath. Just as a man that is fast asleep in a house on fire, and whilst the consuming flames are round about him, his fancy is sporting itself in some pleasant dream; this is a very lively resemblance of the unregenerate soul. But yet he that sleeps hath the principle of life entire in him, though his senses be bound, and the actions of life suspended by sleep. Lest, therefore, we should think it is only so with the unregenerate, the expression is designedly varied, and those that were said to be asleep, are positively affirmed to be dead; on purpose to inform us that it is not a simple suspension of the acts and exercise, but a total privation of the principle of spiritual life, which is the misery of the unregenerate. Secondly: We have here the duty of the unregenerate, which is to awake out of sleep, and arise from the dead. And the order of these duties is very natural. First awake, then arise. Startling and rousing convictions make way for spiritual life; till God awake us by convictions of our misery, we will never be persuaded to arise, and move towards Christ for remedy and safety. Secondly: But you will say, if unregenerate men be dead men, to what purpose is it to persuade them to arise and stand up? And that this is the state of all Christless and unsanctified persons, will, undeniably, appear two ways.1. The causes of spiritual life have not wrought upon them.2. The effects and signs of spiritual life do not appear in them; and therefore they are in the state and under the power of spiritual death. 1. If all Christless and unregenerate souls be dead souls, then how little pleasure can Christians take in the society of the unregenerate! Certainly ‘ tis no pleasures for the living to converse among the dead. It was a cruel torment, invented by Mezentius the tyrant, to tie a dead and living man together. The pleasure of society arises from the harmony of spirits, and the hopes of mutual enjoyment in the world to come; neither of which can sweeten the society of the godly with the wicked in this world. 2. How great and wholly supernatural, marvellous, and wonderful is that change which regeneration makes upon the souls of men! It is a change from death to life: “ This My Son was dead and is alive again.” Regeneration is life from the dead (Luke 15:24). (J. Flavel.)Conviction Conviction is the first step in the new life. It is essential to conversion, as the action of winter is necessary to the growth of spring. I. Conviction is produced by the power of the truth. II. Conviction awakens the guilty conscience. III. Sometimes conviction is transient. A mere play on the feelings cannot produce a permanent change. IV. There are instances of special means used to produce conviction. St. Paul’ s conversion. V. Conviction is genuine when salvation is sought. The gaoler at Philippi. VI. Conviction sometimes comes too late to save. Belshazzar. Dives. (The Weekly Pulpit.)Men asleep and dead in sins, called to awake I. The state we are here supposed to be in by nature.1. A state of sleep. This implies-- (1) Ignorance.(2) Insensibility.(3) Security, carelessness, unconcern.(4) Indolence and sloth. II. The exhortation given to such. God calls thee by His Word; by His ministers, whom He raises up, qualifies, and sends forth, chiefly for this end; by His providence, affliction, health, adversity, prosperity, the sickness or death of friends and relations; by His Spirit, which enlightens thy mind, awakens and informs thy conscience. III. The gracious promise made to those who take the exhortation. “ Christ shall give thee” --1. The light of knowledge as to Divine things.2. The light of comfort and happiness.3. The light of life. (I. Barrow, D. D.)Our natural state, and its remedy I. What the text calls us to believe.1. That our natural state is a state of darkness. Light in the external world is the element or medium by which we see other objects. Darkness precludes light, not by extinguishing the sense, but by rendering it useless. Three gradations may be stated, three degrees of darkness, as it affects the soul and its perceptions. (1) That in which the soul has no perception at all of spiritual objects or “ the things of God,” which are, to it, as though they were not. (2) That in which it sees the objects as existing, but is blind to their distinguishing qualities and relative proportions. (3) That in which the qualities are seen, but not appreciated; they are seen to exist, but not seen to be excellent or the reverse. Not so much a darkness of the mind as of the heart--a blindness of the affections as to spiritual objects. 2. A state of sleep. This is more than darkness. The man who is asleep has his senses sealed; not his sight merely, but his other senses. External objects are to him as though they were not. All that lies beyond this life and its interests is veiled from his view, and might as well not be. But while his senses are suspended, his imagination is awake and active. The more insensible he is of that which really surrounds him, the more prolific is his fancy in ideal objects. His life is but a dream. His illusions may be of a pleasing and agreeable nature; that will only make the awakening more dreadful. It is related by one of those who witnessed and experienced a late explosion, that when it occurred he was asleep, and that his first sensation was a pleasant one, as though he had been flying through the air. He opened his eyes, and he was in the sea! May there not be something analogous to this in the sensations of the sinner who dies with his soul asleep, and soars, as he imagines, towards the skies, but instantaneously awakes amidst the roar of tempests and the lash of waves upon the ocean of God’ s wrath? 3. A state of death. (1) The suspension of the faculties is permanent.(2) No power of self-resuscitation.(3) The whole frame hastening to putrescence. 4. A state of guilt. Alienation from the love of God. 5. A state of danger. Exposed to the wrath of God. II. What the text calls us to do. The real ground of men’ s indifference to this matter is their unbelief. They do not really believe what they are told as to their state by nature. Where this faith really exists, it shows itself in anxious fears, if not in active efforts. The soul’ s first impulse is to break the spell which binds it. But this it cannot do; in itself it is helpless. Hence the exhortation has added to it the necessary promise--“ Christ shall give thee light.” Repentance and faith are conditions of salvation; but the Author of our salvation is the Giver of repentance, the Author and Finisher of our faith. God forgives us freely if we repent and believe, but we can just as well make expiation for our sins, as repent and believe without Divine assistance. But (it may be asked) will not this doctrine tend to paralyze the efforts of the sinner for salvation? And what then? The more completely his self-righteous strength is paralyzed, the better. No man can trust God and himself at once. Your self-reliance must be destroyed, or it will destroy you. But if, by a paralysis of effort, be intended a stagnation of feeling, and indifference to danger, I reply that this doctrine has no tendency to breed it. Suppose it should be suddenly announced to this assembly that a deadly malady had just appeared, and had begun to sweep off thousands in its course; and that the only possibility of safety depended on the use of a specific remedy, simple and easy in its application, and already within the reach of every individual, who had nothing to do at any moment but to use it, and infallibly secure himself against infection. And suppose that while your minds were resting on this last assurance, it should be authoritatively contradicted, and the fact announced, with evidence not to be gainsaid, that this specific, simple and infallibly successful, was beyond the reach of every person present, and could only be applied by a superior power. I put it to yourselves, which of these statements would produce serenity, and which alarm? Which would lead you to fold your hands in indolent indifference, and which would rouse you to an agonizing struggle for the means of safety? I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what I say. Oh, my friends, if there is any cure for spiritual sloth and false security, it is a heartfelt faith in the necessity of superhuman help. The man who makes his helplessness a pretext for continuance in sin, whatever he may say, does not really believe that he is helpless. No man believes it till he knows it by experience.1. Light dispels that blindness of the heart and affections which disables us from seeing the true qualities of spiritual objects. That which before seemed repulsive becomes lovely; that which was mean is glorious. That which was pleasing or indifferent is now seen to be loathsome. The beauty of holiness and the ugliness of sin are now revealed in their true colours. Nor is this all. The light which beams upon us not only rectifies our views of what we law before, but shows us what we never saw. 2. Light, then, is the remedy; but how shall we obtain it? It must be given to us. If it comes at all, it comes as a free gift. 3. Christ alone can give it. This world, to the believer, is a dark, perplexing labyrinth, and in its mazes he would lose himself for over were it not that ever and anon, at certain turnings in the crooked path, he gets a glimpse of Calvary. These glimpses may be transitory, but they feed his hopes, and often unexpectedly return to cheer his drooping spirits. Sometimes he is ready to despair of his escape, and to lie down in the darkness of the labyrinth and die. But as he forms the resolution an unlooked for turn presents a distant prospect, and beyond all other objects, and above them, he discerns the cross and Christ upon it. Look to Christ then! look to Him for light to dissipate your darkness, to arouse you from sleep, and to raise you from the dead. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)Christ the Light Giver That the great intent of Christ in the gospel is to call people out of their woeful estate by sin into the marvellous light of His salvation. This is the great truth here represented; and to clear it up to you-- I. Observe how woeful and dangerous the present case of carnal unregenerate men is. It is represented to us under the notions of spiritual sleep and spiritual death; which I shall speak of both generally and apart, and then conjointly and together. First: To speak of them generally, and apart.1. They are asleep in sin, whereas the regenerate are awakened (1 Thessalonians 5:5-6). Here, then, is their misery upon the first account, they sleep in sin; and a great misery it is. (1) Because their insensibility and security make their other sins more dangerous. (2) Though they sleep, their damnation sleepeth not (2 Peter 2:3). (3) The sun is up, and shines into their windows (Romans 13:11). 2. The next notion is spiritual death; for we are bidden to “ Arise from the dead,” which showeth this sleep is deadly (Ephesians 2:1). How are we dead? Two ways-- (1) Dead as we are destitute of spiritual life;(2) Dead as we are destitute of the favour and peace of God. Secondly: Let us speak of these terms conjunctly; the one helpeth to explain the other. When we hear that man sleepeth in sin, possibly we might be apt to be conceited that man’ s heart is not so corrupt as it is, and are ready to say of it, as Christ did of the damsel whom He raised to life, “ She is not dead, but sleepeth” (Matthew 9:24). Therefore we must take in the ether expression to help it. We do not only sleep in sin, but are dead in trespasses and sins. So, on the other side, when we hear that we are in the state of the dead, we may misconceive of God’ s work in conversion, and press the rigour of the notion too far, as if He wrought upon us only as stocks and stones; therefore we must take in the other expression; we sleep in sins. Life natural is still left us; there is reason and conscience still to work upon, though we are wholly disabled from doing anything pleasing to God; that is to say--1. We have reason. Thou art a man, and hast reason, and therefore art to be dealt with by way of exhortations. God influenceth all things according to their natural inclination, as He enlighteneth the world by the sun, burneth with fire, so he reasoneth with man. 2. We have conscience (which is reason applying things to our case), and can judge of our actions morally considered with respect to reward and punishment, and accuse or excuse as the nature of the action deserveth (Romans 2:14-15). 3. That we have a natural self-love and desire of happiness (Psalms 4:6), “ There be many that say, Who will show us any good?” (Matthew 13:45-46). So that, though we are dead, so as to do nothing savingly and acceptably, yet we must remember that we are also asleep, ignorant, slight, careless, do not improve our natural reason, conscience, and desires of happiness to any saving purpose, and will not mind things. Both together giveth us a right apprehension of our woeful condition by nature, that we are corrupt, and so are said to be dead; and senseless and secure, so we are said to be asleep, mindless of our danger and remedy. II. The manner of our recovery out of this wretched estate.1. In the general, it is by calling of us. “ Awake, arise” (see 1 Peter 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:14). 2. More particularly, the order of this calling is set down in the text, in these two injunctions, “ Awake,” and “ Arise from the dead.” We are reduced and brought home to God two ways--either (1) Preparatively and dispositively; or(2) Formally and constitutively. III. The next thing is, what a blessed estate Christ calleth them into; He doth not only rescue them out of the power of darkness, but “ He will give them light.” Many things are intended hereby.1. By light is meant the lively light of the Spirit, or a clear affective knowledge both of our misery and remedy. 2. Light is put for God’ s favour, and the solid consolation which floweth from thence (Psalms 4:6-7). 3. It implies eternal glory and happiness, to which we have a right now, and for which we are prepared and fitted by grace. A tender waking conscience is a great mercy, whereas a dead and stupid conscience is a heavy judgment; for then neither reason nor grace is of any use to us; we can neither do the functions of a man or a Christian while we are asleep. First: “ Awake thou that sleepest.” Consider these motives--1. Doth it become any to sleep in your ease, while you know not God to be a friend or an enemy? yea, when you have so much reason to think that He is an enemy to you, for you are enemies to Him by your minds in evil works (Colossians 1:21). 2. You sleep in that ship that is swiftly carried to eternity, and are just upon the entrance into another world: “ Lest coming suddenly He find you sleeping” (Mark 13:36). 3. Yon have slept out too much precious time already: “ The time past of our life may suffice us” (1 Peter 4:3). 4. Thou hast been long and often called upon. If God had not sought to awaken you, you had the better excuse: “ How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of sleep? yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.” (Proverbs 6:9-10). 5. Now is your time and season: “ He that gathereth in summer is a wise son; but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame” (Proverbs 10:5). To lose time is sad, but to lose the season worst of all, and a season that bringeth profit as well as labour, as harvest doth. 6. Others care for their souls, and are hard at work for God; their diligence should awaken us (Acts 26:7). 7. The devil is awake, and will you sleep? (1 Peter 5:8). 8. If nature were well awake, it would disprove your courses as much as religion. Secondly: “ Arise from the dead” ; that is, be converted to God; for the voice of Christ doth not only conduce to awaken us, but to raise us from the dead (John 5:25). Look about you, then; entertain serious thoughts of getting out of a state of sin into a state of grace. Take two motives to quicken you to this--1. Better never be awakened if still we continue in our sins, for this aggravateth them (John 3:19). 2. Better never rise in the last day if we be not raised from the death of sin. (1) Do not say, It is too soon; for we can never soon enough get out of so great a danger. (2) Do not say, It is too late; for the work is yet possible, as short as your time is like to be in the world; and it will be your fault if it be not done. (T. Manton, D. D.)Inattention to warning It is said of birds that build in steeples, being used to the continual ringing of bells, the sound disquiets them not at all; or as those that dwell near the fall of the river Nilus (Nile), the noise of the water deafens them so, that they mind it not. Thus it is that the commonness of the death of others is made but, as it were, a formal thing: many have been so often at the grave, that now the grave is worn out of their hearts; they have gone so often to the house of mourning, that they are grown familiar with death; they look upon it as a matter of custom for men to die and be buried, and when the solemnity is over, the thoughts of death are over also; as soon as the grave is out of their sight, preparation for the grave is out of their mind: then they go to their worldly business, yea, to coveting and sinning, as if the last man that ever should be were buried. (Caryl.)Insensible to Divine influence The person here spoken of is first said to be asleep; and surely this gives the idea of one who may be surrounded by danger without knowing it; may be approached by enemies without perceiving it; may have the assassin’ s blow aimed at his heart without attempting to repel it. In like manner, those by whom he is best loved may watch beside his pillow, and he is unconscious of their presence. “ A feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined,” may be spread before him, yet his appetite is not awakened; riches and honours may be placed within his reach, yet his hand is not stretched forth to grasp them. And why? Because he is asleep. His eyes are closed, his ears are dulled, his senses are locked up by the power of slumber; and forgetfulness of his best interest, and inattention to outward objects, have come upon him. And thus is it with the unconverted man. He is surrounded by dangers which he heeds not; by enemies whom he regards not. The murderer of souls has struck at his heart and he has made no resistance. He may be active in worldly matters, and eager for worldly objects; but he has no eagerness, no activity for spiritual concerns. Wrath, and that eternal, is even now pursuing him; the bottomless abyss has yawned at his very feet, and is ready to engulph him; the thunders of the law are pealing forth their denunciations against him; and this immortal being remains heedless and unconcerned when there is but one step between him and the lake of fire. And there is an eye of love watching over him for good; there is a voice of mercy appealing to his soul; there is the marriage supper of the Lamb spread, and he is invited thereto; there are the unsearchable riches of Christ placed within his reach, with this encouraging inscription, “ Ask, and ye shall receive” ; yet he hears not the voice which cries, “ Look unto Me, and be ye saved” ; he sees not the bleeding form which stands between us and the stroke of Divine justice; the famished wretch hastens not to taste the feast; the beggar’ s hand is not put forth to lay hold on the boundless treasures. He is asleep; and feels not, sees not, hears not, knows not these things. And yet he is often not devoid of strong feeling with respect to the things of this world; nor destitute of regard for the decencies of life. He may find, or think he finds, happiness in this very forgetfulness of God; nay, in his own way, he may make a profession of religion, and have a dreamy prospect of salvation to be hereafter received. He thinks that he may now give his faculties to earthly objects and to self-indulgence, that he may offer to God the service of the lip whilst his own passions and inclinations receive the adoration of the heart; and he flatters himself that he is happy now, and that he shall, unconverted and separated from the love of God as he is, be happy in His presence eternally. Alas! how delusive is this dream, springing as it does from the sleep of carnal security. When for a moment he thinks seriously, he finds himself not really happy, and when that hour comes in which the unawakened sinner shall be called into the presence of his Judge, where shall be all the joys either on earth or in heaven, which he promised to himself? “ It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he is faint and his soul hath appetite.” His anticipations were but a dream, founded on self-delusion, and ending in bitter and irretrievable disappointment. (Bishop Ryle.)Light It is a remarkable illustration of the truth that material phenomena are designed to convey to us lessons of spiritual realities, that the language in common use to describe the latter is that of the former. For example, in this sentence we have the expressions “ sleep,” “ death,” “ light.” All these are material conditions or things. Probably none of these symbolical expressions for spiritual things is so frequently used as that of light. Without entering into the disputed question as to the source whence this quotation is taken, whether it be a free adaptation of a passage in the book of the prophet Isaiah or whether (as some imagine) a fragment from some ancient Christian hymn, we can refer to not a few passages in the Old Testament in which a right spiritual condition is described as being a condition of light. In the New Testament, which is a record of the advent of Him who is the source of spiritual light, these passages are still more numerous. He is heralded as the Dayspring from on high who shall give light to them that sit in darkness. He is declared to be a light to lighten the Gentiles. He claims for Himself that He is the Light of the world. In Him is light, and they who receive of Him are no longer darkness but “ light in the Lord,” for in Him “ the darkness is past and the true light now shineth.”1. Light was the first creation of God. His first recorded word is, “ Let there be light.” Proceeding out of this creation of light comes all other creation until the end is reached and man is made in the image of God. In like manner light is the first creation of the gospel, which is the re-creation of the world. 2. Light needs no evidence of its presence. It proves itself. To the blind, indeed, it has no existence, and no explanation of it can make them understand it. But to such as have eyes to see, the presence of light makes itself known at once. The gospel light commends itself by its own light to those who are possessed of a clear spiritual eyesight. 3. Light is given in order that we may see where we are and amidst what surroundings we are placed. Apart from the gospel of Christ we can possess no, true view of life; we are overwhelmed by unsolved mysteries. 4. Light exists not merely that we may rejoice in the revelation of which it is the author, but that we may walk in it. 5. “ God called the light, day,” and the day is given for work. “ Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening.” “ I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day, the night cometh when no man can work.” 6. Darkness is always fruitless (verse 11) while light is fruit-producing. The fruit of the light (for such is the true reading of verse 9, which is recognized in the Revised Version) is in goodness, righteousness, truth. Light is a necessary element in the formation of the fruit of a tree or a plant. Such if deprived of light becomes barren. How true a picture of the human soul upon which the Light of Life is not shining! (Canon Vernon Hutton.)The Awakener is in every sleeper God would not mock man by bidding him to “ awake” out of death, and to arise to a new life, if the Awakener were not in the very midst of his soul to help him. God calls man from within himself. “ The Resurrection and the Life” stirs in him, saying, “ Arise from the dead!” and the man is already at the dawn of the heavenly life. As sunrise pricks the sleeper, and says to him, Arise! even so the hour cometh when the dead soul hears the voice of the Son of Man, and, hearing, lives. The gentleness of the Divine love opens a new day within the man, and ten thousand noiseless arrows penetrate and startle his soul. They are the life glances of the Quickener, to which the inner man responds, trembling in the pangs of the new birth, and, at the same time, blessing God with unspeakable gladness that he is alive from the dead and an heir of heaven. It happens daily that after the light has penetrated the eyelid of the sleeper, he recognizes it for a moment, turns himself, closes his lid, and sleeps again. Take heed, lest after the arrows of Christ, which are gentler than the light, have wakened your soul, you do not sleep on in death. (J. Pulsford.)Christ our Light The motto of the Northcotes is, “ The Cross of Christ is my Light.” A light needed A man is out on a night that is as dark as pitch--a lamp is placed in his hand to guide him on his journey. Instead, however, of taking advantage of the light the lamp affords, the man says, I do not require this lamp; I know every step of the way; I will trust to my own judgment. That man, in a certain sense, does his best; he strives to keep the beaten track, and for that purpose he moves carefully and cautiously along. When, however, he makes a false step and tumbles into a ditch, or falls over a precipice, no one dreams of saying, “ Poor fellow! he could not help himself, he did his best.” The man did not do his best. Had he done his best, and not been rash and foolhardy in refusing to avail himself of the lamp, he would have escaped the wounds and bruises that now burden him. (P. Robertson.)Christ our Light Christ is our only defence at the last. John Holland, in his concluding moment, swept his hand over the Bible, and said: “ Come, let us gather a few flowers from this garden.” As it was eventime he said to his wife: “ Have you lighted the candles?” “ No,” she said, “ we have not lighted the candles.” “ Then,” said he, “ it must be the brightness of the face of Jesus that I see.” (Dr. Talmage.) Ephesians 5:15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.Circumspect behaviour I. The duty--“ Walk circumspectly,” i.e., diligently, carefully. The phrase imports such a caution and exactness in our Christian conversation, as resembles that which men use when walking on the top of a precipice or the summit of a building, where a small misstep would endanger a fall, and a fall would be fatal.1. Walk circumspectly, that you may keep within the line of your duty. Religion is not an extended plain, in which you may walk at large, and turn to any point without passing its limits; but a strait and narrow path, in which you must pursue one steady course without diverting to either side. (1) Be watchful to retain a sense of virtue and rectitude.(2) Be attentive, that you may conform to the spirit of God’ s commands. 2. Walk circumspectly, that you may escape the snares in your way. Your greatest security lies in watchfulness and prayer, lest you enter into temptations. If they meet you, resist them; but your first care must be to avoid them. 3. Walk circumspectly, that you may wisely comport with the aspects of Providence. The beauty of religion, yea, religion itself, greatly consists in the correspondence of your temper and behaviour with your existing circumstances. In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider. 4. Be circumspect, that you may do every duty in its time and place. 5. Walk circumspectly, that your good may not be evil spoken of. II. The reason--“ The days are evil.” The Christian, while he dwells on earth, may say, “ The days are evil” --1. Because he finds in himself much disorder and corruption. 2. Because he is exposed to various afflictions. 3. Because there are many adversaries. 4. Because iniquity abounds. Much need there is that he should “ walk circumspectly.” (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Admonitory counsels I. The course against which we are counselled. Not to walk as fools. The ungodly walk as fools--1. As they have no rule of conduct.2. As they have no direct or distinct object in view.3. As they walk often presumptuously and without fear of danger.4. As they act without regard to their real welfare. II. The course which is recommended for our adoption. “ To walk circumspectly, as wise.” Now this is just the opposite of the walk of fools. In doing this--1. We must walk by a wise rule.2. We must possess the spirit of wisdom. Now this must come from above (see James 3:17).3. We must imitate the divinely recorded examples of wisdom.4. We must walk and keep company with the wise. (J. Burns, D. D.)Wise walking I. In the first place, here we see the true character of the family of God. They are called wisdom’ s children: “ Wisdom is justified of her children.” We do not deny that in the family of God there is oftentimes great weakness of character; that they make oft mistakes as to doctrine; and yet, compared with their wisdom, there is no wisdom upon earth. They are wise in the things of God; they are wise in the concerns of eternity; and compared with that wisdom, all the wisdom in this world is folly. These are they that know Christ; and to know Him is life eternal. These are they that know what sin is. These are they that know the great secret of holiness. These are they that know the way to a throne of grace. These are they that know where the treasury is, and the door to it; that Jesus is the treasury, and that He has opened the door by His own precious blood. These are the men who know how to meet trouble: that trouble that scares a worldly man. II. But now observe, these are exhorted to walk wisely. As I said before, the wise man may oftentimes walk unwisely. We see it in the histories in the Bible; we see it in the biography of God’ s saints. “ See that ye walk circumspectly” : accurately. The worldly man lives at random. Sometimes his will leads him, his caprice, his fancy, his passion; sometimes he guides himself, sometimes others guide him. The apostle exhorts the wise to walk accurately; according to the rule of God’ s Word, according to the rule of an enlightened conscience, and according to the rule of a filial, Joying heart. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)The Christian urged to greater circumspection I. The Christian’ s duty. Every person familiar with the Bible knows that the term walking, applied to the Christian, signifies his habitual temper and deportment. The word here rendered “ circumspectly,” in the original Scriptures suggests rather the term “ accurately,” agreeable to a prescribed rule; and the translators of the Bible have adopted the word “ circumspectly,” inasmuch as no one can walk accurately, or correctly, without looking about him, and carefully too. It is the part of fools to be heedless, taking their steps without care, insensible of their danger.1. Christians should walk judiciously; impelled by principle rather than by feeling. 2. Christians should walk correctly or accurately according to the prescribed rule. 3. Christians should walk prudently, mindful of consequences. 4. Christians should advance cautiously, apprehensive of danger, and guarding against it. 5. Christians should walk diligently, improving every favourable opportunity. II. The arguments which enforce it.1. We plead the obligations of a religious profession. Many, indeed, are called Christians, but we refer to those who profess themselves not merely nominal but real Christians. 2. The solemn and express engagements into which many have voluntarily entered, present a second argument. Surely, Christians, your own acts must be binding. 3. The anxiety Christians must feel for the credit of religion, and for the honour of the Saviour, is a most powerful motive urging them to greater circumspection. 4. A regard to his relative usefulness is another consideration urging the Christian to greater watchfulness. 5. The positive injury to others, which invariably results from a flagrantly inconsistent profession of religion. 6. We urge upon the Christian, as a final motive to greater circumspection, a due regard to his own personal interests. His peace, his comfort, and even his safety are alike involved in it. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)The Christian’ s walk Reasons to evince the necessity of this circumspect walking. First: We have a strict rule, that doth not yield the least allowance and indulgence to sin. Secondly: What a holy God we have for our witness, approver, and judge, who will one day call us to an account! Thirdly: A great obligation to our strict obedience, as we are children of the light.1. Surely there should be a great and broad difference between them and the children of darkness. 2. Because the more light and knowledge a man hath, the more he is bound to take heed to his ways, that his practice may be according to his light. 3. They are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14; Philippians 3:15). They should be a copy and pattern to others to invite them to the heavenly life by the strictness and seriousness of their conversations. The same honour is put upon you that was put upon the star at Bethlehem, to be guides to Christ. Therefore you are to be more exemplary, which cannot be without circumspection. 4. Because there are many snares and dangers; as in a chessboard, we can hardly move back or forth but we are ready to be attacked. In all the businesses, affairs, and comforts of this life, we are apt to miscarry. Yea, sometimes there may be a snare in our duties (1 Timothy 3:6). Now they that are not circumspect are sure to miscarry. He that hath his eyes in his head, and looketh about him, may escape (Proverbs 1:17). 5. blest Christians have but a weak heart, that is apt to lead them aside into some unbecoming practice. Our heart is most in danger, and therefore we have need to look to ourselves (1 Corinthians 10:12). 6. Consider how many guards God hath set upon man, who is apt to fly out upon all occasions. There is an external guard, the magistrate, who is to watch for thy good (Romans 13:4). 7. Because there are so many spies upon us, who may make an ill use of our failings. I shall instance in three--Satan, wicked men, and weak brethren. Of reproof.1. Of those that scoff at strictness and accurate walking. These scoff at that which is the glory of that religion which they do profess, that which God aimed at, that which Christ purchased, that which the Spirit worketh. Can a man keep at too great a distance from sin? But it is preciseness and fond scrupulosity. So did the conversations of Christians seem to the old pagans (1 Peter 4:3-4). 2. It reproveth them that think men are more nice than wise, that we make more ado than needeth when we press men to a constant watchfulness and serious diligence in the heavenly life. Oh, consider, we have slippery hearts, and live in the midst of temptations, and are to approve ourselves in the sight of a holy God, who expecteth to be glorified by us. 3. Some slight strictness as a thing out of date, since they know their liberty by Christ. Alas! all the doctrines of grace do enforce it, not lessen it (Titus 2:11-12). There are some grazes necessary, and some practices. First: For graces which are necessary, such as these--1. Watchfulness, and heed that nothing unseemly pass from us. Those that are rash and indeliberate, and live at haphazard, can never walk accurately: “ He that hasteth with his feet, sinneth” (Proverbs 19:2). 2. The fear of God: “ They walked in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 9:31). This is a grace never out of season (Proverbs 23:17). 3. Diligence, that we may both remove impediments of good and avoid occasions of evil, that you may take an accurate inspection of your whole life and conversation. Frequently examine your ways, whither they tend (Proverbs 4:26-27). 4. A tender conscience. Make conscience not only of gross sins, but lesser escapes. Do not wittingly tread one hair’ s breadth out of the way, nor run into any sin, much less live in it, be it never so small and profitable in the esteem of the world (Proverbs 7:2). The eye is offended with the least dust. Secondly: Helps by way of practice.1. Fix your end; for when the end is fixed, the means may be the better suited; it shineth to us all the way along: “ If thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of light” (Matthew 6:22); “ Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee” (Proverbs 4:25). We should mind all things with respect to our end. 2. Take an account of the way you walk in: “ I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies” (Psalms 119:59; Lamentations 3:40). 3. Seek a good guide. Use much prayer to God, that He may direct you (Proverbs 3:5-6). 4. Renew your covenant, and often engage yourselves afresh to this strict and holy walking, because the strength of former resolutions is soon spent: “ I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep Thy righteous judgments” (Psalms 119:106). 5. Season the heart with strict principles. (T. Manton, D. D.)Wise walking There are many points of folly to be avoided.1. Be not in a hurry to judge God’ s providences. 2. Do not mock at sin. Fools make a mock at sin; whereas sin is the only thing to be feared. 3. Set not your affections upon worldly things. 4. Be not slow to receive the verities of faith. 5. Be not foolish in regarding mysteries. (J. Stratten.)Wary walking It used to be said of old that all roads led to Rome, because she was the capital of the world. And nowadays, in the most remote country place in England, you will find a road which leads to London. But all roads do not lead to heaven. Some foolish people like to believe that they can travel anyway they please, and yet reach heaven at last. They love to imagine that they can hold to any doctrine, however false and extravagant, and set up a gospel of their own, and yet find the way to heaven. Let us think of some of the rules by which we must walk in the narrow way.1. We must walk humbly. It is a narrow way, remember, and if we walk with our heads lifted up by pride, we shall miss our footing, and slip from the path. The gate, too, is strait, or narrow. It is like one of those low-pitched, narrow entrances which you may still see in old buildings, and which were common once in all our ancient towns. A traveller could not get through those gates unless he bent his head, and bowed his shoulders. 2. If we walk along the narrow way, we must not overload ourselves. There are some burdens which we must bear, but the dear Lord, who laid them upon us, will give us strength to carry them. It is the burden of the world’ s making which will hinder us. We see a man who wants to walk in the right way, who hopes to pass through the narrow gate, who has so loaded himself with worldly things that he goes staggering along, till he is like one escaping from a shipwreck, who tries to swim ashore with all his money bags, and is sunk to the bottom by their weight. Sometimes people, coming home from abroad, bring with them a quantity of smuggled goods, and their clothes are all padded with laces, and other ill-gotten gear. What happens? They are stopped at a narrow gate, and stripped of all their load before they are permitted to return home. So, my brothers, if you would pass the gate which leads home, to the rest which remaineth for the people of God, you must not overload yourselves with this world’ s gear. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)Christian circumspection or exactness It is no uncommon thing to hear persons commended for their regular and circumspect way of living, viz., with respect to their diet and exercise, and other things that belong to their bodily health; whilst few are taken notice of, esteemed and honoured for a higher sort of regularity and circumspection, such as relates to their immortal souls, and the concerns of a better life. Here many are content to be remiss and superficial, and make it the least of their study to be exact. I. I begin with the first observable, the general important duty incumbent on us, “ See that ye walk circumspectly.” The remark, then, upon this first clause of the text is this, that a Christian’ s life is a life of the greatest accuracy and exactness. A Christian is one that is not like other men, he surpasses the common condition of mankind.1. This exact and circumspect walking is not singularity and affectation. It is no fantastic opposition to the common usages and received customs of mankind, if they be in themselves lawful and innocent. 2. This exactness in my text favours nothing of over-nice fear and superstition, in which many place a great part of their religion. St. Paul tells us, he was of the strictest sect of religion, meaning that of the Pharisees. But that strictness and exactness were afterwards undervalued by him as trifling and childish. 3. Neither doth this duty imply any pharisaical boasting and ostentation of strictness. That proud and arrogant sect before mentioned used to glory in their great severity of life, or rather in the mere appearance of it. 4. This exact living doth not import any fond rigour and austerity over the body, as some have imagined. 5. This strictness or exactness of life doth not contain in it any notion of merit and supererogation. 6. This circumspect and exact walking doth not speak complete perfection and absolute freedom from all sin. II. To further and advance you still in this great and weighty affair, I will proceed in the next place to tell you positively wherein this exactness or circumspection, which the apostle commends to you, doth consist.1. It is opposed to idleness, neutrality, and indifferency, and consequently is an act of Christian zeal and vigour. He must shake off all coldness and indifferency, and prosecute religion with the warmest emotions of mind, with the most ardent zeal and liveliness. 2. This strict and accurate walking is opposed to partiality, and so doth denote universal obedience, and having respect unto all the Divine law. There is no exactness without a rule or square, and that is the Word of God. Now this universal respect unto God’ s laws (wherein the Christian circumspection is so much seen) requires of us and strictly obliges us to these three things: (1) That we refrain not only from outward and visible acts of sin, but that the inward lusts and hidden desires of vice be carefully supprest in our minds. (2) We are obliged, as we would be impartial observers of God’ s laws, not only to perform the visible and public offices of religion, and such as are more easy in themselves and more creditable and fashionable in the account of the world, but likewise to be mindful of the private exercises of devotion, such as praying to God in our retirements. (3) Our universal respect to God’ s laws obliges us not only to abstain from gross and notorious crimes, and such offences as are very heinous and enormous, but also to make conscience of lesser and smaller sins. 3. This Christian duty of exact walking is opposed to our giving of scandal and offence to our brethren, and consequently commends to us a wary and cautious deporting of ourselves before those we converse with. This is circumspection in the true and precise notion of the word. It supposes persons to look about them, and to take good notice of things, and weigh well what they do, and before whom they act. 4. This duty in my text is opposed to hypocrisy and formality, and so it engages us to be sincere and cordial in whatever we do. 5. He that would acquit himself to be an exact walker, must more mind the things that are substantial and essential in religion, than those that are merely circumstantial and accidental. Religion doth not consist in puncto, its exactness is not placed in petty and mean things. 6. This Christian exactness is opposed to apostasy and backsliding, and so it obliges us to increase every day more and more in holiness, to abound in grace, and to persevere in the ways of goodness. 7. This most accurate and strict life of a Christian, is no less than an aiming and endeavouring after perfection. III. To excite you to this Christian exactness and circumspection which I have been insisting upon, I pray let these following considerations be entertained by you:1. Think how strict the principles and rules of Christianity are, and accordingly what great improvements were intended by them. The institution of the gospel designed as for greater perfection than ever was attained by the ceremonious Jew, or the most accomplished Gentile. 2. Besides the doctrine of Christianity and the design and purpose of Christ in it, I may adjoin the most holy, exact, and exemplary life of our blessed Master, and on this consideration I may urge you to a wary and circumspect walking; for the life of a Christian should be no other than a conformity to the life of Christ. We are to follow His steps, and to reckon His actions to be our pattern. 3. Consider how great helps and assistances God is pleased to afford you, and you will conclude it reasonable to walk with great exactness and strictness. The cruel and unmerciful taskmasters in Egypt pressed the Israelites to make brick, but would not give them their allowance of strait. We deal with no such hard master. 4. Think with how many dangers you are every moment environed, and you will be concerned to walk circumspectly, to tread cautiously, to live orderly and regularly. This world is hung about with snares, beset with various temptations, and the spirit of darkness, that great enemy of God and our souls, is ever plotting and contriving our ruin. 5. Set before you, and often seriously represent to your thoughts, the everlasting rewards of heaven. I cannot apply the common story of the Limner better than here. That famous artist was wont to take up a great deal of time in finishing his pictures and portrays, whereas others of that profession made quick dispatch, and had soon done their work. He, being asked why he was so long at his, and why so curious and exact? gave this short answer, “ I paint for eternity,” i.e., I do my work so that all future ages shall applaud me, I design myself a perpetual reward of fame. Did we but consider that every line we draw in our lives, every stroke we make, every enterprize we undertake, is for eternity; if we seriously thought of this, we should be more accurate and exact, more laborious and industrious, in all that we do. We are those that draw and limn for eternity, we labour for that which endureth to everlasting life; therefore we cannot be too long and tedious about our work, we cannot be too diligent and exact about it. 6. Let me add this one consideration more, that an exact and exemplary life is the best (if not the only) way you can take to work upon others, to amend the sinful world, to reclaim men from their follies, to win them to the embracing of religion and holiness, which I doubt not you think is a design well worth your prosecuting. (John Edwards, D. D.)Christian wisdom or prudence Having dispatched the first observable in the text, which was the grand duty incumbent on us, viz., that “ we walk circumspectly,” I proceed now to the particular instances of this duty, and they are “ Christian wisdom” and “ redeeming the time.”1. I say, we may more eminently convince the world that we have obtained to Christian wisdom and prudence by our being of a humble and meek spirit. There is nothing looks so unbecoming in a person that professes godliness as pride. 2. Make a visible proof of your walking wisely by being of a peaceable and quiet, a loving and charitable temper, and that, first, among yourselves, secondly, towards all men. Let your first care be that you disgrace not religion by falling out among yourselves. 3. Though you ought to maintain a loving and sociable converse with the world, yet Christian wisdom directs you to abhor and avoid all intimate commerce and friendship with such as you know to be professed enemies to virtue and godliness, and are openly profane, and refuse to be reclaimed from their abominable practices. 4. Show your godly wisdom in your strict observing of the second table as well as the first. Your duty to God must never exclude that which you owe to your neighbours, for in discharging both you serve God. 5. Let your prudence be seen in your perfect vanquishing of earthly-mindedness and covetousness. 6. Walk not as fools, but as wise, by living contentedly and cheerfully in whatever state of life it pleaseth the Divine Providence to place you. Serve God and be joyful, is a Christian’ s motto. He hath learnt to live by faith, which is ever accompanied with rejoicing. 7. Discover your Christian prudence and wisdom by being always more strict and severe to yourselves than you are to your neighbours. 8. Show your Christian prudence (and in that your circumspection) in being cautious in the use of lawful and innocent things. 9. Let our spiritual care and wisdom be seen in our not making ourselves guilty of other men’ s sins. The application of all shall be in these two particulars:1. Be deterred from all appearance of wickedness and vice.2. Be encouraged to a holy and godly life. Think you have reason to be deterred from all manner of vicious practices on this double consideration:1. Lest the ways of God be evil spoken of, and consequently that God himself be dishonoured thereby.2. Lest others be drawn to imitate your ill example. (John Edwards, D. D.)Cautious exactness There is a grace too little thought of, which, nevertheless, belongs eminently to a Christian man. Let not any man think lightly of it, as though it were a mere heathen virtue. I mean, a cautious exactness. It is this of which the apostle is speaking in my text. For so it would be most literally translated, “ See that ye walk accurately, or exactly.” Now, it is certain that he who would be accurate in action, must first be a man accurate in thought, and that especially in thoughts about God. If a man allow himself inaccurate views about religion, how can we wonder that the life, which is, after all, but the reflection of every man’ s mind, be inaccurate too? Now, in close connection with this accurate holding of truth, let me earnestly impress upon you the necessity of the accurate performance of the daily duties of your own closet. Four things you have always to do when you are in your own room alone with God: to read God; to read self; to bring self to God; and to bring God to self. Let each have its own little space; and let each be done with exactness of thought. Who can wonder if all irregularities grow up into that mind which is not disciplined in spiritual duties? Or, what profit can there be in a flung prayer; or in jumbled thoughts as you read the Bible? With this foundation, then, of the exactness of the knowledge of truth in your minds, and with very measured, punctual prayers, let a man go forth. But as he goes forth, let him still carry with him the thought, that the outer life always follows the inner life, and that, before there can be correctness of action in any matter, there must first be strictness of feeling; and that, after all, in everything the motive is the determining consideration. Therefore, in this, as in everything else, the Christian has to guard and study most what is secret and unseen by men. He must accustom himself, by daily efforts, to think accurately. He must be always a man keeping the tight rein of his affection. He must always be practising, and habituating his judgments. He must go up and down the chambers of his own heart, and be always setting his own heart in order. He must “ walk circumspectly” with his inner man. He must make a covenant with his eyes. He must prevent a rising desire when it first springs up. He must chasten himself in his inner thoughts. He must be within what he wishes to appear to be without. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Christian prudence The prudent man, in the world’ s estimation, is one who walks circumspectly; who goes through life, as the saying is, with his wits about him; with his eyes open to mark every opportunity; ready to spread his sail to every wind; one who does not rashly commit himself, but rather stands aloof and studies others, and uses the results for his own advantage. Prudence, or providence, for the words are the same, implies a power to overlook the pressing temptation of the present, for the weighty advantage of the future--that which glitters and deceives, for that which is solid but less attractive. Now, all this is our guide and pattern. What they do for corruptible advantages, we are to do for an incorruptible. What they do and submit to for a self whose interests terminate here, we are to act and to suffer for one whose welfare is not bounded by time. Yet how far are we from acting with the prudence that they do. Careless about the high interests before us, we let time flit by, and opportunities pass unheeded. We do not study the aspect of the days in which we live, nor ask ourselves what care they especially demand that we may be effective for good; and so the gospel is losing ground, and unbelief is coining in like a tide upon us, and men’ s lives are losing their Christian character, and evils of unmeasured magnitude must follow, if we do not awake in time to spiritual wisdom. I will first remind you that we Christians were certainly never meant to be thus remiss and insensible; that Christ came to redeem and renew us in every legitimate faculty and every salutary use of it. The redemption of Jesus Christ was wrought to comprehend man’ s whole nature, and man’ s whole history; there is no lawful advance of mankind, no wholesome invention, which it may not; include in its instruments for God’ s glory, and by neglecting which it does not lose space and power for its work; no symptom of the state of men’ s minds and of society, which it ought not to turn to account for its high purposes. We need to walk circumspectly, brethren, both in belief, and in practice. Belief is a state of mind made up of the results of persuasion, and the influence of habit. And this latter is very much affected by the society among which we move in life. So that any prevailing character in the views and thoughts of an age is sure to be reproduced more or less in each individual man’ s belief. Let us pass on now to practice. Here, too, we most deeply need wary and circumspect walking, as to both the good and the bad habits and influences around us. There can be no doubt that we live in an age of much practical good. The infirmities, miseries, and ignorances of humanity are more noticed and more cared for than in any previous age. We have numerous institutions calculated to teach the ignorant, to reclaim the fallen, to help those who need help. Well, then, our question today is, are we Christians walking prudently, with regard to all this machinery for good? Are we making the most of it for God and for our own eternal happiness? And if not, how may we do so? Strive to do what thou canst do well, and to serve where thou canst serve with a pure conscience; but aim not at duties which thou canst; never thoroughly perform, and at offices which thou canst not satisfactorily fill. If we are walking circumspectly, can we avoid hearing such voices as these sounding about us? if we are not fools but wise, shall we not admit them to a place in our counsels, and in the formation of our plans in life? (Dean Alford.)Wise Christian method It was the safety of Methodism, and the secret of its success, that in its first rise among the knot of men in Oxford who banded themselves together for security in the midst of ungodliness and vice prevailing all around them, they soon learned the lesson of combining the two elements and conditions of a right Christian mode of life; walking circumspectly, strictly by rule, methodically arranging and rigidly observing a definite plan of spiritual life; and yet doing so, not foolishly, as if they were to be the slaves of their own arrangements; but; wisely, with a wise common sense, and intensely Christian regard to the evil days on which their lot had fallen, and the urgent need of their redeeming the time, grasping and improving the opportunity. It was this that made Methodism a power; not a new retreat and home for recluse spirits and souls sick of sin and of the world; but a new source of blessed influence in a dry, cold age; a mighty agent for the revival and regeneration of a Christianity that had fallen upon, and, alas! yielded itself up to what were, truly evil days. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)Wise conduct of life Life is a voyage in a frail boat upon a dangerous sea, a sea washed by mighty currents, liable to awful storms, torn with sunken reefs, bound by iron shores. If the captain be wise and watchful, if his crew be under due control, if his anchors be strong, his chart correct, his compass true, his vessel taut, he may safely ride out the hurricane, and safely reach the haven where he would be. But, ah! if he leave her to drift with mutinous sailors, false chart, damaged compass, rent sails, untended helm, what shall be the end but a dismantled hulk upon the surging waters, or a desolate wreck upon the lonely shore? Is life, with all its tremendous realities, a thing less dangerous? If the fool’ s ship will not be ruled by the rudder, must it not be ruled by the rock? (Archdeacon Farrar.) Ephesians 5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.On redeeming the time I. Directions.1. We must redeem time by sincerely repenting of sin and devoting ourselves immediately to the great business of life. 2. We must redeem time by considering the various ways in which we have wasted it, and avoiding them for the future. 3. We must redeem time by forming a wise and judicious plan for the regulation of our conduct, and firmly and conscientiously adhering to it. The immortal Alfred, one of the best of kings that ever filled the British throne, divided his time into three portions, allotting eight hours to sleep, recreation, and meals, eight to public business, and eight to private study and devotion; and by constantly adhering to his plan, he accomplished the works and acquired the wisdom which have excited the admiration of posterity. Dr. Doddridge adopted nearly the same plan, and by that means he was enabled to educate so many young men, to preach so frequently, and to leave the world those various writings which have enlightened the minds and aided the devotion of multitudes. Colonel Gardiner always set apart two hours in the morning for devotion, and if his troops had to march at six o’ clock he rose at four to commune with God, and like his Divine Master prepare for arduous duties by fervent prayer. 4. We must redeem time by forming habits of activity and diligence. It requires great labour to improve time as it comes--what then must it require to redeem it? Should a husbandman or mechanic have lost any time in his work, he redeems it by extra exertion; in like manner should we redeem the time which we ought to have spent in serving God and preparing for eternity. II. Reasons.1. The merciful purpose for which time is granted, and the greatness of the work which we have to perform. 2. Because the period in which we can redeem time is not only very uncertain, but may be extremely short. The goldsmith gathers up every particle of gold. The very least which he can discern he deems too valuable to be lost. Can you, then, willingly suffer the loss of your precious moments, when worlds on worlds cannot buy one of them back again? Many who are now on the bed of death or passing into eternity, would part most gladly with all the wealth they have amassed, and all the fame they have acquired, for another year, or another month. While time lingers for you, improve it. Conscientiously set apart its hours as they come to the highest purposes. 3. We should redeem time because of the eternal consequences which will result from the use we make of it. As our time is given us by God, He will call us to account for the way in which we have spent it. Every day therefore brings with it an awful responsibility. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)Redemption of time To redeem is to reclaim by price, or recover by labour, that which has been lost or alienated; or to preserve by prudence that which is in danger. A metaphor taken from the practice of merchants, who observe the favourable seasons of buying and selling, of making profits and repairing losses, who keep regular accounts of their expenses and gains, and often inspect their affairs, to know whether their interest is in progress or decline. I. It is here supposed that time is precious.1. It is precious, because we have much business on our hands; business which relates, not to our bodies only, but to our souls; not merely to this life, but to the whole duration of our existence. 2. It is precious, because it is short and uncertain; and our work must be done soon, or it never can be done at all. 3. It is precious, because part, and with many, the greater part of it is gone already. What remains is increased in value, as it is contracted in length. We had none to waste at first; we have need to be frugal now. II. We must regain the time which is lost. Time past, indeed, cannot be recalled. Each moment, which flies off, is gone forever, and will return no more. Like the wind, it passeth away and cometh not again. But we do the best we can toward the recovery of lost time, when we reflect with sorrow on follies past, and resolve to be wise in future. III. We must use prudence to save, and diligence to improve, the time that remains. In vain you pretend to lament your past folly, unless you apply your heart to wisdom. Godly sorrow will work in you carefulness.1. Enter on your work speedily.2. Attend to your work with diligence.3. Guard against the things which rob you of your time. (1) An indolent habit is inconsistent with laudable actions. It creates imaginary, and magnifies real, difficulties arid dangers. It enervates the powers of the body, and stupefies the energy of the mind. (2) A versatile humour is active, but wants patience. It flies from object to object too rapidly to appropriate or retain any. Time is lost, because nothing is prosecuted to effect. (3) An excessive fondness for company and amusement is the cause of much waste of time. Diversions may be innocent: but then they must be (a) well chosen; (b) wisely timed; (c) moderately used. (4) Do every work in its season. Attend with discretion to the calls of duty, and you will save much time and prevent much loss. It is so in your worldly business. Make a good arrangement of its parts, and take up each part in its order, and you will execute the whole with facility and success; while your improvident neighbour, who leaves all his matters in confusion, and takes hold of his business as it happens, and usually at the wrong end, is always embarrassed with cares, straitened for time, and disappointed in the result. This attention to seasons is no less necessary in the work of your salvation.1. Youth is the most promising season. Then the work is most easy, and attended with fewest obstructions; and then there is the fairest prospect of Divine concurrence. If that season is past with you, take the present; for the future is uncertain, and the difficulty of your work and the indisposition to attempt it will increase by delay. 2. The time of health is more favourable than a time of sickness; for you are now more capable of intense thought and persevering application, and better able to prove your sincerity. 3. There are some tender seasons, when the conscience is awakened, serious sentiments impressed, and good resolutions excited. Improve these seasons. 4. There are seasons friendly for particular duties. For your daily devotions, choose the hours when your mind can be most free from the occupations of the world, that you may attend on God without distraction. If you would advise or reprove a friend, take a time when you can speak to him in private; when you feel your own mind affectionate, and think his to be calm and tender; when you can address him inoffensively, and he may hear you dispassionately. Also in doing works of charity, observe opportunities. 5. Wisely divide your time among your various duties. Lawful things will become criminal in you, if they occupy your time so far as to exclude other things of greater importance. The duties of religion are consistent with each other, and may be made to harmonize in practice. If they interfere, it is because you throw them into confusion, and your time into disorder. Distribute your seasons properly, and arrange your works prudently, and you will find there is a time for everything. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Redeeming the time First: In the duty there is the act and the object. Both must be explained.1. The act, buying; or, as we render it, “ redeeming.” Well, then, what is the meaning of “ redeeming the time,” or buying the time? The term is proper to civil contracts, but is here applied morally. (1) In buying there is some price paid; we part with one thing to obtain another; so we must part with anything less than it rather than lose time; as Proverbs 23:23, “ Buy the truth, and sell it not.” As merchants stand upon no rate or price if they may get such wares into their hands as they may make benefit of, so time is such a precious commodity, and so useful to us in order to eternity, that we should not stand upon ease, carnal pleasures, and worldly conveniences, that we may purchase it. (2) That which is bought belongeth to the buyer; and so buy time to make it your own for spiritual advantages. But our translation useth the word “ redeem,” which implieth another metaphor--namely, the recovery of a mortgage, or the redeeming of what hath been lost or pawned out; and so it noteth our former improvident misspence of time. We have, as it were, mortgaged it to Satan, to the world, and to vanity, and now should redeem it out of the hands of these engrossers, and by future diligence recover our former neglect. 2. The object--“ the time.” The word properly signifieth the season and opportunity, but yet it is the usual word for time in Scripture, for to a Christian all time is season. Time in general is but short: “ But this I say, brethren, the time is short” (1 Corinthians 7:29). But the season or opportunity, which is the flower of time, is shorter; therefore this must not be slipped: “ As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men” (Galatians 6:10). Secondly: The reason by which this duty is enforced--“ Because the days are evil.”1. For the meaning of the phrase. (1) It may be understood of the whole course or race of man’ s life: (Genesis 47:9). Time in itself is neither good nor evil, but in regard of the accidents of time, as it is encumbered with variety of vexations, cares, and miseries, so our days may be called evil. And in this sense we must take that of our Saviour (Matthew 6:34). Every day bringeth evil enough and sorrow enough to exercise us. Therefore you had need to lay up for a better life, for you have but sorry evil days here. (2) More properly and specially it relateth to the times the apostle wrote in, which were hard and calamitous, and full of danger, because of the wickedness of those among whom they lived. There were many enemies then, both to Christian verity and piety. 2. The force of the consequence. (1)Because others vainly misspend time, Christians should be more careful to redeem it. The worse the times are, the better should we be, as fountain water is hottest in the coldest weather, and stars shine brightest in the darkest night. (2) Adversity makes men serious. (3) With relation to the heathen among whom they lived, he advised them to redeem the time (Colossians 4:5). (4) Some are so bad and froward, that they would take away liberty, estates, yea, life itself from you, and with it all occasions of doing and receiving good. You carry your own lives in your hands, and the lives of many of God’ s precious instruments are in danger; and therefore, before means and opportunities be wholly lost, redeem the time. That it is the duty of Christians to look to the due improvement of the time and season. I shall draw out the force of the apostle’ s exhortation in this method. I. The commodity or thing to be bought. The word signifieth time and season, the general and particular opportunity.1. Time. (1) If you have not begun already by conversion, it must not be delayed and left to uncertainties. The sooner you begin to buy time, the better bargain you will have; for every man would have as much for his money as possibly he can, therefore take the market while it is at the best (Ecclesiastes 12:1). (2) After you are once admitted into the evangelical estate, your whole time should be redeemed and spent for God (Luke 1:75; Romans 6:10). 2. The season: buy it, whatever it cost you. The season of receiving good and of doing good. II. The use we must put it to when we have gotten this commodity into our hands. It is a precious commodity; you should never let it go but for something better than itself. There are two great ends, the glorifying of God, and the saving of our own souls. Thirdly: I shall now proceed to the encouragements to the bargain to redeem time and season. First: Let me press you to redeem the time.1. Too much time hath been spent already (1 Peter 4:3). 2. We are to be accountable to God for time. 3. That time is only yours which is spent well, in pleasing God, and doing good; for that time is bought and redeemed which otherwise is lost to you. We lose all that time which is not spent in the love and service of God. 4. Time is not ours to dispose of at pleasure. A Christian, when he giveth up himself to God, he giveth up everything that is his to God. My time is not mine, but Christ’ s. It is sacrilege to rob God of what is consecrated to Him. 5. Time is a precious commodity, worth the looking after. The devil values it; if he can cheat you of your time, he can cheat you of your souls; for when conviction is strong, and all your prejudices are borne down, and his outworks taken, excuses and self-flatteries vanish. The last thing that he is loath to let go is time; his game is to cheat you of today, and so of the next day. God saith, “ Today” (Hebrews 3:13); and the devil saith, Not today, but at a more convenient season; as Felix put off Paul (Acts 24:25). 6. The present time is the best: “ I made haste, and delayed not to keep Thy commandments” (Psalms 119:60). Ludovicus Cappellus telleth us of a Jewish rabbin, who being asked when a man should repent, answered, One day before his death; that is, presently, this day; it may be your last in the world: “ Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). 7. You have no time bug what may be serviceable for some good use. There is no time wherein thou dost not enjoy some blessing to provoke thee to thankfulness, or hast not some sin to be mortified, or some good work to be done. We have a great deal of work to do in a short time. 8. We have much work to do, therefore let us spend it in matters that most concern us. We all complain of the shortness of time, and yet everyone hath more time than he useth well. We should rather complain of the loss of time than the want of time. In the general, use time well. If it be short, do not make it shorter by your negligence and improvident misspending of it. A thing that is hired for a while, it is a loss to us if it be not used and employed; as a horse that is bargained for if he be kept idle, or money taken up at interest. So it is with time lent us by God for a while; we pay dear for it if we use it not, and improve it not for God. It is good to see what advantage we make of time daily. One could say when he heard the clock strike, Now I have another hour to answer for. 9. The slight price we are to give for time. You part with nothing but what is better lost than kept; with a little ease of the flesh, vain pleasure which passeth away as the wind, a little worldly profit, which at death will be of no use to thee. Now these are of no worth in comparison of time. 10. The necessity should quicken us, because there are many things which are apt to steal away and engross our time, and therefore must be redeemed; as-- (1) Sloth and idleness.(2) Vain and sinful pleasures, and carnal sports.(3) Worldly distractions.(4) Vain company; they steal a jewel from us they can never restore, which is our precious time. Secondly: Why we must redeem the season.1. Because all things are beautiful in their season. It is said that the good man “ is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season” (Psalms 1:3). Now, fruit in its season is a carriage answerable to all providences (Matthew 9:15). 2. Because the season may soon slip out of our hands (Galatians 6:10). Take and seek all occasions of doing good. To take the season relates to the necessities of others; to seek the season relates to our own capacity and ability; both together bind the duty stronger on us. We must not defer a benefit. Some are like hogs, good for nothing till they are dead; they will not part with anything till they are incapable of the use of it any longer. So for exhorting (Hebrews 3:13). So for serving public good (Acts 13:36). They that mind to do good in the world engage themselves in a warfare, and the loss of our season is no small part of the enemy’ s conquest. 3. This is wisdom. Some are wise in time, others too late; as the foolish virgins; they saw a necessity of getting oil into their vessels, but it was too late (Matthew 25:10). But the godly make much of time before it is lost. 4. The foresight and provision of the creatures may shame us. God will not only teach careless men by His prophets and messengers, but by His creatures. There is a great deal of morality lieth hid in the bosom of nature if we had the skill to find it out. In this business of redeeming the time we are sent to the pismire (Proverbs 6:6-8). 5. Most of the calamities of the world come for not observing and improving the season (Ecclesiastes 8:6). I. Reproof of several sorts of men.1. Of them that wilfully spend their time vainly, either in doing nothing, or doing what they should not, or in doing evil. 2. It reproveth them that delay their conversion and return to God; as those invited to the marriage supper did not deny, but delay (Matthew 22:1-46). 3. Reproof to fallen believers, who do not take the next advantage of recovering themselves by repentance. The longer sin continueth unmortified or unpardoned, the more dangerous is your case. A candle, as soon as the flame is blown out, sucketh light and is re-enkindled; but when it is grown cold and stiff, it requireth more ado. 4. It reproveth those that withstand the special seasons of grace, when God’ s arms are most open to receive us. (T. Manton, D. D.)Redeeming the time Literally to comply with this exhortation of the apostle, is not in our power. Sooner may we stop the revolutions of the orbs of heaven, and arrest the sun in his course, than recall the years that are past, the days that are gone, or even the moment which but now is vanished. But by quickening our pace in our Christian course, and increasing our industry in every good work, we may, in some sort, retrieve the losses of past time, and make up for our former tardiness and waste of life. This is the duty to which the apostle exhorts; and a very solemn duty it is upon us erring and accountable beings. To the discharge of it, we have as strong motives as can affect the human mind. Time in itself is the gift of God, produced for us by His continual agency; and, therefore, not to be wasted or abused. It is by the power of the Deity that we are upheld in being. Again: The importance and magnitude of the business of life gives infinite value to every moment of it. Evidently, to exercise faith and exhibit obedience, to purify our nature and to acquire Divine habits, with a view to an immortal existence beyond the grave, is the primary object of our present being. Once more: We should be moved to obey the apostle’ s exhortation by the solemn consideration that we are accountable for our time. Life is the first, the greatest, and most wonderful talent with which we are entrusted. Nor is it given to us merely for our sport. It is something which we are to use for our own benefit and our Maker’ s glory. And this leads me to observe, further, that we should be engaged to this duty, and excited to very great fidelity in it, by a sense of the goodness of God in yet prolonging our days. Finally, we should be induced to an immediate compliance with this apostolic exhortation, by reflecting upon the uncertainty of life; and that the longer we defer the duty, the more complicated and arduous will be the task. (Bishop Dehon.)Redeeming the time Bishop Morton, of Durham, lived to a great age (ninety-eight), and few men made better use of their time, for he was never idle. He was often up at his devotions and study before four o’ clock, even after he had reached fourscore years; yet he seldom went to bed till after ten, and then had always a man servant to read some book to him till such time as sleep overtook him. When he travelled in his coach, he took care not to lose that time from study, carrying with him always some portion of his library. (Memoirs of Bishop Morton.)“ As you cannot overtake Time, the best way is always to be a few minutes before him.” Redeeming the time I. The value and power of time. God’ s estimate of it very high. The one gift He gives His creatures sparingly. Millions of flowers, gems on the fingers of Nature, burning on every landscape. But not so does God give time: only one moment at a time, and never that until the previous one has been taken back. Also, we may see the power of time from the lives of men who have carved their way from obscurity to fame. They achieved their success entirely from perseveringly employing spare moments wasted by others. And time is irreparable; once gone you cannot recall it, be your grief never so deep and your regret never so unfeigned. II. The importance of redeeming and how to do it. Time equally given to all; so all have the same responsibility. He that has a soul to be saved from eternal death need not have one idle moment. He that has a heaven to win, has enough to do to occupy all his time. They redeem their time who employ it--1. In gaining useful knowledge.2. In doing good to others.3. In employing it for the purpose of gaining an honest livelihood.4. In prayer and self-examination to make the heart better.5. In seeking salvation, and endeavouring to do the will of God. There are several temptations to waste time which we should avoid.1. The allurements to sinful pleasures and amusements.2. Novel reading.3. Temptations to ambition, spending time in self-aggrandisement.4. Dissipation.5. In wild and visionary plans.6. Luxurious indulgence in dressing, eating, drinking, and overmuch sleep. Determine, then, to redeem your time by--1. Usefully employing it.2. Methodically employing it.3. With an eye to God’ s judgment day employing it, rescuing each opportunity from the chains of sloth, ease, and listlessness. (G. T. Dunney, M. A.)Redeeming the time What is the “ time” meant there? How can we in any way “ redeem” this “ time” ? The question may be answered by considering our state and relation to the present, and the invisible worlds. “ Time” has been defined as “ the consideration of duration, the measure of it, as set out by certain periods, and marked by certain measures.” Time is but a fragment of eternity, and we obtain the best idea of it, perhaps, from the revolutions of heavenly bodies, as the sun, moon, and stars, although it is difficult to make clearer by philosophy the intuitive idea we all have of its relations and fleeting nature. The clearest idea may be given of time, to a thoughtful mind, by one standing on the banks of a mighty river; he beholds the flowing waters glide along in a powerful volume, taking complexion from all things round; he views the floating bubble, the fallen leaves, the scattered branches of trees, or various boats or living beings constantly borne away; he stands rapt in contemplation, not knowing what is above or what is below his vision, but he finds all life and time hero imaged, vividly, and all rapidly pass away into the vast ocean of eternity. Time, however, has only reference to man. To the omniscient God all periods, beings, circumstances, and seasons, are present and alike. This results from the perfection of the Divine nature. But time has an important relation and bearing to man. It means the period of his life; his opportunities of doing evil or good; a trust and a talent confided to his care. In the apostle’ s exhortation there is embodied a fine metaphor, taken from the practice of enterprizing merchants, who diligently look for the proper season of buying and selling; and who deny themselves, or readily part with their own mere pleasure for the sake of gain or property. Wisdom and skill thus combine with perseverance in obtaining the best goods for the best market and profit. Thus the Christian seizes old Father Time by the forelock, and uses every lawful opportunity for promoting his own spiritual happiness and the eternal welfare of his fellow men: this is what Christianity positively demands; and this is what the true Christian delights to do. I. The merchant redeems or improves the time. We behold him employ his capital wisely, and find him sedulously attentive to all his worldly interests, so arranging all his business and regulating all the affairs of traffic that he knows how he stands in the world. What a lesson may the Christian learn from him I Ought he not to know in what state he stands before God? Ought he not to examine carefully whether his spiritual concerns are safe--declining or improving? II. The farmer redeems or improves the time. See how carefully he prepares the seed and the ground, early and late in season. His watchfulness is ever alive, his cares never cease, while he looks for the dew and air and light of heaven to bless his fields with abundance and joy. Here, again, is a lesson for the Christian. For sowing Divine truth in the mind and doing good in the world is but acting as the farmer does in his fields. Sow broadcast and constantly the seeds of holy truth. Seize upon time, and redeem it from the world to God. III. The philosopher, student, or statesman redeems or improves the time. No man ever rose to any eminence who did not wisely employ time. Our narrow space of days is so brief, that we must treasure well its moments. It is prime wisdom to use time as the gift of God. Behold the pale student with his books; often by the midnight lamp he ransacks tomes of the ancient or illustrious dead: see, though the sober light of thought settles on his cheek, though hectic fever fills his veins, and may flush his damp brow, yet he never tires in the pursuit of important knowledge. Thus the philosopher tests, by science and reason, the mysteries of nature, and with noble perseverance he draws forth some secret into the full daylight of knowledge; and thus the wise statesman studies the complicated webs of political or moral life, and penetrates with the keen eye of sagacity the undercurrents of human government, and the bearings of moral action. No student of books, nature, or men, is satisfied unless he adds daily to his stores of knowledge. Hence he is an economist of time. If even one day has borne no fruit of advancement to his hope, he sighs over lost opportunity, and exclaims, with the Roman Emperor, “ I have lost a day!” And yet he has only tasted, not exhausted, the springs of knowledge! Other fields possess intellectual treasure; other Alps command a purer heaven! The purest philosophy, the noblest study, the highest statesmanship, are those which the Christian is invited to spend his life in mastering and acquiring! IV. The Christian redeems or improves the time. We can behold this from the life of a consistent child of God. He lives not for himself, but for Him who died for him and rose again. All his thoughts and actions are regulated by the standard of Divine truth. The discipline of his heart and the duties of life are referred to this sacred test. (J. G. Angley, M. A.)Admonitory counsels for the closing year I. The subject to which we are directed. That is to “ time.”1. Consider its true character.2. Consider its value.3. Consider the brief portion which is allotted for our service.4. Consider the right application of time. II. The course recommended. Redeem--recover, buy back. This we may do in a certain sense--1. By saving all the time we can.2. By cherishing activity and diligence.3. By regarding first the most momentous subjects. III. The motives assigned--“ Because the days are evil.”1. They are uncertain in their number.2. They are days of temptation and sin.3. They are liable to be interrupted by infirmity and sickness. (J. Burns, D. D.)Reasons for redeeming the time 1.Redeem the time, for time is very precious. Nothing is so valuable as time. Not all the gold in the universe--not all the hoards of ages--can purchase a single moment. 2. Redeem the time on account of the momentous consequences which depend on our use of it. These consequences are an eternity of woe, or an eternity of bliss. 3. Redeem the time, for the time is short. What are the longest lives? “ My days,” says Job, “ are swifter than a post: they are passed away as the swift ships; as the eagle that hasteth to her prey.” “ What is your life?” says St. James; “ It is but a vapour which appeareth for a time and then vanishes away.” Time is short, and the work we have to do is great. How important it is to “ redeem the time.” 4. Redeem the time, for when it is once past it cannot be recovered. If we chance to lose a valued treasure, is may be found again though it be buried in the depths of the sea. It is not so with time. Not all the entreaties of eternity will bring back a single moment of time. It is a vessel dashed in a thousand pieces which can never be repaired; it is as water spilt upon the ground which can never be gathered up again. 5. The last reason I shall urge why we should redeem the time, is that it is not our own. Woe to that idle servant who neglects to improve and to trade with the talents given him to traffic with. (J. J. S. Bird, B. A.)The use of opportunity The apostle bids us “ buy up” out of the market what we can never purchase so cheaply again--what, in fact, we can never buy again at any price. The lesson is--use opportunity, and use it thoroughly while you have it. Go read the old weird myth of the Cumaean Sibyl. She wrote her predictions upon leaves, and laid them at the entrance of her cave. Those who consulted her were compelled to exercise the greatest care and caution, lest the wild wind should take up the leaves, and scatter and displace them, destroy their arrangement, break their connection, and turn the clear oracles into inexplicable enigmas. That was a mythological lesson on seizing opportunity. Again, according to the familiar Roman legend, a Sibyl came to the palace of Tarquin II bearing nine volumes, for which she demanded a high price. Her offer being declined, she went away, and burned three of the precious books. Returning, she offered the remaining six, but asked for them the same price which she had demanded for the nine. Again her proposition was rejected, and again she departed and committed to the flames three more volumes. Once more she came back, bearing the last three, and refusing any less sum for them than that by which all might once have been bought. Tarquin, startled by this strange conduct of the merciless Sibyl, advised with his augurs, and bought the books, which proved the invaluable “ Sibylline Verses” ; but the chance of purchasing those priceless sister volumes was forever lost. Buy up opportunity!” Your privileges will never be offered so cheaply again. Each time life’ s Sibyl comes to us her precious treasures are diminished in number, and relatively increased in value. Each time she has less to offer, and asks a higher price for each opportunity that remains. So comes Time’ s stern, relentless Sibyl, until she herself finally disappears, and Time and her opportunities are no morel (A. T. Pierson.)Redeeming the time 1.In the first place we may be exhorted to redeem our time from the power of indolence. Those who have accomplished much in the world have learned the happy art of redeeming these fragments, just as the goldsmith spreads his apron and saves all the filings of gold, which, little in themselves, when ran together form something of great value. 2. Again, we may be exhorted to redeem time from its misapplication. It is said of a wise man that, being in company with some learned friends and philosophers, from whose society he had expected great profit, but finding that their occupation was gaming and their discourse trifling, he took out his tablets, and for an hour or two noted down their words, which he afterwards read to them, whereat they were so ashamed that they threw aside their cards and sought to pass their time more profitably. 3. But a third point for our consideration is the redeeming a larger portion of our time for the immediate concerns of the soul and the service of our God. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.)Redeeming the time I. In these words we have a figure most expressive, both of the condition in which our hours by nature abe, and of that in which by grace they should be. Time is represented as in captivity. We are bidden to redeem it as from bondage. Those hours which are given us for the trial of our hearts, for the exercise of our souls through grace unto salvation; those hours are too commonly enslaved to the pursuit of mere worldly objects. They are devoted to the service of Mammon, laden with the fetters of tormenting care, dishonoured in the base indulgence of sensual pleasure, or in the vain pursuit of frivolous amusements. II. Many reasons might be urged with force for our thus redeeming the time. We might argue that it is scarce, dealt out to us in single moments, poured forth as it were drop by drop, like a precious gift, of which it would be too much for us to possess more than one particle at once. But the special reason given by St. Paul is that “ the days are evil.” Bad times are not times for indolence, extravagance, or amusement. “ The days are evil.” Therefore work harder in your spiritual work. “ The days are evil.” Therefore enjoy less of earthly pleasure, that you may enjoy more of bliss in heaven hereafter. III. You have now seen how time is in captivity, and what is meant by redeeming it. You have heard also the force of the apostle’ s argument why you should ever labour so to do. In what remains, I shall set forth some plain practical rules for so doing.1. One very important rule towards redeeming the time is this, that you avoid all waste of it, and so make the most of what time you have. 2. Next to a diligent frugality of time comes the right allotment of its parts, the due proportioning of its several employments. 3. And observe further, that these things, however proper in their place, must not engross, as they are apt to do, too much of our time. 4. Lastly, in all these holy offices, and in all the duties of life, be watchful. Time steals on smoothly, but swiftly. If you would stay it for good, watch. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.)On redeeming time I. What we are to redeem. Time.1. Its nature. It differs from eternity as space differs from infinity.2. Its value. II. What is implied in redeeming time and how this may be done. The word used alludes to the custom of merchants and traders, who buy up the articles they know to be of value, and what they know they can turn to good account. But where may we buy up time? Where is it to be met with? In the hands of sin, wickedly and madly employed. At what price may we buy it? To buy it out of the hands of sin, we must part with our sins, our lusts, and passions; out of the hands of amusements, pleasures, worldly ambition. III. For what purpose time should be redeemed. Not to hoard it up as misers do their gold, nor to spend upon ourselves; but that we may use it for our spiritual and eternal profit, for our instruction, conversion, renovation, for the glory of God, and the good of others. IV. The reason of this advice, and the wisdom of taking it. (J. Benson, D. D.)Redemption of time I. What makes it so supremely important to redeem time?1. Its connection with eternity. Time is the seed of eternity. 2. So much time has gone by, and cannot be recalled. A dying English queen cried, “ A world of money for an inch of time!” 3. Because of the worth of the work that is given us to do in it. What would be said of a farmer idling his time while his fields lay uncultivated, or a general occupied with trifles when the enemy was in the camp? 4. The special reason given in the text--“ Because the days are evil.” II. Mark how this redemption of time can be accomplished.1. Take the exercise of the responsibility to God. Begin with heartfelt prayer. Seek to know the value, and to obtain strength for performing the duty. We must begin with God if we are to prosper. Even all our strength put to the wheel will not move it; the work will break down because the power is insufficient. But God will give what we need (Deuteronomy 33:25; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Philippians 4:13-19). 2. Having begun to lead a new life in the exercise of prayer, and in the life that prayer brings out for us to live, remember another important rule, viz., to keep the great end of life before us. We are either sinners lost in sin or saved by grace. If lost in sin, the work given us to do is, “ Believe,” etc. We look to the Saviour as the object of our love, and we go to Him as the source of our strength. One brings the brightness and the other brings the power. 3. Another rule for us to remember as redeemed and saved sinners, is our responsibility, and the one object of our life, viz., “ To me to live is Christ,” etc. Let us turn our eyes on Him. If we suffer our hearts to wander from that centre we immediately become palsied creatures, living for no earthly object or value at all. In conclusion, let us remember, in the exercise of this life, that He who died for us has a claim on the best of our time and the whole of our heart. (Charles Bridges, M.A.)The value of time It was a saying of Charles V, “ I have spent my treasure, but that I may recover again; I have lost my health, but that I may have again; but I have lost a great many brave soldiers, but them I can never have again.” So other temporal blessings may be lost and recovered again; but, if the term of life wherein you should work for heaven be once lost, it is past all recovery; you can never have another season of grace for your soul. (T. Watson.)Time, its loss, and its redemption I. How time is lost.1. By idleness.2. By excessive amusements.3. By unprofitable talk.4. By exclusive attachment to worldly pursuits.5. By positive wickedness. II. How is time to be redeemed?1. By guarding against its loss.2. By acting according to rule or method.3. By specially attending to the parts of our time that are most precious.4. By being habitually engaged in doing good. III. Why is time to be redeemed?1. Because it is short and uncertain.2. Because the work to be done in it is important.3. Because the days are evil. (G. Brooks.)The redemption of time I. Why time should be redeemed.1. It is the most choice and precious thing in the world.2. When once passed, it never returns.3. It must be one day accounted for.4. The shortness and uncertainty of human life.5. Because of the work we have to do, and the difficulty of doing it.6. Because we have already lost so large a proportion of the time allowed us. II. How it may be redeemed.1. Observe a method in the distribution of your time.2. Be moderate in your recreations.3. Cut off, as much as may he, unnecessary visits.4. Examine, every evening, how you have spent the day. (Bishop Horne.)Redeeming the time There was once a young shoemaker, who became so much interested in politics, that his shop was filled with loungers, talking, and discussing, and disputing about one thing and another from morning till night; and he found it often necessary to work till midnight to make up for the hours lost in talk during the day. One night, after his shutters were closed, and he was busy on his bench, a boy, passing along, lout his mouth to the keyhole, and mischievously piped out, “ Shoemaker, shoemaker, work by night, and run about by day.” “ Had a pistol been fired off at my ear,” he said, “ I could not have been more startled. I dropped my work, saying to myself, ‘ True, true; but you never shall have that to say of me again.’ I never forgot it. To me it was the voice of God, and it has been a word in season throughout my life. I learned from it not to leave till tomorrow the work of today, or to be idle when I ought to be working. From that time I turned over a new leaf.” This shoemaker was Samuel Drew, who subsequently wrote on the “ Immortality and Immateriality of the Soul.” Wise investments:--From the year 218 to the year 212 B.C. for ancient Rome the days were evil. A fierce and warlike invader was in the land; the army of the Commonwealth had been twice defeated by him with terrible loss; and, finally, there came a day in which the proud Roman people suffered the humiliation of seeing their very capital reduced to a state of siege. Hannibal’ s army lay encamped against it. Outside the walls, where the children had played and the citizens had lounged, foreign standards were waving in the breeze. On the very spot where, in days of security and peace, the busy fair had been held, and the gay booths had plied their brisk trade, foreign sentinels challenged the passer-by. It was while affairs were in this state that the Roman senate took a remarkable step. They put up to public auction a piece of ground outside the walls on which at that very moment the invading general’ s tent was standing, and the ground was forthwith purchased by a senator. Now you will see at once the wisdom of the senate’ s action. You will perceive that no more politic or statesmanlike stroke could have been played. For what would the immediate result of such action be? Why, to give heart and hope to every man, woman, and child within the city walls. Their leaders, the people would argue, were evidently but little disturbed by what had happened. Evidently they regarded Hannibal’ s action as mere bravado. The enemy would never set foot within the gates--very soon he would be compelled to raise the siege and retreat in haste. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what did happen. But why do I speak of it now, and what has all this to do with “ redeeming the time” ? Well, it furnishes us with a very good illustration of what the apostle means when he uses these words. For the expression, “ redeeming the time,” may more accurately be rendered, “ buying up the opportunity, because the days are evil.” Now this is just what the senate did. The opportunity (a very great opportunity) was in the hands of the foe. The prestige of the victor in two bloody engagements; of the besieger of a strong, proud city, was all on his side. Then, by a master stroke, the Roman Fathers “ bought up the opportunity,” so to speak, from Hannibal; wrested it out of his hands, and secured a moral victory. (J. B. C. Murphy, B. A.)The purchase of opportunities A better rendering would be, “ Buying up the opportunity, because the times are hard.” But no mere translation can fully convey the idea St. Paul had in his mind. The picture or parable suggested by the Greek is this. Here stands a wise and wary merchantman, keen for spiritual traffic and gain. Like Milton, he has fallen on evil times; on “ bad times,” as men of business would say. The days drag slowly by, bringing him few means of moral culture, rare occasions in which he can trade with his talents and make them more. But, at last, as the caravan of Time moves tardily by, among the captives in its train he espies an opportunity such as his heart has long craved. He leaps at it, seizes it, redeems it, i.e., pays a price for it, and makes it his own. This seems to have been the conception, the picture, in the apostle’ s mind. And thus he defines the Christian attitude toward Time. Its days and hours are for the most part in bondage to vanity and corruption. We are to watch them as they pass by, keen and prompt to rescue them from their bondage, to set them free by devoting them to the service of God and man, to purchase any precious opportunity they may bring with them, whatever it may cost us. There are many reasons why we should take and maintain this attitude.1. Opportunities are only too apt to slip by unrecognized. Even the wisest of us is hardly wise enough to recognize his opportunities till they are past. As a rule our days are samely and monotonous. There is not sufficient difference between them to awaken attention and inspire hope. Our days, moreover, come to us masqued for the most part, so that even when they bring us a great opportunity, we do not recognize its greatness at the time, and therefore do not seize upon it and improve it as we should if we knew its worth. The current of our life is often turned by seeming trifles, which we assume to be quite incapable of seriously affecting it. When the crises of our life occur, when the great opportunities come to us, which come so seldom, they are hidden from us by a multitude of subsidiary accidents and occurrences. If there were no God above us, ruling even the accidents of life for our good, and working out the counsels of His will even when we let our wills drift on the tide of chance or drive before the waves of impulse, what would become of us all? 2. These opportunities, critical as they are, when once they are gone, can never be recalled. The occasion once lost, can never be recalled. Says Plato, “ It is quite clear, quite clear, that if a person lets the right moment for any work go by, it never returns. For the thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer.” Our past neglects should lend new force and urgency to the apostolic injunction, “ Redeem the time,” and make our obedience to it more prompt and vigorous. Today we may listen to the Divine voice to which yesterday we were deaf. Today we may renounce those hurtful passions and lusts which ought to have been renounced long ago. Today we may begin to grasp occasions as they rise, and to do the duty we have often thought of doing, and even talked of doing, but have not done. 3. But if we set ourselves to seize and redeem present opportunities, we shall need to remember that they are only to be redeemed at a certain cost. In St. Paul’ s view these opportunities were as captives which the days led by in chains; and to redeem a captive we must pay a price. We can avail ourselves of no occasion of serving God and man except as we rouse ourselves to labour and self-sacrifice. And these sacred opportunities, like the Sibylline books, both rise in price and grow fewer every time we refuse to purchase them. If it be hard to subdue passion and the cravings of irregular desire today, it will be harder tomorrow, should we leave the hours of today unimproved. If it would cost us much to do what we know to be the will of the Lord today, it will cost us more every day we neglect our duty. 4. Finally, the apostle warns us that when the times are hard, we should be the more eager to redeem the opportunities they bring us. Hard and evil times, indeed, bring opportunities of a special value, not only because they are scarce, but also because they have a great intrinsic worth. Nay, more, hard times, sorrowful times, times of temptation and difficulty, are themselves opportunities of preeminent value. Then, if ever, we have a chance of showing of what stuff we are made, of testing and proving the sincerity, the genuineness, of our religious life. Too often we forget that every provocation, wrong, loss, hardship, is an opportunity to be redeemed; that it is sent by God even though it comes from men; that He tasks our strength to test our character, to teach us what we really are, to wake us up from any delusion into which we have fallen about ourselves. (S. Cox, D. D.)Thrift of time It is the counsel of reason, as well as of inspiration, which bids men do with their might whatsoever their hand findeth to do. The value of time is what few men ever adequately learn; and the number is still smaller of those who ever learn to improve it to the best possible advantage. Dr. Johnson was once asked how it was that the Christian fathers, and other voluminous authors of former days, ever found leisure to fill so many large folios with the productions of their pens. “ Nothing is easier,” said he; and then he proceeded to make a calculation, by which he showed that an author who should write no more than one octavo page in a day would easily be able, in thirty or forty years, to produce works as extensive as those of Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, or Baxter. Mr. Gladstone is one of the best living illustrations of the truth of his own words, addressed to the students of Edinburgh University as its Lord Rector. He said to them: “ Thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams; while the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, beyond your darkest reckoning.” (Christian Age.)Time veiled One’ s vocation is never some far-off possibility. It is always the simple round of duties that comes with the passing hour. Someone has pictured the days as coming to us with their faces veiled, bearing only the commonest gifts in their hands; but when they have passed beyond our recall the draped figures became radiant, and the gifts we rejected are seen to be treasures fit for kings’ houses. No day is commonplace, if we only had eyes to see its splendour. There is no duty that comes to our hand, however homely, but brings to us the possibility of kingly service. There is opportunity for the most ordinary people to make their years beautiful. There is room in life’ s common relations for noblest heroism. (Christian Age.)Wasted opportunities If a girl who had been strolling in the parks or pastures before breakfast came in laden with bunches of primroses and violets, with cowslips for bracelets, with daisies for brooches, and dandelions for earrings, you would not reprove her, or consider that she had forfeited a splendid chance: what was there better than these fair blossoms? But now, if every pebble in her ramble had been a diamond, or a topaz, or an amethyst, and yet she came in with nothing but these fading blossoms, what would you say to her then? Would you not; exclaim, “ Silly, stupid girl! you have missed a fortune; you have despised treasures” ? And what shall we say of ourselves if we occupy ourselves with worldly vanities, or scramble on anyhow in idleness, when God has strewn our path with what should enrich us for heaven? We might have gathered wisdom, which is above riches: we might have gained God’ s favour; we might have adorned ourselves with virtues and graces; we might have imitated Mary in her choice; but we let the whole train glide by us without seizing on a single gem. (Anon.)Definition of time Time is a continual over-dropping of moments, which fall down one upon the other, and evaporate. (Richter.)Economy of time How many minutes have you to spare? Five, ten, fifteen? Much may be done with them. We have heard of a young man who perused a History of England while waiting for his meals in a boarding house; we have heard of a mathematician who is said to have composed an elaborate work when visiting with his wife, during the interval between the moment when she first started to take leave of her friends, and the moment she had finished her last words. (E. P. Hood.)Employment of time “ We all complain,” says the philosopher Seneca, “ of the shortness of time; and yet we have more than we know what to do with. Our lives are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.” Alfred the Great was one of the wisest, the best, and most beneficent monarchs that ever swayed the sceptre of this realm; and his example is highly memorable. Ever hour of his life had its peculiar allotted business. He divided the day and night into three portions of eight hours each; and though much afflicted with a very painful disorder, he assigned only eight hours to sleep, meals, and exercise; devoting the remaining sixteen, one half to reading, writing, and prayer, and the other to public business. So sensible was this great man that time was not a trifle to be dissipated, but a rich talent entrusted to him, for which he was accountable to the great Dispenser of it! We are told by historians that Queen Elizabeth, except when engaged by public or domestic affairs, and the exercises necessary for the preservation of her health and spirits, was always employed either in reading or writing; in translating from other authors, or in compositions of her own. Gassendi, the celebrated philosopher, was perhaps one of the hardest students that ever existed. He generally rose at three o’ clock in the morning, and read or wrote till eleven, when he received the visits of his friends. He afterwards at twelve made a very slender dinner, at which he drank nothing but water, and sat down to his books again at three. There he remained till eight o’ clock; and after having eaten a very light supper, he retired to bed at ten. Among the ancient Indians there were a set of men called gymnosophists, who had a great aversion to sloth and idleness. When the table were spread for their repasts, the assembling youths were asked by their masters in what useful task they had been employed from the hour of sunrise. One, perhaps, represented himself as having been an arbitrator, and succeeded by his prudent management in composing a difference between friends. A second had been paying obedience to his parent’ s commands. A third had made some discovery by his own application, or learned something by another’ s instruction. But he who had done nothing to deserve a dinner was turned out of doors without one, and obliged to work while the others enjoyed the fruits of their application. (Knowles.)The season of mercy Neglect not the seasons of mercy, the day of grace, because opportunity facilitates the great work of your salvation; it is much easier to be done in such a season than it can be afterwards: an impression is easily made on wax, when melted, but stay till it be hardened, and if you lay the greatest weight on the seal it leaves not its impression upon it. Much so it is with the heart, there is a season when God makes it soft and yielding, when the affections are thawed and melted under the Word; conscience is full of sense and activity, the will palpable: now is the time to set in with the motions of the Spirit; there is now a gale from heaven, if you take it, and if not, it tarries not for man, nor waits for the sons of men: neglect of the season is the loss of the soul. (J. Flavel.)Opportunity Time is deservedly reckoned among the most precious mercies of this life; and that which makes it so valuable are the commodious seasons and opportunities for salvation which are vouchsafed to us therein. Opportunity is the golden spot of Time. If time be a ring of gold, opportunity is the rich diamond that gives it both its value and glory. (J. Flavel.)That the wisdom of a Christian is eminently discovered in saving and improving all opportunities in this world, for that world which is to come God hangs the great things of eternity upon the small wires of times and seasons in this world: that may be done, or neglected in a day, which may be the groundwork of joy or sorrow to all eternity. There is a nick of opportunity which gives both success and facility to the great and weighty affairs of the soul, as well as body; to come before it is to seek the bird before it be hatched; and to come after it, is to seek it when it is fled. (J. Flavel.)The mystery of time That great mystery of Time, were there no other; the inimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent like an all embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are and then are not. This is forever very literally a miracle--a thing to strike us dumb; for we have no word to speak about it. (Carlyle.)Time, a treasure An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto, “ that time was his treasure” ; an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without cultivation, but which will always abundantly repay the labours of industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than use. (Dr. Johnson.)Redemption of time Our moments slip away silently and insensibly; the thief steals not more unperceived from the pillaged house. And will the runagates never stop? No: wherever we are, however employed, time pursues his incessant course. Though we are listless and dilatory, the great measurer of our days presses on, still presses on, in his unwearied career, and whirls our weeks, and months, and years away. Is it not, then, surprisingly strange to hear people complain of the tediousness of their time, and how heavy it hangs upon their hands? To see them contrive a variety of amusing artifices to accelerate its flight, and to get rid of its burden? Ah! thoughtless mortals! Why need you urge the headlong torrent? Your days are swifter than a post, which, carrying despatches of the last importance, with unremitted speed scours the road. They pass away like the nimble ships, which have the wind in their wings, and skim along the watery plain. They hasten to their destined period with the rapidity of an eagle, which leaves the stormy blast behind her, while she cleaves the air, and darts upon her prey. Now the day is gone, how short it appears! When my fond eye beheld it in perspective, it seemed a very considerable space. Minutes crowded upon minutes, and hours ranged behind hours, exhibited an extensive draught, and flattered me with a longer progression of pleasures. But upon a retrospective view, how wonderfully is the case altered! The landscape, large and spacious, which a warm fancy drew, brought to the test of cool experience, shrinks into a span, just as the shores vanish, and mountains dwindle to a spot, when the sailor, surrounded by skies and ocean, throws his last look on his native land. How clearly do I now discover the cheat! May it never impose upon my unwary imagination again! I find there is nothing abiding on this side eternity. A long duration, in a state of finite existence, is mere illusion. Hark! what sound is that? In such a situation every noise alarms. Solemn and slow it breaks upon the silent air. ‘ Tis the striking of the clock--designed, one would imagine, to ratify all my serious meditations. Methinks it says, Amen, and sets a seal to every improving hint. It tells me that another portion of my appointed time is elapsed. One calls it, “ the knell of my departed hours.” ‘ Tis the watchword to vigilance and activity. It cries in the ear of reason, “ Redeem the time. Catch the favourable gales of opportunity. Oh! catch them while they breathe; before they are irrecoverably lost. The span of life shortens continually. Thy minutes are all upon the wing, hastening to be gone. Thou art a borderer upon eternity, and making incessant advances to the state thou art contemplating.” May the admonition sink deep into an attentive and obedient mind! May it teach me that heavenly arithmetic, of numbering my days; and applying my heart unto wisdom! (Hervey.)The flight of time Refusing to hear anything from me, or take anything from the physician, he lay silent, as far as sudden darts of pain would permit, till the clock struck. Then he with vehemence cried out, “ Oh! Time! Time! it is fit thou shouldst thus strike thy murderer to the heart. How art thou fled forever! A month! Oh, for a single week! I ask not for years, though an age were too little for the much I have to do. So much the worse. ‘ Tis lost! ‘ Tis gone forever!” (Life of Rochester.)Value of time As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every minute of time. (J. Mason.)Fragments of time As in money, so in time, we are to look chiefly to the smallest portions. Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves. Take care of the minutes, and the hours and years will take care of themselves. Gold is not found in California for the most in great masses, but in little grains. It is sifted out of the sand in minute particles, which, melted together, produce the rich ingots that excite the world’ s cupidity. So the spare pieces of time, the shreds, the odds and ends of time put together, may form a very great and beautiful work. Hale wrote his “ Contemplations” when on his circuits. Dr. Mason Good translated Lucretius in his carriage, while, as a physician, he rode from door to door. One of the chancellors of France penned a bulky volume in the successive intervals of daily waiting for dinner. Doddridge wrote his “ Exposition” chiefly before breakfast. Kirke White studied Greek, went over the nouns and verbs, as he was going to and from a lawyer’ s office. Burney learned French and Italian while riding on horseback. Franklin laid the foundation of his wonderful stock of knowledge in his dinner hours and evenings, while working as a printer’ s boy. In the Palace of Industry there were several curious specimens of art, wrought by humble individuals out of such fragments of time as they could secure from their regular occupations. Oh, the preciousness of moments! no gold or gems can be compared to them. Yet all have them; while some are thereby enriched, and others leave themselves in poverty. The wealth of time is like gold in the mine--like the gem in the pebble--like the diamond in the deep. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 5:17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.On the excellence and utility of the truths contained in the gospel The will of God, which determines the whole extent of our obligations, is principally unfolded to us in the doctrines and moral precepts which are delivered in the sacred Scriptures. It is expedient, therefore, to explain to you, from the pulpit, these Divine oracles, by showing you, first, their superior excellence to all other instructions; secondly, the inestimable advantages which they are capable of producing in securing your peace and happiness. I. As man was created to be eternally happy in the clear and perfect knowledge of the infinite perfections of the Divine Being, there is naturally inherent in the mind of each individual an insatiable thirst after knowledge. But, my beloved friends, if human wisdom be unquestionably a valuable and precious acquisition, certainly the knowledge of those truths to which religion invites our attention must be incomparably more estimable. Yet, inconceivable as it may appear, it is an undeniable truth that many amongst us, while they give themselves to the pursuit of inferior attainments with indefatigable application, will scarcely devote one moment, without reluctance, to the gaining of a proficiency in that sublime and noble science which the fountain of all knowledge pours out so liberally before them. What a lamentable degradation of our mental faculties! II. The value, moreover, and the excellence of any science, is generally, and very justly, estimated by its utility, by its tendency to promote our interests and advantage. On this account the arts which are calculated to add to the convenience and increase the happiness of society, the arts which tend to cultivate and embellish human life, are held in peculiar esteem, and encouraged by every mark of public approbation. Considering, therefore, the doctrines of Christianity in this point of view, we discover, at the first glance, that they stand eminently superior to every other knowledge which can possibly be acquired. The information which they impart regards whatever is dear and interesting to us in time and eternity. They furnish us with arms for our defence against every enemy that seeks our destruction, and secure us against every danger which surrounds us. (J. Archer.)Wisdom is necessary to accurate walking That wisdom and a good understanding of the will of God is necessary to accurate walking or ready obedience. I. Before I give you the reasons, let me state the point as it lieth in the text.1. That every man that hath a tender conscience would be accurate and exact in his obedience to God, not contenting himself with a slight tincture of Christianity, but looking into every creek and turning of it, that he may in no point be lacking and defective in his duty. Now this cannot be without much wisdom and knowledge; therefore here, when the apostle presseth them to “ walk circumspectly,” he presently addeth, “ Not as fools, but as wise.” 2. We have no sure rule to walk by but the will of God. 3. This will is revealed to us in His Word. There our duty and our happiness is clearly stated (Psalms 119:105). 4. This word we need thoroughly to understand, otherwise how shall we know our duty? (Proverbs 19:2.)5. This understanding must not be idle, but reduced to use and practice. A readiness to serve God in God’ s way bringeth us soonest to a knowledge of God’ s will. The Word was not given us to try the acuteness of our wits in disputing, but the readiness of our obedience in practising. 6. This reducing what we know to practice is our wisdom. Knowledge is never right but when wisdom goeth along with it. II. The reasons why much wisdom and a good understanding is required of Christians.1. That they may resemble God, and discover His perfections to the world. 2. That there may be a due impression of His word upon us, which is all wisdom; and if we understand it and improve it, it must needs make us wise also; for the impression is according to the nature of the seal; and so the new creature must needs be the wisest creature on this side heaven. 3. The great danger of ignorance, or the evils that come from the want of spiritual wisdom. (1) To ourselves. Our worship is but a fond superstition, a blind devotion to an unknown God, a mere guess directed by custom and some devout aims (John 4:22). Our zeal is but a wild fury (Romans 10:2). (2) To others. There is no preventing trouble in the Church or scandals to the world if we have not spiritual wisdom and understanding. 4. The incredible delight and peace it begets in our souls. (1) The bare knowledge of God’ s will is very delightful, and yieldeth much more pleasure to the mind than an epicure can find in his most exquisite sensual enjoyments. (2) The peace which accompanies it. 5. The properties of this knowledge and wisdom show the necessity of it. (1) Because it is employed about the highest things, to know God’ s nature and will, what He is, and how He is to be enjoyed. (2) These things are most useful and profitable (John 17:3). 1. Is of reproof to divers sorts of persons who live in ignorance, or countenance ignorance upon several pretences. (1) That it belongeth not to them that dig in the mines of knowledge; they leave that to clerks and men of learning. (2) Others have a little general and traditional knowledge of the religion commonly professed among us, and talk of it by rote after others, but generally look no further than the outside of it. (3) Some confine their knowledge to a few obvious truths, and for other things they leave it to preachers more accurately to search after the mind of God, and content themselves to see with other men’ s eyes. (4) Some think ignorance is the mother of devotion, and that men leave off to be good when they grow more knowing. 2. Is to press us to get this knowledge and understanding of God’ s will. The apostle speaketh to children of light; and none of us know so much but we may know more. (1) Labour to get a more full knowledge of heavenly mysteries, especially of those which are necessary to salvation (Hebrews 5:12-13). (2) Get a more clear knowledge. Fulness relateth to the object, or matters known; clearness to the subject or faculty knowing. (3) Get a more certain knowledge, or more confirmed knowledge in the truth (Acts 2:36; John 4:42; John 17:8). (4) Get a more distinct knowledge. Truths are best known in their frame and dependence. A confused knowledge is always unsatisfactory; it is not till we see how one truth agreeth with another, as the curtains of the tabernacle were fastened by loops; till we are able to “ compare things spiritual with spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:13). (5) Get a more experimental knowledge. Most of Christianity is not only to be believed, but felt (1 John 5:10). 6. Get a more practical knowledge. Knowledge is for use, not an idle speculation. As a gallant and a physician cometh into a garden, one looketh upon the colour and beauty, the other upon the virtue and use of herbs and flowers: “ For if, these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ” (2 Peter 1:8). “ He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4). A practical Christian is more ready to serve and please God every day. (T. Manton, D. D.)Understanding God’ s will is true wisdom That this is true wisdom appears thus.1. It brings us to that frame of mind with which God is pleased (Isaiah 66:2; Romans 7:7-11). 2. It points out a certain way of escaping the misery due to us as sinners (1 John 5:11-13; Hebrews 6:17-18). 3. It gives that view of God which excites us to love and give ourselves to Him (1 John 4:9-10; 1 John 4:19). 4. It removes the fear of death and the grave. 5. It gives the best ground of submission to the trials of life. 6. It lays the strongest restraints upon sin, which is our disgrace and misery. 7. It shows us that all our enemies are under Divine control. 8. It puts into our hands the best Weapons of defence (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). 9. It assures us that God will soon set all matters right (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10). If so, how foolish and ungrateful are the neglecters and despisers of this will of God. Let us pray and study to know this will of God. (H. Foster.)Value of wisdom If the mountains were pearl, if every sand of the sea were a diamond, it were not comparable to wisdom. Without wisdom a person is like a ship without a pilot, in danger to split upon rocks. The price of wisdom is above rubies. The ruby is precious stone, transparent, of a red fiery colour. It is reported of one of the kings of India, he wore a ruby of that bigness and splendour that he might be seen by it in the dark; but wisdom casts a more sparkling colour than the ruby; it makes us shine as angels. (J. Watson.)Eight marks of folly If you would know such as are wise above sobriety you shall discern them by these marks:--1. They have all the talk, wheresoever they come, like parrots.2. They contemn others, like the Pharisees.3. They spurn at them which tell them of their fault, like Abner.4. They jump with Caesar, like the Herodians.5. They turn with the time, like Demas.6. They seek their own credit by the discredit of others, like the enemies of Paul.7. They love to hear their own praise, like Herod.8. Above all things they would have their own will, like Jezebel. Whensoever these eight marks meet there is a wise man and a fool; a wise man in his own conceit, and a fool in proof: these are the wise men of the north, and the philosophers of England. (Henry Smith.)Submission to the will of God There is a memorable passage in the history of St. Francis that may throw light on this subject. The grand rule of the order which he founded was implicit submission to the superior. One day a monk proved refractory. He must be subdued. By order of St. Francis a grave was dug deep enough to hold a man; the monk was put into it, the brothers began to shovel in the earth, while their superior, standing by, looked on, stern as death. When the mould had reached the wretch’ s knees St. Francis bent down, and, fixing his eyes on him said, “ Are you dead yet? Is your self-will dead? Do you yield?” There was no answer; down in that grave there seemed to stand a man with a will as iron as his own. The signal was given, and the burial went on. When at length he was buried up to the middle, to the neck, to the lips, St. Francis bent down once more to repeat the question, “ Are you dead yet?” The monk lifted his eye to his superior, to see in the cold grey eyes that were fixed on him no spark of human feeling. Dead to pity and all the weaknesses of humanity, St. Francis stood ready to give the signal that should finish the burial. It was not needed; the iron bent; he was vanquished; the funeral was stopped; his will yielding to a stronger, the poor brother said, “ I am dead.” I would not be dead as these monks to any man. The mind and reason which I have got from God Almighty are to bend implicitly and blindly before no human authority. But the submission I refuse to man, Jesus, I give to Thee--not wrung from me by terror, but won by love; the result, not of fear, but of gratitude. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Ephesians 5:18 And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.The sin and folly of drunkenness This precept follows very naturally what he has said about the necessity of wisdom. For even a wise man when he is drunk becomes a fool; the light of reason and of conscience is quenched, and the blind impulses of his physical nature are left without control. Some men take drink in excess to deaden their sensibility to trouble, to lessen the pain of distressing memories or distressing fears. With them it acts as a opiate. But Paul was thinking of those who drink to excess because intoxication, at least in its early stages, gives them excitement. It exalts the activity both of their intellect and of their emotion. Thought becomes more vivid and more rapid. The colours of imagination become more brilliant. Their whole physical nature becomes more animated. The river of life, which had sunk low and had been moving sluggishly, suddenly rises, becomes a rushing flood, and overflows its banks. This is the kind of drinking which betrays men into violence and profligacy. “ Be not drunken with wine,” for in drunkenness there is “ riot,” dissoluteness, release from all moral restraint. The craving for a fuller, richer life, for hours in which we rise above ourselves, and pass the normal and customary limitations of our powers, is a natural craving. Paul indicates how it should be satisfied: “ Be not drunken with wine wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit.” Forsake the sins which render it impossible for the pure and righteous Spirit of God to grant you the fulness of His inspiration; keep the channels open through which the streams that flow from Divine and eternal fountains may find their way into your nature; and then the dull monotony of life will be broken, and hours of generous excitement will come. The gray clouds will break, and the splendours of heaven will be revealed; the common earth will be filled for a little time with a great glory. Harmonies such as never fell on mortal ear will reach the soul. The limitations which are imposed upon us in this mortal condition will for a time seem to disappear. Your vision of eternal things will have a preternatural keenness. Your joy in God will be an anticipation of the blessed life beyond the grave. And, looking back upon these perfect hours, you will say, whether we were in the body or out of the body we cannot tell. But some men drink, not so much for the sake of personal excitement, as for the sake of good fellowship. They never drink much when they are alone; and when they are in company they drink to excess because, as the heat of intoxication increases, it seems to thaw and dissolve all reserve; conversation flows more freely and becomes more frank; mind touches mind more closely; lives which had been isolated from each other blend and flow in a common channel. Perpetual isolation is as intolerable as perpetual monotony. We were not made to live a separate and lonely life. This is the secret of our delight in listening to a great orator addressing a great assembly. If it were possible for him to touch the same heights of eloquence when speaking to us alone, we should be less moved. We like to lose our individuality in the crowd; sharing their thought, our own thought becomes more vivid; sharing their passions, our own passion becomes more intense. It is hard to explain the mystery; but we are conscious of it; the poor and narrow stream of our own life flows into the open sea, and the large horizon, and the free winds, and the mighty tides become ours. We have all known the same delight while listening in a crowd to a great singer or a great chorus. The craving for this larger life in the society of other men is as natural as the craving for excitement; and Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that instead of trying to satisfy it by drinking with other men they should satisfy it by common worship and by sacred song. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Drunkenness Drunkenness, though in general disallowed among the heathens, was admitted in their Bacchanalia, as an expression of gratitude to the god who gave them wine. This pagan rite the apostle seems to have in his mind here. I. The nature and extent of this vice. Various degrees of intemperance: the highest degree is such an indulgence as suspends the exercise of the mental and bodily powers. But there is sin in lesser degrees also. If by the indulgence of your appetite, you unfit your hefty for the service of the mind, or your mind for the service of God; so waste your substance, as to defraud your family of a maintenance, or your creditors of their dues; become enslaved to a sensual habit, and fascinated to dissolute company; are diverted from the duties of religion, or the business of your worldly calling; awaken criminal desires and excite guilty passions; stupify your conscience, extinguish the sentiments of honour and banish the thoughts of futurity; you are chargeable with a criminal excess. II. The guilt and danger of this vice.1. It is an ungrateful abuse of God’ s bounty. 2. It divests the man of his native dignity, and sinks him below the brutes. 3. It is injurious to the body, as well as the mind. 4. It consumes men’ s substance. 5. It destroys conscience. 6. It generates other vices--impure lustings, angry passions, profane language, insolent manners, obstinacy of heart, and contempt of reproof. 7. It has most lamentable effects on families. (1) It subverts order and government.(2) It discourages devotion.(3) It destroys domestic peace and tranquillity.(4) It brings family distress. 8. The Scripture abounds in the most solemn warnings against this sin. 9. This sin must be renounced, or the end of it will be death. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)To be filled with the Spirit, the best defence against a besetting sin I. The solemn caution. Those here addressed were the saints of God. Yet they needed this exhortation. The best of saints need to be cautioned against the worst of sins. There are the seeds of all evil in them. No previous consistency of walk, no deep experience, no holy acquaintance with God, no near walking with God, can give them the least security. But besides this, there are constitutional temptations. Some persons are constitutionally tempted to anger, some are tempted to vanity, some are tempted to worldliness in its excess of folly, some are tempted to untruthfulness, and oh! there are some who are tempted to drunkenness constitutionally. But besides this also, there are circumstances that oftentimes throw a man in danger here. Noah was, for aught I know, weary and tired as a husbandman; and by his inexperience, too, of the effects, he was overcome with drunkenness. We find in the case of Lot, in his secret retirement, there was in his circumstances that which exposed him to danger. II. Observe now, secondly, the exhortation, the encouraging exhortation: “ be filled with the Spirit.” I conceive there is in the expression that which would imply the power of the Spirit to fill the soul of man. Or rather the expression is--“ Seek to be filled in your understandings, in your memories, in your consciences, in your will, in your affections, seek to be ‘ filled with the Spirit.’“ Now let me point out some few of the blessings that result from this communication of the “ fulness of the Spirit,” in all His holy influences, to our souls. First of all, let us look at Him as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. So I read in the first of Ephesians, and the seventeenth verse. Look at the Apostle Peter before the day of Pentecost. How dark his perception of the Atonement, how little did he see of what Jesus came into the world for! I talk with some men, many of whom, I doubt not, are truly converted to God; yet Christ is in the background, I see so little of Him. They talk of God; there is something about their creed that is so Jewish; they speak so much more of God, than of God in Christ. There is so little of the great work of the incarnate One, so little of realizing the strength of the covenant “ ordered in all things and sure.” Oh! beloved, to be filled with the Spirit of wisdom is the highest wisdom. But let us look at the subject in another point of view. I find in the eleventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the twenty-fourth verse, it is said of Barnabas, “ he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith.” So, when we are filled with the Holy Ghost, we are filled with faith. Ah! who can describe the blessing of being filled with faith? To see everything in the light of God’ s countenance; to see everything in the light of a Saviour’ s fulness. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)The wine Divine In saying: “ Be not drunk with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit,” St. Paul recognizes a pressing human appetite, or want. He not only perceives the necessity for wholesome gladness of heart in his disciples, but admits the encouragement of special moods or seasons of cheerfulness. It is impossible for anyone to stand always at the same spiritual level. There are mysterious risings and fallings of the mental barometer. The soul has its periods of high and low pressure. We are the subjects of many influences which we cannot command. And yet there are some at our disposal. The apostle indicates an “ elevation” of which we are the conscious agents, when we set ourselves to counteract depression or to kindle a fresher thrill of cheerfulness. That is a legitimate desire. It is recognized by the Church itself in the appointment of thanksgiving days and special services--when we are summoned to show our gladness in a livelier strain. There are seemingly two distinct means for inducing cheerfulness. One is material, or bodily: the other mental, or spiritual; and the lesson before us is that one is temporary, imperfect; the other finally effective, being eternal. St. Paul instances wine as an example of the former. It is either a transitory stimulant, legitimate in its temperate use, or it overshoots the mark, leading to excess, or riot. There are several kinds of “ material” relief which excite, deaden, regulate our bodily functions. And this affords the most obvious illustration of what the apostle here means to teach. It cannot, e.g., really drown dull care. Care dies hard. A material stimulant may do much, may help nature over a crisis. But man has troubles of mind as well as of body. And these constantly present difficulties, complications, which baffle the prescriber of drugs. Who shall minister to a soul diseased? Beneath the surface of beneficent science are sores and sorrows which have been caused by no grave offence against, or neglect of, the laws of health. They have come from a perception that the conscience has been defied, or perhaps they have grown from some seeds of distracting doubt, from some seemingly insoluble difficulties, social, intellectual, which makes him who feels them go mourning all the day long. Who shall tell the trouble and the hindrances over which we want to be helped, or above which we want to be lifted by some kindly and exhilarating influence? It is in meeting this desire that we must come to realize the two great sources of cheerfulness. The Spirit of God alone can fit the needs of the spirit of man. There is something special in this strengthening, healing, and cheering gift. It is the juice of the true vine, the new wine of the kingdom of heaven. Here we reach the great transforming power in the world. The knowledge of this is the support and recovery of man’ s life. He does not refuse, nor affect to despise, the material adjuncts of this existence. He does not put aside the flour of wheat because Christ is the true Bread. He sees no wrong in a right use of every creature of God. But his innermost and safe joy, his secure and trusted moods of exultation, come from the Spirit, the mysterious Spirit of God, which is our Father’ s special gift to us His children upon earth. In that is the true buoyancy of life. (Harry Jones, M. A.)Not wine, but the Spirit I. The prohibition. I know it requires much courage, and much firmness of purpose in many cases to refuse the inducements, and to give a denial to the temptation to indulge in excess in drink. For instance, we are told it is fashionable to drink; if you don’ t drink freely you are not a man of the world; you are a strange, unsocial misanthrope; you are not fit for blending with society. I am not going to say that fashion has no place; I know fashion has a place; but fashion has no right to meddle with morals. Besides, I say, after all, it is not fashionable to be drunk: I say, after all, that although instances of intoxication are lamentably numerous, the instances of sobriety, thank God, are a vast deal more so. Then, again, it is said that to drink freely is almost a necessary passport to a knowledge of the world. How people abuse language! II. The injunction.1. In order to our being “ filled with the Spirit,” we must be aware of the magnitude of this blessing. (1) The Spirit is the great promise of the New Testament dispensation. (2) The gift of the Spirit more than compensates for the absence of the bodily presence of Christ. 2. This supposes, also, that we have a relish for the blessing. 3. In order to being “ filled with the Spirit,” you must make room for Him. 4. In order to be “ filled with the Spirit,” you must be the subject of the same ardent desire which is expressed in many parts of Scripture. 5. In order to be “ filled with the Spirit,” we must yield ourselves to His influence--we must give ourselves up to the guiding of His agency. (J. E. Beaumont, D. D.)A warning against intemperance I. The matters put in opposition to each other, which are both things and actions. The things are “ wine” and the “ Spirit” : the actions, being “ drunk with wine,” and “ filled with the Spirit.” First: The things: these two are put in opposition--1. To check the temptation. The sensual pleasure which men find in wine enticeth them to excess. There are higher pleasures men should be taken up with, namely, the joy of faith and a delight in holiness. 2. To show the difference between the holy societies or meetings of the faithful, and the dissolute feasts of the heathens in honour of their idols. 3. Because of the analogy between wine and the Spirit; they are often proposed in Scripture as correspondent, or as having some likeness in their operations; as wine cheereth and exhilarateth the spirits: “ It maketh glad the heart of man” (Psalms 104:15); so the Spirit filleth the soul, and exhilarateth it. Only in this fulness there is no excess: “ Drink abundantly, O beloved” (Son 5:1). And in this mirth there is no dissoluteness; when we are filled with the Spirit, it is no corruptive joy, but perfective, such as strengtheneth the heart: “ The joy of the Lord is your strength “ (Nehemiah 8:10). But what is it to be filled with the Spirit? The phrase is taken two ways-- (1) Either to be filled with the gifts of the Spirit; or(2) with the graces of the Spirit. (1) The gifts of the Spirit: “ And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). (2) To be filled with the graces of the Spirit. And here we must consider His three offices--as He is our guide, sanctifier, and comforter. II. The inconsistency of the one with the other; to be drunk with wine is inconsistent with being filled with the Spirit.1. They that are filled by the one are acted by a contrary principle. 2. This contrary principle hath such an influence on them, that the Spirit of the gospel hath no place in them. (1) Their sight is blinded (2 Corinthians 4:4).(2) The delight and relish of the soul is corrupted (Philippians 3:19).(3) Their strength is weakened, that they cannot resist any temptation. (T. Manton, D. D.)The sin of intemperance There is in the vice of intemperance that kind of dissoluteness which brooks no restraint, which defies all efforts to reform it, and which sinks lower and lower into hopeless and helpless ruin. This tremendous sin is all the more to be shunned as its hold is so great on its victims, that with periodical remorse there is periodical inebriety, and when the revulsion of a throbbing head and a sickening depression passes away; new temptation excites fresh desires, and the fatal cup is again coveted and drained, while character, fortune, and life are risked and lost in the gratification of an appetite of all others the most brutal in form and brutifying in result. There are few vices out of which there is less hope of recovery--its haunts are so numerous, and its hold is so tremendous. As Ephesus was a commercial town and busy seaport, its wealth led to excessive luxury, and Bacchus was the rival of Diana. The women of Ephesus as the priestesses of Bacchus danced round Mark Antony’ s chariot on his entrance into the city. Drunkenness was indeed an epidemic in those times and lands. Alexander the Great, who died a sacrifice to Bacchus, and not to Mars, offered a prize to him who could drink most wine, and thirty of the rivals died in the act of competition. Plato boasts of the immense quantities of liquor which Socrates could swill uninjured; and the philosopher Xenocrates got a golden crown from Dionysius for swallowing a gallon at a draught. Cato often lost his senses over his choice Falernian. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Drunkenness to be avoided I. I am to enter upon the apostle’ s dehortation, or prohibition--“ Be not drunk with wine.” For the right understanding of which I premise this, that wine is one of the good creatures of God which He hath given for the use of men. And He hath given it for these three considerable purposes.1. To the inhabitants of those places where it grows, for part of their ordinary drink. For God hath so constituted the nature of man’ s body that he stands in need of drink as well as of meat. 2. Wine was given to cherish and refresh us when we are weak and languishing. 3. As wine is given to cure the infirm and fainting, so likewise to cheer and delight the sound and healthy. It is lawful to drink it not only for necessity, but sometimes for pleasure. Wine, without doubt, was given us by our gracious Benefactor to delight the taste, and refresh the palate, especially when sorrow and trouble clog the mind, and begin to oppress and weigh it down. As drinking, so sobriety may be abused. Men may effect those mischiefs by their abstaining from immoderate drinking, which they could never be able to do if they drank extravagantly. Generally the shrewdest contrivers and executors of mischief are those who are not addicted to intemperance: and their very sobriety renders them the more able to do harm. And yet I cannot say that this sort of men are wholly free from drunkenness; for it is possible they may be drunk even with their sobriety, i.e., with the conceit of it; they may be intoxicated with pride and arrogance, or with spite and malice, or with a heady confidence of success in their evil enterprizes. They may, as the prophet speaks, “ stagger, but not with strong drink, and be drunken, but not with wine.” That which makes this sin is, first, the not restraining of our extravagant desire and appetite, which I mentioned before, and, secondly, the actual gratifying and satisfying of our desires. Which brings me to the next thing observable, viz., the reason of the apostolical dehortation, expressed in those words, “ wherein is excess” : as much as to say, Re not drunk with wine, because there is a strange excess attends it. This is the genuine meaning of this clause of the text. Now, in drunkenness there is excess not only formally, but causally (to speak in the language of the schools). It is both excess in itself, and the cause and origin of many other excesses.1. The first evil of drunkenness is that injury which is done to the body by it. 2. This is a vice which injures not only the bodies but the estates of men. A drunkard is a spendthrift: the extravagant drinker is profuse and lavish. 3. A sottish course of drinking injures the name and reputation, no less than the bodies and estates of men. 4. The intemperance of the tongue usually attends that of the brain. Drunkenness first sets the tongue a going, and then soon makes it run too fast. 5. Wrath and fury, slaughter and bloodshed, are the cursed fruits of drunkenness. “ Strong drink is raging,” saith Solomon (Proverbs 20:21). 6. Lust and lewdness, whoredom and fornication, are the frequent attendants of extraordinary drinking. 7. Among the direful effects and consequences of extravagant drinking this must not be omitted, that the soul and all its faculties are corrupted and debauched by it. False notions are drunk in with the wine: undue and unbecoming apprehensions are entertained. Let us hear what men say for drink.1. It is good nature and friendship, they say, to sit and drink, even till they can drink no more. 2. They say that it is for company and good fellowship’ s sake that they drink sometimes to immoderation. 3. Others defend their immoderate draughts after this manner; We are persons well bred, we cannot be so rude and unmannerly as to refuse our glass when it comes to our turn. 4. Some excuse their drunkenness by saying, “ It is to put away melancholy.” 5. There are those who defend their immoderate drinking, especially of wine, by the serviceableness of it, to exalt their parts, and to make them witty. 6. There is another excuse made by some men, which, though it be not worth the answering, yet that I may remove all the pretences of drinking men, I will say something to it. They are no common drunkards, they say, and when they exceed in drink, they do not, like others, spend their money, but are drunk gratis. They cannot afford to indulge so costly a vice, but they only take these opportunities when they may have wine at others’ charges. 7. There is another great objection or pretence of drunkards yet behind, which is this, they happen to be in the company of these persons who engage them to drink healths, and these going often round, and there being an obligation on them to pledge their next neighbour, and to drink cup for cup, they are sometimes unhappily overcome of the liquor which presents itself so fast to them. In the last place, I am to offer to you some proper means and helps whereby you may effectually extirpate this odious vice. They are such as these:1. Weigh this express command of God in the text, “ Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.” 2. Consider the dreadful woes that are denounced against this sin. Read with trembling (Isaiah 5:11). 3. Consider that this vice is condemned even by those that are guilty of it. There is not a drunkard that breathes but at one time or other is cast by his own verdict, he passes sentence against himself. 4. That you may do so, learn to relish the pleasures of religion and holiness. Re acquainted with the excellency of virtue and goodness, understand the intrinsic worth of these. 5. That you may cast off this abominable vice, and stifle your excessive delight in intemperate drinking, and in that mirth which attends it, sit down, and seriously think of the distresses and miseries which your brethren labour under, in one part or other of the world. 6. That you may effectually abandon this vice, be careful to avoid all the occasions of it. (John Edwards, D. D.)Christians invited to partake of the Spirit freely I. What we are to understand by being “ filled with the spirit.”1. By “ the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, of life, of grace, of might, of wisdom and revelation, of Father and the Son, we are baptized, often termed the Holy Spirit, the eternal Spirit” here, is meant that Divine Agent, in whose name, as well as in those of the holiness, the Comforter, the Spirit of God, of Christ. But observe, not His extraordinary gifts, which in no age are necessary to salvation, and were chiefly bestowed in the early ages, for the good of others, are here meant; but His ordinary influences, which are necessary to salvation (see verses 19-21; Galatians 5:22-23). 2. The expression, “ filled with,” or by, “ the Spirit,” supposes there to be a sufficiency in the blessed Spirit, and His influences, to fill our souls, to supply all our wants, to satisfy our desires, and help our infirmities. We are in darkness, and need illumination, instruction, and direction; He is the Spirit of light, truth, wisdom. We are in want of consolation; He is the comforter. It imports our partaking of His influences and fruits in a large and plentiful manner; not indeed “ without measure” ; in this tense Christ only had the Spirit: nor so as to admit of no increase; thus we shall hardly have the Spirit in heaven. But so as to have every power and faculty of the soul subject to the authority, and under the influence of the Spirit; to have His influences rendered more mighty and operative in us, producing their proper and genuine effects; as greater light, life, power, purity, comfort, strong faith, a fully assured and confirmed hope, fervent love, an uniform meekness and patience, a full conformity to God, and close and constant communion with Him; filling us with all his fulness (Colossians 1:9-11; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 7:37); making us taste great sweetness and delight in Him, so as to aspire after full perfection (Philippians 3:13-14). II. Why this is made a matter of exhortation to us. Because of--1. The desirableness of being filled with the Spirit.2. The attainableness of it.3. Something being incumbent on us, in order to it. We must make use of the appointed means. III. The obligations which lie upon us, as Christians, to aim at being filled with the spirit. The clear revelation we have concerning His agency, beyond all which was given in former ages of the Church, lays us under strong obligations to desire to be filled with His influences. The dignity of His person should make us ambitious of such a guest, when He is willing to dwell with us. He is no less than the Spirit of God, as our soul is the spirit of man (1 Corinthians 2:11). His relation to Christ obliges us (Romans 8:9; Galatians 4:6). Our relation to Christ will be most clearly proved and manifested by His Spirit dwelling with us (Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13). Thus we shall be vessels of honour, sanctified and made meet for the Master’ s use. (Anon.)Filled with the Spirit The command, “ be filled with the Spirit,” is virtually an injunction to pray more fervently for enlarged spiritual communication, and to cherish those influences already enjoyed. Not only were they to possess the Spirit, but they were to be filled with the Spirit, as vessels filled to overflowing, with the Holy Ghost. This is the contrast. Men are intoxicated with wine, and they attempt to “ fill” themselves with it: but they cannot. Wine cannot fulfil their expectation--they cannot live habitually under its power; its fumes are slept away, and new indulgences are craved. The exhilaration which they covet can only be felt periodically, and again and again must they drain the wine cup to relieve themselves of despondency. But Christians are “ filled” with the Spirit, whose influences are not only powerful, but replete with satisfaction to the heart of man. It is a sensation of want--a desire to fly from himself, a craving after something which is felt to be out of reach, an eager and restless thirst to enjoy, if at all possible, some happiness and enlargement of heart, that usually leads to intemperance. But the Spirit fills Christians, and gives them all the elements of cheerfulness and peace--genuine elevation and mental freedom--superiority to all depressing influences, and refined and permanent enjoyment. Of course, if they are so filled with the Spirit, they feel no appetite for debasing and material stimulants. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Grace expels vice If there is any single vice which a man desires to eject from his character, or from another’ s, he can accomplish the end finally and completely, and only, by letting in the corresponding grace. Sin, in every form of its indulgence, is to be looked upon as an intoxication. Let him therefore introduce into the blood vessels of his soul a counter-stimulant. Let him intoxicate himself with love, and joy, and peace, the fruit, as it were, of the True Vine, and there will be no possibility of intrusion from lower sources, because no room will remain for them. And it follows from the same principle that a Christian must apply more and more to spiritual sources as life goes on. The spiritual capacities enlarge with time. And the same amount of devotion will not fill them now as filled them a year ago. He must pray more, seek after godliness more, covet the best gifts more. The tendency of the experienced Christian often is to relax devotional habits and live on a grace that is past. He has reached a high level and his religion has become, as it seems to him, self-acting. But stagnation is all the more perilous because it is high. There is no smaller measure for the grace that is to be in him than this--he is to be filled with the Spirit. He defrauds himself of what he might possess and imperils all he has by seeking to live on less. The surplus must be made up from earth. And every minutest crevice left unfilled by good must, by the law against vacuum, be filled by something worse, something which must adulterate and may ruin at last the whole. (H. Drummond.)Not spirits, but “ the Spirit” The human mind cannot be void. If it have not the light of true wisdom, it will have the light of fallacies. Fleshly baits are not the temptations by which superior men are caught. Their understandings must be flattered. They must be decoyed by facts, and the science of things patent to their senses. You shall be leaders in the world of thought, “ you shall be as gods,” you shall open men’ s eyes to the reality of things. Beware of the strong drink of sense-bound intellectuality. Neither be drunk with the soul spiritualism. “ The Spirit will fortify both your bewitching magnetic ether of spiritualism. “ The Spirit” will fortify both your understanding and your heart against all spirits, whether of the visible or the invisible world. “ The Spirit” is our only safe inspiration. There is, moreover, not only a calmer power, but a greater variety in the one Spirit of God, than in all the spirits which lead captive the human soul. God is not sparing in the ministration of wholesome excitement. Every new morning is a genial, delightful excitement. The seasons are an ever-changing round of excitement. Lore and marriage are joy from heaven, in earthly cups. Family life is God’ s wine of fellowship all the year round. Every meal is a pleasurable excitement. Birthdays and feasts are special indulgences and celebrations of the excitement of home life. The verdant glory of the earth, the tranquil heavens, and the works of our divine poets and musicians, are excitements worthy of heaven. The gospel of our eternal hopes is the feast which crowns all; and the congregation in church, made up equally of friends and strangers, is a wonder of fellowship and a most pure joy of love. What a depth of sweetness, what serene gladness, what a variety of inspiration there must be in that One Spirit, whence all our innocent and noble excitements spring. The martyrs found an intensity of spirit quickening on the boundary between life on earth and life in heaven; not only proving that “ death is abolished,” but that all the joys of our earthly life are but poor shadows going before our eternal human delights. Drop your burdens, forget your labours and sorrows, and soar above the dull plains of mortality, in a Divine exhilaration. (J. Pulsford.)Christians must be filled with the Spirit I. The reasons why Christians are so strictly bound to be filled with the Spirit.1. That we may answer the great and rich preparations of grace which the infinite love of God hath made for us by the merit of Christ and the promises of the gospel. 2. Because of their necessity. (1) If it be those that only profess Christianity, but are not yet really converted to God, they are in danger to be filled with a worse spirit, if not filled with the Spirit of God. (2) For those that are regenerated, and have received the spirit of the gospel and not of the world, there needeth a further supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:19). 3. That the glory and excellency of our religion may appear. II. The means how we come to be filled with the Spirit. Certainly--1. It is from God, who is the author of all grace: “ And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ “ (2 Corinthians 5:18). 2. That God doth it through Christ the Scripture also witnesseth: “ Which He hath shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour” (Titus 3:6). 3. That this frame of heart is wrought in us by the Spirit or Holy Ghost that came down from heaven, is evident also in Scripture. 4, It is given us by the gospel, for that is called “ the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2). 5. The gospel worketh two ways-- (1) Morally;(2) Powerfully. 6. If any have this power and Spirit of the Lord Jesus, it is the mere favour of God: if any want it, it is long of themselves. 7. One of the means is prayer. Christ hath taught us to pray for the Spirit (Luke 11:1-13). None so fatherly as God; no gift so necessary as the Spirit. (T. Manton, D. D.) Ephesians 5:19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.Sacred music I. The design of music in general. Singing is no less natural to mankind than speaking. They are naturally disposed to speak, because they wish to communicate their thoughts, and they are naturally disposed to sing, because they wish to communicate their feelings. Speaking is the natural language of the understanding, and singing is the natural language of the heart. We always use words to express our thoughts, but we do not always use words to express our feelings. These we can clearly and forcibly express by simple sounds. How often do we see this exemplified in the case of little children! Before they are capable of speaking, or even understanding a single word, they can express their joy and sorrow, their love and hatred, and all the variety of their feelings, by merely varying the tones of their voice. This language of the heart grows up with every person, and would be as commonly used as the language of the understanding, were it not restrained by the force of example, or by the sense of propriety. Accordingly we find that music has always been much more in use among those people, who have been left to follow the mere dictates of nature, than among others who have been governed by the customs and manners of civil society. II. The design of sacred music in particular. General music becomes particular when it is applied to one particular purpose. The first purpose to which mankind naturally apply music is to cheer and exhilarate their spirits. The design of another kind of music is to inspire men with a spirit of courage, fortitude, and patriotism. This is the music of the army. But the great design of sacred music is to awaken and express every holy affection of the heart towards God. III. Let us next inquire, what is necessary to render sacred music the most useful in religious worship.1. That sacred music should be constructed with great simplicity. 2. It is highly proper that sacred music should be connected with poetry, in order to promote private and public devotion. Melodious sounds have only a mechanical operation on the mind; but when they are united with appropriate language, they produce a moral effect. The apostle directs Christians not only to sing, but to sing in psalms, or hymns, or spiritual songs. This is always proper in devotional music, which has immediate reference to God, who is the only proper object of religious worship. How absurd would it be, for instance, to celebrate the birthday of Washington by mere music, without any ode or hymn adapted to the occasion! And how much more absurd would it be to celebrate the character, the works, and the ways of God, by mere music, without using any psalm or spiritual song, to bring those great and glorious objects into view! There can be no religious affection without the perception of some religious object. Some part of the Divine character or the Divine conduct must be seen, in order to exercise any right affection towards God. And since it is the sole design of sacred music to excite or express devout and holy affections towards the Divine Being, it should always be connected with some significant and appropriate language, either in prose or poetry. 3. Sacred music should not only be connected with words, but adapted to their sense, rather than to their sound. When music is adapted to the mere sound of words, it can serve no other purpose than to please the ear; but when it is adapted to the proper meaning of a psalm or hymn, it not only pleases the ear, but affects the heart. It is here that both composers and performers of sacred music are most apt to fail. How often do composers appear to pay more regard to the sound than to the sense of the words which they set to music! 4. Sacred music can never produce its best effect unless it be performed with true sincerity. There ought to be a perfect concord between the music, the words, and the heart. (N. Emmons, D. D.)How we may make melody in our hearts to God in singing of psalms 1. The singers. Christians. 2. The song itself. Three divisions. (1) Psalms.--They are the composures of holy David. (2) Hymns.--They are the songs of some other excellent men recorded in Scripture, as Moses, Heman, Asaph, etc. (3) Spiritual songs.--They are odes of some other holy and good men not mentioned in Scripture, as the song of Ambrose, Nepos, and others. 3. Some aver that these several speeches mentioned in the text, answer the Hebrew distinction of psalms. But I may add, Are not all these several species mentioned to prefigure the plenty and the joy which is reserved for the saints within the veil, when they shall join in concert with the glorious angels in singing their perpetual hallelujahs to their glorious Creator? 3. The manner of singing. Our text saith, “ making melody” ; with inward joy and tripudiation of soul; if the tongue make the pause, the heart must make the elevation. 4. The master of the choir, the preceptor. That is, the “ heart.” 5. The end of the duty--“ To the Lord.” Our singing must not serve our gain, or our luxury, or our fancy; but our Lord. The several parts of the text being thus opened, they may be set together again in this Divine and excellent truth: In the ordinance of singing, we must not make noise, but music; and the heart must make melody to the Lord. In this service we must study more to act the Christian than the musician. We must sing David’ s psalms with David’ s spirit. I. We will show the Divine authority of this ordinance. II. We will show the sweetness of it. III. The universal practice of it. IV. We shall show the honours God hath put upon this ordinance. V. And then come to the main case. VI. And make application. I. For the first: we shall show the divine authority of this ordinance.1. From Scripture precept. And here we have divers commands laid upon us, both in the Old and New Testament. David, who among his honourable titles obtains this, to be called “ the sweet singer of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1)--he frequently calls upon himself: “ I will sing praise to the name of the Lord most high” (Psalms 7:17). And sometimes he calls upon others: “ Sing unto Him, sing psalms unto Him, talk ye of all His wondrous works” (1 Chronicles 16:9). Nay, sometimes He summons the whole earth to join in this duty: “ Sing unto the Lord, all the earth; show forth from day to day His salvation “ (1 Chronicles 16:23; Psalms 68:32). And holy Hezekiah--he propagated this service (2 Chronicles 29:30). Nay, in their times when the royal majesty was lodged in Judah, singers were a peculiar office enjoined constantly to sing the praises of the Lord (1 Kings 10:12). And Jehoshaphat “ appointed singers “ (2 Chronicles 20:21). Nay, and Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and Ethan, men eminent and holy, were employed in this holy service (2 Chronicles 5:12). But why should I light a candle at noon day? Thus this harmonious service was most usual and most acceptable in the times of the law. 2. From Scripture argument. And I shall only take out one shaft out of the whole quiver. I shall use one argument among many, which is this, namely, we always find this duty of singing psalms linked to and joined with other moral duties (Psalms 95:1; Psalms 95:6; James 5:13). 3. From Scripture pattern. Moses both pens a psalm, namely, the ninetieth; and sings a holy song, and Exodus 15:1-27. is the record of it. So David tripudiates in the practice of this delightful service (Psalms 104:33). 4. From Scripture prophecy. Divers prophecies in the Old Testament concerning this ordinance in the New. So in Psalms 108:3; upon which Mollerus observes, that in that text David pours forth ardent prayers and wishes for the kingdom of Christ. And so divines observe that the first and second verses of Psa 100:1-5 are prophetical: “ Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before His presence with singing.” To which may be added that pregnant prophecy recorded in Isaiah 52:8. II. We may take notice of the sweetness of this duty. Singing is the soul’ s jubilee, our spiritual recreation, the shout of the heart, our tuning of our hallelujahs, the sweetest solace of a sanctified soul.1. Singing is the music of nature (Isaiah 44:23; Psalms 65:13). 2. Singing is the music of ordinances. Augustine reports of himself, that when he came to Milan and heard the people sing, he wept for joy. 3. Singing is the music of saints. (1) They have performed this duty in their greatest numbers (Psalms 149:2).(2) In their greatest straits (Isaiah 26:19).(3) In their greatest flight (Isaiah 42:10-11).(4) In their greatest deliverances (Isaiah 65:14.(5) In their greatest plenties. 4. Singing is the music of angels (Job 38:7; Luke 2:13). 5. Singing is the music of heaven (Revelation 15:8). III. The universal practice of this duty. It has been practised--1. By all varieties of persons. (1) By Christ and His apostles (Matthew 26:30).(2) By godly princes (2 Chronicles 29:30).(3) Worthy governors (2 Chronicles 5:12).(4) Holy prophets (Psalms 146:2. Deuteronomy 32:1-52).(5) The body of the people. As singing is not too low for kings, so not too choice for subjects. The whole multitude sometimes engaged in the harmony: “ Then Israel sang this song” (Numbers 21:17). The people’ s voice may make melody, as the lesser birds contribute to the music of the grove, their chirping notes filling up the harmony.2. In all ages. This service of singing to God was soon started in the world. Moses, the first penman of Scripture--he both sung a song and penned a psalm, as we hinted before. In the Judges’ times, Deborah and Barak sang a triumphant song (Judges 5:1-2, etc.). During the time of the kings of Judah, the Levites sang the praises of God in the sanctuary. A little before the captivity, we find the Church praising God in singing (Isaiah 35:2). In the time of the captivity, Israel did not forget the songs of Zion, though they were in Babylon (Psalms 126:2). After their return from captivity, we soon find them return to this joyous service (Nehemiah 7:1). Their long exile had not banished this duty. Towards the close of their prophet’ s prophesying, the Church is again engaged in this part of God’ s worship (Zephaniah 3:15; Zephaniah 3:17). 3. In all places. Moses praiseth God by singing in the wilderness, throughout Exodus 15:1-27. David practises this duty in the tabernacle (Psalms 47:6); Solomon in the temple (1 Kings 10:12); Jehoshaphat in the camp (2 Chronicles 20:21); Christ and His apostles in a particular chamber (Matthew 26:30); and Paul and Silas in an uncomfortable prison (Acts 16:25). We may say of singing, as the apostle speaks of prayer: “ I will,” saith he, “ that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8). 4. In all conditions. (1) In a time of cheerfulness and inward joy. The Apostle James commands us then to take the advantage of singing psalms (James 5:13). Joy may excite, must not stifle, this duty. (2) In a time of affliction. Paul and Silas sang in prison, a place of sorrow and confinement (Acts 16:25). A chain might bind their feet, but not their tongue; while others sleep, they sing, and turn their dungeon into a chapel. (3) In a time of fear. When some would press Luther with the dangers the Church was in, and what a black cloud hung over Zion, he would call for Psalms 46:1-11 to be sung; and he thought that psalm was a charm against all fears whatsoever. And since, this psalm is called “ Luther’ s psalm,” his sacred spell against invading fears. 5. By all sexes. Miriam sings a song to God, as well as Moses (Exodus 15:21). Rivet well observes, “ God is the Lord of both sexes.” Women, though they are removed by apostolical command from the desk or pulpit, yet they are not debarred the choir, to join in that harmony where God’ s praises are elevated. IV. And now we come to speak of that honour which God hath put upon this heavenly duty. And this will appear in three things; namely--1. God hath honoured this duty with glorious appearances. This we find upon record in 2 Chronicles 5:13. 2. With eminent victories (2 Chronicles 20:21-22). 3. With evident miracles (Acts 16:25-26). V. And now I come to the main case, how we may make melody in our hearts to God in singing of psalms.1. We must sing with understanding. We must not be guided by the tune, but the words, of the psalm; we must mind the matter more than the music, and consider what we sing, as well as how we sing. 2. We must sing with affection. Love is the fulfilling of this law. It is a notable saying of St. Augustine: “ It is not crying, but loving, that sounds in the ears of God.” The pretty child sings a mean song; but it delights the mother, because there is love on both sides. 3. We must sing with real grace. This the apostle admonishes us (Colossians 3:16). It is grace, not nature, sweetens the voice to sing. We must draw out our spices, our graces, in this duty. 4. We must slug with excited grace. Not only with grace habitual, but with excited and actual. The musical instrument delights not but when it is played upon. The clock must be plucked up before it can guide our time; the bird pleaseth not in her nest, but in her notes; the chimes only make music while they are going. Let us therefore beg the Spirit to “ blow upon our garden, that the spices thereof may flow out,” when we set upon this joyous service (Son 4:16). God loves active grace in duty; that the soul should be ready trimmed, when it presents itself to God in any worship. 5. We must sing with spiritual joy. Indeed, singing only makes joy articulate; it is only the turning of bullion into coin; as the prophet speaks to this purpose (Isaiah 65:14). Singing is only the triumphant gladness of a gracious heart, a softer rapture.6. We must sing with faith.7. We must sing in the Spirit.8. Purify thy heart.9. Neglect not preparatory prayer. 1. Those who despise this ordinance do not consider the holy ends of this duty; namely-- (1) Psalms are sung for instruction.(2) Psalms are sung for admonition.(3) Psalms are sung for praise and thanksgiving. 2. Nor do such consider the rare effects of this duty, namely, of singing to the Lord: and they are-- (1) Singing can sweeten a prison. Thus Paul and Silas indulcorated their bondage by this service (Acts 16:25). (2) Singing can prepare us for sufferings. When Christ was ready to be offered up, He sang an hymn with His disciples: Christ sups and sings, then dies. (3) Singing lightens and exhilarates the soul. 3. Nor do such consider the sweet allurements which draw us to this duty. And if we inquire what it is that puts us upon rejoicing in God by singing, I shall tell you-- (1) The good Spirit. That heavenly principle both leads us to this duty, and helps us in it. (2) The joyous heart. Holy singing is both the sign and vent of joy. The little child is pained, and then it cries; the saint is surprised with joy, and then it breaks out into singing. (3) A sense of obedience. To sing praises to the Lord is a duty which the saints know not how to wave or respite. I. This checks those who scruple this ordinance. Surely this must proceed from the evil one, turning himself into an angel of light. II. Let this check those who suspend and neglect this heavenly ordinance. III. This likewise checks those who formalize in this duty; who act a part, not a duty. They make a noise, and not music; and more provoke the eyes, than please the ears, of God. Bernard makes two conditions of grateful singing.1. “ We must sing purely, minding what we sing; nor must we act or think anything besides; there must be no vain or vagrant thoughts; no dissonancy between the mind and the tongue. 2. “ We must sing strenuously, not idly, not sleepily or perfunctorily.” IV. Let us get an interest in Christ. If we are not in Christ, we are certainly out of tune. The singing of a sinner is natural, like the singing of a bird. But the singing of a saint is musical, like the singing of a child. We are accepted in Christ in this offer of love. Therefore let us get into Christ: He can raise our voice in singing to a pleasing elevation. V. Let us sometimes raise our hearts in holy contemplation. Let us think of the music of the bride chamber. There shall be no cracked strings, displeasing sounds, harsh voices, nothing to abate or remit our melody; there shall be no willows to hang up our harps upon. (J. Wells, M. A.)Music in the Bible This is but one of hundreds of passages in which the inspired writers, both of the Old and the New Testaments, dwell on the sacredness of music. “ Joy and gladness shall be found therein,” says David of the redeemed Zion, “ thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.” Music is in our Lord’ s parable the fit sign of joy for the returning prodigal. “ Is any merry,” says St. James, “ let him sing psalms.” Not only the psalms which we have just been singing, but it is not too much to say that even the whole Bible rings with music. There is an heavenly music in it and an earthly music. For in the very beginning when the earth was made we are told that “ the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” And in the very beginning of the gospel also, when the gospel was revealed, there was with the herald angel “ a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill towards men.” And as music is the earliest, so is it the last glimpse we have of heaven, when, before its azure curtain was closed forever to mortal eyes, we see myriads of angels shouting Hallelujah; and “ harpers harping with their harps,” and the redeemed in their countless multitudes as with “ the sound of many waters, and as with the voice of great thunder,” “ singing the song of Moses and the Lamb.” And so, too, from first to last, there is in the Bible an abundance of earthly music. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, you have the first instruments invented by Jubal--“ the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.” In the thirty-first chapter of Genesis you have the first choir, when Laban says that he would have sent Jacob away with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp. And after that the whole Bible thrills with song. There is Miriam with her timbrels shaken over the rolling waves which have drowned the enemies of God. There are the silver trumpets of the new moons and the solemn feast days. There is David with his psalms, now sad as the wail over Saul, and Jonathan lost upon the mountains of Gilboa; now rapturous as the paeans which tell of the triumph of the Lord. There are the Levites in their white robes on the temple steps, the one choir singing aloud, “ Oh, give thanks unto the Lord,” and the other replying as with thunderous antiphone--“ for His mercy endureth forever.” The exiles march home from Babylon with rivers of music; the disciples break forth into hymns after Pentecost; our Lord and His apostles sing a hymn before that last walk under the olive trees to the Garden of Gethsemane; Paul and Silas, their backs bleeding with Roman rods, turn their prison into an edeum, and God gives them songs in the night. Even in the Epistles, as far back as these early days of Christianity, we find more than one fragment of the earliest Christian hymns. And lastly, the Apocalypse, as Milton said, “ shuts up the stately acts of its awful tragedy, and fitly concludes the whole volume of Scripture with a seven-fold chorus of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies.” (Archdeacon Farrar.)Music in nature There is, indeed, little of what can be accurately called music in nature, for music is the Divine prerogative of human and angelic beings, and nature furnishes only the rude elements of music, the uncut diamonds, as it were, of sound. We may, indeed, say that the winds of God make music under the blue dome of His temple, “ not made with hands” ; music, sweet sometimes and soft as the waving of angel wings, or weird as when it sweeps the wild moors and mingles the multitudinous murmurs of the withered heather bells, or awful as when it roars among the mountain pines. And you may say that the sea makes music; now in the ripples that flash upon the shore, and now in the bursting of its stormy billows. And you may say that the thrush and the nightingale make music, or the lark when it becomes a singing speck in the summer heaven. And so the poets have sung of the music of nature; but, my brethren, the music is not in these outward things; where they sound to us like music it is because we are “ making melody” of them in our hearts; happy for us if that melody be always “ to the Lord.” It is thus that David says, “ Praise the Lord upon earth: ye dragons, and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapours: wind and storm, fulfilling His word,” etc. Yet David knew that the music of heaven and earth was in itself deep silence. It was only the music of the cosmos, the music which the beauty and order of the universe awaken in the heart of man, and none had ever heard it, though the Jewish legend said that Moses was solely sustained by that music of the spheres when he spent those forty days upon the mount of God. (Archdeacon Farrar.)Music in the life The man who makes melody in his heart to the Lord will make it in his life. “ Making melody.” What is melody? Is it not the arrangement of notes, the sequence of the same or different sounds, so following one another as to give us pleasure? Unless there be melody in your hearts there will be no true music, neither Christmas music, nor Lenten music, nor Easter music, in your worship. Believe me, we may be able to make little music, or none at all, with our hands or our voices; but oh! what music we can make of the sweet, solemn, sacred human life of every one of us! And how beautiful is a musical life; but how many of us spoil it! “ How sour sweet music is when time is broke And no proportion kept.” So is it with the music of men’ s lives. When do we “ break the time” ? When there is no rhythm, no due order, no regulated sequence in our lives; when “ reckless youth makes rueful age” ; when we waste, squander, defile, throw away our early years, and are never able to be again what once we might have been; when we have sudden pauses and backslidings, and breaks and stoppings short in the wholesome continuity of righteous purposes and righteous actions; above all, when we sacrifice the vast future to the fleeting present; when we sell our eternity for a little hour--ah! then we ruin the melody; for we “ break the time.” And when is there “ no proportion kept” ? Is it not when some evil passion or some base desire utterly subdues and masters us, raises above the rest its dominant and screaming voice, makes of our lives a foolish and fussy egotism, or a harsh and agonizing jar? Ah! what broken music there is in the individual character of many of us. When the unruly wills and affections of sinful men snatch up in their lives each its several instrument, or when they lay their tainted and raging hands upon the sacred strings; pleasure, with its corrupt under song; pride, with its jangling cymbals; hate, with its fierce trumpet; malice, with its ear piercing fife. What horrible discord there is in the lives of the drunkard, the cheat, the gambler, the debauchee! You have all heard of that point on the strings of the violin, which, if touched, produces a harsh and grating dissonance called the wolf note. Alas! how often do we hear in our own lives, and in the lives of others, that hideous jarring wolf note--the wolf note of envy, of virulent hatred, of vile, selfish lust, from the stringed instrument of what should be a man’ s sacred life! Only, my brethren, if there be melody in your hearts to the Lord can you make life and death and the forever one grand, sweet, song. For the potentiality of music is everywhere. The heart of every one of you is a harp of God. Yield it to the music of furious passions, and it will disgust and horrify; but let it be swept by the Holy Spirit of God, and it will give forth Divine and solemn sounds. Then, lastly, for the music of life harmony is no less necessary than melody. We must learn the united chorus no less than the individual hymn. The sounds of our lives must not only be sweet in themselves, but they must be subordinated to each other. If melody be the due sequence, is not harmony the due inter-relation of sounds? the combination of different sounds uttered at the same time, but so related to each other as to give us pleasure? A self-willed musician, one who only cares to hear his own voice, one who from carelessness or from vanity will introduce his own eccentric or special variation, one whose voice is always ringing false or falling flat, does not he ruin the harmony and so spoil the chorus? Where there is not God’ s peace in the life, where selfishness rules in place of self-denial, where pride asserts itself at the expense of considerateness, where violence overleaps the barriers of law, there, for the music of life’ s sweet and solemn chorus, you have got the screeching discords of anarchy and an anticipated hell. As the hideous sounds of war break up the unity and spoil the chorus of nations, so the quarrels, hatreds, envies, selfishness of individual men, spoil God’ s choir of human society. These it is which keep us out of tune with heaven. When the breath of the Holy Spirit of God breathes through the organ of noble natures, then, indeed, the world hears music as Divine as it is rare; but when a man has nothing to offer to that high influence of the Holy Spirit of God but the “ scrannel pipes” of an individuality which he has degraded by egotism and by mean alms, then all his life becomes a lean and flashy song. There can be no harmony in ourselves, no harmony in societies where there is no melody in our individual lives. Only by self-repression, by obedience, by humility, by purity, by common sympathy, can we get that music which one day shall be when the sound of every several voice, of every several instrument in God’ s great orchestra of human communities is dominated over by the Divine keynote--shall I sadly say by the last chord of heavenly love. So, and so only, can any one of us hope to be joined to that choir, visible and invisible-- “ The noble living and th’ immortal dead. Whose music is the gladness of the world.” But we can all strive to be like Christ, and Christ is the music of the world. In Him only do music, chorus, worship find their meaning. Only in unison with Him can you hope for individual melody or for harmony. The time for perfect music, the time when these discords which we hear all around us shall cease to be in all the world--that time is not yet. We may hope that at some day it shall be. We may hope that He who died for the world will, we know not how, in some way or other, at last make life’ s broken music whole. It is the nature of evil to perish, it is the nature of good to live forever; it partakes, and it alone partakes, of God’ s eternity. (Archdeacon Farrar.)Let joy overflow in song Joy in God opens a thousand gates at once. There are gates in the heart, gates in the mind, gates in the nerves and muscles of the body, and gates in the atmosphere, which may be either open to Heaven’ s tide of sweet influence, or shut against it. Unbelief and gloom shut the gates: hope and joy open them. But the gates are very secret, and when heaven is pouring itself in, whether upon souls in their closets, or upon congregations, no one suspects how, or by what channels, the tide has come. The joy in God, of a single soul in private, may let loose a blessing that shall run round the whole earth in its mission of comfort, and carry in its glance the break of day to numberless sad hearts. In the world, the Divine life finds prose enough; but in himself, every child of God is a new Divine poem and temple of psalmody. The understanding is not able always to appreciate the melody which is made unto the Lord, in the inmost chambers of the soul. The understanding misjudges it, and calls it groaning, because it has no ear to hear the purest music of the heart. “ Blessed are they that mourn.” God joys with singing, and rests in His love, over His mourners. In the “ bitterest cry of His best beloved: “ My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” the Father hears the midnight singing in the morning to all broken hearts. (J. Pulsford.)Thomas Fuller on his voice Old Thomas Fuller, who was as noted for his quaintness as for the wisdom of his remarks, had a defective voice; but he did not refuse to praise on this account. “ Lord,” he said, “ my voice by nature is harsh and untunable, and it is vain to lavish any art to better it. Can my singing of psalms be pleasing to Thine ears, which is unpleasant to my own? Yet, though I cannot chant with the nightingale, or chirp with the blackbird, I had rather chatter with the swallow than be altogether silent. Now what my music wants in sweetness, let it have in sense. Yea, Lord, create in me a new heart, therein to make melody, and I will be contented with my old voice, until in due time, being admitted into the choir of heaven, I shall have another voice more harmonious bestowed upon me.” So let it be with us. Let us ever sing in the same spirit and in the same joy and hope. Psalm singing a gospel ordinance 1. A duty prescribed, and that is, “ singing of psalms.” 2. It is amplified, and set forth in its parts or necessary branches, outward and reward. (1) The outward part; there we have-- (a) The subject matter, “ psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” (b) The actions conversant about it-- (i) Speaking; (ii) singing.(2) The inward part, “ Making melody in your hearts to the Lord.” Doctrine: That singing of psalms is an ordinance of God’ s worship under the gospel. I. Before I come to prove it, let me observe something out of the words, to fix and state the duty. Observe that singing of psalms is made to be a fruit of being filled with the Spirit. II. Having thus stated the duty as it is here recommended to us, I shall here prove--1. That it is a clear and unquestionable duty.2. That it is a delectable duty.3. That it is a very profitable duty. It is a profitable ordinance. (1) It subdueth the lusts and passions of the flesh by diversion, or directing us to a purer and safer delight. Spiritual joy is the best cure of carnal, for we keep our joy pure, and our delights are safe and healthful. (2) It inspireth us with fortitude, courage, and constancy in wrestling for the truth; for singing of psalms is our exultation in God. (3) It is profitable, as the psalm not only holdeth forth what the word read doth, but it stayeth and fixeth the heart upon the sweet and lively meditation of what we sing. Use 1. To show us what a good God we serve, who hath made our delight a great part of our work. God is much for His people’ s pleasure and holy joy. Use 2. To show how much we overlook our profit when we deal slightly in this ordinance. It is a means, as other duties are, not a task; and a means to make our lives both holy and comfortable; therefore let us not contemn it. The same graces which are necessary for other parts of worship, which we make greater reckoning of, are necessary here also. (T. Manton, D. D.)Nature and office of sacred music I. The design of public worship may be learned from the word “ worship” itself. Good etymologists are agreed that it is composed of the noun “ worth” and the suffix “ ship,” forming worth-ship; contracted, “ worship.” The verb “ to worship,” accordingly, signifies to ascribe worth. John describes an act of worship, when he represents the elders falling down before the throne and saying, “ Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power.” Worship essentially consists of holy emotions inspired in the soul by the contemplation of God. Worship is complete when these emotions are expressed in the most natural and suitable form.1. There is in the constitution of our nature a necessity for the expression of emotion. We cannot subdue expression any more than we can subdue emotion. 2. Audible worship is enjoined. 3. We have Divine example. Jesus prayed audibly. He sang with His disciples at the Holy Supper. 4. We have example furnished by the apostles in their writings, and in the records of early Church historians, and profane writers. 5. We have the continued example of the early Church for centuries, and the unbroken observance of vocal worship by the universal Church unto this day. 6. There is, however, a reason for audible worship that is alone decisive. Without audible prayer and praise, there can be no social worship. II. What part does music perform in this worship? We have seen that worship is the expression to God of holy affections. Music is the highest form of emotional utterance, and therefore becomes a necessary instrument of worship. The child sings as naturally as it talks--it often sings before it can speak. Man everywhere has made for himself the art of song, however rude and imperfect. Religious emotion is the highest that fills the soul. Its inspiring source is the grandest, the sublimest, the only perfect, the infinite object of contemplation. Religious feeling, therefore, demands the most expressive form of utterance. The worship which consists of the speaking forth to God of oar highest and holiest affections, must have the service of song. III. Social worship is the expression to God of common affections by united worshippers, and the utterance of feeling by one to another.1. Preparation is needful to the proper employment of this part of worship. If you do not meditate upon God as He is revealed, your soul will. 2. The psalms and hymns that we sing should express correct thought and true feeling, and we should use such of these as truthfully express our own sentiments and emotions. To remedy the evil of untruthful singing, the hymn book should be made a study. 3. Sacred music should be simple and familiar. 4. All the worshippers should unite in the singing. (J. T. Duryea.)The song of the heart But whilst we believe that there is some expression of joy and praise which God peculiarly desires, and which in His Word is called “ singing,” yet we shall fall into most serious and fatal errors, unless we strictly understand what is principally meant by the term. And here our text will altogether assist us. It must, first, be an expression of joy having the heart as its source of utterance. “ Making melody in your heart,” says Paul. But this “ singing” must not only come from the heart, and a new heart too, but it must also come from a believing heart in a particular state’ s state of joy. The very term indicates the required temperament of the soul. Singing implies gladness. “ The ransomed of the Lord,” says the prophet, “ shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting icy upon their heads.” True, there are such things as dirges; but the Christian must never attempt them. His work is “ psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” But, yet further, this song of the heart must have for its constant and invariable theme its Lord and Redeemer. Music is often very varied. You will often find page after page of notes all as different and widely distinguished each from each as possible. There are a thousand chords, and runs, and combinations, and movements; and yet all are variations on one short air, included perhaps in two or three lines. Just so with your Redeemer. He must be your theme, running through all the variations of business, or pleasure, or domestic cares. But, lastly, in this song you must remember, that it is only the Spirit who can teach you either the love of spiritual music, or its true expression. “ Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.” So many tears, so many evils, so many sins around us--oh! what a place for song! Not Babel’ s stream, all lined with willows, was half so unsuitable a place as this wilderness of a world, Not they that led the chained captive of Judah from his dear home were half so unreasonable in their demand for melody, as are men who can expect songs from the sin and trouble-choked sons of Adam. How can we sing the Lord’ s song? We are in a strange land, and a land of darkness and sorrow. Yea, we ourselves are voiceless and tuneless as the dull clay itself. Sin has taken away our faculty of song, and sorrow has put us out of heart for music. What can we sing? We can mock song it is true; we can excite ourselves to an unnatural and bacchanalian imitation of melody. Paul alludes to something of this kind, when he says, “ Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be ye filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” As though he had said, “ Go to the true source of joy; drink in the spirit of song from Him who is the Lord of bliss; be filled with the Spirit; and avoid the false, excited, drunken mirth of the world. It is only music created by the fumes of wine, and doomed to expire in weeping and wailing.” What a delusion is such mere noise! What a counterfeit of the heart’ s music! We had intended to show you that this music must not be confined to the heart, though it must commence there. You must let others hear it, and be cheered by its cadence. “ Speaking to” or among “ yourselves,” says Paul, “ in psalms.” He makes his meaning still clearer in a parallel passage. “ Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Your singing must always be designed to influence others. (D. F. Jarman, M. A.) Ephesians 5:20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.Thankfulness to God I. The duty here enjoined is to give thanks. Thankfulness is such a sense of favours received from, and of obligations due to, a benefactor, as disposes us to make suitable acknowledgments and returns.1. A grateful heart retains the impression of past mercies. 2. Gratitude sees a real value in God’ s blessings. 3. A sense of our unworthiness enters into the essence of thankfulness. 4. In the exercise of gratitude, we shall improve God’ s favours to the ends for which He bestows them. 5. Gratitude delights to express its feelings and sentiments. 6. Thankfulness studies a suitable return. God’ s goodness should lead us to repentance. When favour is shown us we should learn righteousness. His mercies should persuade us to present ourselves to Him as living sacrifices. His disinterested love should awaken in us sentiments of benevolence to our fellow men. II. Consider the character of that Being to whom our thanks must be supremely directed. God is the Father of the universe, and the Giver of all the blessings which we receive, and which we behold around us.1. To Him we must give thanks; for all things are His. 2. To Him we must give thanks; for He has given us all things richly to enjoy. 3. To Him we must give thanks; for His goodness is free and disinterested. III. We are required to give thanks always to God.1. We ought to be always in a habit of thankfulness, and in a readiness for actual thanksgiving, whenever providence calls us to it. 2. Thanksgiving should find a place in all our stated addresses to God. 3. All special favours should be distinctly observed and acknowledged. 4. We should be thankful in every condition. 5. We should never cease to give thanks. IV. The matters for which we are to give thanks. “ All things.” Personal blessings. The benefits of civil society, Religious privileges. V. The medium of our access to God in this duty--“ The name of Jesus Christ.” God putteth no trust in His saints; the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much less man that is a worm; man that is a sinner! We are not worthy to speak to Him in praise for the benefits which we receive; much less to ask of Him farther benefits; least of all to receive the benefits which we ask. We are, therefore, directed not only to pray but also to give thanks in the name of Christ. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)The duty and scope of thanksgiving There are few duties which the Bible enjoins in terms of so large a requirement as the duty of thanksgiving. It must be true that to the Christian the causes of gladness always exceed the causes of melancholy; so that, in times the darkest and most adverse, the Christian has greater cause to rejoice than to be downcast. In the first place we will examine our text as enjoining thanksgiving as a duty; in the second place, as proposing “ all things,” with no exception whatsoever, as the subject matter of that thanksgiving; “ Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I. Now it cannot be necessary that we should speak at any great length on the duty of giving teases. It would seem to have been determined in every age and by every nation, that ingratitude is so execrable a thing, that to be unmindful of benefits demonstrates an unworthiness which disqualifies for all the intercourses of life. Yet, strange it is, we have the spectacle forced on us continually, of men who would blush to be thought ungrateful to their fellows, utterly unconscious that they owe anything to God, and untouched by the numberless benefits which they are every moment receiving at His hands. How are we to account for this? There are two reasons, we think, to be given for this phenomenon. The first is the practical atheism which loses sight of a first cause, and idolizes second causes; the second is the repugnance there is in our nature to the owning itself dependent. II. But the duty of thanksgiving will be yet more evident when we have to consider, in the second place, the subject matter of gratitude. We are directed by the apostle to give “ thanks for all things” ; and it were easy, and it would be a pleasing occupation, to bring before you a long and wide catalogue of benefits, and to summon you as each separate act of beneficence passed under review, to “ praise the Lord, for His mercy endureth forever.”1. Look then, first, at the small or everyday mercies. If you would apply a microscope to an everyday mercy, you might discover in it, as in the atom or the water drop, the very same demonstration of the presence of the Omnipotent, as in the surprising interposition which has marked some great crisis in your life; and, therefore, you are only giving a melancholy proof of the feebleness and short-sightedness of your nature, if you so cast up benefits under the divisions of great and small, that you think any too trivial to claim the tribute of your thanksgiving. It costs God (if we may use such an expression) the same labour to build the world as the atom, the same love to give the moment’ s breath and the empire’ s dowry; and if it be for the love shown that we render thanks, we owe, therefore, the same amount, whether the instance of mercy be rare and almost unexampled, or whether it be of daily and even momentary occurrence. Besides, it ought to be evident, on the least reflection, that the common and daily benefits of life are usually the greatest and the most valuable in their nature. Oh! it is a cold and withered heart that lies in that man’ s breast, who requires a miracle before he will recognize a mercy. Life is one perpetual miracle. But you must, I hope, be satisfied that you owe God thanks for what men count small and everyday mercies; do you not also owe Him thanks for what they count evils? If not, then you would be grateful for food, but not for medicine. But the “ giving thanks always for all things,” this it is which we would specially press upon your attention. We have comparatively no fears of your not giving thanks on great occasions and for signal mercies; what we fear is a habit of overlooking little and everyday things, and not feeling them to be cause for praise. And then, observe the concluding words of our text, “ in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our prayers and our praises must alike be presented in and through this all-prevailing name. In themselves they are weak and polluted, but purified with His merits they rise with acceptance and find favour with God. The Lord Jesus Christ is our argument in asking, and should be our incentive in thanking. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The deity of Christian thanksgiving, and the period and manner in which it is to be performed I. Let us consider the duty enjoined--thanksgiving--“ Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father.” He is the object of all religious worship, and to Him all our thanks are supremely due. I say supremely, because it is not unlawful to give thanks to others. Children should be thankful to their parents; and the poor and the needy should be thankful to them that afford them relief. For though men are but instruments, they are instruments--and they are voluntary instruments. You never thank the ox and the horse for the behests you derive from them, because you know they are destitute of knowledge and design; but men are influenced by motives, and actuated by choice; yet we are to look above them to God, who is the fountain of all good and blessedness. For, who gave these instruments their capacity? Who placed them in our way and within our reach? Who endowed them with power to help us, and inspired them with inclinations to bless us? “ He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and on the good,” “ and His paths drop fatness.” Two things must here be observed:--1. Thanksgiving is frequently confounded with praise; but they are distinguishable. We praise persons for excellency of character and conduct. We give thanks for favours received from them, and obligations we are under to them. The essence of praise is admiration; the essence of thanksgiving is gratitude. 2. And you must have observed that, when the apostle speaks of thanksgiving, he does not mean only the use of the words--“ Words are but air.” The verbal expression is nothing, unless corresponding views and feelings proceed, and corresponding actions follow it. You would not wish a man to thank you if he were senseless of his obligations. If he should commend and applaud you, and then do everything in his power to injure you and to offend you. And yet how much of this hypocrisy has God continually to meet with from His creatures, and even many professors of religion! II. How this duty is to be performed.1. It is to be done in the name of Christ. It is His intercession on our behalf that renders our supplications accepted in the Beloved, and by His much incense which purifies our hearts. Thus, as Peter says, we “ offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” And therefore, says the Apostle Paul, “ Let us offer by Him the sacrifices of God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” 2. Again, as we are to do this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, so we are to do it always. What, then, does the apostle mean when he says, “ We are to give thanks always for all things unto God and the Father.” Thanksgiving should always be found in our addresses to God. You are not to adore and praise God in His house only, but also in your own. You are not only to worship Him on the Sabbath, but during the week: indeed, the week is to show in you what the Sabbath does for you. And it is a poor devotion indeed, that does not survive the sanctuary, and that is brushed out on Monday morning along with the dust of the place. It can intend, also, nothing less than perseverance; “ Holding fast the confidence, and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end” ; not “ growing weary in well-doing,” and not becoming cold after your first fervours in religion. Now, in order that you may have this praying frame--this readiness for thanksgiving always--and feel these excitements to it, there are three things essentially necessary.1. The first is, deep self-abasement. You will always find the proud ungrateful. 2. The second is--it will be necessary for you, if you would live in this praying frame of mind, to be careful to observe and mark the loving kindnesses of the Lord. According, as David says, “ Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even he shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord.” And Mr. Flavel remarks, that “ He who observes providences shall not want providences to observe.” 3. The third is, to keep these things in remembrance; for, if they are forgotten, they can no longer sway or influence you; and therefore, says David, “ Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” First pair. You are to give thanks for natural and spiritual mercies. Second pair.--You are to thank Him for ordinary and extraordinary mercies. There are some remarkable instances of the Divine interposition in their favour, in a way of providence or of grace. These are like the red-letter days in the calendar of life. These may be considered as the masterpieces of providence, either in our protection or our deliverance: either in our support or our comfort. At the same time we must not forget that “ His mercies are new every morning,” and that “ He daily loadeth us with his benefits.” Third pair.--You are to thank God for positive and preventive mercies. From how many unknown evils as well as known, have you been preserved ever since you have had a being! Fourth pair.--You are to give thanks for public and private mercies. You are embarked in a vessel, the safety of which is your safety too. Fifth pair.--You are to bless God for personal and relative blessings. In how many lives, is your whole life bound up! There is the wife of your choice--there are the children of your love. Sixth pair.--You are to bless God for present and future mercies. The seventh and last pair.--You are to give thanks unto God for your sweet and for your bitter mercies. (W. Jay.)The duty of thanksgiving I. The substance of the duty.--“ To give thanks” ; or, rather, “ to be thankful.”1. It implies a right apprehension of, and consequently a considerate attention unto, benefits conferred. For he that is either wholly ignorant of his obligations, or mistakes them, or passes them over with a slight and superficial view, can nowise be grateful. 2. This duty requires a faithful retention of benefits in memory, and consequently frequent reflections on them. For he that is no longer affected with a benefit than it incurs the sense, and suffers not itself to be disregarded, is far from being grateful; nay, if we believe the philosopher, is ungrateful in the worst kind and highest degree. “ He that falsely denies the reception of a benefit, and he that dissembles it, and he that doth not repay it, is ingrateful; but most ingrateful of all is he that forgets it.” 3. This duty implies a due esteem and valuation of benefits; that the nature and quality, the measure and quantity, the circumstances and consequences of them be well expended; else the gratitude is like to be none, or very defective. For we commensurate our thankfulness, not so much to the intrinsic excellency of things, as to our peculiar estimations of them. In such manner ought we diligently to survey and judiciously to estimate the effects of Divine beneficence, examining every part, and descanting on every circumstance thereof: like those that contemplate some rare beauty, or some excellent picture; some commending the exact proportions, some the graceful features, some the lively colours discernible therein. There is not the least of the Divine favours, which, if we consider the condescensive tenderness, the clear intention, the undeserved frankness, the cheerful debonairity expressed therein, hath not dimensions larger than our comprehension, colours too fair, and lineaments too comely for our weak sight thoroughly to discern; requiring therefore our highest esteem and our utmost thanks. They are immense, innumerable, unconceivable, and unexpressible. But still-- 4. “ Giving thanks” imports that benefits be received with a willing mind, a hearty sense, a vehement affection. 5. This duty requires due acknowledgment of our obligation, significations of our notice, declarations of our esteem and good acceptance of favours conferred. 6. This duty requires endeavours of real compensation, and a satisfactory requital of benefits, according to the ability and opportunity of the receiver. 7. True gratitude for benefits is always attended with the esteem, veneration, and love of the benefactor. II. The object and term to which it is to be directed. To this God, to this great, to this only Benefactor of ours, we owe this most natural and easy, this most just and equal, this most sweet and pleasant duty of giving thanks. III. I proceed now to the third, the circumstance of time allotted to the performance of this duty, expressed by that universal and unlimited term, “ always.”1. Hereby is required that we do often actually meditate on, be sensible of, confess and celebrate the Divine beneficence. If God incessantly demonstrates Himself gracious unto us, we are in all reason obliged frequently to confess ourselves grateful unto Him. 2. “ Giving thanks always” may import our appointing and punctually observing certain convenient times of performing this duty; that is, of seriously meditating on, and affectionately acknowledging the Divine bounty. Instance of the Jewish sacrifice, rendered by the Greek translators, “ the continual sacrifice.” As that sacrifice, being offered constantly at a set time, was thence denominated continual, so perhaps may we, by constantly observing some fit returns of praise and thanksgiving, be said “ always to give thanks.” 3. But farther, “ giving thanks always” may import a vigilant attendance on this duty, such as men bestow on their employments, of which, though the actual prosecution ceases, yet the design continually proceeds; just as we say, such an one is writing a book, or building a house, though he may at the present time be occupied by some other employment; because his design never sleeps, and his purpose continues uninterrupted. This term “ always” necessarily implies a ready disposition or habitual inclination to give thanks, ever permanent in us; that our hearts, as David’ s was, be fixed always, that is, fittingly prepared and steadily resolved to thank and praise God. 5. Lastly: “ giving thanks always” imports that we readily embrace every opportunity of actually expressing our thankfulness: for so in some places of Scripture, what is enjoined to be done continually, is in others only required to be done on all opportunities. It is true that no time is unfavourable: every moment we receive favours, and therefore every minute we owe thanks. We should be like those trees that bear fruit (more or less) continually; but then more kindly and more abundantly when more powerfully cherished by the heavenly warmth. When any fresh, any rare, any remarkable benefit happens to us; when prosperous success attends our honest endeavours; when unexpected favours fall as it were of their own accord into our bosoms. IV. The matter.--“ For all things.”1. We are to give thanks, not only for great and notable benefits, but for the least and most ordinary favours of God: though indeed none of God’ s favours are in themselves small and inconsiderable. Men are wont to bless themselves, if they receive but a transient glance from a prince’ s eye; a smile from a great personage; any slender intimation of regard from him that is in capacity to do them good. What is it then to receive the least testimony of His goodwill, from whom alone every good thing can be expected. 2. We are to render thanks, not only for new and present benefits, but for all we have formerly, all that we may hereafter receive. 3. We should bless God, not only for new, rare, extraordinary accidents of providence, but for the common and daily benefits and indulgences thereof. 4. We should give thanks, not only for private and particular, but for public benefits also, and for such as befall others. 5. We are obliged to give thanks, not only for pleasant and prosperous occurrences of providence, but for those also which are adverse to our desire, and distasteful to our natural sense; for poverty, sickness, disgrace; for all the sorrows and troubles, the disasters and disappointments, that befall us. We are bound to pay thanks, not for our food only, but for our physic also (which, though ungrateful to our palate, is profitable for our health): we are obliged, in the school of providence, not only for the good instructions, but for the seasonable corrections also vouchsafed unto us (whereby, though our senses are offended, our manners are bettered). 6. Lastly, we are obliged to thank God, not only for corporeal and temporal benefits, but also (and that principally) for spiritual and eternal blessings. I should conclude with certain inducements persuasive to the practice of this duty. I. First, therefore, we may consider that there is no disposition whatever more deeply radicated in the original constitution of all souls endued with any kind of perception or passion, than being sensible of benefits received; being kindly affected with love and respect toward them that exhibit them; being ready with suitable expressions to acknowledge them, and to endeavour competent recompenses for them. Even the worst of men retain something of this natural inclination, and the very brute creation gives evidence of it. II. The second obligation to this duty is most just and equal; since we are in all reason indebted for what is freely given, as well as for what is lent to us: for the freeness of the giver, his not exacting security, nor expressing conditions of return, doth not diminish, but rather increase the debt: this enlarged on. III. Thirdly, this is a most sweet and delightful duty: as the performance of it proceeds from good humour and a cheerful disposition of mind, so it feeds and foments them both. Prayer reminds us of our imperfections and wants; confession of our misdeeds and bad deserts; but thanksgiving includes nothing uneasy or unpleasant, nothing but the memory and sense of exceeding goodness. Other considerations may be briefly added: viz., that this duty is of all others most acceptable to God and profitable to us, inducing Him to bestow more, and qualifying us to receive it. (I. Barrow, D. D.)The duty of giving thanks That thanksgiving to God is a great and necessary duty becoming all Christians. I. To open the duty. Here is--First: The substance, or act of it--“ Giving thanks.” Praise relateth to God’ s excellencies, thanksgiving to God’ s benefits. There is a two-fold thanksgiving.(1) By way of celebration or commemoration, when we speak of God’ s mercies one to another. (2) By way of invocation, adoration, or worship, when we express them to God Himself. Secondly: The circumstances of the duty. 1. Of time. “ Always.” How is this possible? (1) We must always have a heart prepared and disposed to give thanks. (2) We must not omit the proper occasions, but must do it frequently and constantly. (3) “ Always,” i.e., in all conditions, both in adversity and prosperity. 2. The matter for which we are to give thanks--“ For all things.” The same extent of the matter we may see in a parallel place (1 Thessalonians 5:18), “ In everything give thanks.” This universal particle comprehendeth all kinds of mercies, spiritual and temporal mercies. He that is not thankful for the smaller mercies disposeth himself to a stupid carelessness and insensibility of the greatest mercies: “ If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” (Luke 16:11.) A suspected leaky vessel we try with water first, and then with wine. Besides, they all came from the same love, the greater and smaller mercies (Psalms 136:25). Ordinary mercies are our constant diet (Psalms 68:19). Extraordinary mercies are our cordials in a fainting fit (Psalms 77:10). (4) Positive mercies and privative mercies. Freedom from all the sins and dangers we might have fallen into. Did we know how busy the devil is to hurt us, were it not for the sense of God’ s providence round about us, we would be more thankful to God. We do not know how many dangers God hath prevented. (5) We are also to give thanks for others (2 Corinthians 1:11). God’ s children rejoice in one another’ s prosperity, and are interested in one another’ s mercies, as if they were their own (Philippians 2:27). (6) Mercies in hand and mercies in hope. That argueth a strong faith, affectionately to praise God for mercies in hope as well as mercies in hand (Psalms 31:19). Abraham, when he had not a foot in the land of Canaan, built an altar and offered thank offerings to God (Genesis 13:18); so God’ s children “ rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2; 1 Peter 1:8). Though we do not simply give thanks for the evil, yet we may give thanks for the good that is mixed with them; that is to say--(1) For the mixture (Job 2:10). He taketh away opportunities of service, but it is a mercy that He continued them so long. (2) For the mitigation; it might have been worse (Ezra 9:13; Lamentations 3:39). (3) For the fruit and profit; if it be not good in itself, it turneth to good (Romans 8:28; Psalms 119:71). (4) For the final issue, that God may be glorified (1 Peter 4:14), and we rewarded (Matthew 5:12). 3. The object to whom this religious worship is to be tendered--“ To God and the Father” (so Colossians 3:17). 4. The manner or means--“ In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Why must thanksgiving be made in Christ’ s name? (1) Because there is more of God discovered in Christ than elsewhere (2 Corinthians 4:6). In creation man was made like God, but in redemption God was made like man. (2) Christ is the only Mediator to convey blessings to us and our services to God; for He is our High Priest and Intercessor. As our High Priest He procured all our mercies for us by His oblation; and by His intercession He conveyeth them to us (Hebrews 8:2). (3) He hath required this duty from us (1 Thessalonians 5:18). (4) Because all our mercies come to us as the fruit of Christ’ s death, as wrapped in His bowels, as swimming in His blood, as the fruit of His purchase. II. How necessary, profitable, and becoming Christians this duty is.1. How necessary a duty it is appeareth-- (1) By the light of nature. Ingratitude is counted an unnatural sin (2 Timothy 3:2-3). (2) By His express will revealed in the Scripture (1 Thessalonians 5:18). 2. How necessary a duty it is appeareth by the great profit that cometh of it. (1) To keep us always in a remembrance of God, and that invisible hand that teacheth out all our supplies to us. (2) The observation and acknowledgment of His benefits breedeth in us a love to God (1 John 4:19). (3) It doth encourage our hope. 3. How necessary a duty it is appeareth because it prevents many sins. (1) Hardness of heart and security in enjoying the blessings of God’ s common providence. (2) It suppresseth murmuring, or that querulous, fretting, impatient humour which venteth itself even in our prayers and complaints, and soureth all our comforts. (3) It preventeth distrust and carking cares (Philippians 4:6). (4) it cureth spiritual pride when we consider who is to be praised for all the good that is in us. They that have more than others are more indebted to grace. Use 1. Is it such a duty? Then take heed of impediments and enemies to thankfulness.(1) A proud heart.(2) A fleshly mind. Use 2. Is our thanksgiving right?(1) If the heart be brought near to God by every mercy we receive from Him (Psalms 96:8).(2) If it breed a great delight in God (Psalms 37:4).(3) If it be a cheerful, thankful obedience (Romans 12:1; John 14:15). (T. Manton, D. D.)The duty of giving thanks to God I. In the first place, I would have you notice that St. Paul speaks of giving thanks “unto God and the Father.” The person described under these two titles is of course one and the same, but the thoughts which belong to the two titles are very different; the name of God may be said chiefly to testify of power, that of Father chiefly of love; it is because God has allowed Himself to be addressed as “ our Father,” that we can draw nigh to Him with fall assurance of faith. II. Next observe, that thanks must be given to the Father “ in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This throws a remarkable light upon the nature of thanksgiving. Our natural feeling would (I think) be this, that if we came to ask any favour or mercy at the hands of God, we should rightly do so in the name of Him, through whom alone our petitions can be granted, but that the same thing would hardly hold good, if we came to pay the tribute of praise and thanksgiving to God; in asking we should feel that we needed a mediator, in giving (however small our gift might be) we should scarcely imagine that the same need existed. And yet, according to St. Paul, the need is the same in both cases; even our thanks must be offered up through Christ; we do not make God our debtor by such offerings; whether we ask or whether we pay tribute, it is we who are the gainers, and for both the one purpose and the other we need the righteousness of Christ, to make our approach to God’ s mercy seat acceptable. III. But again; St. Paul in the text gives a very wide range to thanksgiving, when he speaks of “giving thanks for all things.” All the dispensations of God should be regarded as the acts of a Father, and therefore as demanding our thanks. I know the difficulty of realizing this state of mind; a time may perhaps come, when we shall be able to look back from our place of rest upon the way by which God hath led us, and when we shall be able to see that in all its turns and twistings (so far as they were the result of God’ s leading, and not due to our own perversity), and in all its darker passages, in its roughest as well as its smoothest portions, it was indeed “ the right way,” and all demands our gratitude to Him, who led us by a way that we knew not. IV. There is one other expression in the text which deserves notice, and to which a remark applies similar to that just now made upon the expression “ all things.” St. Paul says, “ giving thanks always” ; the word “ always” is sufficiently strong and comprehensive in itself, and becomes additionally so by being joined to the words “ all things.” “ Giving thanks always for all things” is obviously as comprehensive a charge to give thanks as could possibly be devised; and I wish to remark that the peculiar force of the word “ always” seems to be this, “ under all circumstances.” St. Paul is not intending (I think) so much to enjoin an unceasing course of thanksgiving, as to warn us against allowing our thankfulness to depend upon our own state of mind, or upon the prosperity or adversity of our outward condition. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.)Common mercies The first thanks of a redeemed creature will always be for Christ. But Christian thankfulness shows itself in joyous acknowledgment of all gifts, great and small. And it finds a new call to its exercise in the fact, that the lesser gifts have their origin in the love which gave us the greatest, and came to us through that greatest Himself. The range of Christian thankfulness becomes, in this way, very wide. “ For all things” --for little mercies as well as great mercies--for the gospel first, but also for the humblest truth which enlarges the mind; for things in heaven and things on earth; for whatever is related to our growth and well-being; for the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fire which warms us, and the earth which is the bountiful food grower for us all. “ All things.” Showers and streams, flowers and trees, bird and beast and creeping things, the wide sea and the lofty hills, sunshine and starlight, light and darkness, clouds and rainbows, waxing and waning moons, seasons and days. “ For all things.” For things of discipline as well as things of nutriment, for toil and the hardness which toil works, for hunger and cold, for sickness and sorrow, for death itself, for mercy and also for judgment, for riches and also for poverty, for peaceful calm and also for purifying storm. “ For all things.” For friends and privileges and just laws and liberties; for our native land and our memories of heroic ancestors; for Christian principle and the Christian Church; for life and strength and reason; for our bodies fearfully and wonderfully made; for our place in society, our opportunities for good, our means of usefulness, our knowledge, insight, and growth; and for faith, hope, and charity in ourselves and others. I. In a country like ours, we could make no selection of common mercies in which the blessings of employment were left out. We are a nation of workers. In our offices, workshops, and studies; at our crafts, domestic duties, and professional tasks, we are all supposed to have some employment. Labour itself is a blessing. It is employment. And anyone who knows the misery of the state indicated by the words “ out of employment,” also knows the greatness of the blessing. In its results it is worse than bodily disease. It is the sure destruction of self-respect and courage. The joy of life perishes at the roots, and despair commences its evil reign. One of the directest blessings of labour is its healthiness. Other things being equal, it is the busy who are healthy. Idleness enfeebles both mind and body. Movement, activity, fulfilment of tasks--this is the law for every creature made by God. Neglect of this law is death. Another element in this blessing of work is its honourableness. Since work implies service, it is a beneficent endowment that it is honourable. And this is an attribute in all work, in work of the hand as well as work of the mind. When our Maker appointed us to labour, He made labour one of the dignities in His kingdom. A working man is one of God’ s noblemen. His queens are working women. II. The last of the mercies I undertook to set before you is home. And I will begin by naming the homeliness of home. In my home I am at ease, and free to be myself. I am neither merchant, nor student, nor craftsman, nor politician. I am simply a member of the home circle, a citizen of “ that country which every man loves.” It is a world whose courtesies are those of love. It exacts no etiquette except that which expresses the heart. How entirely it surrounds us. We are born into it, we die in it. We frequent it day and night; we are in it from infancy to old age. We rise in the morning, and find it filled with friendly faces; we retire for the night from amidst a group of the dearest we have. Every way it is a comfort to us. It is our shelter from the weather, our banqueting house, our hospital and place of rest. Next to its homeliness, in matter for thankfulness, is the seclusion of home. Above my summer hut one year was a mountain stream, which I often visited. Rising far up in the marshy hollows of the mountains, it made its way by steep and frequent plunges to the sea. Sometimes it leapt from crag to crag, brawling in a confused way over the sudden breaks of rock in its march. Sometimes it flung its waters in a mass on a lower shelf with an angry clash. At one point it came trailing down the face of the glistening rock behind; at another it tumbled and splashed in fantastic pools within its bed. But here and there, in its descent, it came to solitary spots, quiet basins of stone, where all the hasting and furious turbulence was at an end. And the stream that leapt and churned higher up, lay still as a sleeping child. What those quiet pools were to the life of that mountain stream, home is to the ordinary life we lead. The one life wrestles and leaps onward in endless unrest, the other dwells in calmness and peace. Home is a blessing so common, and we have been all our days so familiar with it, that few realize the full riches of blessing which it is in our life. But there is a blessing in our homes greater than either its seclusion, or comfort. Some of the best discipline of life is there. Home has functions which point to eternity. It is a school to instruct us in the knowledge of God. A revelation of God older than the Bible shines in the home. The parables of the fireside are as Divine as those of Christ. “ Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” As we learn the secrets of that pity in the heart of our earthly father we become acquainted with God. A mother’ s love is a Jacob’ s ladder by which we ascend to the love of God. “ As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” What surrounds us from our infancy is a vision and prophecy of God. (N. Macleod, D. D.)Praise in death James Hervey, when Dr. Stonehouse saw him for the last time, about two hours before he expired, pressed upon the doctor in the most affectionate manner his everlasting concerns, telling him “ here is no abiding place.” Stonehouse, seeing the great difficulty and pain with which he spoke, desired that he would spare himself. “ No,” said he, “ doctor, no. You tell me I have but a few moments to live. Oh let me spend them in adoring our great Redeemer … ” He then expatiated in the most striking manner upon these words of St. Paul, “ All things are yours.” He then paused a little, and with great serenity in his countenance quoted those triumphant words, “‘ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.’ There, doctor, is my cordial. What are all the cordials to the dying compared to the salvation of Christ?” In his last moments he exclaimed two or three times, “ Precious salvation!” and then, leaning his head against the side of the easy chair in which he sat, he shut his eyes and fell asleep. (Romaine.)Praise at all times Praise is the believer’ s help in his trials, and his companion after trial. Jehoshaphat’ s army sang praises before the battle. David sang praises in the cave; Daniel, when the trap was set for his life, prayed and gave thanks three times a day as usual: and Jesus, when He would raise Lazarus, first lift up His heart in thanks to the Father; and before He went to supper, first sang a hymn. So is praise also our solace after trial. Music is sweetest when heard over rivers, where the echo thereof is best rebounded by the waters; and praise for pensiveness, thanks for tears, blessing God over the floods of affliction, makes the sweetest music in the ears of heaven. (A. Fuller.)A day of thanksgiving A person being once cast upon a desolate island, spent a day in fasting and prayer for his deliverance, but no help came. It occurred to him then to keep a day of thanksgiving and praise, and he had no sooner done it than relief was brought to him. You see, as soon as he began to sing of mercy exercised, the exercise of mercy was renewed to him. The Lord heard the voice of his praise. (C. Nevins.)Varieties of praise The psalmist speaks of singing to the name of the Lord, blessing, extolling, thanksgiving, exalting. Just as the stem which is full of sap throws out many branches, so the believer who is full of a spirit of praise will give vent to it in many different forms. (P. B. Power.)The music of the Christian life Every Christian life is like a psalm. Just as in those grand old Hebrew psalms you may hear different voices; as you may hear, now the broken voice of the broken and contrite heart as it sobs out its confession of sin, and now the soft cooing as of the infant falling asleep in perfect peace upon its mother’ s bosom; just as you may hear, now the dull groan of anguish wrung from the heart almost overburdened with sorrow, and now the peal of laughter, as of one who is bounding over the mountain side, breathing God’ s pure air, and rejoicing in God’ s glad sunshine; as you may hear, now the sharp cry of pain as of a soldier who has been hit by the archers, and now the shouts of triumph rising from the throats of those who have been victors in the fight; and yet in all the psalms, running like an accompaniment, you may detect the perpetual sense of God’ s nearness and of God’ s love: so we shall not fail to find many varied experiences in the Christian life, some joyful and some painful--many voices in one psalm; and yet, if that life is what it should be, the accompaniment of every experience will be the music of a thankful heart.1. Thankfulness is the harmony of contentment and aspiration.2. Thankfulness is the harmony between the deep sense of obligation, and the joy of perfect freedom. (W. V. Robinson, B. A.) Ephesians 5:21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.Submission one to another I. In the first place, observe the necessity of the precept. Pride is the great besetting sin of our fallen nature. In our unregenerate state it rules, reigns, and tyrannises; and in our regenerate state, it still harasses, entangles, and tempts us in all we do. Some are proud of their learning, and some of their ignorance. Some are proud of their intellect, and some of their stupidity. Behold then, the necessity of the precept. What is it leads men, beloved, to that insubordination as to ranks in society, that is so very manifest in the present day? What is it leads men to pull down their superiors? What makes men behave so unsuitably to their equals? What makes men look down so on their inferiors? It is the pride of our hearts. II. But observe, secondly, there is not only a necessity for this precept, but there is an especial suitableness in it. These are addressed as servants of Christ. What a Master! Why, His whole life was one submission; it was subjection to the work and will of God. Observe, even in His intercession, in His exaltation at the right hand of God, it is according to the will of God. And let me remark this one thing more; not only was our Lord one exhibition of subjection to God His Father, but He was subject unto His parents. More than that, He was subject in a sense to His very disciples. Look into that twenty-second chapter of Luke’ s Gospel. Oh! blessed truth! may we have grace to learn it out! “ There was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And He said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.” III. Now see the extent of the precept. Many seem to say that it means submission to the “ powers that be” --those in authority, them that have the rule. But that is not the meaning of this passage; and I cannot see any reason to think so for one moment. It takes it in, certainly; it necessarily includes submission to those who are above us; to him who is our superior in age, our superior in position in the Church, our superior in gifts, or our superior in grace. It takes in submission from the wife to the husband; from the children to the parent; and from the servant to the master. But it includes more; for it includes the duty of submission on every part. It is mutual; it is universal; it not only belongs to one party, but it belongs to all; so that each one of God’ s children shall feel the solemn obligation there is for subjection to those around him. What! does this break in on the different ranks of men? By no means. Does this bring the world into confusion? Masters still remain masters; servants still remain servants. Still, the command--“ be subject to the powers that be,” “ give honour to him to whom honour is due,” is a precept for us to obey. Here, then, we have to consider the respectful and affectionate bearing ordered and enjoined by this portion of God’ s Word to all, without distinction; to those our superiors, to those our equals, and to those who we think beneath us. But observe, why is it added, “ in the fear of God” ? Is not this a motive? Is not self-consideration enough to give us a motive? This man has many infirmities, manifest infirmities; but how little do I know how much grace he receives from the Lord, hour by hour. Perhaps I should take my place at his feet, instead of placing him at my feet. How little do I know how soon he may have to bear my infirmities? How soon may he have to take up my burden! My dear hearers, yet the great motive here is, submitting “ in the fear of God.” All these things are motives; yet this motive is especially remarked--“ in the fear of God” --as under His eye; remembering, “ Thou God seest me.” (J.H. Evans, M.A.)Mutual condescension In the words observe--1. The connection or dependence; for the construction is continued from that clause, “ Be filled with the Spirit, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” The construction is the same. The Spirit’ s influence is necessary for the duties of our relations, as well as the duties of worship. 2. The substance of the duty--“ Submitting yourselves one to another.” The exhortation is to mutual submission, keeping the order set by God. 3. The manner of performance--“ In the fear of God” ; that is, so as they would approve themselves to God, who is the author of all order in every community and society of mankind; and to Him we must give an account as our proper Judge (1 Peter 1:17). That mutual condescension to one another in the duties of our places and relations doth very much become those who are filled with the Spirit.I. I shall inquire wherein this mutual condescension doth consist? I answer--It may be considered with respect to ecclesiastical, or civil, or economical power.1. With respect to ecclesiastical power, which must be determined by the nature of that community for which it serveth. 2. There is political or civil power, principally greatness and authority in the civil state. This is the Lord’ s ordinance, and must be submitted to for God’ s sake (1 Peter 2:13-14). 3. There is economical power; that of the husband, parent, master. There are duties which belong to these relations. Well, then, this submission is by discharging the duties we owe to each relation. But why is this called submission? (1) Because superiors have a debt of duty upon them, as well as inferiors, which in some cases is hard to perform. This submission on the superior’ s part lieth in the faithful and loving discharge of their duty to the meanest within their charge. The husband is to cherish the wife in all conditions, sick and well; masters to stoop to do good to the meanest of their servants, and not rule them according to passion and will; they have souls to save or lose as well as the best of the family, and therefore they are to take care of all of them, that they may serve the Lord, they and all their household; their outward condition doth no way hinder our duty to them. (2) Because this duty calleth upon us for the meanest services for the common good; as when a magistrate defendeth the poor against the mighty, and disdaineth not to appear for his meanest subjects (Job 31:34). (3) With all patience to bear their infirmities. (4) As to equals, there is a submitting ourselves one to another (Romans 12:10; Philippians 2:3). We are better acquainted with ourselves than others, we want some perfection and accomplishment God bath given to them. We ought to speak of our own gills with modesty, of theirs with charity; to be severe at home, without a jealous inquiry. (5) We are to speak to one another by way of instruction and reproof (Colossians 3:16; Leviticus 19:17), Now it is a submission to take it well. II. The graces which are necessary for this, to submit ourselves one to another. It is required that we be filled with the spirit. But I answer--1. Love, which is the cement of human society; for where love reigneth, there will be mutual service and submission (Galatians 5:13). 2. Humility, which is opposite to fastidiousness, disdain, and contempt (1 Peter 5:5). 3. “ The fear of God,” that is in the text. Now this “ in the fear of God” -- (1) Noteth the impulsive cause, that obedience to this precept floweth from this cause. It is done in conscience to His command, and then it is acceptable to God. (2) The fear of God is the rule and measure of this submission. As it influenceth, so it limiteth it (Acts 5:29). (3) The fear of God is necessary, and a great help to this duty. (a) Partly to tame that natural fierceness that is in the heart of man, that we may not refuse the yoke; as Nabal was “ such a son of Belial, that a man could not speak to him” (1 Samuel 25:17). 2. To check our pride, that we may not be ashamed to serve our neighbour in love. 3. To bridle and curb excess of power. III. I am now to prove that this is an unquestionable duty.1. It is required in Scripture (Galatians 5:13).2. I prove it by example. I shall first produce the example of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 13:3; John 13:5).3. Now I shall give you the reasons of this duty. 1. To prevent contempt. Human nature is incapable of bearing it. Whatsoever rank we are in, we should not despise others, but acknowledge the gifts of God in them. 2. Because there are none living whom God alloweth only to live to themselves. We are all bound to promote the common good. 3. Submitting ourselves to one another is required for a supply of mutual necessities. We lack something that the meanest have; if they have strength for labour, others have wisdom and conduct for government. There must be a contemperation; if some are fitted to serve, those that have wealth should bless God that He hath put them into such an able condition to hire their service; if some have wisdom to contrive, others have elocution to recommend a good design; both must serve one another in love. 4. Because of equality; the equity of this mutual submission is built upon a double equality. 1. The actual equality of all men by nature.2. The possible equality in the course of God’ s providence. 1. To show how much the Christian religion befriendeth human societies; for we owe duties one to another in our several stations. It is neither injurious to princes nor subjects, but it commandeth everyone to do good according to his calling. 2. Where the fear of God is rooted in the heart of any, it will make him tender and careful of his duty to man, and from a right principle and motive, and in a right manner, and to a right end. (T. Manton, D. D.)Submission for a common cause When a Scottish chieftain desired to summon his clan, upon any emergency, he slew a goat, and making a cress of any light wood, seared its extremities in the fire, and extinguished them in the blood of the animal. This was called the “ Fiery Cross,” or the “ Cross of Shame,” because disobedience to what the symbol implied inferred infamy. It was delivered to a swift and trusty messenger, who ran full speed with it to the next hamlet, where he presented it to the principal person, with a single word, implying the place of rendezvous. He who received the symbol was bound to send it forward, with equal despatch, to the next village; and thus it passed with incredible celerity through all the district which owed allegiance to the chief. At sight of the Fiery Cross every man capable of bearing arms was obliged instantly to repair to the place of rendezvous. He who failed to appear suffered the extremities of fire and sword, as indicated by the bloody and burnt marks upon this warlike signal. (Sir Walter Scott.) Ephesians 5:22-24 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.Relation of husband and wife 1.For the duly--“ Submit yourselves.” Subjection in the general on God’ s part noteth the subordination of one creature to another according to His wise disposal, as the imperfect to the more perfect, and this for the good of both; for it is so ordered, that in all relations comfort and duty shall go together. On our part it is a ready inclination to obey this order set by God; for every creature must know his place, and be content with the order wherein God hath set him. According to this order, submission is required of the wife towards her husband; though she is not to be subject as children to their parents, much less as servants to their masters. 2. The persons--“ To your own husbands.” 3. The manner how it is to be done--“ As unto the Lord,” i.e., Christ. (1) The regulation of the duty; it must be clone willingly and sincerely, resembling that submission which is performed to Christ, whose image, in His government over the Church, the husband beareth in his superiority over the wife. (2) It may import the enforcement, the reason and motive of this duty, because Christ hath commanded it; and by virtue of the law of Christ all wives must be subject to their husbands; which doth not disannul, but confirm God’ s institution, for His precepts are not privative, but accumulative. (3) “ As unto the Lord” implieth a limitation; this subjection must be in all things which belong to the lawful authority and superiority of the husband; or so it seemeth to be expressed: “ Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord” (Colossians 3:18). (4) It importeth Christ’ s acceptance of this duty. He interpreteth this subjection and obedience as given to Himself, and the contrary as rebellion against Himself; for it is service done to Christ: which may give the woman comfort against all unkindnesses, and unthankful returns from her husband. That wives must reckon it their unquestionable duty to be subject to their husbands. Let me show you--(1) Wherein this subjection consisteth.(2) The reasons and grounds of it. I. Wherein it consisteth. To speak briefly of it, this subjection lieth in two things--in reverence and obedience.1. In reverence, which is both inward and outward. (1) The inward, in a due esteem of the husband, which is the ground of all love and submission. So it is said, “ Let the woman reverence her husband” (Ephesians 5:33). If for nothing else, yet in a humble acknowledgment of his right by God’ s ordinance; for esteem is not only due to personal qualifications, but to the eminent dignity wherein God hath placed any creature with whom we have commerce; and if we cannot acknowledge them for any worth in them, yet we must acknowledge God in them, who hath put His image of superiority upon them, that we may the better discharge our duties to them. (2) Outward reverence is both in word and deed. 2. Obedience: that is showed in many things. (1) in studying to please rather than to be pleased; for the apostle telleth us that “ she that is married eateth for the things of this world, that she may please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:34). (2) By fulfilling his commands in all things lawful, and not contrary to her duty to God (Titus 2:5). (3) By submitting her will to her husband’ s content, and her desires to his approbation and allowance (Genesis 3:16). (4) In patience under his rebukes. So the apostle (1 Timothy 2:12). Meekness and quietness is chiefly exercised in bridling our passions, when anything falleth out cross and contrary to our desires and expectations, and we eschew all needless contradiction and expressions of malcontentedness. Now this is not only gaining upon the husband, but is very acceptable to God, who delighteth in the graces He hath wrought in His own people. But now, on the contrary, a humorous moroseness and impatiency is very displeasing unto God and man, and destructive of family society (Proverbs 13:19). (5) By being a comfort and a help to him (Genesis 2:18). The woman is to be a help, not a hindrance; not the governor, for the right is originally in the man, but a help in government, to ease him in part of his burden and cares; a help every way, for the comfort of society, for assistance in governing the family. II. The grounds and reasons.1. The law of nature written by God’ s own finger in the hearts of men. We read of those who were heathens, that they enacted a law and decree: “ That every man should bear rule in his own house; and that all the women should give honour to the husband, both great and small” (Esther 1:20; Esther 1:22). Indeed, both anciently and to this very day, great is the power of the husbands over their wives in Persia. Now, shall heathens see that which Christians do not? 2. God’ s ordination, which a holy heart dareth not disobey. Now, God hath expressly commanded it in His word in the text (so Colossians 3:18). 3. The natural imperfection of the woman. The apostle calleth her “ the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7). Abilities of mind are not ordinarily so strong in her as in the man; and they have fewer opportunities than man hath for perfecting their natural parts; and they are not so able to provide for themselves, modesty not permitting them to go up and down in the world. 4. The manner and order of the creation. The woman was made after man, out of man, and for man. God formed man first, and then the woman out of him, and for man’ s good (see 1 Timothy 2:13; 1 Corinthians 11:8-9). 5. From the woman’ s being first in the transgression; for this is a part of the sentence: “ He shall bear rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16). 6. The inconveniences that would ensue if this subjection were taken away. There must be order in every society, without which there followeth division, and thereupon confusion; and a house divided cannot stand. Use 1. Is reproof to several sorts.1. Of all those frothy and profane wits who scoff at women’ s subjection, and make it a matter of unsavoury mirth. See how misbecoming Christians this is, partly as it is a duty required by God. 2. It reproveth those that dispute against it by manifold cavils; but no reasoning must be allowed against a plain and known duty. Therefore, to prevent these disputes, let me lay down two conclusions-- (1) On the wife’ s part; no privilege of birth, parts, breeding, can exempt her from it. (2) On the husband’ s part; no personal infirmity, no froward nature, no error in religion (1 Corinthians 7:13), deprives him of it. 3. It reproveth them that have no reason to allege but their own imperious and peevish humour causeth them to live discontentedly and disobediently in this relation. 4. It reproveth those husbands that by their own default lose their authority and dignity, and are themselves causes that their own power is lessened and diminished, either by their intemperance, behaving themselves as beasts rather than men, that they are altogether unfit to judge what is meet and good for the family. It is true the husband is to govern, not by fear, but by love. He is the image of Christ in governing His Church, and the wife is not a slave, but a meet help; but this love should not be a snare to him. And it is true the wife should not be despised, for God saith to Abraham, “ Hearken to the voice of Sarah.” But there is a difference between hearkening to good counsel, and swallowing a temptation, and being driven to evil by the woman’ s imperiousness. Use 2. Is to exhort wives to submit to their own husbands.1. The impediments. (1) Pride.(2) A defect of true love.(3) Affectation of vanity.(4) Want of self-denial. 2. Motives. (1) It is easier and safer to obey than to prescribe and direct, and more felicity is found in obedience than in commands; and in the event it is found more safe; as Zipporah, by obeying her husband in circumcising the child, saved his life (Exodus 4:26). (2) It is better to give the husband occasion of thanksgiving than of complaining (James 5:9). (3) Your own peace, that your “ prayers may not be interrupted” (1 Peter 3:7). (4) Honour to God. (a) It takes away the reproach of the gospel: “ Obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus 2:5). That Christian religion may not be thought to impose anything contrary to moral virtues. (b) That gainsayers may be won to God: “ Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives” (1 Peter 3:1). (T. Manton, D. D.)A wife’ s obedience Mary, wife of Prince William of Orange, and the heir-apparent to the English throne, was asked what her husband the Prince should be if she became Queen. She called in her husband, and she promised him he should always bear rule; and she asked only that he would obey the command of, “ Husbands, love your wives,” as she should do that, “ Wives, be obedient to your husbands in all things.” (Little’s Historical Lights.)The terms “ husband “ and “ wife” defined Did you ever hear the word “ husband” explained? It means literally “ the band of the house,” the support of it, the person who keeps it together, as a band keeps together a sheaf of corn. There are many married men who are not husbands, because they are not the band of the house. Truly, in many cases, the wife is the husband; far oftentimes it is she who, by her prudence, and thrift, and economy, keeps the house together. The married man who, by his dissolute habits, strips his house of all comfort, is not a husband; in a legal sense he is, but in no other; for he is not a house-band; instead of keeping things together, he scatters them among the pawnbrokers. And now let us see whether the word “ wife” has not a lesson too. It literally means a weaver. The wife is the person who weaves. Before our great cotton and cloth factories arose, one of the principal employments in every house was the fabrication of clothing: every family made its own. The wool was spun into thread by the girls, who were therefore called spinsters; the thread was woven into cloth by their mother, who accordingly was called the weaver, or the wife: and another remnant of this old truth we discover in the word “ heirloom,” applied to any old piece of furniture which has come down to us from our ancestors, and which, though it may be a chair or bed, shows that a loom was once a most important article in every house. Thus the word “ wife” means weaver; and, as Trench well remarks, “ in the word itself is wrapped up a hint of earnest, indoor, stay-at-home occupations, as being fitted for her who bears this name.” (Anon.)The submission of the Christian wife I. Jesus is the head of His Church.1. But observe, He is also her governing Head. He has the sole guidance, and direction, and control of her. 2. But He is also her protecting Head. II. The submission which the Church is enjoined to give to her Head, is the pattern of the subjection which Christian wives are commanded to give their husbands. But what is the nature of the subjection? I know it has its basis in affection; but yet it goes beyond that; it has its basis in the principle of allegiance. The Church owes Christ its allegiance. He is her rightful Lord.2. But observe, it is the submission of dependency. The Church is essentially dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, then, is the true principle of that subjection, that submission which the Lord enjoins on every Christian wife: to rely upon, and to confide in, the power, wisdom, and love of her husband. To receive from him that which supplies her family with all things needful; and to receive it meekly from him too. To seek her happiness in his smile and in his presence; and to mourn for his absence, and to long for his appearing. To go to him for counsel in difficulties; to give up her own pleasures, and yield up her own will. III. The extent and limit of this subjection--“ In everything.” Not in some things, but in all things; “ in everything.” Some of you may say, beloved sisters in Jesus--“ In things pleasant I find it not difficult.” Yes, but in things painful. Some of you may say, “ In great things I would yield.” Yes, but subjection in little things; in little things; in “ everything.” You may say, “ When we are alone together, I dare not refuse; but suppose it is in public, then my will goes another way.” In public you are commanded to submit. “ Yes,” but you may say, “ in things that relate to himself of course I submit; but in things that relate to myself, of course I may act for myself.” For yourself? “ In everything,” even as regards yourselves. Yet there is a limit. Is there not a limit? Yes, blessed be God, there is a limit in the very text before us. Observe the twenty-second verse: “ as unto the Lord” ; no further. Act up to it, but go not beyond it. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Duties enjoined upon the wife I. Subjection. Look at--1. The creation--woman was made after, out of, and for, man.2. The Fall--the woman occasioned it.3. The history of woman. Does not everything point to her subordination? II. Reverence.1. In words--speaking of, to, or before her husband.2. In actions. III. Meekness. IV. Modesty--not adorning herself with dress. V. Economy and order in household management--freedom from extravagance. VI. Attention to all that concerns the welfare and comfort of the children, if there be any. For this purpose she must be a keeper at home. (J. A. James.)Reason for the wife’ s subjection to the husband The words contain a reason of the foregoing precept, both of the matter and manner of the duty. Why subject to their “ own husbands” ? Why “ as unto the Lord” ? The reason is taken from the resemblance which the husband carrieth in family government to Christ. In them observe three things--(1) What the husband is to the wife.(2) What Christ is to the Church.(3) The resemblance between the one and the other--“ Even as Christ.” There is a similitude, though not an exact equality in the case. In handling of this Scripture we must first speak of Christ’ s relation to His Church, and then of the husband’ s relation to the wife; for first we must consider the pattern before we can state the resemblance. That Jesus Christ is the Church’ s Head.1. Oneness of nature between Him and the Church; for head and members suit. The Church hath such a Head as carrieth conformity with the rest of the members. He and we have one flesh; and so the Godhead, that was at such a distance from us, is brought down in our nature that it might be nearer at hand, and within the reach of our commerce. 2. It implieth an eminency; for the head is the most eminent part of the body. As it is the noblest, so nature hath placed it nearest heaven. The very situation doth in a manner oblige the other parts to show their reverence. So Christ is the Head of She Church, infinitely of much more worth than the Church, as being the only-begotten Son of God. 3. The head is the most illustrious throne of the soul; not only the seat of nerves and senses, but of the memory and understanding: so there is in Christ a fulness of perfection, enabling Him to do all the duties of a Head to such a great and necessitous body as the Church is (Colossians 2:3). 4. It implies authority and power to govern. His excellency giveth Him fitness, but authority, right to rule and govern the Church; to appoint officers, and to make laws that shall universally bind all His people (Matthew 28:18-19). 5. It implies strict union between Him and the Church, such as is between the head and members in the natural body; which union is brought about externally by confederation, or visible owning the covenant, and professing faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. 6. Thence there resulteth a communication of influences. 7. It implies sympathy with His members; there is none of them hurt but it redoundeth to Him (Acts 9:6). Use 1. If Christ be Head of the Church--(1) Then there is no other that can usurp and take this honour upon him. (2) None can be a political governing head to the Church universal but He who is a Mediatorial Head, of vital influence to them. (3) A ministerial, universal head, that shall give law to all other churches and Christian societies; and if they depend not on Him, shall be excluded from the privileges of a Christian Church. Use 2. Let us make conscience of those duties which this relation bindeth us unto; for if Christ be our Head, we must subject ourselves to Him, and live by His laws. Use 3. Is comfort to those that are in so near a relation to Christ. He is not only a governing Head, but a quickening Head; giveth life, and strength, and growth (Ephesians 1:22). II. I come now to handle the second title, “ He is the saviour of the body.” He must do the part of a Saviour as well as a Head; and His dominion over the Church is exercised in procuring her good and salvation. Here I shall show you--(1) The nature of this salvation;(2) The manner, or the several ways by which Christ doth accomplish it. First: The nature of it will be known by several distinctions.1. The notion of a saviour is doubly applied--First, to him that preserveth that which is already made, that it may not perish and return into nothing, or to him that recovereth a thing that is lost out of a state of perdition. 2. That salvation is positive and privative. 3. Salvation is either temporal or eternal. (1) Temporal salvation, when we are saved from the dangers incident to the present life. In this notion it is taken, 1 Peter 3:20. (2) However we have a better salvation to wait for besides the mercies of daily providence, even the enjoyment of God and Christ to all eternity; this is salvation, and this is blessedness. This is the end of our faith (1 Peter 1:5). Better we had never been born if we have not an interest in this salvation. 4. Eternal salvation is either begun or consummate. Salvation begun is attributed to the grace vouchsafed to us in this life; as the grace of justification or sanctification. 5. There is a typical saviour and a real Saviour. The people of God of old were mostly acquainted with the typical salvation. 6. There are some inferior helps or subordinate instruments which are called saviours; but the Saviour, or the original author of all salvation, is Christ. Secondly: The manner, or the ways and means by which Christ doth accomplish it.1. By way of satisfaction, because He sayeth us from the guilt of sin, the curse of the law, and the eternal wrath of God, which are the lets and hindrances of our salvation, and could not otherwise be removed by us. So we are said to be saved by His blood (Romans 5:9). 2. By His merit, because He procureth to us the favour of God, and a right to all those blessings which are bestowed on the children of God. 3. By way of efficacy and power, because by His Spirit He doth effect and work in us all those things which belong to salvation. Use 1. Let us come to Christ for salvation if He be a Saviour; for this is His office. All men would be saved, why then is there no more resort and recourse to Christ?2. Let us believe the truth of this salvation, and how worthy it is of our deepest thoughts (1 Timothy 1:15). 3. Embrace this salvation in Christ’ s own way, and upon His own terms. 4. Leave not this way till you have the evidence in yourselves (1 John 5:8; 1 John 5:10). (T. Manton, D. D.)The supreme authority of Christ I. As the Head, Christ is the life of the Church. Head and heart are essential to life of body--latter, blood centre; former, nerve centre. The mere animal life is connected with the heart; but all belonging to higher life depends on head. Paralyze the brain, and all the characteristic features of the life of man fail. Illustrate by the old manner of execution, severing head from body. To keep the head is to keep life; to lose the head is to lose life.1. This is true of each individual member of the Church. No life as a mere member; no life save as he comes into relation to the head. 2. It is true of the united life of the Church. The harmony that is in the body is only secured through the common share in the life of the Head. II. As the Head, Christ is the guide of the Church. III. As the Head, Christ bears the rule in His Church. He alone has the right to make laws for us; and He alone has the right, the power, to preside over their execution. (The Weekly Pulpit.)The greatness of Christ The greatness which the apostle commends to Christian wives, is expressly the greatness of Christ. It is His glory and joy to be subject to the Father. “ I came down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of Him that sent Me.” “ I do always those things which please Him.” There is nothing servile in the meek subjection of a wife to her own husband. The very contrary: it is her crown of beauty. She is counselled to clothe herself with the dignity of Jesus. Moreover, the woman who has married wisely, and who respects her own marriage, puts on authority and walks in freedom, just in proportion as she is subject to her husband. The body can in no other way walk in power and freedom, than by being subject to its own head. The earth is beautiful so long as she is directly subject to her own sun. She no sooner enters upon the path of independence than she becomes cold and gloomy. The more complete her subjection, the greater is her freedom, and the more she sings and rejoices. In like manner, wives will find that subjection to their own husbands is the very law of their freedom and joy. Not only the wife’ s reverence, but her love, for her husband, inclines her in this direction. Wherein a wife hesitates to be subject to her husband, she must lose the sense that she is his wife. By an independent course of action, she virtually separates herself, asserts her self-sufficiency, and ceases to respect her wifehood. If she only knew it, the path of subjection, appointed of God for the Christian wife, is an inestimable opportunity and privilege. Therein she will find the most favorable condition possible, for the growth and development of her eternal beauty. On no account let her look upon subjection to her husband as having its end in time. It is a sacred thing. The root of it is in Christ, the flower thereof is in eternity. The hidden wisdom, and the love and beauty of God are being embodied in her daily meekness. “ The Lord lifteth up the meek.” “ He will beautify the meek with salvation.” Home is the wife’ s empire, and she is exhorted to reign there, not after a vulgar or worldly manner, but after a heavenly manner. Her free and loving subjection is a perennial means of grace. She renders it indeed to her husband, but “ as unto the Lord.” Many fair appearances are deceitful; but the beautiful deportment of a Christian wife is even more beautiful within than without. Jesus hides Himself under the veil of her quiet habit. By her own obedience she rules her household. There is an air of majesty about her. Steadfast in piety, and self-possessed, an atmosphere of unknown power encircles her. Her husband may, or may not, appreciate her sovereign humility. The Lord notes it. In His sight it is an ornament of great price. It is fragrant to the angels. Her thousand private acts, lost to common observation, are written in heaven. Many an excellent wife, buried in deepest obscurity, and withal, sorely tried, is yet sweetly fulfilling her course. Her fair monument, all unknown to herself, is being built in the presence of the Lord. Pure-hearted woman! she will do her husband nothing but “ good all the days of her life.” He may “ safely trust in her,” as in the quicker soul of his soul, the secret heart of his heart. (J. Pulsford.)The manner of wifely subjection Here the apostle inferreth the conclusion from the foregoing argument. In the proposal of this conclusion two things are considerable--1. The manner how this subjection is to be performed--“ As the Church is subject to Christ.” 2. The extent; unlimited, “ In everything” : that is, in everything that is lawful and belonging to her duty. 1. Let us state the nature of the subjection of the Church of Christ.2. Give the reasons of it. In stating the subjection to Christ we must consider-- (1) The foundation;(2) The nature;(3) The properties of it. First: The foundation is Christ’ s authority. The primitive sovereign is God; the sovereign by derivation is Christ the Mediator, in His manhood united to the second person in the Godhead. He is Lord, not as Creator but Redeemer, which kind of authority accrueth to Him by His own merit and purchase (Romans 14:9). Concerning it observe two things--1. It is superadded to the former sovereignty and dominion, which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had as Creator. This new dominion and sovereignty is not destructive Of the former, but accumulative. 2. This authority and dominion which the Redeemer is possessed of is comfortable and beneficial to us; and the end and effect of it was our cure and recovery. Secondly:--The nature of this subjection. It consisteth of two things-- (1) Our willing and hearty consent to become subjects to Christ;(2) Our actual obedience to His commands. Thirdly: The properties of this subjection and obedience.1. It is a willing subjection and obedience: “ Thy people shall be a willing people in the day of Thy power” (Psalms 110:3). They voluntarily submit themselves to the Son of God as their Prophet, Lord, and Sovereign. 2. It is a thankful subjection and obedience. The design of God in the work of redemption was to lay a foundation of the highest thankfulness; therefore the obedience to our Redeemer must be a thankful obedience. A mere law, as a law, requireth obedience; but a benefit, as a benefit, requireth thankfulness. Join both notions together, and then you will see it is a thankful obedience we are called unto. 3. This subjection must be constant unto the death (Revelation 2:10). 4. Our subjection must be dutiful, and with great reverence. 5. Our subjection must be universal and unlimited, having respect to all His commandments (Psalms 119:6 and Colossians 4:12). It is not enough to do some things required by Christ, but the Church must be regulated by Him in all things. If we would be contented with a little of Christ, we should soon despatch our business. The world will yield to a little of Christ; they will prize His name when they neglect His office; they will embrace the outward form of His religion when they hate the power: they will value and esteem and desire His benefits, but they despise His laws; they will attend upon external duties, but neglect private or inward acts of grace; they will seem to acknowledge the general duties, but as to particulars questioned or assaulted in the age they live in, they desire to be excused; but a gracious heart reverenceth everything that carrieth the stamp of Christ upon it, and in everything desires to submit to Him. II. I shall give the reasons of it; though they be evident already in stating the nature of this subjection, yet I shall add more.1. Because obedience is the best impression or stamp of our religion upon us. 2. This obedience is the qualification of those that, shall have benefit by Christ. That is evident in the same chapter: “ He is the Author of eternal salvation to those that obey Him” (verse 9). On the contrary, vengeance is threatened on those “ that obey not the gospel” (2 Thessalonians 1:8).1. Consider whom it is we call you to obey: Jesus Christ, who-- (1) Hath sovereign authority to command, as He gave good evidence in the days of His flesh: for the whole course of nature obeyed Him (Matthew 8:27). (2) This Jesus is your Saviour, and shall He not be your Lord? (3) It is Christ who hath set us so perfect a copy, and first obeyed Himself, and put His own neck under the yoke, that we might obey Him the more patiently. 2. Consider wherein we are to obey Him; in things just and equal. He only lays necessary laws upon us. 3. Consider why this obedience is required. Christ doth not rule us for our hurt and ruin, but for our conduct. His conduct and government is to lead us to eternal life, and when you disobey Him, you forsake your own happiness. Use 1. To persuade the people of God to live in a more perfect and exact obedience to His will.1. It is more perfidious for you to disobey Him, that have given up yourselves by a serious covenant made with God, renouncing sin, and devoting yourselves to the will of God (1 Peter 1:14). 2. You have received the sanctifying Spirit, and begun this work (1 Peter 1:22). Others offer violence to their duty, but you to your nature. 3. You make a profession of being in relation to Christ as your Lord, and therefore you should live in a strict obedience to His holy will (Luke 6:46). 4. You know what the will of God is more than others, and therefore, if you disobey it, you will be beaten with many stripes (Luke 12:47). 5. You have found Him a Saviour; and therefore you should not stick to obey Him as a Lord. We have seen the pattern; Christ the pattern of the husband’ s preeminence, the Church the pattern of the wife’ s subjection. Now it is easy to accommodate these things. First: The husband is the head of the wife.1. As the head is more eminent than the rest of the members Of the body, so there is an eminency and superiority in the husband because of his sex! “ The head of the woman is the man, and the Head of the man is Christ, and the Head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3). Man is superior in dignity and authority, as the head is above the body. 2. As the head hath power over the body to rule it and direct it, so it noteth his authority and power of government. 3. As the head is the seat of the senses and understanding, so the husband should be furnished with some complete measure of knowledge and prudence (1 Peter 3:7). Use 2. Direction to husbands.1. They ought to resemble Christ, whose image they bear-- (1) In other things as well as in point of superiority; holiness, self-denial, love, and all sorts of duty. (2) In using and employing their dignity and power suitable to the ends of their relation. Christ, that is the Head of the Church, is also the Saviour of the body. 2. If the husband, by being the head of the wife, bear Christ’ s image, then this image must not be defaced nor despised. (1) Not be defaced by the husband by impertinent commands. If they would have that submission and respect from inferiors, they must carry their government prudently and lovingly. Then it is most a similitude of Christ’ s authority over the Church; Christ doth not burden His Church with needless laws. (2) Not despised by the woman. All superiors have a piece of the image of Christ put upon them, therefore they must not be contemned by their inferiors, lest thereby they despise and contemn the image of God. If Jacob could say, “ I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me” (Genesis 33:10); he saw God in His kindness and reconciliation; so here. Secondly: The wife’ s subjection--“ As the Church is subject to Christ.” Where observe the manner--(1) Negatively, not merely for their own ease, peace, and credit, but in conscience of and respect to that dignity God hath put on her husband. He bath placed him above her. (2) Positively. 1. A righteous subjection, not a slavish.2. A willing subjection, not grudging.3. A dutiful subjection. (T. Manton, D. D.) Ephesians 5:25-27 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church.The love of Jesus for His Church I. The chosen Church, the object of the Saviour’ s love.1. Observe what this Church was by nature. Sinful. 2. Nay, more, this Church of Christ is made up of persons who are actually defiled by their own transgressions. 3. The kind of love which Jesus bestows on His Church is that of a husband. (1) Special.(2) Constant.(3) A husband loves his wife with a hearty love, with a love that is true and intense. It is not mere lip service. II. The work which love seeks to accomplish in its gracious designs. Since the Church is not fit for Christ by nature, He resolved to make her so by grace. When the text says, “ He gave Himself for it that He might sanctify and cleanse it,” is there not allusion here to the double cure of sin? But what is the outward instrumentality which Christ uses? The text says, “ With the washing of water by the Word.” The Word of God has a cleansing influence. III. The loved one as she is perfected. “ Glorious.” What must a glorious Church be? There is one lamp; well, that is very bright, very pleasing: you like to have it in your room; but think of all London illuminated to the very top of the cross of St. Paul’ s, and what an idea you then have of brightness. Now, one glorified Christian is a lamp. Think, then, of all heaven, with its domes of glory lit up with ten thousand times ten thousand companies of blood-bought spirits, whom Jesus Christ has taken up--a glorious Church! One flower is very sweet. I smell its perfume. But I walk into some vast conservatories, into some gentleman’ s garden, acres in extent, and there are beds of flowers, the blue, and scarlet, and yellow. I see the verbena, the calceolaria, and the geranium and many others, all in order, and in ranks. Oh, how glorious is this! Those undulating lawns, those well-trimmed hedges, those trees so daintily kept, all growing in such luxuriance. One flower is sweet, but a garden! a garden! who can tell how sweet this is! So, one glorified saint is one of God’ s flowers, but a glorious Church is Christ’ s garden. A drop of water may be very precious to a thirsty tongue, but a river full of it! Children are pleased, when for the first time in their lives they sail across some little lake, but how surprised they are when they come to the deep and rolling sea, which seems without shore or bottom. Well, so pleased am I at the very thought of the glorious Church. But do observe what is said of her. She is to be “ without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” “ Without spot” --that is much; but you see spots can be taken off. The face is washed, and the spot comes out. The garment is thoroughly cleansed, and there are some chemicals and acids applied, and the spots can be got out. IV. And lastly, the loved one is to be presented. It is said, He is “ to present her to Himself.” Every day Christ presents His people to His Father in His intercession. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Christ’ s love for the Church I. In stating and defining this love, I will take notice--1. Of the general nature of it.2. The degree.3. The effects. First: The general nature of love is the delectation and complacency of the heart in the party loved, from whence followeth a desire of their good, and a seeking and promoting of it to the uttermost of our power. So the husband must love the wife, that his heart may cleave to her, and take delight in her; as it is said: “ The young man had a delight in Jacob’ s daughter” (Genesis 34:19). Secondly: The degree.1. There is a common love which belongeth to believers of either sex, as brothers and sisters in Christ (John 13:34). 2. It is alone, which in some respects exceedeth that we owe to our parents and other near relations (Genesis 2:24). 3. It carrieth it higher yet. They ought to “ love their wives as their own bodies; for he that loveth his wife, loveth himself” (Ephesians 5:28). 4. As Christ loved the Church. The husband for his pattern of conjugal love is referred to Christ, partly for the degree of his love, and partly for the kind of it. Thirdly: The effects of it.1. Delight in her presence and company; not suffering himself to be separated from her for any long time, unless it be for necessary cause. Those that find more pleasure in converse abroad than at home certainly do not heartily love one another, though no filthy and prohibited act should ensue from this liberty which they take. 2. The second act or effect of love is, to direct and instruct in all things that belong to this life and a better, for therefore he is called “ a head” ; and the office of the head is to guide the body. 3. In providing all things necessary for them that conduce to health, food, and raiment, and that according to the decency and decorum of their estate; for herein they imitate the care and providence of Christ, who hath provided all things for His spouse; food for their souls, garments of salvation to cover their nakedness, healing grace to cure their distempers. So must the husband do for his wife. 4. In a care to preserve and defend her. As Abraham of Sarah (Genesis 20:1-18). II. Let us now see by what reasons this is enforced.1. The order of the creation. We pleaded that before for the woman’ s submission, that she was made out of man, after man, and for man. We plead the same argument now for the husband’ s duty of love to her; for the apostle urgeth this in the same chapter (1 Corinthians 11:11-12). 2. It is a relation of love, instituted by God for that very end and purpose. 3. Reason will tell us how much the husband is bound to love her that hath in a manner forsaken all the world, father, and mother, and all her relations, to cleave to her husband, and to share with him in all conditions until death, although she were free before the contract. Surely common gratitude will suggest that a recompense of true affection is due to her for this; otherwise men are unthankful, unholy, and without natural affection, which is the worst character can be given to them. 4. The interest and comfort of the married estate will also persuade it. While love is kept up, all things go on sweetly; but as soon as love faileth, presently everything is out of order and out of joint; for when once they begin to disaffect the persons of each other, all matrimonial duties are stabbed at the heart. Use 1. To reprove that which is contrary to this love, bitterness and harshness of carriage: “ Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter to them” (Colossians 3:19). The gall was taken out of the sacrifices offered to Juno, as Plutarch witnesseth. This is seen--1. Partly in a froward disposition, when men are offended for light causes or small provocations, and, like fine glasses, broken as soon as touched. 2. In sharp words and contumelious language, which leaveth such a grudge and such averseness in the mind as is not easily forgiven. Certainly such bitter speeches must needs destroy all love and breed an unquiet life. 3. Churlish deeds also show this bitterness. (1) When the husband taketh from her all command in the family, handling her rather like a slave than a consort and companion. (2) Denying necessaries. (3) The height of bitterness is when passion and anger proceed to blows. Use 2. To persuade to this love.1. Choose one that is amiable. Prevention is better than cure.2. Marry not till you be sure you can love entirely.3. Love not as bare husbands, but as Christians.4. Avoid giving offence.5. Exercise patience. Make conscience of your duty, and God will give you strength. Secondly: Now I come to Christ’ s love; in which we have--(1) The person that loveth, viz., Christ.(2) The persons loved--“ The Church.”(3) The fruit of His love--“ He gave Himself for it,” to a painful and ignominious death. There are solemn notions by which Christ’ s death is set forth--a ransom and a sacrifice. (a) A ransom: “ And gave His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). (b) As a sacrifice, a mediatorial sacrifice: “ When thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:10; Ephesians 5:2). Great love it was, if we consider-- 1. The giver, Jesus Christ, God over all, blessed forever, to whom nothing can accrue from us: “ It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). When He foresaw what it would cost, and what He should give, He said, “ It is enough.” 2. The gift--He gave Himself: “ We are not redeemed with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of the Son of God” (1 Peter 1:18). 3. “ For us,” whom He after calleth into a Church (Romans 5:6-8). Oh, let us be blessing God for this love, and show our thankfulness both in word and deed. (1) In word (Revelation 5:9). The angels, who are the spectators, ever blessed God for it; and shall not we, who be the parties interested? (2) In deed, by giving up ourselves to Him (Romans 12:1). (T. Manton, D. D.)The glory of the Church I. Christ’ s love for His Church. Love which has in it no element of evil is always a very beautiful, tender, and impressive thing. Whether it is the love of the babe for her doll, or the love of the older children for the babe, or the blessed love of the mother for all her children, it is still the same exquisite, joy-giving sentiment. It is a rose of the same loveliness and fragrance whether it bloom amid the splendours of royal gardens or in the cottager’ s door yard; it is the nightingale which sings in the night the same song for prince and peasant. Who can read without increased tenderness in his heart the story of the mother who, overtaken by a terrible storm in the Alps, sat down at last in the snow, bared her own tender bosom to the storm, and wrapped her cloak carefully around her babe? The storm raged on, and the poor mother, stripped of her heavy outer garments, died; but the babe was found alive, and greeted its deliverer with a smile. There are deeds of power which elicit more boisterous applause, but there are none which more invoke what is holiest in our nature than these exhibitions of conspicuous love. But, conspicuous and beautiful as these examples are, we feel when we read this text, and others to the same effect, that Christ’ s love for His Church is something transcendent--something unparalleled. We sometimes think the night is glorious, and so it is, with the moon shining in her full splendour; but when the sun rises the moon fades away into the intenser light. So does the love of Christ outshine all other love. The text makes concerning this love but this simple record, He loved the Church, “ and gave Himself for it.” The record is brief, but it is enough; we know from it that the love was infinite. The Alpine mother did much, and suffered much for bet babe; but there was a little possibility, and, therefore, a little hope, that some good monk would come that way and save both her and her babe alive; and even had she formally resolved on death for the infant’ s sake, it would have been but a finite sacrifice. The father did much for his boy when he dashed into the burning house to rescue him; but that was frenzy, the transient ecstasy of love, and it was for his own boy, not for a stranger, much less an enemy. But Christ’ s love for His Church was a deliberate plan, not entered upon in an hour of frenzy, but in calm counsel in the eternal sunshine of heaven, and it was executed through slow-going years of persecution, that the very men who lacerated Him with whips, and thorns, and nails, might be washed in the blood they shed, and come thereby to the “ fellowship of the firstborn.” II. The character of the Church which Christ thus loved. The Church is described in the text by the general word “ glorious” : and more particularly by the terms “ cleanse and sanctify it with the washing of water by the Word” ; and “ not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.” The Church of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth has a glorious character.1. She has a glorious origin--is a child of heaven. She “ was not born of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Her Father is a Spirit, and this child has, in this respect, her Father’ s character. Her beauty is not material, like the beauty of a flower; it is spiritual, like the beauty of the archangels. Her power is not material, like that of the mountain oak, which, though it defies the tempests of a century, wanes at last from decay; her power is of God, and is like God, not in extent, but in kind: it is spiritual power, and defies all time and change. 2. She has a glorious history. Sometimes it has been a history of persecution, and sometimes of victory; and it is difficult to tell which virtue is most conspicuous, her fidelity in persecution or her meekness in triumph. 3. Now at length the Church is glorious in power--in the power which comes of wealth; in the power which comes of learning and literature; in the power which comes of numbers, and of numbers organized; in the power which comes of many edifices and splendid architecture; in the power which comes of elegance, and wealth, and refinement in private life. God grant that this power may not decay through disuse, nor make itself a curse by being perverted I 4. The Church is glorious in her universal adaptations. III. The destiny of this glorious and much loved Church. My text says, “ That He might present it to Himself.” The figure used is evidently that of an oriental wedding. The bridegroom has a friend, called a paranymph, whose duty it is to find him a bride, to secure an introduction, to prepare for the nuptials, and to be in close attendance on the wedding night. St. Paul evidently has in his mind the figure of a marriage. But Christ is to be His own paranymph, “ that He might present it to Himself.” This is a favourite figure with Christ and His disciples. He is the Bridegroom and the Church the bride. Just when the nuptials are to be celebrated we do not know, but the entrance of this glorious Church upon her glorious destiny as the Lamb’ s wife is to be an event before which all other nuptials shall be as the glimmer of a candle in the light of a midsummer sun. John had a glimpse of the sublime scene in his wondrous vision on Patmos; and as the angel opened out this scene of unparalleled magnificence, this destiny of infinite sweep and indescribable glory, it was more than the spirit of the enraptured seer could endure. He perhaps saw himself in that Church; he, one day a poor fisherman on the shore of Tiberias, now an exile from his native land, he should be there; the shout of the archangel and the trump of God should salute his ear: the rider of “ the white horse,” the Man of the nameless name, with eyes “ like a flame of fire” and “ vesture dipped in blood,” should come even to him; he should be at His wondrous marriage supper. It was more than he could endure. He fell adoring at the angel’ s feet; the visions had so intensified the glory of the angel himself that John thought it had been God. But the angel said, “ See thou do it not. Worship God.” This, then, is to be the glorious destiny of this glorious Church--she shall become the bride of the Lamb. The purest thing on earth shall marry the King of kings and Lord of lords. The bride shall live with her Husband, and be under His protection forever. (J. H. Bayliss.)Christ’ s love to His Church I. The fact. “ Christ loved the Church.” I would begin by remarking that the Church of God--the reality of a true Church--is a thing quite unknown to the world. The world talks about Churches, the glory of a Church, and the beauty of a Church; but it does not know what a Church is; it has no true perception of what a Church of Christ is. If there be any gleaming of light upon the point, so far as it sees it, it dislikes it, hates it, despises it. We fully acknowledge that the Church of Christ is just like its Author; it has “ no form nor comeliness” in the eyes of the world, and “ no beauty that men should desire it” ; and so, like Himself, it is “ despised and rejected of men.” It has no outward splendour; it has no earthly glory; it has nothing in it, wherefore men should gaze, look at it, bow before it. But who can describe, notwithstanding, its true glory, and the love that Jesus has to it? He loved it in all eternity. Language seems altogether to fail in describing the love that Jesus has to His Church. It seems exhausted. Does an eagle “ bear her brood upon her wings” ?--not only to teach them, and not only to nourish them, but to protect them, so that the arrow that toucheth them must touch her, and come through her, before they can be destroyed. This is the figure that sets forth His love to His Church. Does a father “ pity his child,” when others can hardly bear with him, “ remembering that he is but dust” ? It is the very figure that sets forth the love of Jesus to His Church. II. The proof He has given of His love. He “ gave Himself for it.”1. Who it was that gave Himself. No mean person, no ordinary individual, no common being; but the Son of God. 2. What it was that He gave. It was not His mere tears, nor groans, nor sighs: though the Lord Jesus was “ a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” He gave Himself--His whole self. He gave His Deity, He gave His humanity; He gave the whole of His Person as God-Man; all that was in man to suffer, and all that was in God to merit. And this He gave freely. 3. And now observe, for what it was that He gave Himself. We find it in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians--He “ gave Himself for our sins.” Two or three remarks, and I close. Here is a door of unutterable consolation opened to us, in the midst of a world of desolation. I see the blessed Jesus giving the most unspeakable proofs of His love. But another door opens: it is the door of solemn inquiry. If the Church of God is so dear to Him, what do you and I for the Church of God? (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Christ’ s love to the Church I. The love of Christ to His Church. “ Christ loved the Church.” What else than love could have selected, pardoned, purified, and redeemed the Church? What other feeling could have stooped to such guilt, and raised it to such glory? As a Divine love to a creature so far beneath Him, what matchless condescension there is in it! It is a love of the sinner, but it attempts no compromise with his sin. “ Christ loved the Church,” and He walked in that Church in the radiance of love. Thoughts of love nestled in His heart; words of love lingered on His lips; deeds of love flew from His arm; and His steps left behind them the impress of love. It threw its soft halo over His cradle at Bethlehem, and it fringed with its mellow splendours the gloom of the cloud under which He expired on Calvary. It gave edge to His reproofs, and pathos to His invitations. It was the magnet that guided Him in all His wanderings. It bound Him to the cross and held Him there, and not the iron nail that pierced His hands and His feet. It thrilled in His bosom, and glistened in His eye. Yes: “ Christ … love,” said the dying philosopher, “ Jesus Christ--love--the same thing.” II. The sacrifice as the expression and result of love. In the stead of the Church He died, to deliver her from death, the sentence which so righteously lay upon her. III. The nearer purpose of his love and death. That death not only affects our state, but also tells upon our character. He died to sanctify the Church. Not only does He originate the change, but He sustains it; for He “ abides” within us. What He commences, He still fosters and perfects. IV. The ultimate end and result. With what delight and satisfaction will we not now contemplate the ulterior purpose of these preliminary arrangements--“ That He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” How noble such a destiny--perfect restoration and felicity. The nuptial figure is still continued, and the allusion is to the presentation of the bride to her husband. That presentation does not take place till he can look upon her with complacency. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Christ’ s love for the Church, and our duty as members of it What a broad scope of thought is embraced in these few words! The Church militant, labouring, suffering, upon earth? the Church cleansed, purified, glorified, in heaven! The apostle, at a single glance, seemed to see it all. And-- I. First, I remark, that we should love the Church. II. Again: We should not only love the Church but labour for it. The word itself suggests the idea of unceasing effort and self-sacrifice. But it is not enough to love the Church and to labour in its behalf, we must likewise be willing-- III. To suffer for it. There is no great difficulty in avoiding unpleasant differences with the world, if we do nothing to thwart and oppose it. IV. Once more. Every true child of God should be willing, if need be, to fight for the Church. (J. N. Norton, D. D.)Christ’ s love for the Church I. The Church’ s polluted condition without Christ. II. Christ’ s love to the Church.1. The antiquity of it (Jeremiah 31:3).2. An active and operative love (Galatians 1:4).3. A real and sincere love (Hosea 2:4).4. An entire and undivided love (John 17:26).5. A lasting and constant love (John 13:1). III. The evidences of this love.1. He established and perfected the Church before God (1 Thessalonians 3:13).2. By bringing her into a state of union with His person (1 Corinthians 6:15).3. He thoroughly justifies her by His blood and His righteousness:4. He animates her by the grace of His Holy Spirit.5. His love constrainedly operates in her heart.6. He does it by the instrumentality of His word.7. The administrations of His appointed ministers.8. In remarkable providences, at some times.9. By painful afflictions at others. 10. But especially by His Spirit, in, and by all things. IV. The effects of this wondrous love.1. Glorious from its nature and worth (Malachi 3:17).2. Glorious from the estimation in which God holds her (Deuteronomy 32:9).3. Glorious from her connection (John 17:22-23).4. Glorious, because she is free from spot, wrinkle, and the slightest mark of blemish. This appears from--1. The wisdom which directs--Christ.2. The righteousness which justifies--Christ’ s.3. The perfection of her sanctification--Christ.4. By her complete and eternal exemption from every charge of all her enemies, even by Christ. Inferences--1. How completely this demolishes all ideas of human merit.2. And secures to Jesus Christ all the glory of our salvation. (T. B. Baker.)Marriage and the heavenly Bridegroom Adhering to the arrangement of topics in the text, we will speak first of the wife’ s duty of obedience and then of the husband’ s duty of love. I. “ Order is heaven’ s first law.” Every portion of the universe knows its own place, and fulfils its proper function. There can be no happiness amongst mankind without due subordination. A state of society is impossible without this. So the apostle says, “ Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” On the knowledge of each one’ s true place and the rendering by each of what is due to others, the welfare both of nations and families depends. St. Paul, after laying down the general principle of mutual submission, illustrates and enforces it in the case of wives. They are to “ submit themselves to their own husbands as unto the Lord.” This submission is based on the fact that God has made man the head of the woman. Whatever may be said--and much may be said justly of woman’ s rights--this fact of the man’ s headship remains, and ever will; established both by nature and revelation, by God’ s works and God’ s Word. There are features in which woman is very superior to man. The fact remains--that man, as such, is generally the stronger both in body and will. This indicates where authority should reside. Where two or more persons are concerned occasions arise when there must be precedence. Both cannot go first when only one can go at a time. What shall be the law? Among nations and in families authority and power must go together. For what is authority without power to enforce it? The inspired apostle urges as an additional argument that man was created before the woman, but that woman sinned before the man. “ I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:12-13). The true glory of all things is the accomplishment of the end for which they were designed. The highest honour of every living creature--of men and of angels--is that each occupies aright his own proper sphere--develops his own proper functions--and does not aim at being something else, and doing what appertains to another. Woman, therefore, dishonours and disfigures herself when she attempts to occupy the place of man--aping his dress, his occupations, or his authority; just as a man would make himself contemptible if, laying aside his proper dress and functions, he were to array himself in womanly garments, affect feminine manners, and occupy his time in the details of the household, and the cares of the nursery. The ivy has its beauty, as it gracefully twines around the oak; but were it to become stiff and rigid, and ape the robustness and strength of the tree to which it clings, while it would never become an oak, it would lose all its own special charms. Let it still cling there--following the oak’ s growth, leaning on it, finding its stability and life in it, while it clothes the oak’ s strength and ruggedness with grace and beauty. This submission does not mean subservience, the denial of a woman’ s individuality, the having no opinion or wish of her own, and properly urging it. No true man would value his wife for ceasing to be herself. Instead of a companion and counsellor she would only be his echo or his shadow. And this submission will be a delight, when rendered, not only from a consideration of the laws of nature, or the express precept of the Bible, but from that love which is the best bond and guarantee of order; that love without which the marriage relationship should not be formed; that love which renders obedience a luxury, and which itself is the fulfilling of the law. On the other hand, if husbands love their wives as Christ also loved the Church, authority will be divested of all austerity. II. If the husband is to maintain his just authority, so also is he, and in the first instance, bound to make Christ’ s love for the Church the model of his own. Other motives are superadded. Love to a wife is love to one’ s self, and neglect or unkindness towards her is as unnatural on the part of a husband as if he inflicted injury on his own body. “ He that loveth his wife loveth himself.” If the standard of the wife’ s obedience is high, equally so is that of the husband’ s love: in both cases it is Christ--obedience as to Christ; love, as that of Christ. The relation of Christ to the Church as the heavenly Bridegroom is seen in His love to the Church, His gift to the Church, His treatment of the Church, and His ultimate purpose towards the Church.1. The love of the Heavenly Bridegroom to the Church. “ Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church.” Love is the foundation, the cement, the glory of marriage. There is no true marriage in the absence of it. So, the love of Christ is the origin and the abiding cause of His connection with the Church. (1) Consider the generosity of Christ’ s love. He loved us first. He loved the world and came to save it. He loved each one of us and besought us to be reconciled to God. He loved us when we were without beauty. Though the marriage relationship should not be based on mere external charms which may deceive and must soon decay, yet beauty is often in the first instance the attractive cause of a pure and abiding affection. But Christ loved us when we were deformed and defiled by sin. Vile compacts are sometimes made under the name of marriage, merely for mercenary and worldly ends; and a husband is chosen not for himself but for his position; or a wife, not to make her happy but to enjoy her estate. But the love of Christ was manifested, not to the rich, the prosperous, and the happy; but to the fallen, the condemned, the ruined, the wretched. (2) His love is persevering. He long went on to woo us while we persisted in rejecting Him. His love does not grow weary, suffers no reaction, has no intervals of indifference, is not diverted by other objects, does not cool with years, but is unchanging, undying, everlasting. (3) His love is tender. “ No man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church.” The love of Jesus is a love which is not content with doing great things, but which delights also in tenderness in regard to little things. How often a husband who may bestow large gifts on a wife, grieves her by the lack of delicate sympathy and gentle care for her comfort in the trifles which make up life. (4) His love is fervent. Sometimes people are warned against loving each other too much, lest they should become idolaters, and thus have the object of such inordinate affection taken from them as a punishment. Nonsense! The Bible never says this. Alas! the general state of society does not require us to say it. The danger is on the side of deficiency, not of excess. Children! love your parents with devotion. Parents! love your little ones with fervour. “ As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you.” Who can fathom this? Well might the apostle speak of “ the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” The love of Christ, thus generous, persevering, tender, and fervent, is to be the model of our own. “ Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church.” 2. The Bridegroom’ s gift. “ Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it.” Gold and jewels and costly array are given to a bride. But what are all these in comparison to the bridegroom himself, when the marriage is one of affection? So Christ gave Himself; a donation which infinitely transcends all the universe besides. In personal fidelity and devotion husbands should love their wives, “ even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it.” 3. The Bridegroom’ s treatment of the Church. “ That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word.” The greatest glory of the universe is God, and our greatest glory is our resemblance to God. Christ can do no greater work for us and in us than promoting such resemblance. This He does by the sanctifying influences of the truth through the operation of the Holy Spirit, which is compared to the cleansing of the body by water. “ Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean.” So giving himself to his wife, the husband should ever watch over and promote her health and comfort of body, her peace of mind, her purity of heart, her religious, spiritual, and eternal welfare: “ even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it.” 4. The Bridegroom’ s ultimate purpose. “ That He might present it to Himself, a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” Let us learn these practical lessons:1. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church. As the Church is subject to Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. 2. Christians, the Bride of Jesus, do not frustrate His gracious purpose by wilful sin. Seek the cleansing of His atoning blood and the daily baptism of His Holy Spirit. 3. Obey Christ “ As the Church is subject to Christ.” Obey His laws, honour His authority, imitate His example. 4. Delight in Christ. Think of His love. Respond to it. Exult in it. 5. Anticipate with holy rapture the heavenly espousals; and “ walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” (Newman Hall, LL. B.)Marriage and holiness Philip Henry’ s advice to his children with respect to their marriage was--“ Please God, and please yourselves, and you will please me” ; and his usual compliment to his newly married friends--“ Others wish you all happiness. I wish you all holiness, and then there is no doubt but you will have all happiness.” Sanctified marriage Rev. Robert Newton, the Wesleyan pulpit orator, and his bride, began their married life by retiring twice each day to pray with and for each other. This practice they kept up, when opportunity served, to the end of life. When an old man, Mr. Newton remarked, “ In the course of a short time, my wife and I shall celebrate the jubilee of our marriage; and I know not that, during the fifty years of our union, an unkind look or an unkind word has ever passed between us.” A man cannot love his wife too much A gentleman informing Rowland Hill of the sudden death of a minister’ s wife happened to say, “ I am afraid our dear minister loved his wife too well; and the Lord in wisdom has removed her.” “ What, sir!” replied Mr. Hill, with the deepest feeling, “ can a man love a good wife too much? Impossible, sir! unless he can love her better than Christ loves the Church.” Lord Lawrence and his wife The following appears in the “ Life of Lord Lawrence,” published by Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co.:--“ Lord Lawrence married after his return to England, at the end of a long and tedious illness, and he was warned that it was death to go back to India. His answer was, ‘ If I cannot live in India, I must go and die there’ ; and the newly married couple sailed accordingly. The marriage proved a very happy one. Mrs. Lawrence constantly acted as her husband’ s adviser and amanuensis, she seldom left his side, and her company became almost indispensible to him. A story is told of them, long afterwards, when they had come back to settle finally in England. Lady Lawrence had left the room; and twice in the course of a few minutes her husband asked what had become of her. ‘ Why, really, John,’ said one of his sisters, ‘ it would seem as if you could not get on for five minutes without your wife.’ ‘ That was what I married her for,’ he answered, simply.” “ The Church loved, washed, presented A pearl of dew will not hold the sun, but it may hold a spark of its light. A child by the sea trying to catch the waves as they dash in clouds of crystal spray upon the sand cannot hold the ocean in a tiny shell, but he can hold a drop of the ocean water. And in this sense the apostle exhorts, “ Love, even as Christ also loved.” I. The love of Christ. In human love we perceive much to be admired, but in that of God there is a something which eludes our grasp when we endeavour to fathom it, and battles our conception as we try to find it out. God only knows the love of God.1. The Divine love is sovereign and supreme. All the attributes of God are glorious, but one shines above the rest and seems to gather up into itself all the others, viz., love. God is love. 2. The practicalness of Christ’ s love. It was not a mere sentiment; it led him to give Himself--the most precious gift that could be offered--for man. Christ was not only a preacher, but a sacrifice; He not only talked, but died. II. The sublime design of Christ’ s love. Christ loved the world before ever there was a Church in it, and determined out of the very ruins of the Fall to build up for Himself a Temple worthy of being inhabited by Himself. You remember when Edward I received a wound one day from a poisoned dagger, his wife, Eleanor, sucked out the poison, venturing her own life to save her husband’ s. Even so, when humanity had been stung by the foul and deadly serpent, sin, Christ came forth and volunteered to extract the poison, although the effort cost Him His life. He sacrificed much, in order to show His love for the race who had rebelled and become polluted by sin. And herein is the mystery of godliness.1. Christ loved the Church because He had determined to effect upon it a mighty transformation. He saw the possibilities of human nature, and the resplendent future to which it was heir by His grace. 1. Cleansing.2. Presentation to Himself. He has sought His beloved, and redeemed her from the bondage of sin--redeemed her by no less a price than that of His own most precious blood. He has espoused and called her His, even here, and now, watching over her with fond affection, and supplying all her wants. But the grand presentation day will dawn by and by--the glorious manifestation of the Church, which is His bride. And as on earth there is often jubilation and pomp attending the nuptial feast, so shall the marriage of the Lamb be the signal for untold joy and unutterable splendours amongst the ranks of the heavenly host. And, moreover, as the earthly bride is exalted to the same dignity, and enjoys the immunities and wealth of her husband, so the Church will share the honours and glories of her Husband and Lord. Impossible! do you say, that such can be the destiny of the often poor, despised, and persecuted Church? Ah, brethren, it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. The day of presentation has not yet come--the day of maturity, perfection, and bloom; but come it shall! When the gardener buries the cold, rough, apparently dead bulb in the damp mould, you might in your ignorance be tempted to say, “ There, now, that is cast aside, and will never be heard of more.” You have not, however, long to wait, ere a magnificent flower springs from the unsightly bulb, a flower fit for presentation, perchance, in the palace of royalty itself. Thus has it been, and thus will it be, with the Church. Full often she has been cast down, and trodden under foot, and despised by the nations, who thought they had buried her in oblivion. But no, she has ever sprung again into renewed life and beauty, like the fair flower of which I spoke, and the time of her presentation will be by and by. Nothing can hinder it. He who hath formed His people for Himself controls all adverse as well as auspicious influences; and having set His heart upon His chosen, they shall be His for evermore. (J. W. Atkinson.)A glorious Church I. The Church is glorious even now.1. Glorious in its foundation (Ephesians 2:20). 2. Glorious in its progress, Although the storms of persecution have beat upon it, yet doth the building rise. Like the ark on the wild waters, it hath safely outridden the fury of every storm till now, nay, hath only been landed on its firm Ararat of rest by the very force of the revolutionary wave. 3. Glorious in its ever-growing empire. 4. Glorious in power in the power which comes from wealth, in the power which comes from learning and literature--in the power which comes of numbers, and of numbers organized--in the power which comes of many edifices and splendid architecture--in the power which comes of elegance, and wealth, and refinement, in private life. II. The Church will be more glorious yet on the day of presentation.1. Glorious in position, immunities, and honour. Though now often poor, despised, and persecuted, she shall then be proclaimed the Lamb’ s wife, and be lifted up to sit with Christ on His throne. 2. Glorious in holiness and purity. (1) Perfect. No “ spot.”(2) Youthful. No “ wrinkle.”(3) Without trace of earthly infirmity. No “ blemish.” 3. Glorious in bliss. If pure it must also be happy; for only the pure can be truly glad. Heaven is a very gladsome and blessed place. Its trees are green forever. Its rivers and seas are clear as crystal. Its music is an eternal symphony. Its light is brighter than the sun--it is the light of purity and bliss. (J. W. Atkinson.)The pattern of love I. How Christ loved His Church.1. A love of choice, and special regard.2. A love of unselfishness.3. A love of complacency.4. A. love of sympathy.5. A love of communion.6. A love of unity.7. A love of immutable constancy. II. How He proved His love.1. He gave Himself to His Church by leaving heaven and becoming incarnate that He might assume her nature. 2. He gave Himself throughout His life on earth by spending all His strength to bless His beloved. 3. He gave Himself in death; the ransom for His Church. 4. He gave Himself in His eternal life; rising, ascending, reigning, pleading; and all for the Church of His choice. 5. He gave Himself in all that He now is as God and Man, exalted to the throne, for the endless benefit of His beloved Church. III. How we should think of it. It is set before us as a love which should influence our hearts. We should think of it--1. In a way of gratitude, wondering more and more at such love. 2. In a way of obedience, as the wife obeys the husband. 3. In a way of reverence. Looking up to love so great, so heavenly, so perfect, so Divine. 4. In a way of holiness. Rejoicing to be like our Holy Husband. 5. In a way of love. Yielding our whole heart to Him. 6. In a way of imitation. Loving Him, and others for His sake. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Conjugal love “ Let all things be done in love,” saith the apostle. If all thy actions towards others, then, much more all things that concern thy wife, should be done in love. Thy thoughts should be thoughts of love; thy looks should be looks of love, thy lips, like the honeycomb, should drop nothing but sweetness and love; thy instructions should be edged with Jove; thy reprehensions should be sweetened with love; thy carriage and whole conversation towards her should be but the fruit and demonstration of thy love. Oh, how did Christ, who is thy pattern, love His spouse! His birth, life, and death were but, as it were, a stage whereon the hottest love imaginable, from first to last, acted its part to the life. It was a known, unknown love. Tiberius Gracchus, the Roman, finding two snakes in his bed, and consulting with the soothsayers, was told that one of them must be killed; yet, if he killed the male, he himself would die shortly; if the female, his wife would die. His love to his wife, Cornelia, was so great, that he killed the male, saith Plutarch, and died quickly. (George Swinnock.)The final glory of the Church I. In describing the future condition of the Church, the apostle has evidently in his mind two previous states of it--its original state when lying dead in trespasses and sins, and its subsequent earthly state, when separated from the mass of the ungodly and partially redeemed. II. He points out the causes to which it is to be ascribed. Of these he mentions four.1. The first is the love of Christ. He “ loved the Church.” 2. The next is the sacrifice of Christ. He “ gave Himself for it.” 3. Hence the apostle goes on to bring before us the Holy Spirit as a third source to which the Church must ascribe its future holiness. 4. And how does the Holy Spirit carry on this cleansing process? The text shows us, and its answer to the question reminds us of the fourth means of our sanctification--the Word of God. “ The washing of water,” is “ by the Word.” III. We have to go on now to our last point--the great end for which all these means of holiness are brought into operation. It is, we are told, to “ sanctify and cleanse” the Church. But why is the Church to be thus sanctified? What is the ultimate object aimed at in this cleansing? All terminates in this one blessed end, that Christ, in the great day of His triumph, may “ present the Church unto Himself a glorious Church.” Nothing dishonours, brethren, but sin; nothing but sin is really shameful. Now take sin from the soul, and you have removed from it everything that can degrade it. We may go farther--the chief glory of God is the holiness of God. His purity is His brightest attribute. His power and immensity strike us more, for our minds are debased, we have lost the perception of that which is most elevated in its character--moral greatness; but go up into heaven, or rather read the language of heaven as we find it in the Bible--power and majesty are both extolled in it, but this is the one great subject of adoration in heaven, in the very world where all the Divine greatness is most fully manifested--the purity of Jehovah; and this the song which, next to the song of salvation, rises most constantly in its splendid courts--“ Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.” No wonder then that the Church will be “ a glorious Church” ; the likeness of God will be put on her the image of Godwill shine in her; that attribute of Divinity, which is the perfection of Divinity, will be her crown. (C. Bradley, M. A.)The bride of Christ That love is the initiative of everything. We did not love Him; but He loved us. We did not choose Him; but He chose us. Just as afterwards, in the copy, the man is not loved first, but the woman. The man’ s love is the cause; the woman’ s love is the consequence. The woman’ s love is reflected love. But His love was intense. It had no beginning, and it had no bounds. It was so great that He actually loved us to the death. Christ, then, having loved us, and chosen us, and died for us, and given us life, preceded next to make us fit and worthy for the high position to which He destined us. For this end two things were necessary. First, we must be relieved of our old guilty defilement. Our souls must be “ washed” from the past. The Jews had what they called “ the bridal bath.” So Christ did away with the previous guilt, and its consequence, and our sins were as though they had never been--for they were expunged! “ When I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live … Then I washed thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.” Of this “ washing” the laver of baptism is the emblem. It prefigures it; it assures us of it; it is intended to be its channel. But it is evident that the forgiveness of past sins, and the removal of their stains, is not all that is necessary for the Church--that it may be “ the bride of Christ.” There must be also real and actual purity and holiness. Now comes the final purpose. What is it all for? Loved; chosen; pardoned; rid of all past guilt; washed; sanctified; clothed; beautified:--what is the Church? “ Glorious.” “ A glorious Church, not having” --that is, “ not having “ as God sees us in Christ--“ not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” “ Glorious” she is--for the glory which God has given Him--which is the Holy Ghost--Christ has given us! “ Glorious” she is--for she reflects the face, and the unity, and the glory of her God! “ Glorious” she is--from rays of light of heavenly beauty upon her! “ Glorious” she is--for God is glorified in her! “ A glorious Church!” And why--again we ask--why so glorious? That Christ may “ present her to Himself” --Himself to Himself--who made her for Himself, that Himself might enjoy her forever and ever. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The final state of the redeemed In this verse we have the last end of our redemption by Christ, the perfection and consummation of our sanctification in the life to come. In setting forth of which take notice--1. Of our nearness to Christ, “ That He might present it to Himself” ; that is, assume or take us home to live with Him, and abide always in His presence. 2. The effect of this union and nearness, which is-- (1) Generally expressed, “ A glorious Church.” It is an allusion to the spouse of a king, or a royal marriage (Psalms 45:13). (2) Particularly explained, or wherein the glory of the Church doth consist. (a) Negatively, “ Not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” A spot is in the garments, a wrinkle is in the flesh; and then follow the general words, “ Or any such thing.” Neither with filthy garments, nor with shrivelled flesh, nor blind, nor lame. (b) Positively, “ But that it should be holy, and without blemish,” perfectly pure, and exempt from either blemish or blame, for the word signifieth both; and the allusion is to a spouse that excelleth in beauty and comeliness. That the final end of our redemption is that we may be presented at the last day glorious in pretty and holiness. 1. Of the final end of our redemption; and there-- (1) Of His love, that Christ could not satisfy Himself with doing us good here, but He would provide for our glorious estate hereafter. (2) That our glory in heaven is the fruit of Christ’ s death, who procured this eternal inheritance for us. It is not merited by our holiness, but purchased by Christ. (3) It implies that none but those who are purified by the blood and Spirit of Christ have interest in this privilege. 2. That we enter into this everlasting estate by being presented to Christ; for in the text it is said, “ That He may present it to Himself,” that is, as the bride to the bridegroom, that the marriage may be consummated. In the Scripture there is a three-fold presentation spoken of-- (1) One made by believers themselves (Romans 12:1). (2) It is ascribed to the apostles, or Christ’ s messengers who have a charge; and when they have done their work, present us to God as the fruit of their labour (2 Corinthians 11:2). (3) This presentation is applied to Christ Himself. Now two ways is Christ said to present us-- (a) To Himself; (b) To God. 3. I observe in the text, that those who are presented to Christ, and by Christ to God, is His Church, and is a glorious Church. 4. I observe that the principal glory of the Church lieth in its purity and holiness. “ Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory” (Jude 1:24). It must needs be so; for-- (1) This is God’ s glory: “ Glorious in holiness” (Exodus 15:11). (2) Sin is the cause of all our misery; and therefore when we are completely holy, our misery which we incurred by the fall of Adam is then at an end. It was sin which was the cause of separation from God (Isaiah 59:2; Psalms 17:15). (3) Then we are dispositively fitted for the full enjoyment of God. Our glory is begun by holiness, and is still increasing to a further glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). 5. This purity and holiness shall then be exactly complete. While we are in the world, neither is the whole Church perfect, nor particular believers. Now, let us go on to the uses.1. To exhort you often to think of this estate. Oh, that our hearts were exercised more about these things! 2. Let us improve it. (1) To glorify God and Christ, who intend so much glory to us. (2) Let the foresight of this estate comfort us against our abasement in the world. We are now obscure, afflicted, poor, disgraced in the world. (3) Improve it to holiness. See that this work be begun, for heaven is but the perfection of what is begun in this life; and when it is begun, never give over till you attain this perfect estate. The more eminency in holiness you get, the more glorious you are. (4) Improve it to the love of God’ s people; a necessary lesson in these days, when they fly from others that are in trouble, as the rest of the herd from the wounded deer (Psalms 15:4). (5) Improve it to thankfulness to Christ; for we have all our holiness from Christ; from first to last, He is the Author and Finisher; He purchased and procured the Spirit of sanctification for us (Titus 3:5-6). And also this glorious estate; He gave Himself not only to sanctify His people, but glorify them. Heaven is the fruit of His blood and love. “ Who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood” (Revelation 1:5). First He purchased it for us, and then communicateth it to us. (T. Manton, D. D.)A holy and glorious Church I. As regards the earthly state. Here the holiness of the Church is but comparative and imperfect: and this in two respects; because there is a mixture of bad and good, of godly and ungodly, of true believers with the insincere and hypocrites; and because even the good themselves, even the best, are but partially good, are never entirely cleansed from all defilement of sin, though they are redeemed from its penalty, and delivered from its tyrannical dominion. II. We thus come to treat of the second state of the Church in the course of its holy progression, that to which the faithful are removed on their departure from this world. Very few are the notices of this intermediate state, between death add the judgment day; but we are taught to look upon it as a place of entire deliverance from trouble and sin. III. There is, indeed, another state, in which the Church will be yet further advanced in blessedness; having been made perfect in holiness, it will be made perfect in happiness and glory: and this will be the consummation of the promise in the text, “ That He might present it to Himself a glorious Church. (J. Slade, M. A.)The presentation of a glorious Church I. The first regards the presentation of the Church--“ That He might present it to Himself.” Now, in the Scripture, my brethren, we find a three-fold presentation of believers spoken of.1. The first of these presentations is what we call personal; and this is made by themselves. Of this the apostle speaks when he admonishes the Romans, saying, “ I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” In the experience of every believer there is a solemn scene in which he has acknowledged God’ s claims; has asked, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” and has said, with resolution and zeal, Lord, I am Thine; save me. Other lords besides Thee have had dominion over me; but henceforth by Thee only will I make mention of Thy name. To Thee I dedicate Myself. My understanding is Thine, to know Thee; my will, to choose Thee; my heart, to love Thee; my conscience to fear Thee; my memory, to retain Thee. Thine are mine eyes, to behold Thy glory; mine ears, to hear Thy voice; my tongue, to show forth Thy praise; and my feet, to walk in Thy ways. Thine is my time, and my substance, and my influence; and if I had the innocency of Adam in paradise, the meekness of Moses, the faith of Abraham, the patience of Job, the fervour of Paul, the perfection of angels, they should be equally, they should be mere Thine, than these poor imperfect offerings which I now present. 2. The second of these presentations we call official; and these are made by ministers. This is what the apostle means when in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians he says, “ I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” And again, in his Epistle to the Colossians, he says, “ Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” Ministers have a charge. It is, to endeavour to bring souls to Christ. 3. The third we call Divine. And this is here intended. And the presentation here unquestionably regards a future day that day for which all other days are made; and which is more than once so emphatically called “ the day of Christ.” This presentation is a very peculiar one, for you see, it is by and to the very same Being. “ That He might present it to Himself.” It is by Him--He presents it; and it is to Him. How is this? By Him; for He shall present them. But when it is here said that He will “ present it to Himself,” it implies some present distance or absence--a want of some present recognition and acknowledgment. And so, while they are at home in the body, they are absent from the Lord. Indeed, there is now a connection and a communion between them; but the distinction is rather this: He is now with them--hereafter they will be with Him. And then, you see where they will be presented with this exceeding joy: “ before the presence of His glory” : that is, His glorious presence. You see also in what state they will be presented with exceeding joy before His presence. He will present them “ blameless.” II. This brings us to the second part of our subject; which is, the glory of the Church. “ A glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” Here Paul tells us, that the Church then presented will be glorious; and he also reminds us wherein that glory will principally consist. We must review both these. You are ready to ask perhaps, “ Is not His Church glorious now?” It is. It is not a glorious Church indeed in the eyes of the world, for the world knoweth them not; they are often, like their Lord, “ despised and rejected of men” : but they are glorious in the eyes of the Lord. But though the Church is now “ glorious,” and “ more glorious than the mountains of prey,” yet its glory is partially prevented and obscured now. It is so by the thinness of its numbers. Its glory is now partially prevented and obscured by intermixtures. The lilies are among thorns; the tares are among the wheat. It is now also partially prevented and obscured by their outward condition. They are now often poor; then they shall “ possess all things.” Above all, the glory of the Church is now partially prevented and obscured by moral infirmities. Wherein this glory of the Church will then principally consist. And according to the apostle it is this: “ He will present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” Here we may remark four things very briefly.(1) We see they have their imperfections now. (2) You see how these imperfections are metaphorically expressed. They are held forth as spots, and wrinkles. You cannot notice spots in black; and you never do notice spots in coarse and repulsive visages. No; spots suppose comeliness and loveliness upon the whole. Spots are consistent with beauty; but yet they detract from it. There are deficiencies which are compatible with sincerity, and the life of God in the soul. Wrinkles are one of the common symptoms of age or weakness. (3) We see that from all these blemishes and defects they are to be effectually, completely freed, when they are “ presented before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy.” Yea, “ without spot or wrinkle,” says the text, “ or any such thing.” Oh! the power of Divine grace! (4) Then you will see, lastly, what it is that achieves and finishes their glory. Why, it is this--that they will no more have any “ spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” What makes the difference between angels and devils? Holiness makes the angel; the want of it the devil. Devils may have possibly, and I am persuaded they have, knowledge or talent; and Voltaire and Byron would be fools by the side of some of them. Wicked men have often now more knowledge and science than good men; but they do not make a good use of it. And what is the consequence? Why it sinks them the lower in disgrace, and degrades them the more. 1. Let us dismiss these explanatory notes by first asking whether you will be found among the saints, in this glory everlasting? 2. Christians, well should the prospect that we have been imperfectly opening, animate and comfort you. 3. Then it should soothe you under the removal of those who sleep in Jesus. Jesus said to His disciples, who were sorrowing, “ If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go to the Father, for My Father is greater than I.” 4. Then, lastly, how are we bound to the Saviour who has destined such glory for us, and is now preparing us for it! (W. Jay.) Ephesians 5:30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.Membership in Christ’ s body I. The nature of membership with the body of Christ.1. Members of the Church of Christ are such nominally and professedly. The Church is a visible organization--“ a city set on a hill, which cannot be hid” --“ the light of the world,” which must shine wherever it exists. Membership in Christ’ s body supposes that we have been baptized, and are in the habit of receiving holy communion; also that we obey the laws, regulations, and discipline which have been made for the orderly government of the Church. 2. To be a member of the body of Christ implies that we are such spiritually and sincerely--in the homage of our minds, the devotion of our lives, and the affections of our hearts. 3. To be a member of the body of Christ implies pardon and regeneration. II. The importance of becoming members of the body of Christ.1. Membership with the visible Church of Christ is necessary in order to the existence and perpetuity of the Christian Church. A Church naturally supposes members, just as the whole supposes parts; there must be members, or there can be no Church. 2. Membership with the visible Church of Christ is necessary in order to a right understanding of some very important passages in the Word of God. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion. 3. Membership with the body of Christ is necessary in order to the full and entire performance of one’ s religious duties. (1) Sympathy.(2) Mutual edification. 4. Membership with the body of Christ is necessary as it may help to assist us against our spiritual enemies. 5. Membership with the body of Christ is necessary to give some proof of our attachment to Jesus Christ and His cause. 6. Membership with the body of Christ is necessary if you consider the spiritual benefits to be derived from it. (P. Cooper.)Members of Christ’ s body I. The doctrine. A difficult subject, liable to misrepresentation and abuse.1. The apostle is speaking of believers only. 2. We must put away all sensual and carnal ideas from the consideration of this subject. It is a spiritual union that is here spoken of. 3. We must put away from the consideration of this subject all narrow-mindedness and bigotry. Now let us notice that the text conveys to us three ideas, as characteristic of the relation in which the Church stands to the Redeemer, viz., (1) Union;(2) Dependence;(3) Sympathy. II. Duties resulting from this relation.1. Love.2. Reverence.3. Obedience. (Dr. Raffles.) Ephesians 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.Husbands and wives Marriage is the most dignified, honourable, and helpful relationship into which we can enter.1. It is a relationship of mutual sympathy.2. It is a relationship of mutual sacredness. There is no authority which can constrain into marriage, and there is none which of itself can dissolve the tie.3. It is a relationship of mutual honour.4. It is a relationship of mutual responsibility. (W. Braden.)The mystery of marriage I. The counsel that God had about Adam’ s marriage with Eve.1. The Lord made Adam before He thought of a wife for him.2. Among all the created things God could not find a help meet for Adam.3. God, in blessing Adam, blessed her afterwards to be made. II. The creation of the woman out of the man. III. The marriage itself.1. God brought the woman to Adam.2. When brought, he consented and owned her. IV. The consequence of Adam’ s marriage.1. A union.2. A rule for all time--that the wife cleave to her husband. (T. Goodwin, D. D.)Qualities of a good wife An old author says, “ A good wife should be like three things, which three things she should not be like.1. She should be like a snail, to keep within her own house; but she should not be like the snail, to carry all she has upon her back. 2. She should be like an echo, to speak when spoken to; but she should not be like an echo, always to have the last word. 3. She should be like a town clock, always to keep time and regularity; but she should not be like a town clock, speak so loud that all the town may hear her.” Ephesians 5:32 This is a great mystery.The mysteriousness of religion It is in a discourse upon marriage that the apostle introduces these remarkable words; but it is unnecessary that we connect them with the original context; they may be detached from it and treated by themselves as containing a great and interesting truth. Just observe. The Apostle Paul is brought to acknowledge that something which he had just been announcing was very mysterious; he does not attempt to deny or explain away the mystery; he leaves it in all its greatness, and in all its obscurity; but then he adds, “ I speak concerning Christ and the Church.” As much as to say, “ There is no reason for any surprise at there being mystery. When discourse turns on such subjects as Christ and the Church, mystery is to be expected, mystery is not to be avoided.” Here, then, opens before us a great and important subject of discourse. Do men object to us that there are mysterious things bard to be understood in Christianity? What course are we to take with these objectors? Are we to extenuate the mysteries, and try to make them seem less, as though we were ashamed of them, and felt that the gospel would be improved by their absence? Not so. We ought rather to glory in confessing and proclaiming them, considering it a sufficient answer to every objection that we are speaking “ concerning Christ and the Church.” It is not for us to make Scripture less mysterious than the Almighty has made it. I. Look, for instance, at Christ as born of a pure virgin in a stable at Bethlehem. The incarnation of the Son of God is not one of those facts which lose their mysteriousness through being examined and pondered. Familiarity may indeed make us less alive to its wonders; but the more we consider, the more must we be amazed. II. But the apostle mentions the Church as well as Christ, and forasmuch as it is the union between Christ and the Church as typified by marriage which led him to express himself in the words of our text, we must briefly see whether there be not mystery--mystery to be thankfully acknowledged, not timidly concealed--in regard to true believers as well as their Divine Lord. Indeed there is mystery. That through such a system as the Christian there should be produced in believers that holiness without which there can be nothing of the oneness between Christ and the Church which marriage supposes--this indeed seems hardly to have been expected, and is not easily to be explained. We are nowise surprised that there should be so vehement an outcry as to the probable tendencies of the gospel; that those who preach as the alone mode of salvation the resting wholly on the merits of another, should often be regarded as advancing a tenet which strikes at the root of all moral energy. Now, in conclusion, we trust that you will thoroughly understand under what point of view the mysteries of the Bible should be regarded by the Christian. These mysteries are not to be shrunk from or concealed, as though Christianity would be the better for their removal; they should rather be gloried in and thankfully acknowledged, as though Christianity would fall to bits if they were taken away. It is the tone which we admire in our text, the frankness of the confession, the avoidance of all controversy. “ This is a great mystery.” “ I do not attempt to deny it,” says the apostle; “ I do not wish to evade it. How can there be other than mystery when I am speaking ‘ concerning Christ and the Church’ ?” But, my brethren, what is mystery now may not be mystery always. “ Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now we know in part, but then we shall know, even as also we are known.” It must be that with our present imperfect faculties and limited capacities we are incompetent to the understanding much of the revelation which God has given us of Himself, but we shall understand more hereafter if we persevere to the end in fighting the good fight of faith. (H. Melvill, B. D.)Christ the husband of the Church There is a story in Fox’ s Book of Martyrs of a woman who, when she came to be tried for her religion before the bishop, was threatened by him that he would take away her husband from her. “ Christ,” was her reply, “ is my husband.” “ I will take away thy child,” said he. “ Christ,” said she, “ is better to me than ten sons.” “ I will strip thee,” said he, “ of all outward comforts.” And again came the answer, “ Yes, but Christ is mine, and you cannot strip me of Him.” (Baxendale’s Anecdotes.)The dignity of matrimony Every blessing of Christianity springs from the union between the Son of God and mankind. This union was inaugurated when God took human nature and thus made it His own, when He became flesh for us, and dwelt among us; and it is continued in His intimate union with the Church, which is His body. It is by this union that Christ confers all graces.1. In His union with the Church God gives Himself to men, and men give themselves to God. Matrimony should correspond with this idea (Genesis 2:24). 2. In the relations between Christ and the Church we admire perfect unity. This ought also to characterize Christian matrimony. 3. Unity involves indissolubility (Matthew 19:6). 4. Another consequence of unity is the reconciliation of authority and obedience. 5. Forbearance. Christ bears patiently all our imperfections, infirmities, and sins. In a similar manner married people should bear one another’ s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ; as the members of the same body bear the infirmities of one another. 6. The objects to be attained by the union of Christ and His Church are the honour of God and the sanctification of men. The objects of matrimony are the same--the honour of God, the sanctification of the married couple, of the family, and of others who see their good works. (Bishop W. E. Ketteler).Church life The true Church of Christ is in intimate union with Christ Himself. It is indissolubly joined unto Him, vitally connected with Him, and, I must add, it is altogether His possession, His servant. When it is in sound and healthy condition, it is in profound and active sympathy with Christ in all His purposes and works; and when it appears in all its beauty and grace, it is in full conformity to the mind of Christ. I. The mutual love of the Church. This is the grand characteristic of believers: love in active exercise, love expressed in word and deed. In order to love, there must be knowledge or acquaintance. II. The worship of the Church. The seat of worship is the heart. And the believer cannot neglect the exercise of private or secret worship. Then, those whom God has set in families should have a home altar, around which morning and evening the whole household should gather. As to the worship of God’ s house, it is your privilege to be partakers of it, and you are under a solemn obligation to observe the ordinances of the sanctuary. III. The work of the Church. This work is two-fold--edifying believers, and converting sinners. IV. The finances of the Church. V. The spiritual tone and temper of the Church. (A. G. Maitland, M. A.)The wife a helper Dr. Payson, meeting an irreligious lady whose husband was trying to serve God, addressed her thus: “ Madam, I think your husband is looking upwards--making some effort to rise above the world towards God and heaven. You must not let him try alone. Whenever I see the husband struggling alone in such efforts, it makes me think of a dove endeavouring to fly upwards while it has one broken wing. It leaps and flutters, and perhaps rises a little way; and then it becomes wearied, and drops back again to the ground. If both wings cooperate, then it mounts easily.” A wife’ s kindness It is related in the life of William Hutton that a countrywoman called upon him one day, and told him that her husband behaved unkindly to her, and sought other company, often passing his evenings from home, which made her feel very unhappy; and, knowing Mr. Hutton to be a wise man, she thought he might be able to tell her how she should manage to cure her husband. “ The remedy is a simple one,” said he; “ but I have never known it to fail. Always treat your husband with a smile.” The woman expressed her thanks, dropped a courtesy, and went away. A few months afterwards she waited on Mr. Hutton with a couple of fine fowls, which she begged him to accept. She told him, while a tear of joy and gratitude glistened in her eye, that she had followed his advice, and her husband was cured. He no longer sought she company of others, but treated her with constant love and kindness. Ephesians 6:1-4 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.Parents and children I. Duties of children to parents.1. Children owe to their parents an inward affection and regard. Their obedience should flow from love, gratitude, and esteem. 2. Children are to honour their parents by external tokens of respect. 3. Children are to obey the just commands of their parents. 4. Children are not only to obey the express commands of parents while under their authority, but to receive with decent and humble regard, the instructions, counsels, and reproofs which they may see fit to communicate afterward. 5. Children are to remember, and, if there is occasion, also to remunerate, the favours they have received from their parents. II. Duties of parents to children.1. Parents are to instruct their children in the doctrines and duties of religion. 2. Parents must not content themselves with giving their children good instructions; but endeavour, by arguments, exhortations, and reproofs, to form their lives according to their instructions. 3. Parents must regulate the diversions of their children. 4. Parents should maintain the worship of God in their houses. 5. Let parents set their children a good example in everything. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Christian children I. The precept.1. Observe the persons to whom the commandment is addressed “ children.” 2. Observe what is commanded as the especial duty of children in reference to parents--“ obey,” and “ honour.” 3. The limitation of the precept--“ in the Lord.” The parent’ s stronghold is here, when he says, “ I must have you obedient, because I am responsible to God for your being so.” And the child’ s strong encouragement is in the same thought: “ In obeying my parents, I am doing that which is pleasing to God, and I do it because the Lord so bids me.” II. The sanction.1. To obey parents is right. (1) Their age, experience, knowledge, entitle them to the obedience of their children. (2) Love should prompt children to render obedience to their parents. 2. There is a promise annexed to obedience. God undertakes that His blessing shall be given. (James Cohen, M. A.)Our fathers and mothers Now this short text is a message to us about our duty to them. I. Notice whom you are to obey and honour. Your “ parents” --your “ father and mother.” II. What it is to honour and obey them.1. We must respect and reverence them. We should regard them as those to whose love and government God Himself has committed us. I have read of two sons who saved their aged parents at the sacrifice of all they possessed and at the risk of their own lives. The city was on fire, and they were in the middle of it; they had gold in the cellar and plate in the cupboard; but one took his father on his back, and the other his mother, and away they ran through the scorching streets and falling houses, till they got outside the walls! Those lads loved their parents with perfect love. How different to the wretched heathen who leave their old fathers and mothers to perish! Mr. Moffat, an African missionary, found a poor woman under a tree; she was a mere skeleton, and the bloodthirsty wolves were bowling around her! She said her children had got tired of her because she was sick; they had been gone some days, and she must sit there till she died. 2. To honour and obey our parents means that we are to do whatever will make them happy, even though they do not enjoin it upon us. 3. To honour and obey them means that we are to do whatever they tell us. Their commands are to be laws with us. A soldier is ordered to do this and that by his officer--it may be to carry a letter through the enemy’ s country, it may be to take the place of a comrade who has just been shot down at a gun, but he knows that he may not hesitate for a moment; if he refused, his character as a soldier would be gone, and he would be drummed out of the army. But what claim has an officer on a soldier, compared with the claim of a parent on a child? III. How far we are to honour and obey our parents (see Colossians 3:20). We are to obey our parents in everything so far as their commands agree with those of God, and no further; if they required us to steal, or lie, or cheat, or do anything wrong, we should not be called to obey them. But, dear children, it is not probable that your beloved parents will ever require you to do anything of this kind; and in all other cases you are bound to obey them. I press that “all,” because many boys and girls will pick and choose amongst duties as they would amongst apples; they will do what is easy and pleasant to them. Now, it seems to me that difficult things are just the test of obedience. Some things are no test at all. Suppose a father were to say to his son, “ Run and buy yourself a dozen raspberry tarts” ; not one boy in a hundred but would run to the shop as fast as his legs could carry him; but for all that, he might be a disobedient boy at heart. Now, let us try him again; “ Leave off your play, and take this note to the doctor’ s for me.” Look at him now! He pretends not to hear, or he puts it on his younger brother, or he flies into a passion, or he says right out, “ Father, I can’ t.” But if, instead of this, he at once cried, “ Father, I’ ll be ready in a minute,” and pulled on his jacket, and went skipping down the street with a smiling face, I should mark him in my pocket book for a thoroughly obedient lad. IV. Why you are to honour and obey them.1. Because God has told us to do it. And God is so wise and good that whatever he bids us do should be done unhesitatingly; His command and our obedience to it should follow one another as quickly as the clap of thunder follows the flash of lightning. 2. Because we owe, under God, our existence to them. 3. Because they are our superiors. If, directly we were born, we were as strong and as wise as they are; then it would be different--we would manage for ourselves: but just look how it is. We come into the world the most helpless of creatures--far more helpless than a lamb, for it can stand by itself--far more helpless than a chicken, for it can pick up its own food. There we are, unable to do one single thing for ourselves; we know nothing at all; we have not a particle of experience! When a boy gets into a boat for the first time, all is strange to him. What should we think of him if he declared that he was going to start for New Zealand, just as he was? We should cry out, “ You are mad!” But if he embarked in a large ship under a tried and skilful captain, then there would be no danger. Now, our parents are tried and skilful captains; they have sailed on the rough ocean of life in many directions; they understand all about its winds, and tides, and currents; they have sounded here, and anchored there; they have marked rocks in one place and shoals in other, and whirlpools in another. They have travelled the dangerous road of life for years; they have learnt the right turnings and the best inns; they know the spots where robbers lurk and wild beasts prowl; they know which fruits may be eaten, and which are poisonous; they know who are safe companions, and who will lead astray: In other words, having read so much, and heard so much, and seen so much, and suffered so much, they are able to guide us; they can tell us how to avoid what is harmful, and how to secure what is valuable; they can train us up “ in the way in which we should go.” 4. Because they are our nearest and dearest friends. 5. Because it will be good for us. It is the “ first commandment with promise” ; and the promise is, “ Thy days shall be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” No doubt this referred more particularly to Jewish children, because, as we have seen, those of them who were disobedient were stoned to death, and thus their days were short in the land; whilst those of them who were obedient lived on. But many Christians think that this promise is still fulfilled to dutiful sons and daughters. And, as a fact, they do live longer. For disobedient children soon fall into wicked ways and among wicked associates, and rain their health, and come to an untimely end. “ The ungodly shall not live out half their days.” So it was with the sons of Eli; so it was with Absalom; so it has been with many youths whom I have known. On the other hand, how different it is with the obedient child; he has his parents’ praise, which is an ever-flowing fountain of joy! He has their most fervent prayers! “ The smell of their son is to them as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.” Often as they embrace him, their bowels yearn over him, as they say, “ God be gracious unto thee, my son!” or, “ God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.” A blameless childhood blossoms into a graceful manhood! (J. Bolton, B. A.)Filial obedience Children ought to render to their parents--1. The obedience of love. 2. The obedience of reverence. It is “ honour thy father and thy mother.” There may be much love, much fondness, and much real obedience, yet I have sometimes seen a most lamentable deficiency in this veneration for parents. If I look into the Word of God, there I see the principle exhibited. I see Joseph, in the forty-sixth of Genesis, meeting with his old father--Joseph who was next on the throne to Pharaoh, a great man in Egypt, with thousands at his beck: yet I find, in the twenty-ninth verse, “ Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goschen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.” And if I turn to another passage, it is still more striking: in the case of Bathsheba and Solomon. It is in the second chapter of the First Book of Kings, and the nineteenth verse. “ Bathsheba therefore went unto King Solomon, to speak unto him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king’ s mother; and she sat on his right hand.” 3. The obedience of gratitude. 4. The obedience of submission. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Fatal result of disobedience Many years ago, a minister lived in a cottage near some very high, rocky hills, which rose abruptly from the vale below. He had two sons, who were not as obedient as boys ought to be. They fancied themselves wiser than their father, and often treated his commands with contempt. Now this good minister knew that the cliffs were not very safe for the boys to venture on. They were too perpendicular, and had too few places for the feet, to be climbed or descended by anyone without great risk of life or limbs. He pointed out this danger to his sons, and repeatedly said to them, “ Be sure you never venture down the face of the cliffs.” You can see that this was good advice, and the boys ought to have given due heed to it. But I am sorry to be forced to tell you these boys were wilful, and disobeyed. They said “ yes” to their father when he gave them this command, and then went out and broke it. Many birds built their nests in the holes among the rocks, and these bad boys would venture down in search of their eggs. They did this so frequently without meeting with any mishap, that they grew bold in their disobedience, and often laughed at their father for being so particular and old-fogyish. One day, however, these boys did not go home to dinner. Their parents wondered where they were, but made no search until tea time. Then the non-appearance of the boys troubled them. They sent, round the village to inquire for them, but they had not been seen since noon, when they were dismissed from school. The minister and his wife were now very much alarmed. They sent messengers in every direction. Their good father’ s heart trembled with fear lest they had tumbled over the cliffs. He went down a gorge which led to the vale below, and there, to his dismay, he found them cold, mangled, and dead! Their disobedience had proved their destruction, The root of heaven, or hell, struck in the nursery All vice and crime may be traced to the nursery. The foundations of reverence are either earnestly laid, or perilously sapped, in the very first years. In the first act of disobedience the child commits himself to a downward course. The assertion of self-will in a disobedient act, is evidence enough that the powers of darkness have prevailed to lay the foundation of hell in the young soul. The parents who tolerate, or mildly pass over the disobedience of their children, tolerate what constitutes the beginning of all evil, and the root of eternal evil. The children who are permitted to make light of the authority of their father and mother, will in all probability grow up to make light of the authority of God. In dishonouring their parents, they have already dishonoured God. They have disgraced themselves, impaired their own moral sense, given their consent to evil spirits as their allies, and entered on the way which leads them to destruction. Children should be made to obey long before they can understand why they should obey. Their hearts should beat, their muscles grow, and their nerves vibrate and play, under the necessity of obedience. From the beginning, their freedom should be freedom in obedience. As soon as they can understand it, they should be taught that reverence for their parents, manifested by unhesitating obedience, is God’ s command. And children who obey their parents because God commands it, are in the straight way wherein they shall not stumble. It shall be “ well with them,” both for time and eternity. They are in “ the Way that they should go” --the Way that leadeth unto life eternal, “ and when they are old they will not depart from it.” They have begun to do “ right.” The foundation of God is in them, and it shall stand forever, and they shall be built up forever. “ Children, obey your parents, in the Lord, for this is right.” It is right, not because it is commanded; but it is commanded because it is right, and it is right because it is essentially good, safe, and prosperous. In the law and ordinance of each child’ s creation, God has made a provision for the reverence of fathers and mothers. Parents are taken into the secrecy of His creative council, that no child may receive his existence immediately from Himself, but from Him, through them. Irreverent and disobedient children, therefore, do violence to the very spring and ground of their own nature; they rupture the covenant which God has made with obedient children; they cut themselves off from all part in His promises; they dissolve their connection with all blessed spirits and angels, and give pledges to Satan. (J. Pulsford.)A daughter’ s obedience A missionary was passing along the streets of London, and he saw a little girl lying asleep on the steps in the night, the rain beating in her face, and he awakened her and said, “ My little girl, what do you here?” “ Oh!” she replied, “ my father drove me out, and I am waiting until he is asleep, and then I am going in.” Then she told the story of her father’ s drunkenness. That night after her father was asleep, she went back and laid down in the house. In the morning she was up early, preparing the meal, and her father turned over, waking up from his scene of drunkenness and debauch, and he saw his little child preparing breakfast, and he said to her, “ Mary, why do you stay with me?” “ Oh!” she said, “ father, it is because I love you.” “ Well,” he said, “ why do you love me when everybody despises me? and why do you stay with me?” “ Well,” she said, “ father, you remember when mother was dying, she said to me: ‘ Mary, never forsake your father; the rum fiend will some day go out, and he will be very good and kind to you, and my dying charge is, don’ t forsake your father’ ; and I never will, father, I never will. Mother said I must not, and I never will.” An excellent proof While driving along the street one day last winter in my sleigh, a little boy, six or seven years old, asked me the usual question, “ Please, may I ride?” I answered him, “ Yes, if you are a good boy.” He climbed into the sleigh; and when I again asked, “ Are you a good boy?” he looked up pleasantly and said, “ Yes, sir.” “ Can you prove it?” “ Yes, sir.” “ By whom?” “ Why, by my mother,” said he, promptly. I thought to myself, here is a lesson for boys and girls. When a child feels and knows that mother not only loves, but has confidence in him or her, and can prove obedience, truthfulness, and honesty, by mother, they are pretty safe. That boy will be a joy to his mother while she lives. Obedience and character A tradesman once advertised in the morning papers for a boy to work in his store, run errands, and make himself generally useful. The next morning the store was thronged with boys of all ages and sizes trying to get the place. The storekeeper only wanted one boy, and as he was at a loss to know how to get the right one out of so large a crowd, he thought he must find out some plan to lessen the number of boys and to be sure of getting a good one. So he sent them all away till he could think over the matter a little. The next day the papers contained this advertisement: “Wanted--a boy who obeys his mother.” And out of the crowd who were there the day before, how many do you suppose came to get that place? Only two. Whichever of these two the storekeeper chose we may be very certain would prove a good boy. Jesus was pleasing His Father in heaven all the time that He was obeying His mother on earth. And so it is always. The boys who learn to obey at home are the boys who will be most wanted for places in business, and who will be most useful and successful in them. (Dr. Newton.)How to bring up children The late Dr. Henry Ware, when once asked by a parent to draw up some set of rules for government of children, replied by an anecdote: “ Dr. Hitchcock,” he said, “ was settled in Sandwich; and, when he made his first exchange with the Plymouth minister, he must needs pass through the Plymouth Woods, a nine miles’ wilderness, where travellers almost always got lost, and frequently came out at the point they started from. Dr. Hitchcock, on entering this much dreaded labyrinth, met an old woman, and asked her to give him some directions for getting through the wood so as to fetch up at Plymouth, rather than Sandwich. ‘ Certainly,’ she said, ‘ I will tell you all about it with the greatest pleasure. You will just keep right on till you get some ways into the woods, and you will come to a place where several roads branch off. Then you must Stop and consider, and take the one that seems to you most likely to bring you out right.’ He did so, and came out right.” Dr. Ware added, “ I have always followed the worthy and sensible old lady’ s advice in bringing up my children. I do not think anybody can do better: at any rate, I cannot.” Good common sense, doubtless, is often better than all set rules; but the thing is to have it. Early impressions abide Some years ago, a native Greenlander came to the United States. It was too hot for him there; so he made up his mind to return home, and took passage on a ship that was going that way; but he died before he got back, and, as he was dying, he turned to those who were around him, and said, “ Go on deck and see if you can see ice.” “ What a strange thing!” some would say. It was not a strange thing at all. When that man was a baby the first thing he saw, after his mother, was ice. His house was made of ice. The window was a slab of ice. He was cradled in ice. The water that he drank was melted ice. If he ever sat at a table, it was a table of ice. The scenery about his home was ice. The mountains were of ice. The fields were filled with ice. And when he became a man he had a sledge and twelve dogs that ran him fifty miles a day over ice. And many a day he stooped over a hole in the ice twenty-four hours to put his spear in the head of any seal that might come there. He had always been accustomed to see ice, and he knew that if his companions on the ship could see ice it would be evidence that he was near home. The thought of ice was the very last thought in his mind, as it was the very first impression made there. The earliest impressions are the deepest. Those things which are instilled into the hearts of children endure forever and forever. The children’ s life in Christ I sometimes meet with men and women who tell me that they cannot remember the time when they began to love and trust and obey Christ, just as they cannot remember the time when they began to love and trust and obey their parents. If we had a more vivid and a more devout faith in the truth that every Christian family is according to God’ s idea and purpose a part of the kingdom of heaven, this happy experience would be more common. The law of Christ is the rule of human conduct in childhood as well as in manhood; and as in Christ’ s kingdom grace precedes law, the grace of Christ is near to a child in its very earliest years to enable it to keep the law, and the child’ s earliest moral life may be a life in Christ. Christ’ s relationship to men cannot be a relationship of authority merely. His authority is the authority of One who has assumed our nature and died for our sins. He is our Prince that He may be our Saviour. These truths are assumed in the precept that children are to “ obey” their parents “ in the Lord.” Every child, apart from its choice and before it is capable of choice, is environed by the laws of Christ. It is equally true that every child, apart from its choice and before it is capable of choice, is environed by. Christ’ s protection and grace in this life, and is the heir of eternal blessings in the life to come. Christ died and rose again for the race. Children may “ obey” their parents “ in the Lord,” before they are able to understand any Christian doctrine; they may discharge every childish duty, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, before they have so much as heard whether the Spirit of God has been given; they may live in the “ light of God before they know that the true light always comes from heaven. And as men and women, who are consciously relying on God to enable them to do His will, appropriate God’ s grace and make it more fully their own by keeping His commandments, so the almost unconscious virtues of devout children make the life of Christ more completely theirs. Like Christ Himself, who in His childhood was subject to Joseph and Mary, as they advance in stature they advance in wisdom and in favour with God and men. This is the ideal Christian life. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Conflicting duties The difficulties of obedience are usually greatest in the troubled years between childhood and manhood; and not unfrequently these difficulties are increased rather than diminished when during these years the religious life begins to be active. To a boy or girl of fifteen the discovery of God sometimes seems to dissolve all human relationships. The earthly order vanishes in the glory of the infinite and the Divine. There is also a sudden realization of the sacredness and dignity of the personal life, and whatever authority comes between the individual soul and God is felt to be a usurpation. At this stage in the development of the higher life the first commandment is also the only commandment that has any real authority. “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” seems to exhaust all human duty, and life has no place for any inferior obligations. I have a very deep sympathy with those young people who are trying, and trying very unsuccessfully, to adjust what seem to them the conflicting claims of the seen and the unseen, of earth and heaven. They have to remember that we live in two worlds, that both belong to God; and that we do not escape from the inferior order when the glory of eternal and Divine things is revealed to us. We still have to plough, and to sow, and to reap; to build houses; to work in iron, and brass, and silver and gold. The old world with its day and night, its sunshine and its clouds, its rain and snow, its heat and cold, is still our home. In things seen and temporal we have to do the will of the invisible and eternal God, and to be disciplined for our final perfection and glory. As God determined the laws of the physical universe, so He determined the limitations of human life, and the conditions upon which human duty is to be discharged. The family, the State, and the Church are Divine institutions: and the obligations which they create are rooted in the will of God. The family and the State belong to the natural order, but they are not less Divine in their origin than the Church, nor are their claims upon us less sacred. In the family the parents by Divine appointment exercise authority, and children are under Divine obligations to obedience. The ends for which the family exists are defeated if authority is not exercised on the one side, if obedience is not conceded on the other; just as the ends for which the State exists are defeated if rulers do not assert and enforce the law, if subjects habitually violate it. Children are to obey their parents, “ for this is right” ; right, according to the natural constitution and order of human affairs; right, according to the laws of natural morality; right, according to the natural conscience and apart from supernatural revelation. But in the discharge of this natural duty the supernatural life is to be revealed. Children are to obey their parents “ in the Lord,” in the Spirit and in the strength of Christ. Obedience to parents is part of the service which Christ claims from us; it is a large province of the Christian life. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The extent of parental authority It is not enough that children obey their parents in those things which would have obligation apart from parental authority. To be truthful, honest, kindly, temperate, courageous, industrious, are duties whether a parent enforces them or not. They may be sanctioned and sustained by parental authority, but to discharge duties of this kind may be no proof of filial obedience; a child may discharge them without any regard to the authority of his parents. It is when the parent requires obedience in things which are neither right nor wrong in themselves, or which appear to the child neither right nor wrong in themselves, that the authority of the parents is unambiguously recognized. A parent may require obedience in things of this kind for the good of the child himself, for the sake of his health, for the sake of his intellectual vigour and growth, for the sake of his moral safety, or for the sake of his future success in life. Before the parents’ authority is exerted the child is free; but afterwards, whether the child sees the wisdom of the requirement or not, he is bound to obey. Or parental authority may be exerted for the sake of the family generally. Regulations intended to secure the order of the household, to prevent confusion, to lessen trouble, and to lessen expense, are often felt by young people to be extremely irksome. The regulations appear to be unreasonable, and to have no other object than to place vexatious restraints on personal liberty. Sometimes, no doubt, they are really unwise and unnecessary. But children are not the most competent judges; and in any case it is the parents, not the children, that are responsible for making the rules. The parents may be unwise in imposing them; but the children are more than unwise if they are restive under them and wilfully break them. To submit to restraints which are seen to be expedient and reasonable is a poor test of obedience; the real proof of filial virtue is given when there is loyal submission to restraints which appear unnecessary. There is less difficulty when a child is required to render personal service to a parent. The obligation is so obvious, that unless the child is intensely selfish the claim will be met with cheerfulness as well as with submission. Affection, gratitude, and a certain pride in being able to contribute to a parent’ s ease or comfort, will make obedience a delight. To be of use satisfies one of the strongest cravings of a generous and noble nature, and that satisfaction is all the more complete if the act of service involves real labour and a real sacrifice of personal enjoyment. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Family discipline and State security The duty of obedience to parents, which is a natural duty, a duty arising out of the natural constitution of human life, was enforced in Jewish times by a Divine commandment. And this commandment had a place of special dignity in Jewish legislation; it was “ the first commandment with promise.” Paul was not thinking of the Ten Commandments as if they stood apart from the rest of the laws which God gave to the Jewish people, or else he would have said that this was the only commandment that was strengthened by the assurance of a special reward to obedience. He meant that of all the Jewish laws this was the first that had a promise attached to it. The promise was a national promise. It was not an assurance that every child that obeyed his parents would escape sickness and poverty, would be prosperous, and would live to a good old age; it was a declaration that the prosperity, the stability, and the permanence of the nation depended upon the reverence of children for their parents. The discipline of the family was intimately related to the order, the security, and the greatness of the State. Bad children would make bad citizens. If there was a want of reverence for parental authority, there would be a want of reverence for public authority. If there was disorder in the home, there would be disorder in the nation; and national disorder would lead to the destruction of national life. But if children honoured their parents the elect nation would be prosperous, and would retain possession of the country which it had received from the hands of God. The greatness of the promise attached to this commandment, the fact that it was the first commandment that had any promise attached to it, revealed the Divine estimate of the obligations of filial duty. And although Jewish institutions have passed away, the revelation of God’ s judgment concerning the importance of this duty remains. And the promise with which it was sanctioned is the revelation of a universal law. The family is the germ cell of the nation. If children honour their parents, men and women will be trained to those habits of order and obedience which are the true security of the public peace, and are among the most necessary elements of commercial and military supremacy; they will be disciplined to self-control, and will have strength to resist many of the vices which are the cause of national corruption and ruin. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Honour is more than obedience The commandment which Paul quotes requires children to “ honour” their parents; “ honour” includes obedience and something more. We may obey because we are afraid of the penalties of disobedience; and in that case the obedience though exact will be reluctant, without cheerfulness and without grace. We may obey under terror, or we may obey from motives of self-interest. We may think that the man to whom we are compelled to submit is in no sense our superior, that he is at best our equal, and that it is mere accident that gives him authority over us. But children are required to remember that their parents are their superiors, not their equals; that they have to “ honour” parental dignity as well as to obey parental commands, that honour is to blend with obedience and to make it free and beautiful. The child that honours his parents will yield a real deference to their judgment and wishes when there is no definite and authoritative command; will respect even their prejudices; will chivalrously conceal their infirmities and faults; will keenly resent any disparagement of their claims to consideration; will resent still more keenly any assault on their character. In a family where this precept is obeyed, parents will be treated with uniform courtesy. There is a tradition that whenever Jonathan Edwards came into a room where his children were sitting, they rose as they would have risen at the entrance of a visitor. Forms of respect of this kind are alien from modern manners; but the spirit of which they were the expression still survives in well-bred families, I mean in families which inherit and preserve good traditions, whatever social rank they may belong to. Nor is it to parents alone that children should show this spirit of consideration and respect; brothers and sisters should show it to each other; and both among the rich and the poor it may be taken as a sure sign of vulgarity, inherited or acquired, if courtesy is reserved for strangers, and has no place in the life of the family. Children are to “ honour” their parents, and if they honour their parents they are likely to be courteous to each other. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Duty of parents to children Paul had a sensitive sympathy with the wrongs which children sometimes suffer, and a strong sense of their claims to consideration. Children are to “ obey” and to “ honour” even unreasonable, capricious, and unjust parents; but it is the duty of parents not to be unreasonable, capricious, or unjust. Parents are sometimes wanting in courtesy to children as well as children to parents, speak to them roughly, violently, insultingly--and so inflict painful wounds on their self-respect. Parents sometimes recur with cruel iteration to the faults and follies of their children, faults and follies of which the children are already ashamed, and which it would be not only kind but just to forget. Parents are sometimes guilty of a brutal want of consideration; they allude in jest to personal defects to which the children are keenly sensitive, remind them mockingly of failures by which they have been deeply humiliated, speak cynically of pursuits in which their children have a passionate or romantic interest, and contemptuously and scornfully of companions and friends that their children enthusiastically admire and love. Parents are sometimes tyrannical, wilfully thwarting their children’ s plans, needlessly interfering with their pleasures, and imposing on them unreasonable and fruitless sacrifices. Parents who desire to be loved and honoured and cheerfully obeyed should lay to heart the apostle’ s warning: “ Provoke not your children to wrath.” Then follows the positive precept, “ But nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.” This covers the whole province of Christian education.1. The precept implies a real and serious faith on the part of the parents that their children belong to Christ, and are under Christ’ s care. The children are Christ’ s subjects, and have to be trained to loyal obedience to His authority. Their earliest impressions of God should assure them that God loves them with an infinite and eternal love, and that He has blessed them with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. 2. The education of which the apostle is thinking is practical rather than speculative; it has to do with life and character, rather than with knowledge. The order of a child’ s life is determined by its parents, and is to be determined under Christ’ s authority, so that the child may be trained to all Christian virtues. In the earlier years of childhood this training will be, in a sense, mechanical. The child will not know why certain acts and habits are required of it, or why other acts and habits are forbidden. There will be no appeal to the child’ s conscience or reason; the parents’ conscience and the parents’ reason will assume the responsibility of guiding the child’ s conduct. 3. If it is the duty of a child to obey, it is the duty of parents to rule. There can be no obedience where there is no authority; and if a child is not disciplined to obedience it suffers a moral loss which can hardly ever be completely remedied in later years. The religious as well as the moral life is injured by the relaxation of parental rule. Obedience to the personal authority of parents disciplines us to obey the personal authority of God. 4. Children should be trained to the surrender of their own pleasure and comfort to the pleasure and comfort of others. Parents who have sacrificed themselves without reserve to their children’ s gratification are sometimes bitterly disappointed that their children grow up selfish. They wonder and feel aggrieved that their devotion receives no response, that their children are not so eager to serve them as they have been to serve their children. On the other hand, parents who with equal affection have made themselves, not their children, the centre of the family life, seem to have been more fortunate. Not selfishly, harshly, or tyrannically, but firmly and consistently, they have required their children to take a secondary position. The comfort of the children and their pleasures were amply provided for, but the children were not led to think that everything in the house must give way to them, that all the sacrifices were to be made by their parents, none by themselves. They were trained to serve, and not merely to receive service. This seems to be the truer discipline of the Christian spirit and character. 5. In relation to the higher elements of the Christian life, to those elements which are distinctively Christian and spiritual, more depends upon the real character of the parents than upon anything besides. In relation to these the power of personal influence is supreme. If the parents really obey the will of Christ as their supreme law, if they accept His judgments about human affairs and about the ends of human life, if they live under the control of the invisible and eternal world, the children will know it, and are likely to yield to the influence of it. But if the parents, though animated by religious faith, are not completely Christian, if some of their most conspicuous habits of thought and conduct are not penetrated by the force of Christ’ s spirit and teaching, the children are in great danger; they are as likely to yield to what is base and worldly in the life of their parents as to what is Divine. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Parents and children Family life has its origin with God. A more sacred position than that of father or mother it is impossible to occupy. And this because the highest revelation of God presents Him to us as a Parent. He is the Father of men. In every family, therefore, where love abounds and holy authority rules, there is a reflection of God. Then, further, according to a law of our Maker, children are a gift. I. Try to estimate the worth of children. They are budding men and women. II. Try to understand their individual characters. Careful study is needed for this. A family is a little world: each member of it has a personality of his or her own. III. Try to appreciate the power of your influence. This can hardly be exaggerated, especially in the formative years of childhood. They are always learning from us, and being influenced by us. We can do nothing and say nothing but what leaves some kind of impression upon their young characters. We are their books, and they study US with keenest eyes, and reproduce us with a ludicrous accuracy. IV. Try to recognize the limits of your authority.1. It is bounded by the will of God.2. It is limited by time. (Wm. Braden.)Religious education I. The nature of this duty.1. Parents are required to impart to their children the instruction or wisdom of the Lord Jesus. 2. Parents must subject their children to the discipline of the Lord Jesus. II. The importance of this duty. This may be proved from--1. The state of prospects of the children themselves. 2. The circumstances and prospects of the Church of Christ. The hope of the Church in the future depends always upon the rising generation. 3. The state and necessities of the world at large. III. The consistent, Christ-like temper in which these duties must be performed. (John Hannah, D. D.)Christian parents I. Caution.1. Avoid harshness and severity of demeanour.2. Do not overstrain the necessity of obedience.3. Avoid the habit of constantly finding fault. II. Counsel.1. Exalt the Word of God. That must be the basis, foundation, rule and guide of everything. The great standard of right and wrong.2. Exalt Christ.3. Exalt the Spirit of God.4. Maintain a godly jealousy of the world. (James Cohen, M. A.)The nurture and admonition of the Lord 1. The first thing to consider is the basis of the culture--the Lord. To make a child understand fully what that means is the Alpha and Omega of Christian education. To train children of old in “ the nurture and admonition of the Lord” was to teach them to comprehend the meaning and bearing of the great spiritual truths which the gospel brought into the world. 2. The next question concerns the method of the culture, which is described in the significant term, “ the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Some have supposed that in the double term there is a reference to the dual parentage, and that it describes the blending of the manly and womanly influence in the rule and culture of the home. But the original hardly looks that way. Our Revised Version has it, “ nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.” So that the word nurture in the Authorised Version in the original bears the sterner meaning; and refers to the discipline which comes through correction; while admonition suggests counsel, advice, reproof, exhortation, and all the intellectual and moral influences whereby a young soul may be trained for its work. It is wonderful how the fatherly and motherly influences blend in Christ; the tenderest nurture, the firmest correction, the sternest chastisement, in which no child can ever miss the love. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)Religious teaching of the young The terms translated, “ nurture and admonition,” were very familiar words to the Greeks. They were proud of their system of education, and, viewed from a moral point, they had reason to be so; their plans were admirably constituted for the development of the body, the culture of intellect, and the refining of the aristocratic taste in society. But between man and God there was the greatest deficiency: the vital deficiency was that which is supplied here by the apostle when he used these words, and said, “ In the nurture and admonition of the Lord” ; for it is Christianity alone which touches the mainspring of our nature, which brings all its parts into harmony with themselves, and restores, as a whole, man to the friendship and communion of God. I. Look at some of the encouragement which we learn in the endeavour to bring them up to the Lord.1. I would find encouragement in the general belief in a “ Present God.” This may be said to be the starting point of a religious education. 2. We have in children comparative tenderness of conscience. 3. There is in children a comparatively prompt appreciation of the love of Christ. To a child it is not so difficult to believe in that complete self-abandonment for the good of others which was manifested in the Cross of Jesus Christ. He can more thoroughly understand in that early part of his life even than he can at a later period, when the shadows of the world are cast upon that Cross--can appreciate the love which prompted the giving Himself for us, and can return it far more than at any later period of his existence. II. The means to be used for this purpose.1. Instruction. It is knowledge, not ignorance, that is the mother of our devotion. We must seek, therefore, to illumine the understanding--to present to it those great objects of faith upon which the soul reposes. 2. Example. The instruction of the family is neither better nor worse than the conduct of its members: if the lessons are high and the conduct low, the effect will be low; if the lessons are imperfect, but the conduct excellent, the effect will be excellent. 3. These means must be applied and sustained in power by prayer. (C. M. Birrell.)Parents and children A parent is bound to his child by a tie which cannot be severed. He may delegate some of that work in which he is sure, intentionally or undesignedly, himself to bear so large a part, to tutors and governors, but he does not by that divest himself of his responsibility. This relationship is unalterable. It is not even affected by the conduct of the child. The bond is indestructible, and the duty as lasting as the bond. I. The nature and extent of parental influence. It is evident that there is no relation in which a man exerts so much power for good or evil. There is no other from whom the child receives so many of the ideas, impressions, and habits, which are most abiding, as from his parents. The opinions which a man holds, the party with which he identifies himself, the friendships he cultivates, and the particular line of conduct he observes, all impress themselves on the mind of his child; and his views of them are affected partly by the feelings he has to his father, and partly by the opinions which they have had upon his father’ s character and life. Very early is the observing power of the child awakened, and from the time that it is roused to consciousness every day adds something to its ever-increasing store. Words and looks, as well as actions, have their effect; and thus, unconsciously to themselves, the parents are constantly educating their children--educating them when they have no thought at all of the serious work which they are doing; when they are going on the way of life in their own accustomed course without recollecting that there are eager young eyes watching every movement, and listening young ears drinking in every word that is spoken, and impressible young hearts which are being trained to good or to evil by that which is thus passing before them. II. The spirit and manner in which this responsibility should be discharged.1. To make the unconscious influence which a man exerts a blessing, the one thing which is necessary is high-toned Christian principle. The power which goes forth from a man will be according to the spirit that is in him. 2. In the direct work of training, the first essential is that you should clearly set before your own mind the object which you have in view. (1) Of course education by a Christian man must be religious, and distinctively Christian. And not only must this instruction be given, but wisely given--so that the religious lesson shall not be regarded as a mere task. 3. The exercise of authority is another of the means by which a parent may fulfil his duty. The one power on earth which is of Divine right in his. It is essential to the right government of the family and the proper discipline of the child. It meets him at the beginning of life with the idea, so necessary for all to realize, that in this world no human will is meant to be absolute and supreme, and that the first lesson--which everyone is to learn--is the difficult but necessary one of obedience. 3. No Christian parent will need to be reminded that he must pray for and with his children. (J. G. Begets, B. A.)Jesus Christ the pattern, means, and end of parental training “ In the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The Lord brings up His disciples; He takes them at their new birth, and educates them; He instructs and teaches them, but He does more than this, He brings them up; He forms and developes a godly character; He conforms them, by discipline and training, to the Divine image; He leads His disciples into true manhood of soul and of life. There is a nurture and admonition which the Lord adopts, and which may, with immense advantage, be imitated by every parent. The Lord exhorts, warns, and restrains. There is nurture, and there is admonition, in the bringing up of Christ’ s disciples by their Lord. He is not like Eli, who was chargeable with great neglect, because he did not restrain his sons when they made themselves vile. The Lord Jesus Christ does restrain His disciples. When they sin He corrects them, yet He does not always chide, neither does He keep His anger for ever. He leaves some faults to wear themselves out, and other faults to die under indirect influences; but He takes care that every fault comes under some destructive influence. The Lord teaches and trains partly by His own example. Hence, when He is spoken of under the similitude of a Shepherd, it is said of Him, that He goes before His disciples, leading them, by showing them the path in which they should walk--showing them, not by His lips merely, but showing them by His own steps. Further, the Lord unites with Himself, by trust and love, those whom He brings up. His influence over them is not through the understanding and the reason merely--not simply through the intellectual faculties--but by the heart. What a melancholy sight it is in families, to see children growing up like roots in dry ground. They have hold of nothing in the home, and nothing in the home has hold upon them; there is nothing there that is congenial, just because there is nothing genial--for the genial to early life will always be congenial. Brethren, speaking of “ the nurture and admonition of the Lord” mentioned in the text, we may really call it the nurture and admonition which the Lord adopts. We do not say that Paul had this thought when he wrote; we think he had another thought, which we shall presently try to give you: but still the thought that we now suggest is inseparably associated with that which we shall presently suggest--and therefore the remarks we have been making appear to us to be quite to the point. And if you would bring up your children aright, just see how the Lord brings you up, and imitate your heavenly Educator. But, speaking textually, “ the nurture and admonition of the Lord” is that which the Lord directs--it is that which has the Lord for its subject, and the Lord for its object. “ Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” means--Let your instruction and your training have the Lord’ s teaching, the Lord’ s warnings, the Lord’ s doctrines, for their means, and the Lord Himself for their end. Let the Lord be the end of education; and let the Lord’ s resources be the means of education. And will you also observe that both parents are charged--for the word “ fathers” is used here, not in the specific sense, but in the generic sense: so that we may read the passage, “ Ye parents, train up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The day was, when the mother had nothing, or very little, to do directly with instruction and education. But so soon as the position of the wife and the mother was improved and righted, so soon as she stood in her proper place by the side of the husband and father, then the father began to give her an undue share of the responsibility in bringing up the children. And what do we see now? We see the mother in many cases doing the whole work, and the father most grievously and sinfully neglecting it. This is not right. In the first place there is something due to the mother, and to the wife; why should she take a greater burden than she is able to bear? In the next place there is something due to the children. Look, further, at the common danger to parents that is here recognized--the abuse of power. The power of a parent is very great; and there is very little to check it; even the State does little here, unless the abuse of power be extraordinary. The power of a parent is, as we scarcely need remind you, almost unbounded. Do you see that the text recognizes the danger of this power being abused? “ Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.” Power, more than anything else, tempts to cruelty; it is an exceedingly dangerous thing to possess--and no man in his senses will ever covet it; he will rather ask God to give him very little of it, than desire to possess it. Those who have right views of power will never be ambitious for it: but they will rather, like some of the old prophets (like Jeremiah, for instance), tremble to take it even when God puts it into their hands. We often see power make the most tender natures cruel, and the most gentle natures fierce. How often have women been rendered cruel by an increase of authority, and an increase of influence! There is danger to parents of caprice, and harshness; of giving commands, and precepts, and prohibitions, for the sake of maintaining their position, and of upholding their authority. And that is the point of the words, “ Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up.” The child is to be nourished; it is not to be driven--it is to be cherished; it is not to be forced. The incitement and the impulsion which are likely to distress and dishearten the child, are distinctly forbidden in the text. The force of the contrast must be manifest to you in a moment. The bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, is placed in contrast with provoking them to wrath. The child’ s faults are to be corrected; but still, correction is to be so administered as not to sink the child into despondency, or drive him to despair--as not to wean the heart of the child either from father or from mother. And the education required is to be marked, as you will have seen throughout the course of these remarks, by the following features. The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, is to be its end. Children are to brought up for the Lord; for subjects in His kingdom; that is to be the ultimate end. Christ’ s teaching is to be the means of education. The precepts and the prohibitions that are to regulate the general conduct are to be taken from Christ’ s lips, and are to be delivered to the child in Christ’ s name. Christ’ s resources are to be the support of education. The parent is not supposed to be able himself to do this work; but there are put at his disposal the unsearchable riches of Christ; and if he cannot nourish his children with that which he has, he may nourish them by the wealth of his Master and Lord. The education required is to have Christ’ s example for its standard--the parent is to: “ bring up” as Christ brings up His followers. And it is to have Christ’ s temper for its spirit--the educator must be meek and lowly in heart. (S. Martin, D. D.)The father’ s charge I. The duties which parents owe to their children.1. Children are weak and helpless, and totally incapable of caring for themselves; and hence arises the first duty which parents owe them--that of feeding and clothing them. 2. Children are ignorant, and without understanding; hence they should not only be fed, but taught. Children should be taught-- (1) Early.(2) Familiarly.(3) Affectionately.(4) Extensively. 3. Children are unruly, and therefore must; be governed. 4. Children are prone to evil, and therefore must be restrained. II. The obligations which parents are under to practise those duties.1. They should do it for their own sake. For the credit of their own characters.2. They should do it for their children’ s sake.3. They should do it for society’ s sake.4. They should do it for God’ s sake. Conclusion:1. Learn how careful the apostles were to instruct their converts, not only in the matters of faith, but rules of conduct descending even to the most particular duties of domestic life. 2. The practicability of a religious education. 3. How awful is the responsibility of parents. (Theological Sketchbook.)The duty of Christian parents I. The tie that binds the parent to his child. It is one of the most affecting of all ties. But see the deep responsibility connected with it--to say nothing of the closeness, the tenderness, and the unchangeableness of the tie--my bone, and my flesh, and my blood. II. But observe the exhortation that is here given. At first sight it seems a sort of strange exhortation to parents, “ not to provoke their children to wrath.” Yet there is infinite love and infinite wisdom in it; because of the very love that parents have for their children. Observe, they are not exhorted to love their children; that is not the exhortation given to them. It is supposed that they love their children; and yet, though they love their children, they may “ provoke them to wrath.” Because there may be, and often is, an exhibition of love that does “ provoke them to wrath.” Oh! beloved, a system of perpetual, endless, unrequired, austere restriction does it; a perpetual restriction, in which there is a practical forgetfulness of the parent’ s duty to make his children happy. Beware of a system of perpetually finding fault. This results from the other; if there be a system of perpetual restriction in all things. But now let us come to that which is the precept before us. “ But,” says he, instead of doing so, “ bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” “ Bring them up” --the same word occurs in the twenty-ninth verse of the former chapter; it is the same as “ nourish.” It implies all tenderness, all feeling with, all feeling for, all care, all gentleness, and all love. “ Bring them up” : just as you nourish your own flesh, caring for its life, for its welfare, and its true well-being--so “ bring them up.” “ Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Here are two points for our consideration. Here is, first of all, the bringing them up, instructing them in Divine truth; and then there is educating them in Divine things. First of all, to instruct them in Divine truth. And this, too, not in a dictatorial way, as a schoolmaster teaches his lessons; but as a father should teach his children. A “ good minister” is one who is “ nourished up in the words of faith, and of good doctrine.” Nourished up, by little and little, just as he is able to bear it. Besides this, beloved, there is in education--and there can hardly be, I should think, a greater mistake than to suppose that instruction in the truth, and education, mean the same things--there is in education the “ bringing up” of a child in those principles in which he has been instructed out of God’ s Word. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)Early religious instruction When a lady once told Archbishop Sharpe that she would not communicate religious instruction to her children until they had attained the years of discretion, the shrewd prelate replied, “ Madam, if you do not teach them, the devil will!” (J. Whitecross.)Training children Be very vigilant over thy child in the April of his understanding, lest the frost of May nip his blossoms, While he is a tender twig, straighten him; whilst he is a new vessel, season him; such as thou makest him, such commonly shalt thou find him. Let his first lesson be obedience, and his second shall be what thou wilt. Give him education in good letters, to the utmost of thy ability and his capacity. Season his youth with the love of his Creator, and make the fear of his God the beginning of his knowledge. If he have an active spirit, rather rectify than curb it; but reckon idleness among his chiefest faults. As his judgment ripens, observe his inclination, and tender him a calling that shall not cross it. Forced marriages and callings seldom prosper. Show him both the mow and the plough; and prepare him as well for the danger of the skirmish, as possess him with the honour of the prize. (F. Quarles.)Correction of children By directing a child’ s attention to a fault, and thus giving it a local habitation and a name, you may often fix it in him more firmly; when, by drawing his thoughts and affections to other things, and seeking to foster an opposite grace, you would be much more likely to subdue it. In like manner a jealous disposition is often strengthened when notice is taken of it, while the endeavour to cherish a spirit of love would do much toward casting it out. (Hare.)The time for religious education Seize the opportunity while it lasts, before the child is inured to evil, and the sinful habit is formed. Act like the skilful physician, who tells you to apply for medical aid while the disease is in its incipient state, and not to delay until the malady has seized upon the vital organs, and is out of the reach of medicine. Now is the time to apply the moral medicine (for there is balm in Gilead, end there is a Physician there), and let it be so applied as that it work freely in these young hearts, for their healing and salvation. (Dr. R. Newton.)Youth is the best season for communicating knowledge If, for instance, you wish your son to learn a business, you send him to acquire it in the period of his youth; if languages are to be mastered, you admit the advantage of beginning them while young; and so it is with trades and professions. Now, men know this, and act accordingly in matters relating to this life. And shall men of this world be “ wiser in their generation than the children of light” ? Surely Christianity is a science, whose interest and importance are immeasurably above every other. Christianity is the Divine science of human salvation. O! then, begin to teach your children this Divine science while they are yet young. (Dr. R. Newton.)Right habits must be inculcated in youth If man be trained in early life to right habits--habits of religion, habits of virtue, truth, righteousness, and piety--it is to be expected that these habits, being truly formed, will grow with his growth, and strengthen with his strength. We have seen this principle repeatedly illustrated. For example, you have perhaps inserted characters in the tender bark of the young tree; and if you return to the tree in the next season, you then find that these characters have become wider and deeper than they were when you placed them there. So it is with the character of truth imprinted in the young and tender mind. It has been remarked that a vessel generally retains the savour of the liquid with which it was first seasoned so long as any part of the vessel remains. How true does this observation apply to the mental constitution of youth! This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Ephesians 6:5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.A sermon to servants Understand your calling as the servants of Christ. You are His servants before you are any earthly master’ s, and every work you do, every duty you fulfil, every command you obey, is really obedience to Him. He says, do this and this, by the lips of the earthly master; do it bravely, cheerfully, thoroughly; it is done for Me, not for him. All that is menial in that case vanishes out of your daffy tasks. Behind the human master there is a higher Master; there is no humiliation even in bondage to Him. I. Be faithful for the sake of Christ your Lord. I mean, be loyal to the trust reposed in you; repay it by strict fidelity, incorruptible honesty, and steady devotion to those interests of the household committed to your charge. II. Be diligent. Give to your service the energy that you would give to Christ; put it on the highest and firmest ground. Give your best, because it is the Lord’ s work you are doing; it is the Lord’ s “ Well done” you are winning; it is the Lord’ s wage you will receive at last. III. Be patient. Many commands may seem unreasonable; many tempers you have to do with, irritable and arrogant. Take it up into a higher region. See how far the thought of Christ will enable you to do and bear. Be always more ready to obey than to question, to work than to wrangle, to submit than to rebel; and you will do well. And do not be always thinking that you can better yourself; be patient, and “ rather bear the ills you have, than fly to others that you know not of.” IV. Be cheerful. Nothing makes such sunlight on earth as cheerful, joyful fulfilment of duty. We have never mastered the lesson of life till we can sing to our tasks, and smile as we sing. Make it your study daily to wear a cheerful aspect as you go about your duty, and to make your life a willing, joyful service to your heavenly King. V. Be sure that your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. No work done for Christ ever fails of a blessing. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)Respective duties of masters and servants I. Let us consider the duties of servants, as they are represented to us in Scripture.1. The first point, then, which is enforced in every passage relating to this subject, is obedience (Colossians 3:22; Titus 2:9; 1 Peter 2:18). Such obedience does not rest on any mere law or custom of man, but on the plain word of Almighty God. There cannot be any disgrace in homing the place of a servant. Can there be shame in that, to which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Lord of glory, submitted? (Philippians 2:6-8; Hebrews 5:8.) But of what kind should your obedience be? The apostle has taught you that as to its extent it should be universal. “ Obey in all things your masters,” that is, in all things which are not contrary to the higher law of your heavenly Master: in all else obey readily and without limitation (Philippians 2:14). In small things as well as great. As servants should show obedience to their masters in all lawful things, so should they show it with reverence and meekness, or, as it is expressed in the text, “ with fear and trembling,” lest ye should offend them. 2. Another duty of a servant is to add to his obedience a constant endeavour to please. Let your services be seen to flow not from necessity or interest alone, but from the attachment of a willing heart. 3. A third duty is strict faithfulness and honesty. An unfaithful servant is in itself a term of deep reproach. He owes much to those into whose service he enters. He is sheltered beneath their roof; he shares the comforts of their home, is placed beyond the reach of want, eats of his master’ s bread, and drinks of his master’ s cup. Much is confided to him. His master’ s goods are placed beneath his care, and are justly required at his hand. II. The duties of a master (see Colossians 4:1).1. A master is bound in justice to keep to the full the terms of his agreement--to give to his apprentice the needful instruction in his business, and to pay his servant the stipulated wages (Deuteronomy 24:14-15; James 5:4). 2. The law of equity may be considered as binding a master to kindness, forbearance, and concern for the souls of his servants. It bids him show kindness, and thus extends further than the strict rule of justice. Reason and conscience are its umpires. III. Mutual are the obligations under which masters and servants are placed to each other. Highly important are their respective duties, and each may truly glorify God in the sphere assigned them. But what are the motives, what is the principle that can produce such blessed fruit? It is summed up in the consideration--Ye have both a Master in heaven. “ Ye are not your own” ; “ ye are bought with a price,” even the precious blood of Christ. Servants l how powerfully is this motive pressed on you! “ Be obedient to them that are your masters … in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to mere” How happy are you, if you have indeed become the servants of Christ. Then will it be your foremost desire and endeavour to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things. And, behold, how true religion can ennoble every station! Masters! “ your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with Him.” Ye and your servants are fellow servants of the Lord; you are members of the same body--His Church; you must speedily stand together before His judgment seat. (E. Blencowe, M. A.)Servants and masters Paul takes the institutions of society as they stand, and defines the duties of those who acknowledge the authority of Christ. He teaches that the State is a Divine institution as well as the Church. Political government is necessary to the existence of human society; a bad government is better than no government at all. Governors might be unjust; but Christian people, with no political authority or power, are not responsible for the injustice, nor are they able to remedy it. Government itself is sanctioned by God, and submission is part of the duty which Christian people owe to Him. Domestic and industrial institutions are also necessary for the existence of society. By the Divine constitution of human life we have to serve each other in many ways, and if the service is to be effective it must be organized. In apostolic times slavery existed in every part of the Roman empire. It was a form of domestic and industrial organization created by the social condition of the ancient world. It was the growth of the history and mutual relations of the races under the Roman authority. To practical statesmen in those days it would have seemed impossible to organize the domestic and industrial life of nations in any other way, as impossible as it seems to modern statesmen to organize commerce on any other principle than that of competition. Christian people were not responsible for its existence, and had no power to abolish it. Their true duty was to consider how, as masters and slaves, they were to do the will of Christ. Paul transfigures the institution. He applies to it the great principle which underlies all Christian ethics; Christ is the true Lord of human life; whatever we do we are to do for Him; we are all His servants. Slaves live in the eye of God. They are to do their work for Him. All that is hard, all that is ignominious, in their earthly condition is suddenly lit up with the glory of Divine and eternal things. “ Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling” --with that zeal which is ever keenly apprehensive of not doing enough--“ in singleness of your heart,” with no double purpose, but with an honest and earnest desire to do your work well, “ as unto Christ.” This will redeem them from the common vice of slaves; if they accept their tasks as from Christ, and try to be faithful to Him, they will not be diligent and careful only when their masters are watching them, “ in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers,” but will be always faithful “ as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” They will cherish no resentment against their earthly masters, and will not serve them merely to avoid punishment, but, regarding their work as work for Christ, will do it cheerfully with real kindliness for those whom they have to serve, “ with goodwill doing service, as unto the Lord and not unto men.” Their earthly masters may deny them the just rewards of their labour, may fail to recognize their integrity and their zeal, may treat them harshly and cruelly; but as Christ’ s servants they will not miss their recompense; they are to work, “ knowing that whatsoever good thing each one doeth,” that very thing “ shall he receive again from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” No good works will be forgotten; the rewards which are withheld on earth will be conferred in heaven. Masters are to act towards their servants in the same spirit, and under the government of the same Divine laws. “ Ye masters, do the same things unto them.” As slaves are warned against the special vices of their order, and charged to do their work, not reluctantly, but “ with goodwill,” “ not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers,” but “ from the heart,” so masters are warned against the special vice of which masters were habitually guilty; they are not to be rough, violent, and abusive, but are to “ forbear threatening.” They are reminded that their authority is only subordinate and temporary; the true Master of their slaves is Christ, and Christ is their Master too; He will leave no wrong unredressed. Before earthly tribunals a slave might appeal in vain for justice, but “ there is no respect of persons with Him.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Relation of the gospel to slavery These precepts may be met with the objection that slavery was a cruel tyranny, and that no moral duties could be created by social relations which were an outrage at once on human rights and on Divine laws; the masters had one duty, and only one--to emancipate their slaves; the slaves were grossly oppressed, and were under no moral obligations to their masters. But the objection is untenable. The worst injuries may be inflicted upon me by an individual or by the State, but it does not follow that I am released from obligations either to the man or to the community that wrongs me. I may be unjustly imprisoned, imprisoned by an iniquitous law or by a corrupt judge; but it may be my duty to observe the regulations of the jail; I ought not to be in prison at all, but being there it may be my duty neither to try to escape nor to disturb the order of the place. And though a man ought not to be a slave at all, he may be under moral obligations to those who hold him in slavery. So, on the other hand, I may be a jailer, and may have prisoners under my care who, in my belief, have committed no crime, and yet it may be my duty to keep them safely. To take an extreme case: the governor of a jail may be fully convinced that a man in his charge who has been condemned to be hung for murder is innocent of the crime, but if he were to let the man escape he would be guilty of a grave breach of trust. We may say of slavery what John Wesley said of the slave trade, that “ it is the sum of all villanies,” and yet a servile revolt may be a great and flagrant crime. While the institution exists and a real and permanent improvement in the organization of society is impossible, it is the duty of the slave to bear his wrongs patiently. Circumstances may be easily imagined in which the position of a master, if he be a Christian, would be in some respects more difficult than that of a slave. Some of the miserable creatures whom he owns may have lost, or never possessed, the energy, the forethought, the self-reliance, the self-control, necessary for a life of freedom. In the organization of society there may be no place for them among free citizens. To emancipate them would be to deprive them of a home, to give them up to starvation, to drive them to a life of crime. In such circumstances a Christian master might think it his duty to retain his authority for the sake of society, and for the sake of the slaves themselves; but would resolve to use his power with as much gentleness and kindness as the hateful institution permitted. But it may be further objected that there are no indications in the New Testament that the apostles saw the hatefulness of the institution, or desired its disappearance. They certainly did not denounce it. I suppose that if Paul had been asked for his judgment on it he would have said that slavery was part of the order of this present evil world. If he had been pressed more closely and asked to say whether he thought it just or not, he would probably have answered that in a world which had forgotten God, and was in open revolt against Him, all the relations between man and man were necessarily thrown into disorder. It was not slavery alone that violated the true and ideal organization of human society; the whole constitution of the world was evil; and no great and real reform was possible apart from the moral and religious regeneration of the race. When the golden age came, and the love and power of Christ had won a final victory over human sin, the order of the world would be changed. Under the reign of Christ, tyranny, slavery, war, and poverty, would be unknown. Meanwhile, and in the actual condition of mankind, the work of the Christian Church was not to assault institutions, but to try to make individual men loyal to Christ. It was not Christ’ s plan to effect an external revolution, but to change the moral and spiritual life of the race … We are happily free from the curse and crime of slavery; but even the social order of England, which we are accustomed, very inconsiderately, to call a Christian country, does not perfectly realize the ideal of social justice. There are no slaves among us, but there are tens of thousands of Christian people who feel, and have a right to feel, that their lot is a very hard one. They are inadequately paid for their work; they are badly fed, badly clothed, badly housed. They are never free from anxiety, they are always on the edge of misery and of ruin. They are without any hope of improving their condition. If by self-denial and forethought they are able in good times to save a little from their poor wages, illness, depression of trade, and loss of work soon sweep their little store away. They have to endure harsh and unkindly treatment from men whose control they cannot escape. But their position is not worse than the condition of slaves in apostolic times, and they should resolve with the help of Christ to obey the apostolic law. Let them do their laborious and ill-paid work as work for Christ. Let them look above and beyond their earthly masters to Him; cherishing no resentment against the men who treat them roughly and tyrannically, but “ with goodwill doing service as unto the Lord and not unto men.” Let them never yield to the base temptation to work badly because they are paid badly; their true wages do not come to them on Friday night or Saturday morning; they are Christ’ s servants, and He will not forget their fidelity. Masters have not yet escaped from their old vice. Their position of power encourages an arbitrary and despotic temper, and those who employ a few men seem to be in just as much danger as those who employ hundreds and thousands. They are to be not only just but courteous. They are to remember that the relations between the master and his workmen, the merchant and his clerks, the tradesman and his assistants, are accidental and temporary. They have all one Master in heaven, and to Him the supreme question in reference to every man’ s life is not whether he is rich or poor, whether he rules or serves, but whether by justice, industry, temperance, and kindliness he is trying to do the will of God. The great revelation which has come to us through Christ abolished slavery; it ought to lift up our whole social and industrial life into the very light of God, and to fill the works, the warehouses, and the shops of this great town with the very spirit which gives beauty and sanctity to the palaces of heaven. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)True service “ Robert,” said a man, winking slyly to a clerk of his acquaintance, “ you must give me good measure; your master is not in.” Robert looked solemnly into the man’ s face, and replied, “ My Master is always in.” Robert’ s Master was the all-seeing God. (New Handbook of Illustration.)The willing service of the heart There is no moral good or moral evil in a work which is not my own--I mean no moral good or evil to me. A work which I do not myself perform may be creditable or discreditable to somebody else, it is neither to me. Take an illustration. In the Square of St. Mark, at Venice, at certain hours the bell of the clock is struck by two bronze figures as large as life, wielding hammers. Now, nobody ever thought of presenting thanks to those bronze men for the diligence with which they have struck the hours; of course, they cannot help it, they are wrought upon by machinery, and they strike the hours from necessity. Some years ago a stranger was upon the top of the tower, and incautiously went too near one of these bronze men; his time was come to strike the hour, he knocked the stranger from the battlement of the tower and killed him; nobody said the bronze man ought to be hanged; nobody ever laid it to his charge at all. There was no moral good or moral evil, because there was no will in the concern. It was not a moral act, because no mind and heart gave consent to it. Am I to believe that grace reduces men to this? I tell you, sirs, if you think to glorify the grace of God by such a theory, you know not what you do. To carve blocks, and move logs, is small glory, but this is the glory of God’ s grace, that without violating the human will, He yet achieves His own purposes, and treating men as men, He conquers their hearts with love, and wins their affections by His grace. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The duties of servants I. The duties they owe to themselves:1. Religion.2. Regard for truth.3. Sobriety.4. Chastity.5. Frugality. These duties they owe partly to masters, but by their non-performance they damage themselves alone. II. Those which they owe to their employers:1. Reverence and honour for them as superiors.2. Obedience.3. Good temper.4. Fidelity--with regard to their property, their time, and their reputation.5. Diligence.6. Gratitude for kindness. III. Those which they owe to each other--peacefulness--temperateness--kindness. (J. A. James.)Christian servants The Christian servants at Ephesus, who first read this letter of the apostle, were, probably, many of them slaves. Some, no doubt, were hired servants; but perhaps the greater part were in a state of absolute bondage to heathen masters. I. Let us look, first, at the precepts and directions given to servants. And one is struck with this: there is no hint thrown out, no suggestion whatever offered, as to its being right or necessary to quit one’ s occupation in order to serve Christ and promote His cause in the world. It is not an infrequent thought, in the minds especially of young men, when brought to the Lord, that they must give up their worldly occupation, and devote themselves wholly and exclusively to minister in holy things. And now let us notice the particulars which the apostle expressly mentions for a Christian servant to attend to.1. Observe the first command is obedience: “ Servants, be obedient to your masters according to the flesh.” 2. Further, in this preceptive part of his address, notice, secondly, how he enjoins a thorough devotedness to his master’ s interests. This will appear in making manifest your thorough trustworthiness and faithfulness. I do not speak of mere honesty; the apostle means much more than this, when he speaks of “ showing all good fidelity.” There is such a thing as seeking just to go through the daily routine with the spirit of a hireling, who will do no more than he must; who needs to be well looked after, or he will leave much neglected. Quite different is the spirit of a Christian servant: he will try his very utmost to please his employer; but he has a higher aim. What a pattern of this was Abraham’ s servant Eleazar, and Jacob in Laban’ s house, and Joseph in his captivity, first, in Potiphar’ s house, and then in his dungeon: his master “ left all he had in Joseph’ s hand; he knew not ought he had, save the bread he did eat.” No terms could more emphatically give the idea of perfect freedom from all care, produced and maintained by the perfect assurance of ability, assiduity, and incorruptible rectitude. II. But let us proceed to notice, secondly, the motive which the apostle holds up as the governing principle, the ruling motive of a truly Christian servant: “ As the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” “ Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily: as to the Lord, and not unto men” ; “ for ye serve the Lord Christ.” Again: “ That ye may adorn” --ye servants, plain, humble, unnoticed, who have little to set you off in the eyes of the world--“ that ye may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.” In a word, let there be at the root of all--godliness: “ Setting the Lord always before you.”1. Now, first, what a comprehensive principle is this! It reminds us of those wonderful triumphs of mechanical skill by which the same engine can be applied to lift the most ponderous masses, or to drive with the utmost delicacy, as with the feeble blow of an infant, the slenderest pin into its place. So with this principle of doing all as to the Lord. 2. And then, secondly, how ennobling and elevating a motive it is! The highest archangel knows no higher. 3. And then, thirdly, how consoling and comforting a motive is this to the humble Christian! “ I am poor and needy, but the Lord careth for me” may he say. “ One need not be in high station to serve the Saviour.” III. And then, thirdly, let us not forget the promise annexed to it. “ Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” Oh! how often this is manifested even here in this life! Many are the houses where the pious servant has been the first to introduce the gospel, and by his “ patient continuance in well-doing,” has demonstrated its reality and power. (J. Cohen, M. A.) Ephesians 6:6 Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.Not with eye-service This exhortation is addressed to “ servants,” i.e., to those who serve, whatever their position as servants may be; whether in the position of bond slaves as in the days of Paul, or of hired servants as in our own day, or of merchants, physicians, lawyers, ministers, or young men, who, for remuneration of any kind, undertake to serve individuals or the public, To all such the exhortation of our text is, that they should discharge their duties, “ not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ.” But the exhortation of our text is of far wider application. It is equally applicable to “ masters” --to those who are served, as truly as to those who serve. For immediately after addressing himself to “ servants,” or “ slaves,” Paul said (Ephesians 6:9), “ And ye masters, do the same things unto them.” Paul had “ the same rule for masters and for servants. And he gave the reason of this, saying, “ Ye masters, do the same things unto them, knowing that your Master also is in heaven” --or, as in the margin, “ knowing that your and their Master is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with Him.” I. The manner in which we should discharge our duties to our fellow men.1. Negatively--how it should not be done. “ Not with eye-service.” This is a word which Paul coined and struck in the royal mint of his own ardent and honest mind. I am not aware that it was ever heard before. But it is a word so true and graphic that it tells its own meaning. “ Eye-service” is either service done only to please the eye, but which cannot bear to be tested; or it is good and real service, but only given when the eye of a master sees it. “ Not with eye-service” is happily associated with that other word, “ not as men-pleasers.” For “ eye-servants” care only to “ please men.” The rule of their duty is, not what is fair and honourable, nor even what may reasonably be expected from them, but only as much as will please the eye of their employers. All else is neglected and left undone, if only the failure in service does not appear to be in them. How much there is of eye-service and men-pleasing in all classes! 2. The positive description of our duty--how it should be done: “ With fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ.” “ With fear and trembling.” From other parts of Scripture where this expression is found, it is plain that it does not mean “ with fear” of punishment, as the slave fears the lash, nor “ with trembling” before men, as the slave trembles before his master, but that it means with anxious and tremulous desire to do our duty. And as this “ anxiety” to discharge our duty is the opposite of “ eye-service,” so also, “ In singleness of heart as to Christ” is the opposite or contrary to, “ as men-pleasers.” “ Not as men-pleasers,” but “ in singleness of heart, as to Christ.” II. The motive by which Paul calls us to the discharge of our ordinary earthly duties. He exhorts us to sanctify, to hallow, to ennoble our earthly duties, by doing them “ not as to men, but as unto the Lord.” Now, consider this motive.1. Observe, it is addressed to the disciples of Christ--to those who knew and owned Him as their “ Lord” ; to the blood bought, the redeemed, the renewed disciples of Christ; to those who, believing in Him, have been pardoned for all past transgressions, and have been born again of His Holy Spirit. It is not now the Law with its lash and its rewords urging men in general, and saying, “ Do this and live” --do it or die. It is Christ the Saviour who speaks to His saved ones, and says, “ Ye live, therefore do this--Ye live through Me, do this to Me.” 2. Mark how this motive sweetens, sanctifies, ennobles our earthly work. It then becomes a part of our worship. Animated by such a thought, the school boy diligently, joyfully applies himself to his task. The clerk needs no other master’ s eye over him to keep him to his work. The tradesman carefully executes his orders to the last stitch, when he feels that he works not merely for men, but for Christ. The merchant no longer sells spurious or adulterated goods, when he feels that he sells, not to men, but to the Lord Himself. The minister, the physician, the lawyer, are no longer content with a formal or perfunctory discharge of duty. The creditor, presenting his account, asks no more than is really due, and the debtor faithfully pays it. And now, in conclusion, you can understand why the apostle specially and formally addressed this exhortation to servants--nay, to “ slaves.” The exhortation is equally applicable to masters. Why, then, did Paul primarily and formally address it to slaves? There was wisdom and tenderness in this. Paul saw and pitied the irksome lot of slaves. He could not break their chains, but he sought to gild and lighten them. He told them that they could make their irksome task pleasant by “ doing it to the Lord.” He sweetened their lot by showing them that the Lord did not despise them, and would “ reward them for the good” they might do. It was a tender and touching thing in Paul first to stoop to wipe the sweat from the brow of slaves. But it was also wisely and well done. For when thus, by enjoining obedience on slaves, he had gained the ear and propitiated the heart of their masters, turning to them he could say with power, “ And ye masters, do the same things to them, knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven,” who demands the same obedience from you. Paul could not emancipate the slaves; but in that appeal to masters he sowed the seed corn, small as a grain of mustard seed, which has produced the harvest of emancipation in every land to which the gospel has come in power. (W. Grant.)Eye-service I saw two boys at work addressing envelopes--or rather, one was at work, while the other, with his pen in his hand, was looking out of the window. Their employer was seated near by; and when he caught my eye he smiled. “ Which of the two boys is the better workman, and the most valued, do you think?” he asked me in a low voice. “ The one at work, I should suppose,” I rejoined. “ No, sir; that lad who is looking from the window now, does so, because he thinks there is no harm in it--does it, you see, under my eyes. On the other hand, while my eye is on them, the other boy is the most industrious; but I find that in my absence he does nothing. So you see he adds deceit to his fault. I would not trust him out of my sight.” “ It seems to me that neither of them is worth much.” “ To be sure,” came the immediate answer, “ a boy who attended to his duties at all times would be best; but a boy who renders eye-service merely, who cannot be trusted to work without watching, is not to be tolerated.” The man who said this had seen much of the world; he knew whereof he spoke. The reward of service There comes over to our shores a poor stonecutter. The times are so bad at home that he is scarcely able to earn bread enough to eat; and by a whole year’ s stinting economy he manages to get together just enough to pay for a steerage passage to this country. He comes, homeless and acquaintanceless, and lands in New York, and wanders over to Brooklyn and seeks employment. He is ashamed to beg bread; and yet he is hungry. The yards are all full; but, still, as he is an expert stonecutter, a man, out of charity, says, “ Well, I will give you a little work--enough to enable you to pay for your board.” And he shows him a block of stone to work on. What is it? One of many parts which are to form some ornament. Here is just a querl or fern, and there is a branch of what is probably to be a flower. He goes to work on this stone and most patiently shapes it. He carves that bit of a fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And by and by the master says, “ Well done,” and takes it away, and gives him another block, and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that, from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only knows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all his skill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made of those few stems which he has been carving, until afterwards, when, one day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the Art Gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not know what they were for; but the architect did. And as he stands looking at his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, the tears drop down from his eyes, and he says, “ I am glad I did it well.” And every day as he passes that way he says to himself, exultingly, “ I did it well.” He did not draw the design nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of his work; but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw that they were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced. Dear brethren, though the work which you are doing seems small, put your heart in it; do the best you can wherever you are; and by and by God will show you where He has put that work. And when you see it stand in that great structure which He is building you will rejoice in every single moment of fidelity with which you wrought. Do not let the seeming littleness of what you are doing now damp your fidelity. (H. W. Beecher.) Ephesians 6:7-8 With goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.The honour of serving Is it not possible that a man can look upon all the inequalities of human life, and upon the varieties of condition out of which come such discontent, such hardship, such injustice, and such torment, and say, “ I am not a servant of these things; I am a servant of my God; and wherever He puts me, I am going to stand for His sake. Whatever may be the experience of that position, I am going to take it as becomes a child of God” ? A poor woman washes for a living, and has a flock of children to support; and it is for her to split the wood, to draw the water, to wash the clothes, rubbing on the soap, and putting in the blueing, and to shove the iron; and what does she do all these things for? What is the stimulus that enables her to cheerfully perform all these duties? It is the thought of those dear children. There is not an hour when she does not think, “ I am working for my darlings.” It is hard for her to get up at four o’ clock in the morning, but she thinks of her children, and of the warm meals, and pleasant fire, and cheerful light that she will be able to supply for them; and these thoughts are her consolation. Whatever she does, she does for her children. Now, seeing it in this humbler sphere and lower instance, can you not magnify it and carry it up, and think that a man can come to a state in which he thinks that the world, nature, life, human society, all the endless events into which time and the experiences of men are broken up, are God’ s, and that out of the vast and mighty mixture are being evolved final qualities, and say, “ I will do all things to the honour and glory of God, and whether I eat or drink, work or rest, go or stay, whether I am in prosperity or adversity (and more in adversity, because, that being harder to bear, shows more manhood), I am God’ s child; and loving Him, and being loved of Him, all these things are easy and noble to me” ? (H. W. Beecher.)The fruits of life You have heard of the old deaf musician who used to sit in twilight and roll from his instrument the most wonderful symphonies and harmonies that seemed to run down to the very source and centre of all things, and that, emerging, bore upon them all sweet treasures of melody. Though he heard not one note of it, it was poured out, and poured out upon the darkness and upon the silence sometimes to select listening ears. We are like musicians playing in the dark who are deaf to the sounds which they produce in human conduct, and which run clear through to the other life. The fruits of life are not to be recognized here; but they are sounding, and sounding forever. Whatever right thing you do, here is the endorsement of the Lord for it: “ Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” (H. W. Beecher.)Our motto Notice well that the Holy Spirit does not bid us leave our stations in order to serve the Lord. Our great Captain would not have you hope to win the victory by leaving your post. Grace does not transplant the tree, but bids it overshadow the old house at home as before, and bring forth good fruit where it is. Grace does not make us unearthly, though it makes us unworldly. Grace makes us the servants of God while still we are the servants of men; it enables us to do the business of heaven while we are attending to the business of earth. I. Our subject opens with this reflection, that if henceforth whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord, this consecration will greatly influence our entire work.1. You will have to live with a single eye to God’ s glory. The Lord Jesus is a most engrossing Master. He will have everything or nothing. As no dog can follow two hares at one time, or he will lose both, certainly no man can follow two contrary objects and hope to secure either of them. 2. To do service to the Lord we must live with holy carefulness. In the service of God we should use great care to accomplish our very best, and we should feel a deep anxiety to please Him in all things, There is a trade called paper staining, in which a man flings colours upon the paper to make common wall decorations, and by rapid processes acres of paper can be speedily finished. Suppose that the paper stainer should laugh at an eminent artist because he had covered such a little space, having been stippling and shading a little tiny piece of his picture by the hour together, such ridicule would itself be ridiculous. Now the world’ s way of religion is the paper stainer’ s way, the daubing way; there is plenty of it, and it is quickly done; but God’ s way, the narrow way, is a careful matter: there is but little of it, and it costs thought, effort, watchfulness, and care. Yet see how precious is the work of art when it is done, and how long it lasts, and you will not wonder that a man spends his time upon it; even so true godliness is acceptable with God, and it endures forever, and therefore it well repays the earnest effort of the man of God. The miniature painter has to be very careful of every touch and tint, for a very little may spoil his work. Let our life be miniature painting; “ with fear and trembling” let it be wrought out. 3. Further, if henceforth our desire is to live “ as to the Lord, and not unto men,” then what we do must be done with the heart. “ in singleness of your heart,” says the context; and again in the sixth verse, “ As the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” Our work for Jesus must be the outgrowth of the soil of the heart. Our service must not be performed as a matter of routine; there must be vigour, power, freshness, reality, eagerness, and warmth about it, or it will be good for nothing. 4. Under subjection. Doing the will of God--not our own. The freedom of a Christian lies in what I will venture to call an absolute slavery to Christ; we never become truly free till every thought is brought into subjection to the will of the Most High. 5. Again, we must do all this under a sense of the Divine oversight. Notice in Ephesians 6:6 it is said of servants, “ Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers.” What a mean and beggarly thing it is for a man only to do his work well when he is watched. Such oversight is for boys at school and mere hirelings. You never think of watching noble-spirited men. Here is a young apprentice set to copy a picture: his master stands over him and looks over each line, for the young scapegrace will grow careless and spoil his work, or take to his games if he be not well looked after. Did anybody thus dream of supervising Raphael and Michael Angelo to keep them to their work? No, the master artist requires no eye to urge him on. 6. One more thought, and it is this. If henceforth we are to serve the Lord, and not men, then we must look to the Lord for our reward, and not to men. “ Knowing,” saith the eighth verse, “ that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” Wage! Is that the motive of a Christian? Yes, in the highest sense, for the greatest of the saints, such as Moses, have “ had respect unto the recompense of the reward,” and it were like despising the reward which God promises to His people if we had no respect whatever for it. II. Should this text become the inspiration of our life, it would greatly elevate our spirits.1. It would lift us above complaining about the hardness of our lot, or the difficulty of our service. What wonders men can do when influenced by enthusiastic love for a leader! Alexander’ s troops marched thousands of miles on foot, and they would have been utterly wearied had it not been for their zeal for Alexander. He led them forth conquering and to conquer. Alexander’ s presence was the life of their valour, the glory of their strength. 2. This lifts the Christian above the spirit of stinting. Christ’ s servants delight to give so much as to be thought wasteful, for they feel that when they have in the judgment of others done extravagantly for Christ, they have but begun to show their heart’ s love for His dear name. 3. This raises us above all boasting of our work. “ Is the work good enough?” said one to his servant. The man replied, “ Sir, it is good enough for the price, and it is good enough for the man who is going to have it.” Just so, and when we “ serve” men we may perhaps rightly judge in that fashion, but when we come to serve Christ, is anything good enough for Him? 4. It elevates above that craving for recognition which is a disease with many. It is a sad fault in many Christians that they cannot do anything unless all the world is told of it. 5. It lifts above the discouragement which sometimes comes of human censure. The nightingale charms the ear of night. A fool passes by, and declares that he hates such distracting noises. The nightingale sings on, for it never entered the little minstrel’ s head or heart that it was singing for critics; it sings because He who created it gave it this sweet faculty. 6. This, too, will elevate you above the disappointments of non-success, ay, even of the saddest kind. 7. This lifts us above disappointment in the prospect of death. We shall have to go away from our work soon, so men tell us, and we are apt to fret about it. 8. Ay, and this lifts us above the deadening influence of age and the infirmities which come with multiplied years. III. I close by saying, that if we enter into the very spirit of this discourse, or even go beyond it--if henceforth we live for Jesus only, so as never to know pleasure apart from Him, nor to have treasure out of Him, nor honour but in His honour, nor success save in the progress of His kingdom, we shall even then have done no more than he deserves at our hands. For, first, we are God’ s creatures. For whom should a creature live but for his Creator? Secondly, we are His new creatures, we are the twice-born of heaven; should we not live for Him by whom we have been begotten for glory? (C. H. Spurgeon.) Ephesians 6:9 And ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening.Treatment of servants A party of friends setting out together upon a journey, soon find it to be the best for all sides that while they are upon the road one of the company should wait upon the rest; another ride forward to seek out lodging and entertainment; a third carry the portmanteau: a fourth take charge of the horses; a fifth bear the purse, conduct and direct the route; not forgetting, however, that, as they were equal and independent when they set out, so they are all to return to a level again at their journey’ s end. The same regard and respect; the same forbearance, lenity, and reserve, in using their service; the same mildness in delivering commands; the same study to make their journey comfortable and pleasant, which he whose lot it was to direct the rest would in common decency think himself bound to observe towards them, ought we to show to those who, in the casting of the parts of human society, happen to be placed within our power, or to depend upon us. (Archdeacon Paley.)Masters I. Their station--one of relative superiority--limited and temporary. II. Their duty--they must be just--kind--forbearing threatenings. III. Their responsibility--to Christ their Master in heaven, who judges without partiality. (Dr. J. Lyth.)Kindness to servants The celebrated Earl of Chesterfield left, by his will, legacies to all his menial servants, equal to two years’ wages each, considering them “ as his unfortunate friends, equal by birth, and only inferior by fortune.” John Claude, when on his dying bed, thus addressed his son, who, with an old servant, was kneeling before him--“ Be mindful of this domestic; as you value my blessing, take care that she wants nothing as long as she lives.” (Baxendale’s Anecdotes.)Forbearing threatening Once, when a very young girl, I was impressed by the manner and words of a good woman. She sat swaying back and forth with a puzzled look on her sweet face. She was thinking how to get rid of a petty annoyance. Arising, she rang the bell. A servant entered in a noisy way. “ Sarah, you may sit down.” The girl threw herself sullenly on a chair, averting her face. “ I am sorry to have to find fault in you, Sarah.” “ O, yet needn’ t be, for I’ m quite used to hearin’ yer scold.” “ I don’ t think I have ever scolded you. I try to watch myself against that sin. Have I ever scolded you?” “ Well, ma’ am, not to say ravin’ scoldin’ as some do, but yer tells me things and makes me ashamed of meself.” “ I want to be kind to you, poor girl, for you are a stranger in a strange land. I was going to ask you to try and be more pleasant to the children. It is now a whole week since a smile has been seen on your face. Now, must I lose my good girl or keep her?” Sarah looked down, and said: “ I think, ma’ am, if I do me work well, I might look grave-like if it suits me.” “ Don’ t you see my little girl will catch your sullen ways. No, Sarah, you must be a cheerful, pleasant girl if you are to stay; and now I want you to decide it for me.” “ I’ ll stay, ma’ am.” And as the tears filled her eyes, she added: “ Ye’ s are the best mistress in the wide world.” Years passed, and Sarah remained a cheerful servant till a wise boy took her for a wife, and many tears fell for the loss of the faithful servant. Who shall count the value of words fitly spoken? (Christian Globe.) Ephesians 6:10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.Why strength is needed There is good reason for our being so often advised in the Scriptures to “ be strong.” Christian character has two sides. We cease to do evil. We also learn to do well. But doing well is impossible if we are not strong. The forces of evil are many and mighty. Life is short. The love of ease is deep rooted. Unless we are strong we effect nothing. Our lives shall be mere bundles of resolves never effected, collections of impotent wishes that never come to anything. (Dr. John Hall.)Moral strength It often requires a braver man to say “ No,” than to take the Cashmere Gate at Delhi. Perfect courage consists in doing without a witness all that we could do if the whole world were looking on. A poor mill girl in the north of England had been led by her clergyman’ s teaching to become a regular communicant, and because of this she had to bear every kind of persecution, chiefly from members of her own family. They not only tried every kind of insult to vex her, but even blasphemed the Blessed Sacrament itself. At last the poor girl went to her clergyman, saying, “ What shall I do? I cannot bear it much longer.” And he reminded her of her Saviour’ s sorrow, and how that when he was reviled “ He opened not His mouth.” At last, one day, this true heroine of humble life fell down dead from heart disease, and when they removed her dress, they found a piece of paper stitched inside it, on which were these words--“ He opened not His mouth.” She had won her victory, and now she rests “ where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.” Anyone can resent an injury, it takes a brave man to bear it patiently. (H. J. Wilmot-Baxton, M. A.)The apostle’ s humility “ Brother” is a word of equality; in calling them “ brethren,” he makes himself equal unto them, though he himself were one of the principal members of Christ’ s body, one of the eyes thereof, a minister of the Word, an extraordinary minister, an apostle, a spiritual father of many souls, a planter of many famous Churches, yea, the planter of this Church at Ephesus; and though many of them to whom he wrote were poor, mean men, handicraftsmen, such as laboured with their hands for their living; and many also servants, and bondmen; yet without exception of any, he terms and counts them all his brethren, and so makes himself equal to them of the lower sort. Behold his humility. For if to affect titles of superiority, as Rabbi, Doctor, Father, be a note of arrogancy (as it is, and therefore Christ in that respect taxed the Scribes and Pharisees), then to take and give titles of humility is a note of humility. The like notes of humility may be oft noted both in other Epistles of this apostle, and in the Epistles of other apostles, yea, and in all the prophets also. Well they knew that, notwithstanding there were divers officers, places, and outward degrees, among Christians; yet they all had one Father, and were fellow members of one and the same Body, and in regard of their spiritual estate all one in Christ Jesus. (William Gouge.)Of Christian courage end resolution, wherefore necessary, and how obtained The Christian, of all men, needs courage and resolution. Indeed, there is nothing he doth as Christian, nor can do, but is an act of valour. A cowardly spirit is beneath the lowest duty of a Christian (Joshua 1:7), “ Be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest” --what? stand in battle against those warlike nations? No, but “ that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses My servant commanded thee.” It requires more prowess and greatness of spirit to obey God faithfully, than to command an army of men; to be a Christian, than to be a captain. What seems less than for a Christian to pray? yet this cannot be performed aright without a princely spirit; as Jacob is said to behave himself like a prince, when he did but pray; for which he came out of the field God’ s banneret. Indeed if you call that prayer which a carnal person performs, nothing more poor and dastard-like. Such a one is as great a stranger to this enterprize, as the cowardly soldier is to the exploits of a valiant chieftain. The Christian in prayer comes up close to God, with a humble boldness of faith, and takes hold of Him, wrestles with Him; yea, will not let Him go without a blessing, and all this in the face of his own sins, and Divine justice, which let fly upon him from the fiery mouth of the law; while the other’ s boldness in prayer is but the child, either of ignorance in his mind, or hardness in his heart; whereby not feeling his sins, and not knowing his danger, he rushes upon duty with a blind confidence, which soon fails when conscience awakes, and gives him the alarm that his sins are upon him, as the Philistines on Samson: alas! then in a fright the poor-spirited wretch throws down his weapon, flies the presence of God with guilty Adam, and dares not look Him in the face. Indeed, there is no duty in a Christian’ s whole course of walking with God, or acting for God, but is lined with many difficulties, which shoot like enemies through the hedges at the Christian, whilst he is marching towards heaven: so that he is put to dispute every inch of ground as he goes. They are only a few noble-spirited souls, who dare take heaven by force, that are fit for this calling. For the further proof of this point, see some few pieces of service that every Christian engageth in.1. The Christian is to proclaim and prosecute an irreconcilable war against his bosom sins; those sins which have lain nearest his heart must now be trampled under his feet. 2. The Christian is to walk singularly, not after the world’ s guise (Romans 12:2). 3. The Christian must keep on his way to heaven in the midst of all the scandals that are cast upon the ways of God, by the apostasy and foul falls of false professors. 4. The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God (Isaiah 50:10). This requires a holy boldness of faith. 5. The believer is to persevere in his Christian course to the end of his life; his work and his life must go off the stage together. This adds weight to every other difficulty of the Christian’ s calling. We have known many who have gone into the field, and liked the work of a soldier for a battle or two, but soon have had enough, and come running home again; but few can bear it as a constant trade. 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 wrapt up in thick darkness of sin and wickedness. O this persevering is a hard word! this taking up of the cross daily, this praying always, this watching night and day, and never laying aside our clothes and armour; I mean indulging ourselves to remit and unbend in our holy waiting on God, and walking with God; this sends many sorrowful away from Christ; yet this is the saint’ s duty to make religion his everyday work, without any vacation from one end of the year to the other. These few instances are enough to show what need the Christian hath of resolution. The application follows.1. This gives us then a reason why there are so many professors and so few Christians indeed; so many go into the field against Satan, and so few come out conquerors; because all have a desire to be happy, but few have courage and resolution to grapple with the difficulties that meet them in their way to happiness. 2. Let us, then, exhort you Christians to labour for this holy resolution and prowess, which is so needful for your Christian profession, that without it you cannot be what you profess. The fearful are in the forlorn of those that march for hell (Revelation 21:1-27). The violent and valiant are they which take heaven by force; cowards never won heaven. Say not, thou hast royal blood running in thy veins, and art begotten of God, except thou canst prove thy pedigree by this heroic spirit, to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils. The eagle tries her young ones by the sun; Christ tries His children by their courage, that dare look on the face of death and danger for His sake (Mark 8:34-35). Now, Christian, if thou meanest thus courageously to bear up against all opposition, in thy march to heaven as thou shouldst do well to raise thy spirit with such generous and soul-ennobling thoughts, so in an especial manner look thy principles be well fitted, or else thy heart will be unstable; and an unstable heart is weak as water, it cannot excel in courage. Two things are required to fix our principles.1. An established judgment in the truth of God. He that knows not well what or whom he fights for, may soon be persuaded to change his side, or at least stand neuter. Such may be found that go for professors, that can hardly give an account what they hope for, or whom they hope in; yet Christians they must be thought, though they run before they know their errand; or if they have some principles they go upon, they are so unsettled that every wind blows them down, like loose tiles from the housetop. Blind zeal is soon put to a shameful retreat, while holy resolution, built on fast principles, lifts up its head like a rock in the midst of the waves. “ Those that know their God shall be strong and do exploits” (Daniel 11:32). 2. A sincere aim at the right end in our profession. Let a man be never so knowing in the things of Christ, if his aim be not right in his profession, that man’ s principles will hang very loose; he will not venture much, or far for Christ, no more, no further than he can save his own stake. A hypocrite may show some metal at hand, some courage for a moment in conquering some difficulties, but he will show himself a jade at length. He that hath a false end in his profession, will soon come to an end of his profession, when he is pinched on that toe where his corn is; I mean, called to deny that his naughty heart aimed at all this while; now his heart fails him, he can go no further. O take heed of this wistful eye to our profit, pleasure, honour, or anything beneath Christ and heaven; for they will take away your heart, as the prophet saith of wine and women; that is, our love; and if our love be taken away, there will be nothing left for Christ. (W. Gurnall, M. A.)Strength in the Lord The meaning of the text is--Be strong as those may be who are bound to God in Christ.1. Our enlistment. We have been taken into Christ’ s army, to fight under His banner. Not solitary knight errants; but an embattled host set in array under the banner of a Captain. This prevents our thinking too much of ourselves. The more we forget ourselves the better. The soldier in an army does not fight for himself. He fights as one of many, for a common cause. He is willing to die, for his part--to have his place filled up, and be forgotten, provided the victory be won by his commander. This is what touches us all in a soldier’ s life; and it touches us first because it is an image of the true Divine law for each. To lose one’ s self in the cause, and to be zealous, enduring, brave, in the service of the King and the Realm, is as much the glory of a soldier of Jesus Christ, as of the professional soldier. 2. This feeling, of the community of our service, may be strengthened much by thinking of our common enemies. There are wickedness and darkness in the world, spiritual in their nature, and to be fought against as spiritual foes. Victory is to be won over evil; over ignorance and stupidity; over malignant errors and false opinions; over vice and misery. These are the devil’ s servants, ever active and encroaching, whom we are commissioned to repel. Our fighting against these enemies must be done in common. The evils are social, or rather anti-social. Every man is hindered or helped by all his neighbours. We cannot, if we would, fight alone. No man liveth or dieth to himself. We know not whom we may help by a truth, or whom we may hinder by a lie. Let us remember that our own enemies are our brother’ s enemies, and that his enemies are ours, and that all victories over evil are a common gain. (J. Ll. Davies, M. A.)Strong Christians A weak and cowardly soldier is a pitiful object, but a weak-kneed, cowardly Christian is still more so. I do not mean that we must be noisy and violent, and quarrelsome in our religion. None of these things are a proof of strength. A giant of power is ever the gentlest, having the hand of steel in the glove of silk. So the stronger a Christian is the more humbly he bears himself. A writer of the day says very truly, “ If the world wants iron dukes, and iron men, God wants iron saints.” I. Be strong in faith. Be quite sure that you do believe; be quite clear what you believe, and then show your faith strongly. Oar faith is not built on sand, but on a rook. It is not founded on such words as--perhaps, I suppose, I hope. No, the Creed of the Church says, “ I believe.” Be ready to give a reason for the faith that is in you. II. Be strong in your language. When Lord Nelson was going into his last battle, they wished him to cover, or lay aside, the glittering orders of victory which adorned his breast. But the hero refused, and perhaps his refusal cost him his life. Well, let us never hide the marks of our profession as Christian soldiers; even if we have to suffer, let men know that we bear about in our bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus. III. Be strong in self-sacrifice for Jesus. We must not forget our cross. Let me tell you the stories of two simple servant maids who, under very different circumstances, gave up their life for the life of little children. The scene of the first story was in America, nearly five and twenty years ago; that of the second story was in London, quite recently. A young English girl had taken service in a family going to America, and her special duty was the charge of the three motherless children of her widowed master. One cold day in December they all embarked in a great Mississippi steamboat bound for the far Northwest. Day after day they steamed through the swollen river, where pieces of ice were already showing, past dark and gloomy shores, lined with lonely forest. One night, near the end of their voyage, the girl had seen her charges, two girls and a boy, safely asleep, and now, when all the other passengers had retired, she was reading in the saloon. Suddenly the silence was broken by a terrible cry, which told the frightened passengers that the steamboat was on fire. The captain instantly ran the vessel for the shore, and ordered the people to escape as best they could, without waiting to dress. The faithful servant had called her master, and then carried the children from their beds to the crowded deck. Quickly the blazing vessel touched the muddy bank, and the father placed the shivering children and the servant on one of the huge branches which overhung the river. A few other passengers, fifteen in all, reached other branches, the rest went down with the burning steamer. But what hope could there be for the children, just snatched from their warm beds, and now exposed unclad to the bitter December night? Their father had no clothing to cover them, and, as he spoke of another steamer which would pass by in the morning, he had little hope of his children holding out. Then the servant maid declared that if possible she would keep the little ones alive. Clinging in the darkness to the icy branches, she stripped off her own clothing, all but the thin garment next her body, and wrapped up the shivering children. Thus they passed the long, dark hours of that terrible night. I know not what prayers were spoken, but I know that Jesus, who suffered cold and hunger for our sakes, made that servant girl strong to sacrifice herself. During the night one of the children died, but in the morning, when the first light came, the little girls were still alive. Then, when her work was done, the freezing limbs of the brave girl relaxed their hold, a deadly sleep fell on her, and she dropped silently into the rushing river below. Presently a steamer came in sight, and the two children for whom she had died were safe. Only quite lately there was a great fire in London. In the burning house were a husband and wife, their children, and a servant maid. The parents perished in the flames, but the servant appeared to the sight of the crowd below, framed, as it were, in fire, at a blazing window. Loudly shouted the excited crowd, bidding the girl to save herself. But she was thinking of others. Throwing a bed from the window, she signalled to those below to stretch it out. Then, darting into the burning room, she brought one of the children of her employers, and dropped it safely on to the bed. Fiercer grew the flames, but again this humble heroine faced the fire, and saved the other children. Then the spectators, loudly cheering, begged her to save herself. But her strength was exhausted, she faltered in her jump, and was so injured that death soon came to her. My brothers, no one will raise a grand monument to Emma Willoughby, and Alice Ayres, who passed, the one through water, the other through fire, for Christ’ s dear sake. But surely in God’ s great Home of many mansions their names are written in letters of gold. IV. Be strong in fighting the battle. You know that life is a great battlefield. Put on, then, the whole armour of God. Stand, as Christ’ s soldiers, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with your faces to the foe. When Napoleon retreated from Moscow, and the main body had passed by, the mounted Cossacks hovered around the stragglers, who, overcome by cold and fatigue, could only force their way slowly through the snow. Many a weary Frenchman thus fell beneath the Cossack lances. Presently a band of these fierce horsemen saw a dark object on the snowy plain, and dashed towards it. They were face to face with a small body of French who had formed into a square to resist them, their bayonets at the charge. The Cossacks rode round and round, seeking for a weak place for attack, and finding none. At length they charged the square, and found it formed of frozen corpses. The Frenchmen had died whilst waiting for the foe. Brothers, may death find us fighting the good fight. “ Be strong in the Lord.” (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)Christian strength Christian strength is a subject which needs emphasizing. Christians have not always been strong. The mediaeval saints, with their fastings and scourgings, their pale faces and emaciated forms, in spite of much that was beautiful in their lives, were not strong. It was a false conception of the Christian life which drove them to the fancied safety of the cloister, while the voice of the great Captain was calling His soldiers, then as now, to fight the eternal battle against sin and selfishness in the glare of day and amid the temptations of the world. And in our own day how many religious biographies are but a tedious record of lives that were in no sense strong. It is scarcely surprising that the average young man’ s opinion of the religious life should be that it is not a very attractive thing; at any rate, as wanting in broad, strong, cheerful humanity. And yet strength and common sense--sturdy strength and masculine common sense--have always been the characteristics of true Christianity. They are the characteristics of Christ Himself. How strong and fearless the spirit with which He went ever to the heart and core of religion! Woe unto you, ye formalists! Or look again at the life of the great apostle. Was not His religion strong and masculine, healthy and practical. Study the way in which He dealt with the vexed questions of His time, such as slavery, or mixed marriage, or meats offered to idols, or circumcision, or the larger question of the relation of Jew to Gentile; and you will find He never fails to divide the kernel from the husk, the essential from the accidental, the eternal from the temporal. You will find that freedom, and love of truth, and a great-hearted catholic sympathy from the very fibre and tissue of his teaching. And so it should be now. So it is now, with all true saints of God. Human nature is not a poor thing, but a grand thing-grand in its origin, for in His own image God created us: grand in its achievements, for men have lived and are living heroic lives by the power of Christ; grand in its destiny, for we shall one day be like Christ and see Him as He is. (W. M. Furneaux, M. A.)Strong in prayer “ Be strong in the Lord” means Be strong in prayer: and never was the warning more needful than in our day. We live in an age of steam and electricity, of activity and bustle, of jostle and close contact: an age which is nothing if it is not practical: an age which scarcely disguises its contempt for a life of contemplation. We are all tempted to fancy that the hours which we give to prayer and meditation are wasted hours: we are all the more tempted to think so, because on every side of us are earnest men, working zealously in the cause of humanity, who do not even pretend to be in any sense men of prayer. And yet it is my profound conviction that every life, however faithfully it be spent in the services of others, falls immeasurably below what it might be, if it is not inspired by prayer. I stood a few weeks ago before the grandest creation of human art, the San Sisto Madonna of Raphael. On an easel at my side was a finished copy. It was the work of a good artist. Every line of feature, every fold of drapery, every shade and tint of colour, seemed a faithful reproduction of the great masterpiece. Yet something was lacking. The nameless something which constitutes the divine genius of the original had evaporated and perished in the copy. My brothers, it is even so with the life of a man who prays, and the life of a man who prays not. We all know men whose faces, as we look upon them, are transparent with a radiant purity: we feel that the light upon their features is a reflection from the light which falls upon the countenance of their Angel who always beholds the face of their Father in heaven: we feel that in their presence we breathe a purer atmosphere, which sends us away stronger in courage and in purpose: we feel that they have a strength which others have not, because they are men of prayer. They go forth every morning to the day’ s work, refreshed and invigorated by prayer: they have learnt to turn, now and again, throughout the day, to their Master’ s face. In proportion as we train ourselves, in every moment of doubt and difficulty, of trial and temptation--nay, in every little act of daily life--to look upon that Face so helpful in its calm strength, so sweet in its radiant purity, we shall lead noble lives, which shall be indeed “‘ strong in the Lord.” (W. M. Furneaux, M. A.)The need of Christian courage Christian valour and spiritual courage is a needful grace.1. Because of our own indisposition, timorousness, dulness, and backwardness to all holy and good duties. What Christian findeth not this by woeful experience in himself? When he would pray, etc., there is I know not what fearfulness in him; his flesh hangeth back, as a bear when he is drawn to the stake. 2. Because of those many oppositions which we are sure to meet. (1) The world.(2) The devil. (William Gouge.)All strength from God The strength and valour whereby we are enabled to fight the Lord’ s battle, is hid in the Lord, and to be had from Him. The Lord has thus reserved all strength in Himself, and would have us strong in Him, for two reasons:1. For His own glory, that in time of need we might fly unto Him, and in all straits cast ourselves on Him; and, being preserved and delivered, acknowledge Him our Saviour, and accordingly give Him the whole praise. 2. For our comfort, that in all distresses we might be the more confident. Much more bold may we be in the Lord, than in ourselves. God’ s power being infinite, it is impossible that it should be mated by any adverse power, which at the greatest is finite. Were our strength in ourselves, though for a time it might seem sufficient, yet would there be fear of decay; but being in God, we rest upon an Omnipotency, and so have a far surer prop to our faith. (William Gouge.)God’ s power is most mighty The power of God, whereunto we are to trust, is a most mighty and strong power, a power able to protect us against the might of all other powers whatsoever. According to God’ s greatness is His power--infinite, incomprehensible, unutterable, inconceivable. As a mighty wind which driveth all before it; as a swift and strong stream, against which none can swim; as a burning flaming fire which consumeth and devoureth all--so is God’ s power. Whatsoever standeth before it, and is opposed against it, is but as chaff before a strong wind, or bulrushes before a swift current, or stubble before a flaming fire; for all other power, though to our weakness it seem never so mighty, can be but finite, being the power of creatures, and so a limited power, yea, a dependent power subordinate to this power of might, of His might who is Almighty, and so no proportion betwixt them.1. A strong prop is this to our faith, and a good motive to make us trust entirely to the power of God, without wavering or doubting, notwithstanding our own weakness, or our adversaries’ power. 2. It is no matter of presumption, to be sure of victory, being strong in this mighty power, because it is the power of Almighty God. (William Gouge.)The benefit of confidence in God 1. It will remove causeless fear (Nehemiah 6:11; Proverbs 22:13). 2. It will make bold in apparent danger (Psalms 3:6; Proverbs 28:1). 3. It will recover a man’ s spirit, though he should by occasion be wounded, stricken down, and foiled; so as though at first he prevail not, yet it will make him rise up again and renew the battle (Joshua 8:3; Judges 20:30). (William Gouge.)A Christian’ s warfare A few general observations on the warfare of a Christian. I. It is in its nature honourable.1. As to what he opposes. Sin. Satan. Sinners, He.2. As to what he aims at. God’ s glory. The salvation of souls.3. As to the parties that are with him. God. Angels. Saints. II. It is very mysterious. As--1. The principal agents in it are invisible.2. None see or understand it but by experience.3. His enemies eventually promote his victory. Job. Paul. “ But I would ye should understand, brethren,” etc. (Philippians 1:12).4. Its weapons can be used by thousands at once.5. He dies to conquer and be crowned. III. It is the most important.1. Whether Christ or Satan be superior.2. Whether he shall be saved or lost. IV. His armour is complete. V. His enemies are condemned, and virtually conquered.1. Sin.2. Satan.3. Death. (H. J. Foster.)The apostolic exhortation 1. Brethren” -- (1) As begotten of the same spiritual Father.(2) As entitled to the same privileges.(3) As bearing the same spiritual features. 2. “ Be strong.” I. The nature of the exhortation. Seen by describing a Christian soldier strong in the Lord, etc. As he has to do--1. With the guilt of accumulated sin (Psalms 51:1, etc.).2. With a body of indwelling sin (Romans 7:1, etc.).3. With Satan’ s temptations (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).4. With great outward trials (Job 1:1, etc.; Acts 20:23-24).5. With death. II. The way in which the Lord brings His people to be as He exhorts.1. By showing them the importance of their situation. As made for eternity. As accountable to God. “ Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight,” etc. (Hebrews 4:13). As called to glorify God.2. By giving them to feel that they can do nothing.3. By showing that in the Mediator is all they want.4. By teaching them to pray for strength.5. By giving them to know that He dwells in them.6. By showing them what He has done before for them and for others. (H. J. Foster.)Strength in the Lord What makes the strongest things in the material world--the trees, the rocks, the mountains? A law which we call the law of their gravitation. That is, they are under a law which draws first the parts one to another, and then altogether into one centre. It is the same law which does both--that attracts them to each other, and then to a common point. Hence their firmness; hence their fixedness; hence their strength. And as it is in the natural, so it is in the spiritual world. There must be, and there must be felt, a great pervading, constraining principle. This principle must fasten us altogether, and it must fasten to one deep, hidden centre. And that principle is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. God meant that to be to the moral world what the law of gravitation is to the material world. Perhaps the chief end of the material law was to be an illustration of the spiritual. We must all follow the attractiveness of Christ. So we must each tend to Christ, and all draw to the Christ which we see in one another. And if we all drew to one common Christ, and to the Christ we see in each other, we should have true strength--we should be “ strong in the Lord.” There is another truth which nature teaches. If I wish to give intensity of strength to anything,--say to the light--I gather it to a focus. And so God has constituted the human mind, it is “ strong” only when it is concentrated. And to meet this necessity of our being, God has provided one great, all-absorbing object, to which the whole man is to converge. Need I say what that object is? It is His own glory. For this we were created--for this we were redeemed--for this we were sanctified. And according as we live indeed for that, we are efficient and we are happy. Divide your end--live for many ends, and immediately talents are frittered, energies wasted, the man is enervated. But be a man of one thing--bent on one purpose--and you will be astonished to find how “ strong” you will become. But, besides this, there is a deep, mysterious rock of strength, which I must not leave out of the calculation. And it is essential, very essential, for no man can be “ strong” who has it not. The vine and the branches shadow it out--the Lord’ s Supper embodies it--every spiritual office promotes it--I mean the actual union which there is between the soul and Christ. I should be afraid to say such a thing if God had not declared it in the plainest terms--the actual oneness of a believer’ s spirit with the spirit of the Lord Jesus--He in us, and we in Him--for this is the strength. Strength, then, is always flowing--just as the oil flowed from the two olive trees, which are the priestly and the kingly character of Jesus--the grace sufficient for the human mind--the strength for every day’ s need--the bidden life--the innate power of God in a man. You must be always realizing and cherishing the union with the Spirit by certain acts--acts of pious thought--holy fondness--frequent participation in the Lord’ s Supper--secret communion, and habitual prayer. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)Strength against temptation On the eve of one of the most eventful of England’ s naval conflicts, Nelson hung aloft from the masthead that inspiring admonition, which was read with a thrill of heroic feeling by his fleet: “ England expects every man to do his duty.” Not less startling and inspiring, as addressed to the young men of our land, should be the stirring admonition that comes to us from a greater leader, and at a crisis more momentous, “ Be strong in the Lord.” I. The strength required.1. It is not primarily physical strength. The time was when this was a prime element in the estimate of a man, nor can we doubt that it is undervalued now. 2. Neither does the direction of the text apply specifically to intellectual strength. This is not without its importance, although without moral aims it is a blind giant, and with perverted aims it is a wilful giant. 3. But far more important than this is moral strength. Here, too, something depends upon original endowment. There are some whose moral natures seem made of wax. Most unfortunately there is nothing in them like flint to strike fire from. The devil shapes them at will, as a woman kneads her dough. A strong temptation bears them away, as a whirlwind does the down of a thistle. Yet sometimes where we witness this, it is not all due to nature. It would be a libel upon her to say so. There is a moral greatness, not necessarily religious, which we admire, for it is strong. It may be heathen greatness, it may be a Pagan strength, but it rests upon the basis of strong character, and the moral element of it forces our applause. There was strength, when Socrates scorned to escape from prison, and chose rather to drink the fatal hemlock. There was strength, when Joseph Reed, of Revolutionary memory, approached by bribes of British gold, nobly replied: “ I am poor, very poor, but poor as I am, the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to buy me.” But how much more noble and enviable than this is the strength of religious principle, strength in God. It is not strong necessarily in muscle, in intellect, in strategy; but it is strong in resistance to moral assault, to temptations that, in winning guise and in more than carnal strength, would draw the soul to perdition. The real battle of life is with Satan and his arts and followers, and the real hero is he who wins in this conflict. II. But whence is this strength to come? “ Be strong in the Lord,” is the reply. (E. H. Gillett.)Strength in suffering A. B--was a young woman residing at Acton at the time I was a student for the ministry. She was heavily afflicted, paralyzed, crippled, deaf, and half blind. Her life was passed in one chamber, for the most part on one couch, but the circle of her influence had a wide radius. In the face of overwhelming infirmities she maintained a spirit of serene and cheerful contentment which no new adversity could break. When her bodily strength rallied a little she filled her room, not with wailing or complaint, but with songs of thankfulness; when the wave of physical vitality ebbed again, the unspoken praise lay in quiet sunshine on the pale but smiling face. When the benumbed fingers recovered for a few days some portion of their former nimbleness, she was happy in resuming the dainty needlework by which her bread was earned. When she could do nothing but suffer, her brave soul shone in undiminished patience. Even among women I have never known another so strong in grace--in “ love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” And what, think you, was her own explanation of this noble and beautiful strength? She gave it to me one evening after I had watched her through a paroxysm of neuralgic torture: “ He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.” (W. Woods.)The secret of strength Many small wax lights, which of themselves burn faintly, when put into one torch or taper send forth a bright and shining flame; many tittle bells, which tinkle together to the pleasing of children, when melted and cast into one great bell do affect the ear in a more solemn and awful sound; and many single threads, which snap asunder with the least touch, when twisted together make a strong cable, which can withstand the fury and violence of a storm. So it is with the mind; the more it is scattered and divided through multiplicity of objects, the more weak it is; and the more it is fixed on one single object, the more masculine and strong are the operations of it, either for good or evil. (W. Spurstowe.)The power of God’ s might What the power of God’ s might is, we very well know. Mountains tremble, and rocks melt before it; the sea feels it, and flies; Jordan is driven back. Armies are discomfited, and cut off by a blast in the night. The world itself was produced by this power, in one instant, and may be destroyed in another. All created power, if opposed to that of the Creator, withers and falls, like a leaf in autumn, when shaken by the stormy wind and tempest. It is “ in the power of this might,” that the apostle exhorts as to “ be strong.” But how is this--“ Hast thou an arm like God; or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?” Yet St. Paul would never enjoin us to seek after that which could not be obtained, Our Redeemer is Almighty; He is with us by His Spirit, and His strength is ours. Look at His apostles in their natural state; ignorant, and fearful of everything: view them “ endued with power from on high” ; acquainted with the whole counsel of God, and bold to proclaim it through all the nations of the earth. During the persecutions of the Church in her infant state, numbers of the weaker sex, receiving strength and courage from above, in the hour of trial, patiently endured all the torments which the malice of men and devils could invent. They triumphed gloriously--“ Now are they crowned, and receive palms from the Son of God whom they confessed in the world.” The promise of assistance in time of need is to us all: to us, and to our children, and to as many as the Lord our God shall call. From Thee, blessed Jesus, we learn our duty: to Thee must we look, and to thy all-powerful grace, for strength to perform it. Not in ourselves, but in Thee, and in the power of Thy might, we are strong. Without Thee, we can do nothing: with Thee we can do all things. It is this consideration which alone can support us, when we take a view of the enemies whom we must encounter. (Bishop Home.) Ephesians 6:11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.God’ s armoury There stands on the banks of the Thames a grim old fortress, well known to all as the Tower of London. In that fortress, with its memories of Roman and Norman, of Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart, there is a wonderful collection of weapons and armour. As you look on those relies of bygone ages, you seem to be reading chapters from the History of England. One suit of mail recalls the rush of the Normans up the hill at Hastings, and the bloody fight at Senlac. Yonder mighty two-handed sword brings back the meeting of stern barons at Runnymead, and the signing of the great Charter. There are arms which tell of Crecy, and Poitiers, where men fled before the sable armour of the Black Prince. There, two, are weapons which remind us of the fatal wars of the Roses, the awful slaughter at Flodden, and the fight at Bosworth, where a crown was lost and won. There are gorgeous trappings which take us back to the field of the Cloth of Gold; and sturdy breastplates which bore the stroke of Cavalier sword, and Puritan pike, at Naseby and Marston Moor. But I would take you into a different armoury today, where the weapons and armour tell of yet fiercer battles, and yet more brilliant victories; where we may not only look on the armour of others, but may choose some for ourselves. This armoury is God’ s, and it recalls the history of His Church militant here on earth, the battles and the triumphs of the soldiers of the Cross. O grand and glorious armoury of God! Let us enter there and choose our weapons. But, first, be sure that you have a battle to fight. There are too many of us who like the name of Christian without its responsibility. These desire to be soldiers of Christ, but not on active service. The battle may be fiercer sometimes than at others, but to the end we must be fighting. Never forget that the true service of Jesus in the world means hardness, means watchfulness, means self-denial, means, above all things, fighting.. Come then, today, into the armoury, and choose your weapons; ask Jesus to give you the whole armour of God. Cast away any untried, worthless armour, in which you have been trusting. Say with David, “ I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them.” Are you trusting to your respectability? The keen arrows of temptation will pierce right through it, and wound your soul! then the good name in which you trusted will be dishonoured and disgraced. What breastplate are you wearing? Self-righteousness? You have never committed grievous sin, you say, you are not like some of your neighbours. There is the grievous sin at once, the belief that you are better than other people. The devil will strike through that breastplate as easily as through one of paper. “ Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” O man of the world, walking among the worldly wise, whose wisdom is not of God, gird on your armour. See that you have the breastplate of righteousness, of right dealing. Let the weapons of the false, and the knavish, and the unjust, strike there and be blunted. See that the girdle of truth is not loosened, and feel that you dare not tell a lie. O brothers and sisters, who are sorely tempted in one way or another, be among those who fight. When David was once going to battle he had no sword, and they showed him that with which he had smitten off the head of the giant. Then said David, “ There is none like that, give it me.” You have such a sword, and you can trust to it. Do you remember that prayer with which you conquered that giant temptation, that impure thought, that angry passion, that wrong deed? Try it again. Say, “ There is none like that, give it me.” And, finally, have on your right hand, as a gauntlet, a firm determination, a fixed resolution to hold fast to that which is right, and by God’ s help to go on to the end. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)The Christian armour I. Explain the nature of the Christian armour.1. It is armour for every part, except the back, which is provided with no defence, to show that the Christian is never to quit the field, but to face his enemies. 2. The armour is of every sort, offensive and defensive, both to protect the Christian, and to annoy his enemies. 3. It is armour that has been proved. 4. This armour is spiritual, and is intended only for spiritual purposes. It is called “ the armour of light,” in allusion perhaps to the bright and glittering army of the Romans, and to show that it is for ornament as well as for defence. It is also “ armour of righteousness,” designed only for righteous persons and righteous purposes; it cannot therefore be rendered subservient to acts of violence and oppression. It is provided by a righteous God, and His righteous word is the rule for using it (Romans 13:12; 2 Corinthians 6:7). 5. It is called “ the armour of God,” to denote its transcendent excellency and usefulness, and that it is provided by His special grace. II. Consider the necessity of putting on the whole armour of God.1. We are in a state of warfare, exposed to innumerable enemies: and if not called to fight, we should not need to be armed. 2. We are naturally unprepared for this contest, having no means of defence, and therefore need to put on the armour of God. We must be equipped from God’ s armoury, for no weapon of our own will be able to defend us. 3. Putting on this armour implies that we see our need of it, and that we use it for the purposes intended. Though we are not saved for our endeavours, yet neither can we be saved without them. We cannot exert ourselves too much in this warfare, nor depend upon our exertions too little. 4. The spiritual armour is not designed for show, like weapons that are hung up in some houses, but for use, and therefore it must be put on. 5. We must be careful to take to ourselves the “ whole” armour of God, for a part of it will not avail. Such is the variety of Satan’ s temptations and the world’ s allurements that the whole of it is but sufficient for our defence; and should any part be left unguarded, a mortal wound might be inflicted. He is also mightier than we are, and we are no match for him, unless we put on the whole armour of God, and place our trust in His holy name. (B. Beddome, M. A.)The Christian warfare I. The danger to which we are exposed. As in other cases, so in this: our greatest danger lies in not feeling our danger, and so not being prepared to meet it.1. View the enemy we have to contend with. He bears an inveterate hatred against us, and seeks nothing less than our destruction and eternal overthrow.2. He is mightier than we are; and, unless we have help from above, we are no match for him.3. An artful enemy.4. Invisible.5. Near us.6. What is worse, he has a strong party within us.7. On the issue of this warfare depend all our hopes. II. The armour provided for us.1. In general, this armour is the grace of the gospel.2. A whole or perfect armour, sufficient to defend us in every part.3. The use to be made of it is that we may be able to withstand and face the enemy. III. The necessity of putting on this armour, or taking it to ourselves. Armour is of no avail, unless it be used. IV. The inducement to do this. That we may “ withstand in the evil day,” etc. (Theological Sketchbook.)The means of standing sure 1.Christians are soldiers. Our life is a warfare. The Church here is militant. God has thus disposed our state on earth for weighty reasons. (1) The more to manifest His pity, power, providence, and truth in keeping promise. The straits whereunto in this world we are brought, the promises which God has made to deliver us, and the many deliverances which we have, show that God pities us in our distresses, that He is provident and careful for our good, and wise in disposing evil to good; that He is able to deliver us, and faithful in doing it.(2) To make proof of the gifts He bestows on His children. A soldier’ s valour is not known but in war.(3) To wean them the better from this world. 2. The graces of God’ s Spirit are for safeguard and defence. (1) Those who want them must seek them.(2) Those who have them must use them. 3. The Christian’ s armour is the armour of God. (1) It is made of God, even in heaven.(2) It is prescribed of God, even in His Word.(3) It is given of God, even by His Spirit.(4) It is agreeable to God, even to His will. 4. It is spiritual armour; therefore suitable for defence against spiritual foes. 5. It is a complete armour, every way sufficient. (1) Sufficient to defend us in every part.(2) Sufficient to keep off and thrust back every assault and every dart of our spiritual enemies. 6. Christians ought to be well furnished always, and well prepared with the graces of God’ s Spirit. They must ever have them in readiness at hand to use them, and make proof of them. As armour rusting by the wall side, as fire smothered with ashes, as money cankering in chests, so are the graces of God’ s Spirit if they be not employed. Though in themselves they be never so excellent, yet to us and others they are fruitless and unprofitable, without a right use of them. 7. The power of every sanctifying grace must be manifest in the life of a Christian. 8. God’ s assistance and man’ s endeavour are joined together. Without God’ s mighty power man can do nothing; unless man put on the whole armour of God, God will do nothing. (William Gouge.)The end and benefit of Christian armour 1.There is no hope, no possibility of remaining safe, without spiritual armour. 2. They who put on the armour of God, and use it as they ought, are safe and sure, and so may be secure. 3. Those who are without armour can have no hope to stand. (1) Without this armour we are naked, and lie open to every dart and shot of our spiritual enemies; and are no more able to free ourselves from the power of the devil than a poor silly lamb or kid from a roaring lion or ravenous bear. (2) By neglecting to use this armour provided of God, we provoke God to east us into the power of our enemies, and to give them power over us. 4. Those who use their armour are sure to stand. (William Gouge.)The spiritual warfare That such a war subsists, and is carrying on, is told us in the text, wherein the armour of God and the wiles of the devil are set in opposition the one to the other. Christ invades Satan’ s kingdom, arming His servants; and Satan leaves no art untried to maintain his dominion, and restrain the progress of the conqueror. I. Of the occasion of the war. This was partly the success of Satan upon our first parents; and partly God’ s jealousy for His honour, and His pity for fallen man. II. The designs of the one and the other. Satan has lost nothing of the pride, rage, and malice of an apostate spirit, therefore he cannot cease sinning. His revenge and rebellion against God are implacable; however much he trembles before the Son of God, yet he will not submit to Him; his proud malice is nothing abated; he roars against the government of God, seeking whom he may devour. Ceaselessly he labours to defeat the kingdom of the Redeemer, and to set up his own against it. III. Where is the seat of action? In our hearts. There the devil has a natural right, and thence Christ would dispossess him. Satan, by the Fall, both ruined the original purity of man’ s nature, and also introduced a sad defilement into both the parts of us, soul and body; rendering the one proud, and the other carnal. To destroy this work of the devil, restoring to us the image of God, taking away our pride, and spiritualizing our affections, is Christ’ s business. IV. Let us consider the manner of the fight. The weapons of Satan are carnal; those of Christ, spiritual. Those of Satan are worldly things, whereby he endeavours to gratify pride, or to nurse indulgence. Jesus, on the other hand, comes with the word of truth, and the power of the Spirit. V. The issue of this war, on the one part and the other. This will be the triumph of the Redeemer, and the confusion of the adversary. (S. Walker, B. A.)Christ versus Satan I. We are to consider the method of Christ’ s assault upon the kingdom: of satan in the heart of a sinner, in order to gain him out of the enemy’ s hand; and also the wiles which the devil uses to disappoint the Redeemer’ s attempt and to keep the sinner in his service. While I am opening this point, it will be evidently seen how the devil wars at all disadvantage; that he must set up falsehood against truth, and temporal against eternal motives; that he cannot foretell the issue of one step he takes, while all his steps are plainly seen and foreseen, in all their consequences, by the Redeemer; that while Satan hath not the least power or strength to oppose one motion of His, He can easily turn all the counsels of Satan back upon himself; in a word, that in respect of Jesus, Satan is a poor, blind, weak, insignificant enemy. What, then, gives him so much success? It is neither his power, vigilance, nor cunning; what are these in respect of the might care, and wisdom of the Redeemer? No, sinners, it is your wilfulness; it is this alone gives him advantage. Now, that I may plainly set before you the method of Christ’ s attack upon Satan in the heart of a sinner, and Satan’ s devices to disappoint the success of it, you must be shown the state wherein Christ finds the sinner; His methods with him; and Satan’ s counterplot to defeat them.1. The state wherein Christ finds the sinner. In sin--committing sin, an enemy to God, godliness, and godly men. 2. The methods Christ uses with the heart of the sinner, in order to dispossess Satan of his dominion over it. The Spirit working by the Word, and impressing the various motives which the Word contains effectually upon the heart. 3. Satan’ s wiles to disappoint the convictions which the Redeemer, by the Word and Spirit, has made upon the heart of a sinner. (1) He may try to catch away the word of conviction by exciting presumption. If the constitution be warm, and a man is naturally bold and hardy (not as many others are, apt to fear in any great undertaking), when the Spirit hath begun to awaken the soul, by the terrors of the Lord, to a strong desire of fleeing from the wrath to come, the work of religion will, of course, seem not so difficult a thing as it is spoken of. Satan, then, will correspond with these views. The sinner shall seem to himself as if he had already overcome. (2) Another sort of awakened sinners may be as continually fearful, as these we have been speaking of are bold and hardy. When such are awakened, the enemy, most likely, will be working with them to make them discouraged, and to harass them with fears, till they yield. With these he magnifies everything, and swells up mole hills to mountains in their apprehension. (3) If the enemy cannot prevail by means of presumption or fear, he will endeavour, by the pleasures or cares of the world, to catch away the impression which Christ has made upon the sinner’ s heart by the Word and Spirit. These are his subtle devices against the soul of a sinner. When there are some stirrings of infelt concern about the judgment and wrath to come, the devil knows how to make advantage of worldly pleasure and care, upon those whom he hath held in subjection by the love of the one or the other. He can plead that pleasure is harmless, and care is needful, till, by the entertainment of the one, and solicitude of the other, the gracious conviction is done away. (4) The last wile of the devil to keep the awakened sinner for his service, is an attempt to detain him from the throne of grace. II. I am now, in the second place, more directly with the design of the text, to describe to you the wiles of the devil against Christ in the persons of believers, whereby he endeavours to shake their constancy, and to render them disserviceable to the cause wherein they are engaged; and likewise the armour Christ hath prepared for their defence, as well as for making them fit to serve successfully under Him against the kingdom of darkness. Satan hath many wiles for those who believe, and are gone over to Jesus; if He cannot draw them back he will harass them, lay bars in their way, try to render them less fruitful, and less serviceable to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. In order to resist them we must put on--1. Truth, or sincerity.2. Righteousness; that is, the practice of all holiness.3. The preparation of the gospel, or firmness, readiness, and constancy in all cases.4. Faith, namely, in the promises of God in Christ. This must be put on above, or over all, because faith preserves all other graces.5. The hope of salvation.6. The Word of God.7. Prayer.8. Watchfulness.9. Supplication for all saints. Then the Christian is prepared for all the wiles of the devil. All these he must put on, not one excepted, because one and another of these things can only preserve us from this and that wile wherewith the devil will beset us. (S. Walker, B. A.)The Christian armour 1. A call to arms. Religious life is sometimes called “ peace in believing.” But let us not forget that there is nowhere in this world any peace which has not been wrought out in stubborn conflict, which is not now the achievement of valiant service for the truth. The soldiers of the cross do not enlist to go at once into the hospital, or sit around the door of a sutler’ s tent. It is to be feared that too much stress is laid upon the emotional and experimental part of piety in this easy day of ours. Too many young princes go off into dangerous Zulu-land for curious inquiry or mere love of adventure. There was (so we are told) once an English poet, who took position in a lofty tower that he might see a real battle. He seems to have had great prosperity, for the world has not yet done praising his versified description of the rushing onset, the tumult, and the carnage, “ by Iser rolling rapidly.” Now, nobody need hope to become acquainted with the solemn realities of life by merely gazing out upon it from a protected belfry, as Campbell did on Hohenlinden field. We cannot make a poem out of it. There are awful certainties of exposure, and necessities of attack, which disdain figures and rhythms of mere music. And, moreover, we are combatants, not spectators; we are in the onset, and the shock is at hand. “ There is no discharge in that war.” 2. It is best to avoid all confusion at once, and ascertain who are our adversaries; specially, who leads on the host. Here the apostle speaks clearly, if only people would listen: “ Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” “ Two kingdoms,” said Ignatius Loyola, “ divide the world; the kingdom of Emmanuel, and the kingdom of Satan.” This the whole Bible admits; but nowhere can there be found even so much as one text which intimates that Christ and the devil are on equal terms. Satan is a created being; he had a maker, and he now has a ruler. He wages at present only a permitted warfare for a limited season. His onsets are well called “ wiles,” for he shuns open fields, and deals best in ambuscades and secret plots. There is awful force in the expression, “ the devil and his angels” ; for it shows us Satan is not alone in his work. He is the prince fiend of a fiendish clan. I have somewhere seen a picture on which was represented a human soul in its hour of conflict. It was as if the invisible world had for a moment been made visible by the rare skill of the artist. There, around the tried and anxious man, these emissaries of Satan were gathered. Dim, ethereal forms luridly shone out on every side. One might see the tempting offer of a crown over his head; but he would have to examine, quite closely before he could discover how each braided bar of gold in the diadem was twined in so as to conceal a lurking fiend in the folds. Then there was just visible a serpent with demoniac eyes coiled in the bottom of the goblet from which he was invited to drink. Foul whispers were plying either ear. There were baleful fires of lust in the glances of those who sought his companionship. A beautiful angel drew nigh; but a skeleton of death could be traced beneath the white robes he had stolen. I cannot say it was a welcome picture; but certainly there was a lesson in it. Among the noisy critics who gaily pronounced on its characteristics, I noticed there was one thoughtful man who turned aside and wept. Perhaps he knew what it meant. 3. Is there no defence against all this? Surely, every Christian remembers the armour which Paul catalogues in detail: “ Wherefore, take unto you,” etc. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)An exhortation and an argument The words contain an exhortation enforced by an argument. I. The argument--“ That ye may,” etc. In handling the argument we will consider--The devil is one who strikes through another by slander, or false accusation. Concerning this being, observe--1. He is very miserable.2. He was once happy.3. Sin has made him miserable.4. He is very powerful, malicious, and vigilant.5. In his person and agency, generally, invisible.6. He has many associates. Wiles--the arts used by a commander to take advantage of his enemy. These consist--1. In assuming false characters.2. In suiting himself to the age, temper, connections, and circumstances of the tempted.3. In choosing the proper instruments to effect his purposes.4. In giving false names to good and evil. Zeal to persecution.5. In causing divisions in the Church.6. In hiding that from us what only can do us good. Ability to stand against them. This implies--1. Knowledge of them (2 Corinthians 2:11).2. Power to oppose them. II. The exhortation--“ Put on,” etc. Reflections: I. A Christian soldier is a wonderful object. In relation to his enemies--and his defence. II. How pleasing is our prevailing infidelity to Satan. III. The experience of believers proves the truth of the text. (H. J. Foster.)The Christian warfare St. Paul was a born warrior. Most of us are what we are by ordination of circumstance. Here and there one is what he is by ordination of nature. It was Paul’ s genius to be belligerent, and his life would have been an epic, lived anywhere. Even in Eden he would have done what his great ancestor neglected to do, stood against the wiles of the devil. “ His life,” Martineau says, “ was a battle, from which in intervals of the good fight his words arose as songs of victory.” It was the supreme feat of the gospel to convert such a man. He is the superlative trophy of the Christian Church. Paul is the miracle of Christianity, one of those incontestible evidences of Christianity that leaves the mind satisfied. It was more to make Saul over into Paul than it was to make water over into wine. Power that could do the former would be at no less to do the latter. The martial quality of this old Napoleon of the cross betrays itself in what he does and in the way he does it, and in every bend and turn of life. The record of his moving hitherward and thitherward reads like the chronicles of an Alexander. He dared difficulties like Hannibal, and grasped details with the omniscience and omnipresence of the first emperor. His visits were invasions, his letters war dispatches, and his whole life campaign. It is noticeable how easily and habitually his thought drops into forms of the camp. “ He is the only man I know of,” said Cassaubon, “ who wrote not with fingers, pen, and ink, but with his very heart, passion, and bare nerves.” That is Paul, the Napoleon of the cross, the mailed and helmeted belligerent of the gospel of peace. And this martial impulse, I say, is everywhere in his letters incessantly declaring itself. It is in our text, “ Put on the whole armour of God.” And the whole ensuing passage is in the same vein. Truth is to be the girdle, righteousness the breastplate, the preparation of the gospel of peace the sandals, faith the shield, salvation the helmet, and the Word of God the sword. There is no beauty in Paul’ s eye, but war is in his eye and everything he sees becomes the reflection of his eye, takes the colour of his thought. And now it is precisely this war spirit of Paul that helps to explain his eminence in the apostolic Church. When God chose Paul (“ He is a chosen vessel unto Me,” said God)--when God chose Paul, He chose him with regard to the work to be done, and with regard to Paul’ s fitness to do it. He chose the Hebrews to be His people instead of the Chinese or East Indians, because there was something in the Hebrews that was apt to His purpose. His choice of Paul was an apt choice, because Paul was an apt man, and he went on in a way to adapt Paul, because Paul was already natively adaptable. And one element of his aptness was his combativeness. A fighting Church, a Church militant, belligerent, could be humanly championed by nothing less than a fighting apostle, an apostle militant, belligerent. St. John had visions of the Church triumphant, and was, in his temper and spirit, a kind of representation and prophecy of the Church triumphant. St. Paul stands for the Church of the present, the Church upon the field, the Church in armour, and the apostle of the armed spirit is fitly the historic champion of the Church in armour. And we shall gain in many ways by contemplating Christian service under Paul’ s aspect and imagery. Christianity is in its very nature and intent a crusade. Ours is a gospel of peace, but it is anything but a peaceful gospel, and the more scripturally it is put the more it betrays its animosity toward everything that in spirit contradicts the gospel; as the brighter the light, the more it differs from darkness, and the greater and swifter the inroad that it makes into darkness. Christianity is in its nature belligerent, and the peace of the gospel comes only as the fruitage of battle, and as the aftermath of victory. “ What communion hath light with darkness?” asked Paul. Between sanctity and sin there is deadly enmity, which will disappear only with the extermination of one or the other of the belligerents. The moral tranquillization of the world is obtainable by no policy of compromise. Diplomacy has no role to play here. “ Put on the whole armour of God.” The call is for soldiers, not diplomats, for regiments, not embassies. The victory is to be fought out, not negotiated. Of course there is courtesy in war as well as elsewhere. There is a consideration due to men as such, be they wicked or otherwise, but there is no consideration due to wickedness. Wickedness has to be handled without gloves, and designated without euphemisms. The act and the actor have to be discriminated. The two lie a little apart from each other in God’ s thought. Said the Psalmist to Jehovah, “ Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.” Courtesy toward a wicked man is Christian; courtesy toward wickedness is poltroonery and perhaps diabolism. All such irresoluteness postpones victory, not wins it. Sooner or later the whole matter has got to be determined by the arbitrament of the sword. There are instances in which there is no evading Waterloo. The competition, of good and evil is such an instance. We may domesticate sin, and array it in terms of elegant Latinity, but sooner or later that same sin will have to be proscribed without mercy and hunted down as an outlaw. We will treat with all the beautiful tenderness of the gospel men and women that are knavish, yes, that are adulterous, but we must remember that honesty and dishonesty, purity and uncleanness, are in implacable feud, and that either righteousness or sin has got to go under before there can be peace on the earth. We want, then, the courage of our convictions to enable us to name things according to their true character, to state things as they are, to deal with things as they are, and heroically to refuse all quarter to everything that declines to be led captive into subjection to Christ. As soldiers of the Lord we want large bestowment of sanctified stubbornness. My friend, there are only two sides to this controversy, the side of Christ and the side of antichrist. You cannot be on both sides. “ No man can serve two masters,” said Christ. On which one of the two sides are you? If you are not promoting godliness, you are hindering it. If you are not building up Christianity, you are breaking it down. “ He that is not with Me is against Me.” (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)Scope and function of a Christian life This is a general view of the scope and function of a Christian life. You will observe that, as here represented, a Christian is not the inheritance of a quiet possession. We enter upon a campaign. You will take notice, also, that this is a conflict which is to be waged, not by physical arms. “ We wrestle not against flesh and blood” --the meaning of which is, that it is not a physical quality--“ but against principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places” --the very highest places in human governments. We war not, therefore, by sword, or by spear, but we put on the armour of God--reason, conscience, purity, courage, and faith. And these qualities, not as they are developed under the inspiration of ordinary human life, but as they are derived from the Spirit of God itself--these are the weapons with which we enter into the war. And it is, as I understand it, the comprehensive teaching here--or the recognition, if not the special teaching--that when we become Christians, we enter upon that great, worldwide, time-long battle, in which the moral sentiments of the race are arrayed against the passions. And the question is, who shall control the vast machinery of this world? Shall it be controlled by appetites, by avarice, by selfishness in its varied forms? Or shall the vast machineries of the world be inspired and controlled by men’ s higher reason and their moral sentiments? That is the real battle in the most comprehensive statement of it. And we have entered into that conflict just as soon as we have entered into the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. This whole world is to be reorganized. It is the aim of Christianity to reorganize the globe, and to deduce laws, maxims, policies, and principles from the moral Sentiments. In other words, it will yet be shown that every element of human life, individual, social, and civil, can be better pursued by the inspiration of religious feeling than by the inspiration of sordid, secular feeling. Truth will be proved to be better than deceit, always, and in all circumstances. Honour will be proved to be better than infidelity to obligations, and always. The day is coming when God, the supernal good, who organized the world that it might serve Him in virtue and true piety, will make it appear to all the earth and to all the universe that He is on the side of rectitude, on the side of purity, and that providence and natural law, and, just as much national law, and social and commercial law, and industrial law, are on the side of the moral sentiments, and not on the side of the passions and the appetites. There is now a supreme incredulity in this. Though, practically, men do not, perhaps, reason upon it, there is an almost universal impression that, while men are in this world, and performing their duties, they must be as brick makers are--that they must work in dirt; and that, when they have got, through working in dirt, then they must clean up and go to church. Men think, “ As long as I am in the world and doing business, I must perform my business according to the way of the world; and then, when I have got through with the necessary sacrifice to the world, I must wash up and go to church, and be a Christian.” The first step in the working plan of this great campaign into which we are called--namely, of regenerating, reforming, recasting the world--is the reformation of individual character, until the supreme forces of it shall be moral forces. Do you not see that half the evils in society come from physical conditions? Do you not see that if society were more honourable, more just in its organizations, a great deal of that which you call sin would disappear of itself, that it is but the friction caused by the working of the machinery? But the question comes back, “ How are you going to reorganize society?” It is assumed, in the Word of God, that the indispensable condition of any reformation in the organization of society is to proceed upon the primary conversion of the individual heart. Therefore it is that the gospel, when it declares that “ the field is the world,” and when it undertakes the conversion of the world, so that human society shall act upon the highest conceivable reason and moral sentiment in its operations, says, “ Preach the gospel to every creature.” And it is for this simple reason that the force by which we are to organize society is to be the force of the regenerated individual. Our battle is not accomplished in our own salvation. We are God’ s soldiers to transform this world. The mere technical spread of the gospel is itself a great gain, but it is only the beginning of the work. The gospel is spread, so far as its technical spread is concerned, into continents, but the gospel is to spread in another way. It is to go down into society, as well as to lie upon the surface of it. As a creed, it is to lie in the disposition, and transform the processes of it. And the very first step that a man takes when he becomes a Christian, after the regeneration of his heart, is to carry those regenerating forces straight along with him. Wherever he goes, that light is to shine; and it is to shine on business, to shine on love, on pleasure, on wealth, on honours, on everything. Wherever he goes, he is to carry the transforming power of the Spirit of God, so that he shall do his part as one of the soldiers of the Lord’ s host.1. Men are called by religion to a personal reformation, and then to the reformation of the whole world in which they live. You are to carry Christ’ s spirit into every relation of life, and to become a witness, and a martyr, if need be, in it. A little child, beginning to love Christ, and desiring to witness for Christ, comes home to its unconverted parents, and to brothers and sisters that are wilful and wayward, and seeks there to carry out the law of love. Its temper, quite infirm, is often lost. Alas, that of all the things that we lose, nothing is found so certainly again as our temper! The little child comes home, and its temper is often disturbed, often stirred up; and still, it means to be a witness for Christ. And it says in its little heart, “ I do love Christ; and I mean that everything I do shall please Him.” It has read, “ In honour preferring one another” ; and it attempts, in the household, to prefer the happiness of its brothers and sisters. It refuses to join in the little deceits that belong to them. It refuses to conceal, when questioned, their little peculations. It comes to spiteful grief in consequence. And the little child is not old enough to know anything about the great laws of society and the great laws of nature. Just converted, it is undertaking to live so that the best part of itself shall govern itself; and then it is undertaking so that, in its little companionships, the best part of it shall all the time rule in its conduct. Now, no child can undertake that without having the epitome of the experience of every Christian in the whole world. 2. Religion must not be selfish--not even if it be the selfishness of the highest quality. We have no right to be Christians simply on the ground that we shall save our souls. We shall save our souls; but to come into religion as a mere soul insurance is selfishness. We have no right to go into religion merely because we should thus gain joy. The man that enters into religion must follow God. And what thought He, when He took the crown, every beam of which was brighter than the shining of a thousand suns, and laid it by? What thought He when, disrobing Himself of power, taste, and faculty, He bowed His head, and, trailing through the sky, became a man, and as a man humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross? The most odious and reputation-blasting death that man’ s ingenuity had developed--all this had combined at the centre point of the cross, as the sign and symbol of degradation; and that was the death that He chose, that He might identify Himself with men, and not be ashamed to call them brethren. “ I am going to follow the meek and lowly Jesus by cutting my acquaintance with the vulgar cares of the dirty world. I am going to be a select Christian, and seclude myself from these things.” Can you, and be a follower of Christ? Religion means work. Religion means work in a dirty world. Religion means peril--blows given, but blows taken as well. Religion means transformation. The world is to be cleaned by somebody; and you are not called of God if you are ashamed to scour and scrub. I believe that the day is yet to come when all the machineries of society will be controlled by truth, by purity, by sublime duty. I call you to be soldiers in that great warfare that is to bring to pass this victory. (H. W. Beecher.)Satan and his warfare I. The character of the great adversary. St. Paul here calls him the devil. He is also spoken of in other parts of the Bible as Abaddon, Beelzebub, Belial, the Dragon, the Evil One, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit, the Prince of this World, the Prince of the Power of the Air, Satan, Apollyon, and the God of this World. Although fallen beings, they, like the Angels of Light, “ still excel in strength” (Psalms 103:20), and are far “ greater in power and might” (2 Peter 2:11) than any of the sons of men. II. The nature of his devices. Having once been pure and holy, the lost Archangel realizes the greatness of his fall; and grief, anger, and revenge, all combine to render him the bitter enemy of everything good. Hence, all his arts are directed to one end, viz., to draw us away from God, and to accomplish our ruin. And very wonderful and successful is the mode of his warfare. Acting upon the rule of expediency, he never begins his assaults by a direct contradiction of the truth, but by a qualified admission of its claims, he seems to agree with his victim, while he is only making ready to come down upon him in an unguarded quarter. It might reasonably be supposed that one who ventured to make war in heaven is a skilful and experienced leader, whose craft and boldness would render him a dangerous enemy upon earth. “ The wiles of the Devil” are marked by all those characteristics which prove him to be a most treacherous and deadly foe. His forces are scattered over the world, busy in executing his commands, and all our weaknesses are spied out, and the corresponding enticements presented. Naturalists report that when the chameleon stretches itself on the grass to catch flies and grasshoppers, it assumes a green colour to prevent detection; and that the polypus changes himself into the sombre hue of the rock, under which he lurks, that the fish may come within his reach without suspicion of danger. And thus the devil, in spreading his net for unwary Christians, turns himself into the shape which they least suspect, and allures them with temptations most agreeable to their natures. III. The means by which his dangerous wiles may be withstood. Our strength is perfect weakness; but the good and gracious Lord is ready to “ open His armoury” (Jeremiah 1:25) and equip those who acknowledge their helplessness and seek for His sustaining grace. This armour is given for use, and if we expect any benefit from it we must not delay to “ put it on.” (J. N. Norton, D. D.)The Christian’ s “ impedimenta” The Romans were accustomed to call the baggage with which their army was encumbered “ impedimenta,” hindrances, because the transportation of this baggage retarded their progress; so although the Evil One cannot destroy the soldier of the army of salvation, he can annoy, him, and cast about him so many discouragements as greatly to cripple his energies and impede his upward progress. These toils of the devil are the “ impedimenta” of the spiritual hosts, by which the believer is led to halt, to turn aside from his onward course, to slumber at his post, and give way to discouragements, until he is far from accomplishing the high attainments which were within his reach, and at last is called away from the scene of his warfare with many of his glorious aspirations unfulfilled, with sad regrets over so much of the work of life to be left undone. Alas! the wiles of the devil! (J. Leyburn, D. D.)That sin is more crafty than violent But think ye for awhile what the ungodly man’ s life is! I can only compare it to that famous diabolical invention of the Inquisition of ancient times. ‘ They had as a fatal punishment for heretics, what they called the “ Virgin’ s Kiss.” There stood in a long corridor the image of the Virgin. She outstretched her arms to receive her heretic child; she looked fair, and her dress was adorned with gold and tinsel, but as soon as the poor victim came into her arms the machinery within began to work, and the arms closed and pressed the wretch closer and closer to her bosom, which was set with knives, and daggers, and lancets, and razors, and everything that could cut and tear him, till he was ground to pieces in the horrible embrace; and such is the ungodly man’ s life. It standeth like a fair virgin, and with witching smile it seems to say, “ Come to my bosom, no place so warm and blissful as this” ; and then anon it begins to fold its arms of habit about the sinner, and he sins again and again, brings misery into his body, perhaps, if he fall into some form of sin, stings his soul, makes his thoughts a case of knives to torture him, and grinds him to powder beneath the force of his own iniquities. (C. H. Spurgeon.)Successful wrestling Imitate yon ancient wrestler, who, laying aside his robes and ornaments, and all the bravery of his attire, steps naked into the arena--limbs and body shining with slippery oil; closing with an antagonist, whose hands, slipping on the unctuous limbs, catch no firm hold, he heaves him up to hurl in the dust, and bear off the palm--honour won, less by his power than by his wise precaution. If prevention is better than cure, precaution is better than power; therefore ought a good man ever to watch and pray that he enter not in temptation; his prayer, that which our Lord has taught us, “ Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (T. Guthrie, D. D.)Resistance ensures victory You know how John Bunyan represents poor Feeble-mind in the cave of Giant Slaygood. The giant had picked him up on the road, and taken him home to devour him at his leisure; but poor Feeble-mind said he had one comfort, for he had heard that the giant could never pick the bones of any man who was brought there against his will. Ah! and so it is. If there be a man who has fallen into sin, but still his heart crieth out against the sin; if he be saying, “ Lord, I am in captivity to it; I am under bondage to it; O that I could be free from it!” then sin has not dominion over him, nor shall it destroy him, but he shall be set free ere long. (C. H. Spurgeon.)“ The wiles of the devil” Colonel Stewart, with Gordon, was for months besieged in Khartoum--then taking ten vessels from that place he bombarded Berber and dispersed all the rebels. Nine of the vessels had returned in safety; Stewart, having remained behind to inspect, was returning in the tenth, with some forty men on board, when the vessel ran on a rock. Some of the enemy, under the guise of friendship, then offered to conduct them safely across the desert. Stewart was deceived, and trusted himself to them; but as soon as they landed the whole party was massacred to a man. Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.The invisible enemies of man Does it not appear, philosophically speaking, a somewhat violent assumption to decide that man is really the highest being in the created universe, or, at least, that between man and his Maker there are no gradations with different moral colourings of intermediate life? Would it not be, rather, reasonable to suppose that the graduated series of living beings, graduated as it is so delicately, which we trace from the lowest of the zoophytes up to man, does not stop abruptly with man, that it continues beyond, although we may be unable to follow the invisible steps of the continuing ascent? Surely, I submit, the reasonable probability would incline this way, and revelation does but confirm and reveal these anticipations when it discovers to faith, on the one hand, the hierarchies of the blessed angels, and on the other, as in this passage of Scripture, the corresponding gradations of evil spirits, principalities, and powers, who have abused their freedom, and who are ceaselessly labouring to impair and to destroy the moral order of the universe. Two great departments of moral life among men are watched over, each one of them, beyond the sphere of human life, by beings of greater power, greater intelligence, greater intensity of purpose, than man in the world of spirits. These spiritual beings, good and evil, act upon humanity as clearly, as certainly, and as constantly as man himself acts upon the lower creatures around, and thus it is that “ we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Does not our experience, my brethren, bear this out, at least sometimes in our darker hours? Have we never known what it is, as we phrase it, to be carried away by a sudden impulse--to be driven, we know not why, hither and thither in conscious humiliation and shame before some strong, overmastering gust of passion? Have we, too, never seen another law in our members, warring against the law of our minds, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin that is in our members? And what is this at bottom but to feel ourselves in the strong embrace and gripe of another power, who, for the moment, has overmastered us, and holds us down? We may be unable to discern his form; we may be unable to define the precise limits and nature of his power; we may despair to decide what it is that we supply to the dread result out of our own fund of perverted passion, and what it is that he adds from the hot breath of an intenser furnace. But then the most ordinary processes of our vital functions themselves defy analysis, however we may be certain of their reality. No, depend upon it, it is not any mere disposition, inseparable from the conditions of human thought, to personify, to externalize passion which has peopled the imagination of Christendom with demons. As well, just as well, might you say that the fearful epidemic which has ravaged London this autumn was itself a creation of human fancy, that it had in itself no real existence, that it was the real cause of no real disease in the individuals who succumbed to it. Our imagination may, no doubt, do much; but there are limits to its activity, and the higher facts are just as much beyond it as are the facts of nature. The contests of which St. Paul is speaking were not only to be waged on the great scenes of history. St. Paul is speaking of contests humbler, less public, but certainly not less tragical, the contests which are waged, sooner or later, with more or less intensity, and with the most divergent results, around and within each human soul. It is within ourselves, my brethren, that we meet now, as the first Christians met, the onset of the principalities and the powers. It is in resisting them--aye, at any cost--in driving them from us at the name of Christ, in driving from us the spirits of untruthfulness, of sloth, of anger, and of impure desire--that we really contribute our little share to the issue of the great battle which rages still, as it raged then, and which will rage on between good and evil until the end comes, and the combatants meet with their rewards. (Canon Liddon.)The holy war I. The foes. Spiritual enemies. Our danger arises from--1. The advantage they find in this world. It is in many respects their own.2. Our natural inclinations.3. Their number--Legion.4. Their mightiness.5. Their invisibility.6. Their artfulness.7. Their malignity. II. The armour.1. The articles in which it consists. None provided for the back. He who flees is wholly defenceless, and sure to perish. 2. Its nature--Divine. (1) Appointed by God.(2) Provided by God. 3. The appropriation of it. You must apply it to the various purposes for which it has been provided. There are some who are ignorant of it; these cannot “ take it to themselves,” and they are “ perishing for lack of knowledge.” There are others who know it, but despise it; they never make use of it; their religion is all speculation; they “ know these things,” but “ they do them not” ; they believe--and “ the devils believe and tremble.” 4. The entireness of the application--“ The whole armour.” Every part is necessary. A Christian may be considered with regard to his principles, with regard to his practice, with regard to his experience, with regard to his comfort, and with regard to his profession; and oh! how important is it in each of these that neither of them is to be left in him exposed and undefended. He is to “ stand complete in all the will” of his heavenly Father; he is to be “ perfect and entire, lacking nothing.” Nothing less: than this must be our aim. III. The success. Three inquiries are here to be answered. The first regards the posture; what does the apostle mean by “ standing” ? It is a military term; and “ standing” is opposed to falling. A man is said to “ fall” when he is slain in battle; and he does so literally. It is opposed to fleeing. We often read of fleeing before the enemy in the Scriptures: this cannot be “ standing.” It is opposed to yielding or keeping back; and so the apostle says, “ Neither give place to the devil.” Every inch you yield he gains, and every inch he gains you lose; every inch he gains favours his gaining another inch, and every inch you lose favours your losing another inch. The second regards the period; what does the apostle mean when he says, “ Stand in the evil day” ? All the time of the Christian’ s warfare may be so called in a sense, and a very true sense; but the apostle refers also to some days which are peculiarly evil days.” Days of suffering are such. The days in which the poor martyrs lived were “ evil days” ; they could not confess and follow Christ without exposing their substance and their liberty and their lives; but they “ stood in the evil day,” and “ rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His Dame.” There are “ evil days” morally considered--perilous periods, in which “ iniquity abounds and the love of many waxes cold,” in which many may “ turn aside from the faith and give themselves to vain janglings.” The third regards the preeminence of the advantage gained; “ stand in the evil day, and, having done all, stand.” Some of God’ s servants have been foiled after various successes, and have become affecting examples to show us that we are never out of the reach of danger as long as we are in the body and in the world. The battle of Eylau, between the French and the Russians, was a dreadful conflict; more than fifty thousand perished. Both parties claimed the victory. What, then, is the historian to do? To do? Why, he will inquire, Who kept the field? And these were the French, while the Russians all withdrew. Oh, my brethren! it is the keeping of the field to the last--to see all the adversaries withdrawn--that is to make us “ more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” It is this that gives decision to the battle. Some have overcome, and then, alas! they have been overcome. What is it to gain success and yield it at last? The Romans often were checked: they often met with a defeat; but then they succeeded upon the whole, “ and having done all, they stood.” Of Gad it is said, “ A troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last.” And this will be the case with every real Christian. What comes from God will be sure to lead back to God. (W. Jay.)The Christian soldier’ s warfare I. The enemies with whom, as Christian soldiers, we are called to contend.1. Spirits.2. Wicked spirits.3. Formidable spirits. (1) On account of their strength.(2) On account of their weapons.(3) On account of their extensive influence.(4) On account of their wiles. II. In what manner we are instructed to contend with them.1. In the armour of God. (1) This must be all put on.(2) We must retain it till our warfare be past.(3) We must take and use it whenever assaulted. 2. In the spirit of prayer and watchfulness.3. In the exercise of firm resistance. Let your resistance be-- (1) Early. At the first approach of the enemy.(2) Courageous.(3) Unwearied. Till you conquer. III. The reasons by which we should be induced thus to contend.1. Because the most important objects depend on this contention. (1) Your steadfastness;(2) your liberty; (3) your glory;(4) your eternal life. 2. Because victory is certain to the faithful soldiers of Christ. (1) Victory over the world;(2) victory over sin;(3) victory over Satan;(4) victory over tribulation; (5) victory over death. 3. Because victory will be attended with certain glory. (1) A glorious rest from all painful toil and contention;(2) glorious exemption from all penal evil; (3) glorious honours;(4) a glorious throne, crown, kingdom. (Theological Sketchbook.)The existence of evil spirits Against the existence of evil spirits, against the possibility of their exerting a malignant influence on the moral and spiritual life of mankind, nothing has ever been alleged, as far as I am aware, that has any force in it. Some people appear to suppose that they have said enough to justify their disbelief when they have recited the grotesque and incredible legends, the monstrous and childish superstitions about the devil which laid so firm a hold on the imagination and the fears of Europe in the Middle Ages; or when they have illustrated the history and growth of analogous legends and superstitions among savage or half-civilized races. But they could justify atheism by a precisely similar line of reasoning. The mythologies of Greece and of Scandinavia are incredible; their original and central elements are obviously nothing more than the product of the imagination under the excitement of the glories and the terrors, the majesty and the beauty, of the visible universe. But because these mythologies are incredible shall I refuse to believe in the living God, the Creator of the heavens and of the earth, the God that loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity? The attributes and deeds attributed to Kali, the black and blood-stained goddess, with her necklace of human skulls, fills me with horror and fierce disgust; but is this horror, this disgust, any reason for withholding my faith from the revelation of God’ s infinite love in the Lord Jesus Christ? Many false, childish, dreadful things have been imagined and believed about invisible and Divine powers; but this does not prove that there is no God. Many monstrous and absurd things have been imagined and believed about invisible and evil spirits; but this does not prove that there is no devil. Three hundred years ago men received popular stories about grotesque and malicious appearances of evil spirits without evidence and without inquiry. It was the habit of the age to believe in such things; men believed, in the absence of all solid reasons for believing. And now we disbelieve, without evidence and without inquiry, what Christ Himself and His apostles have told us about the devil and his temptations. It is the habit of the age to disbelieve in such things; we disbelieve, in the absence of solid reasons for disbelieving. We do not care to investigate the question. We go with the crowd. We think that everybody cannot be wrong. We regard with great complacency the contrast between our own clear intelligence and the superstition of our ancestors. But when we are challenged to state our reasons for refusing to accept what Christ has revealed on this subject, we have nothing to answer except that other people refuse to accept it; and our ancestors had just as good an apology for accepting the superstitions of their times--everybody accepted them. It is not quite clear that there is any good ground for our self-complacency; the belief of our ancestors was as rational as our own disbelief.1. The subject is confessedly difficult, obscure, and mysterious; but there is nothing incredible in the existence of unseen and evil powers, from whose hostility we are in serious danger. Give the faculty of vision to the blind, and they see the sun and the clouds and the moon and the stars, of whose existence they had known nothing except by hearsay; give a new faculty to the human race, and we might discover that we are surrounded by “ principalities” and “ powers,” some of them loyal to God and bright with a Divine glory; some of them in revolt against Him, and scarred with the lightnings of the Divine anger. The moral objections to the existence of evil spirits can hardly be sustained in the presence of the crimes of which our own race has been guilty. There may be other worlds in which the inhabitants are as wicked as the most wicked of ourselves; we cannot tell. We may be surrounded--we cannot tell--by creatures of God, who hate righteousness and hate God with a fiercer hatred than ever burned in the hearts of the most profligate and blasphemous of our race. And they may be endeavouring to accomplish our moral ruin, in this life and the life to come. 2. Our Lord plainly taught the existence of evil spirits (Matthew 13:19; Matthew 13:39; Luke 10:18; Luke 22:31; John 12:31; Matthew 25:41). No use to say that as He spoke the language, He thought the thoughts, of His country and His time; for it was impossible that He should mistake shadows for realities in that invisible and spiritual world which was His true home, and which He had come to reveal to man. Nor can we believe that Christ Himself knew that evil spirits had no existence, and yet consciously and deliberately fell in with the common way of speaking about them. The subject was one of active controversy between rival Jewish sects, and in using the popular language Christ took sides with one sect against another. That He should have supported controverted opinions which He knew to be false is inconceivable. Again: He came to preach glad tidings; can we suppose that, if the popular dread of evil spirits had no foundation, He would have deliberately fostered such a falsehood? 3. The teaching of Christ on this point is sustained by all the apostles (James 3:7; 2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Corinthians 11:14; Ephesians 4:26; 1 Peter 5:8; 1 John 2:13-14; 1 John 3:8; 1 John 3:10; 1 John 3:12; 1 John 5:18-19, etc.). 4. The teaching of Christ and His apostles is confirmed by our religious experience. Evil thoughts come to us which are alien from all our convictions and from all our sympathies. There is nothing to account for them in our external circumstances or in the laws of our intellectual life. We abhor them and repel them, but they are pressed upon us with cruel persistency. They come to us at times when their presence is most hateful; they cross and trouble the current of devotion; they gather like thick clouds between our souls and God, and suddenly darken the glory of the Divine righteousness and love. We are sometimes pursued and harassed by doubts which we have deliberately confronted, examined, and concluded to be absolutely destitute of force, doubts about the very existence of God, or about the authority of Christ, or about the reality of our own redemption. Sometimes the assaults take another form. Evil fires which we thought we had quenched are suddenly rekindled by unseen hands; we have to renew the fight with forms of moral and spiritual evil which we thought we had completely destroyed. There is a Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness; light falls upon us which we know is light from heaven; in times of weariness strength comes to us from inspiration which we know must be Divine; we are protected in times of danger by an invisible presence and grace; there are times when we are conscious that streams of life are flowing into us which must have their fountains in the life of God. And there are dark and evil days when we discover that there is also a power not ourselves that makes for sin. We are at war, the kingdom of God on earth is at war, with the kingdom of darkness. We have to fight “ against the principalities,” etc. And therefore we need the strength of God and “ the armour of God.” The attacks of these formidable foes are not incessant; but as we can never tell when “ the evil day” may come, we should be always prepared for it. After weeks and months of happy peace, they fall upon us without warning, and without any apparent cause. If we are to “ withstand” them, and if after one great battle in which we have left nothing unattempted or unaccomplished for our own defence and the destruction of the enemy we are still “ to stand,” to stand with our force unexhausted and our resources undiminished, ready for another and perhaps fiercer engagement, we must “ be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might,” and we must “ take up the whole armour of God.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)The nature of the contest Wrestle. It denotes--1. That our enemies aim at us personally.2. The nearness of the parties to each other.3. The severity of the struggle, ðáëç.4. The continuance of it. The present tense. (H. J. Foster.)The evil angels I. Here are presented beings whose attributes are very appalling.1. Actual beings, possessing an angelic order of existence.2. Beings deeply and fearfully characterized by evil.3. Beings who possess wide power and authority over the world. II. The beings here presented are engaged in active and malignant conflict against the interests of redeemed men.1. Notice the manner in which that conflict is conducted. These principalities, etc., fight against the children of God through the medium of their own thoughts; as those thoughts may be influenced independent of external objects, or as those thoughts may be influenced by the thoughts and passions of other men; and by the various events and occurrences which are transpiring in this sublunary and terrestrial world. It is intended by this power and instrumentality to lead to principles, to actions, and to habits which are inconsistent with the maintenance of the Christian character. 2. Mark the spirit in which that warfare is conducted. It is precisely such as we might expect from the character and attributes of the principalities, the powers, and the rulers against whom we wrestle. It is, for instance, conducted with subtlety and cunning. We find that Satan is said to transform himself into an angel of light. Hence, again, we read of “ the devices of Satan” and “ the rulers of Satan” as being “ the old serpent.” It is, further, conducted in cruelty, Hence, we read of Satan as being “ the adversary” ; we read of his fiery darts; and we are told that he “ goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” It is, again, conducted in perseverance. All the statements which are urged with regard to subtlety on the one hand, and cruelty on the other, show that there is one incessant labour, which is perfectly unvaried and unremitting on their part, to accomplish the great designs they have in view with respect to the character and the final destiny of the soul. 3. Observe for what purpose the conflict is designed. That there may be a failure on the part of the redeemed, in their character, their consistency, and their hopes; and this, under the impulse of one dark and fearful result, as bearing both upon God and upon man. As regards God, it is intended that the purpose of the Father should be foresworn; that the atonement of the Son should be inefficacious; and that the influence of the Spirit should be thwarted. And, as bearing on man, it is intended that his life should become bereft of honour, comfort, and peace; that his death should be a scene of agitation, pain, and darkness; that his judgment should he an event of threatening and bitter condemnation; that his eternity should be the habitation of torment and woe; and that over spirits, who once had the prospects of redemption, there shall be pronounced that fearful sentence, “ Depart ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” III. The knowledge, on the part of redeemed men, of such a conflict, ought, at once, to bind on thee those practical impressions which are essential to their perseverance and victory.1. The nature of the means of preservation. (1) A constant and diligent attempt, in the strength of the living God, to live in practical conformity with the doctrines and precepts of the gospel.(2) Watchfulness.(3) Prayer. 2. The effect which these means, when used aright, will secure. That the Christian warrior, fighting against these mighty and invisible foes, shall, although faint, yet pursue, and although feeble, shall yet conquer. (J. Parsons.)The craft of our invisible foes The great art of these invisible world rulers consists in never seeming to be against us. They conceal themselves in our affections, and plead for our wishes. And, as though from quite a motherly consideration for our weakness, and a warm concern for our enjoyment, they make it appear that the claims of God are unreasonable, and that the way to heaven is cold and forbidding. Seated in the warmth of our hearts, they reason warmly for our pleasure, and then flatter us that we reason well. We are taken by the “ wiles,” we suck in the flattering honey, and know not that we are being poisoned unto the second death. These spirits are too much for us. Their strongholds are in our hearts. Before we can successfully oppose those who clothed themselves with the armour of our own life, we must put on “ the armour of God.” Jesus is the only man who ever prevailed in this war. He came to the encounter, not in nature’ s heats, nor with nature’ s reasonings; but clothed with truth and purity, guilelessness and perfect love. We must “ put on Christ.” (J. Pulsford.)Our spiritual foes The apostle brings out into bold relief the terrible foes which Christians are summoned to encounter.1. Their position. They are no subalterns, but foes of mighty rank, the nobility and chieftains of the spirit world. 2. Their office. Their domain is this darkness in which they exercise imperial sway. 3. Their essence. Not encumbered with an animal frame, but “ spirits.” 4. Their character--“ evil.” Their appetite for evil only exceeds their capacity for producing it. (J. Eadie, D. D.)Every part must be protected against the adversary It is reported by the poets of Achilles, the Grecian captain, that his mother, being warned by the oracle, dipped him--being a child--in the river Lethe, to prevent any danger that might ensue by reason of the Trojan war; but Paris, his inveterate enemy, understanding also by the oracle that he was impenetrable all over his body, except the heel or small part of his leg, which his mother held him by when she dipped him, took his advantage, shot him in the heel, and killed him. Thus every man is, or ought to be, armed cap-a-pie with that panoply--the whole armour of God. For the devil will be sure to hit the least part that he finds unarmed; if it be the eye, he will dart in at that casement by the presentation of one lewd object or other; if it be the ear, he will force that door open by bad counsel; if the tongue, that shall be made a world of mischief; if the feet, they shall be swift to shed blood, etc. Spiritual wrestling is personal At the battle of Crecy, in 1316, the Prince of Wales, finding himself heavily pressed by the enemy, sent word to his father for help. The father, watching the battle from a windmill, and seeing his son was not wounded and could gain the day if he would, sent word: “ No, I will not come. Let the boy win his spurs, for, if God will, I desire that this day be his with all its honours.” Young man, fight your own battle, all through, and you shall have the victory. Oh, it is a battle worth fighting! Two monarchs of old fought a duel, Charles V and Francis, and the stakes were kingdoms, Milan and Burgundy. You fight with sin, and the stake is heaven or hell. (Dr. Talmage.) Ephesians 6:13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.Military metaphors St. Paul lay in prison at Rome, as he himself says, bound with a chain, “ for the hope of Israel,” to the Roman trooper who watched him day and night. He employed his prison hours by writing--first to the Asiatic Churches of Ephesus and Colosse, to the Christian slaveholder, Philemon, and, at a somewhat later date, to the Macedonian Church at Philippi. It was very natural that his language, like his thoughts, should be coloured, here and there, by the objects around him; and we find that whilst writing this circular epistle to the Ephesians, his eye had actually been resting on the soldier to whom he was chained. In the outfit of the Roman legionary, he saw the symbol of the supernatural dress which befits the Christian. The ornamented girdle or balteus bound around the loins to which the sword was commonly attached, seemed to the apostle to recall the inward practical acknowledgment of truth which is the first necessity in the Christian character. The metal breastplate suggested the moral rectitude or righteousness which enables a man to confront the world. The strong military sandals spoke of that readiness to march in the cause of that gospel whose sum and substance was not war but spiritual, even more than social peace. And then the large, oblong, oval wooden shield, clothed with hides, covered well nigh the whole body of the bearer, reminding him of Christian faith, upon which the temptations of the Evil One, like the ancient arrows, tipped, as they often were, with inflammable substances, would light harmlessly and lose their deadly point; and then the soldier’ s helmet, pointing upward to the skies, was a natural figure of Christian hope directed towards a higher and a better world; and then the sword at his side, by which he won safety and victory in the day of battle, and which, you will observe, is the one aggressive weapon mentioned in this whole catalogue--what was it but the emblem of that Word of God which wins such victories on the battlefields of conscience, because it pierces, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Thus girded, thus clad, thus shod, thus guarded, thus covered, thus armed, the Christian might well meet his foes. He was, indeed, more than a match for them, and might calmly await their onset. (Canon Liddon.)The chivalry of the Christian life At that age military effort was the most successful form of human activity. Rome had made herself, not quite a century before, the mistress of the civilized world, and this not by her commerce, not by her diplomacy, but by her arms. In such an age, therefore, such a metaphor would quickly win its way to the popular ear; but it also would have attractions for the characteristic thought and temper of the apostle who employed it. The constant exposure to danger, the constant necessity for exertion, the generous indifference to personal suffering, the large-hearted sympathy with the experiences of every comrade, and the sense of being only a unit, only one in the vast organization of a serried host moving steadily forward towards its object--the instinct of discipline, in complete harmony with the instinct of personal sincerity and courage--all these features of a soldier’ s life made it welcome to the apostle’ s conception of the Christian career and character--“ Thou, therefore, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” ; “ Quit ye like men; be strong” ; “ No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.” The higher precepts of the army constantly occur in the apostolic Epistles. St. Paul does not discuss the theory of war, its antagonism to the real mind of a holy God, to the true interests, the true ideal of human life. He only takes it as a matter of fact in the world, as it was nineteen centuries ago, as it is at this moment, alas! and he consecrates it thus; he consecrates its higher and its loftier side by making it a shadow, not of Christian chivalry, but of the chivalry of the Christian life. The soldier differs from the merchant or the farmer, in that he has to deal with an antagonist. He differs from the racer at the games, in that his antagonist is not merely a competitor, but an enemy in good earnest. It was this which made the metaphor in the apostle’ s conception so exactly correspond to the actual facts, to the real case of the Christian life. The Christian is not merely making the best of his materials, he is not merely engaged in a struggle for spiritual successes, he is, before everything else, engaged in a stern and terrible contest with implacable enemies; the forces arrayed against him are such as to oblige him to spare no exertion, and to neglect no precaution whatever if he is to escape defeat. (Canon Liddon.)The Christian armour The military code of the Christian soldier. A spiritual contest, hence spiritual weapons; whole armour to resist wiles of devil. I. Active arming. Take--1. Truth: not mere information. (1) Truth is inward--to one’ s self. No self-deception, nor vanity, nor conceit. (2) Outward--to others. Candour, frankness, truth of word and life, Most sublime sights are these: (a) Simple truthfulness of character at home. (b) A powerful mind vindicating truth in the presence of foes. (c) The martyr calmly sealing truth with his blood. 2. Righteousness. This means truth towards God, justness, fairness, honesty, faithfulness (Micah 6:8). It is a breastplate, in forefront, to be borne bright and high, and seen by all. 3. Readiness--like that of Israel leaving Egypt, or a soldier in camp. 4. Faith--a shield, therefore a protection. Like God, our refuge, strength, help. It quenches all the fiery darts, etc. Not easy to have such faith; try, however. II. Passive arming. The following are outward, external, not in the soul.1. Salvation is the helmet. 2. Word of God is the sword. (W. M. Johnston, M. A.)Soldiers of Christ must stand In the armies of our great nations, while desertion is punished with heavy penalties, retirement is allowed under certain conditions. There is an army, however, in which retirement is never sanctioned--not even in the case of the oldest veteran; and, addressing the soldiers of that army, the apostle writes, “ Having done all, to stand. Stand therefore.” I. The prohibition involved in the precept. The conflict may neither be forsaken nor suspended. The following are forbidden:1. Indolent or even weary sleep. 2. Cowardly or even politic flight. 3. A treacherous, or even a desponding surrender. Treachery is apostasy; despondency is sinful distrust. 4. The declaration of a truce, or even an application for it. There is a termination to the war, but no truce. No favour will ever be shown to the foe by our Commander-in-Chief, and the soldier of Christ does not really need the cessation of the conflict. 5. The giving up of a military position until the war is fairly over. The orders to the individual soldier run thus--“ Unto death” ; and until death the warfare is not accomplished. Death is in fact the last enemy. II. What do these words demand?1. They require a distinct and solemn recognition of the fact that the time of our life on earth is a time of war--“ an evil day.” There are periods during which the sharpness of the conflict is greatly increased, and such seasons are peculiarly “ the evil day” --but every day is a day of battle. 2. They require us to be always possessed by the conviction that we are personally called to this good fight. The true vocation of every believer is conflict; and to this rule there is not a single exception. 3. They demand the honest and manly facing of our foes. Some professed Christians turn their backs upon their spiritual enemies in contempt. They have speculated and theorized upon Satanic agency, until they have expunged God’ s doctrines concerning devils from their creed. They have flirted and compromised with the world, until they and the evil that is in the world are placed on the same side. They have modified and shaped their language concerning human depravity, until there dwells in their flesh, according to their opinion, no evil thing. And thus denying the existence of foes, they have turned their backs upon them. Other professing Christians look at our spiritual enemies more as spectators than as warriors. They are seen as objects of spiritual interest, and as subjects for religious inquiry, rather than as foes with which they personally have to do. To stand, in the sense of the text, requires that we face our foes--not to contemplate them; far less to despise them; but to fight them. 4. The text requires that having taken the field we keep it. We may not retire to the ranks of those who refuse to fight: we must stand. The militant position must be maintained throughout life. We may be weak; but must stand. We may be weary; but must stand. We may be fearful; but must stand. We may be defeated in some single fight; but must stand. We may See others fall about us; but must stand. Many may desert our cause; but we must stand. Consternation may spread through the army of the Lord of Hosts; but we must stand. It may seem as though all things were against us; but we must stand. The day of final triumph may seem long delayed, and with weak, and weary, and aching hearts, we may cry, “ How long, Lord? how long?” --but we must stand. The measure of conflict and of service allotted to us may seem excessive, but having done all, we must stand. “ Stand therefore.” This requires, 5. that we be ready for attack or defence. To stand unarmed, is not to stand. To stand unclothed with armour, is not to stand. To stand in any sense unready, is not to stand. Having done all, your foes stand. Satan has done much; yet he stands. The world--the temporal, the sensual, and the social--has done much; yet it stands. The flesh has done much; yet it stands. Antichrist and error, and sin in every shape, have done much; yet they stand. No foe is as yet really slain. New foes are continually led to the field, and old foes show themselves in new forms. I read; “ Gethsemane!” “ Calvary!” Calvary? Who fought there? Your Captain--alone; for all His soldiers forsook Him and fled. With “ Calvary” and “ Gethsemane” on your banner, to be consistent, you must stand. Stand therefore! Now your orders are, Stand. Yet a little, and the command shall be, Retire. Come, ye faithful soldiers, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; and receive the crown of glory which fadeth not away. (S. Martin, D. D.)The handbook of a Christian knight 1. What kind of heart and courage such an one must have, to appear in the place of review.2. Who is his chief Captain, to whom he must have regard.3. What kind of equipment he must have, and what is the best armoury, the best arsenal.4. Who are his worst enemies.5. How he ought and must accustom himself to his armour.6. What a severe regimen he must carry out.7. Finally, what he has to expect, if he conduct himself in a knightly manner. (Herberger.)How the equipment with the whole armour of God is--1. So indispensable.2. So accessible.3. So glorious. (Rautenberg.)The reason why we must be well armed 1.The more danger we are in, the more watchful we must be.2. Our spiritual war is a sore, fierce, and dangerous war.3. All must fight this spiritual combat.4. Our enemies are more than flesh and blood. (1) Spiritual enemies are terrible.(2) No outward prowess can daunt them. 5. The devil is our principal enemy, in all our conflicts, whether with flesh and blood, or with spiritual foes. 6. They who are quailed with what flesh and blood can do, will never be able to stand against principalities. 7. Our spiritual enemies have a dominion. (1) God permits this.(2) Yet is it usurpation on the part of Satan. 8. As our spiritual enemies have a dominion, so they have power to exercise the same. The Lord suffers this for the following reasons. (1) That His own Divine power might be the more manifested.(2) That there might be a greater trial of the courage of His saints and children.(3) That He might execute the sorer vengeance upon the wicked. 9. Satan’ s rule is only in this world. 10. Ignorant and evil men are Satan’ s vassals. (1) They resist him not, but yield to him.(2) They are not subject to Christ. 11. The enemies of our souls are of a spiritual substance. (1) Invisible.(2) Privy to what we do or speak. 12. The devils are extremely evil. 13. The devils are many in number. 14. The main things for which the devils fight against us, are heavenly matters. (William Gouge.)The whole armour I. The day referred to--“ The evil day.” “ Day” a fit emblem, mixture of light and darkness, sunshine and storm, joy and sadness. Certain evils in this day to which we are all liable.1. Evil day of affliction. Our bodies have the seeds of innumerable diseases in them.2. Evil day of temptation.3. Evil day of persecution.4. Evil day of death. II. The advice given.1. We have recommended to us Divine armour. The Lord’ s warfare must be carried on by the Lord’ s weapons.2. We must have the whole armour of God. Every part is vulnerable, and every part, therefore, must be defended.3. The whole armour must be taken unto us. III. The motives urged. “ That ye may be able,” etc.1. That we may not be destroyed by the evils of this life. “ Withstand.”2. That we appear victorious in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. “ Having done all, stand.” Great comprehensiveness in the words, “ Done all.” Application:1. Let believers rightly remember their present state. This is your evil day, expect and prepare for trouble.2. Examine your armour; is it Divine armour? whole, and entire?3. Let grace sustain you, depend entirely on it.4. Let glory animate you. Think of the day when, having done all, you will stand. (J. Burns, D. D.)The whole armour of God 1.It is very characteristic of Paul that he should give the first place to “ truth.” He is thinking of the truth concerning God and the will of God which comes to us from God Himself through His revelation in Christ and through the teaching of the Spirit; for all the elements of Christian strength are represented in this passage as Divine gifts. Truth appropriated and made our own gives energy, firmness, and decision to Christian life and action, relieves us from the entanglement and distraction which come from uncertainty and doubt, gives us a complete command of all our vigour. It is like the strong belt of the ancient soldier which braced him up, made him conscious of his force, kept his armour in its place, and prevented it from interfering with the freedom of his action. 2. He gives the second place to “ righteousness.” In the conflicts of the Christian life we are safe, only while we practise every personal and private virtue, and discharge with fidelity every duty both to man and to God. “ Righteousness” is the defence and guarantee of righteousness. The honest man is not touched by temptations to dishonesty; the truthful man is not touched by temptations to falsehood; habits of industry are a firm defence against temptations to indolence; a pure heart resents with disgust and scorn the first approaches of temptation to impurity. 3. Paul gives the third place to what he describes as “ the preparation of the gospel of peace.” When we have received with hearty faith the great assurance by the remission of sins through Christ, we are released from the gravest anxieties and fears. We have escaped from care about the past, and are free to give our whole strength to the duties of the present and of the future. The discovery that God is at peace with us gives us confidence and inspires us with alertness and elasticity of spirit. We are not merely ready, we are eager for every good work. 4. The fourth place is given to “ faith.” There are a thousand perils against which faith in the righteousness and love and power of God is our only protection. When the misery of the world oppresses us, or we are crushed by the misery of our personal life, terrible thoughts about God pierce through every defence and fasten themselves in our very flesh, torturing us, and filling our veins with burning fever. We writhe in our agony. If by any chance we hear about “ the unsearchable riches” of God’ s grace, we listen, not only uncomforted, but sometimes with a passion of unbelief. “ Grace!” we exclaim, “ where is the proof of it? Is there any pity in Him, any justice, any truth?” In these hours of anguish we are like soldiers wounded by the “ darts” with burning tow fastened to them, or with their iron points made red hot, which were used in ancient warfare. We should have been safe if, when “ the evil day” came it had found us with a strong and invincible faith in God; this would have been a perfect defence; and apart from this we can have no secure protection. 5. The fifth place is given to “ salvation.” We are insecure unless we make completely our own the great redemption which God has achieved for us in Christ. If we have mean and narrow conceptions of the Divine redemption, or if we think that it lies mainly with ourselves whether we shall secure “ glory, honour, and immortality,” we shall be like a soldier without a “ helmet,” unprotected against blows which may be mortal. But if we have a vivid apprehension of the greatness of the Christian redemption, and if our hope of achieving a glorious future is rooted in our consciousness of the infinite power and grace of God, we shall be safe. 6. But all these are arms of defence. Have we no weapons for attacking and destroying the enemy? Are the same temptations and the same doubts to return incessantly and to return with their force undiminished? The helmet, the shield, the breastplate, the belt, may be a protection for ourselves; but we belong to an army, and are fighting for the victory of the Divine kingdom and for the complete destruction of the authority and power of the “ spiritual hosts of wickedness” over other men; it is not enough that our personal safety is provided for. We are to fight the enemy with “ the Word of God.” Divine promises are not only to repel doubts, but to destroy them. Divine precepts are not only to be a protection against temptations, but to inflict on them a mortal wound, and so to prevent them from troubling us again. The revelation of God’ s infinite pity for human sorrow, and of His infinite mercy for human sin, of the infinite blessings conferred upon men by Christ in this world, and of the endless righteousness and glory which He confers in the world to come--the Divine “ Word” to the human race--is the solitary power by which we can hope to win any real and enduring victory over the sins and miseries of mankind. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Standing safely The coat of arms of the Isle of Man is the figure of three legs armed and spurred, with the motto, “ Quocunque jeceris, stabit.” Daring several centuries the island, standing alone in the mid-ocean, was a battlefield for contending nations. English and Irish, Saxon and Dane, here strove for the mastery. The coat of arms seems to refer to one result of this in the brave character of the islanders. Swift and strong, they were ready to attack, courageous in the fight, and prepared to follow quickly the retreating foe. The motto gives the same idea: “ Throw him where you will, he will stand.” A coat of mail The Rev. J. Thain Davidson said to an audience of young men: “ There is no courage so noble as that which resists the devil, and is valiant for Christ. ‘ Put ye on the panoply of God.’ Cromwell wore under his garment a coat of mail; wore it whether he was in camp, or in court, or in chambers. He never could know when the dagger would be thrust at him, so he was always ready. Be you similarly provided. The fiery darts of the wicked may fly at you where you least suspect danger; therefore, be ever on your guard. And may the Lord deliver you from evil, and preserve you safe unto His heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory now and forever. Amen.” No saint free from danger Do you know, I have noticed that young people who are often exposed to severe temptations are very generally preserved from falling into sin; but I have noticed that others, both old and young, whose temptations were not remarkably severe, have been generally those who have been the first to fall. In fact, it is a lamentable thing to have to say, but lamentably true it is, that at the period of life when you would reckon, from the failure of the passions, the temptation would be less vigorous, that very period is marked more than any other by the most solemn transgressions amongst God’ s people. I think I have heard that many horses fall at the bottom of a hill because the driver thinks the danger past and the need to hold the reins with firm grip less pressing as they are just about to renew their progress and begin to ascend again. So it is often with us when we are not tempted through imminent danger we are the more tempted through slothful ease. I think it was Ralph Erskine who said, “ There is no devil so bad as no devil.” The worst temptation that ever overtakes us, is, in some respects, preferable to our being left alone altogether without any sense of caution or stimulus to watch and pray. Be always on your watchtower, and you shall be always secure. (C. H. Spurgeon.)We must fight to the end A man may be wrecked within a ship’ s length of the lighthouse. Lot’ s wife was not far from Zoar, yet she miserably perished. Near the summit of Mount Washington is a rude cairn of stones that marks the spot where a young lady, who was overtaken by the darkness (without a guide), died of exposure and nervous fright! The poor girl was within pistol shot of the cabin of the “ tiptop” ; its cheering light was just behind the rocks; yet that short distance cost her her life! So, my dear friend, you may be at last picked up dead, just outside the gateway of your Father’ s house. While its hospitable door of love stands open, hasten in! You are losing the very best part of this life, and the whole of the life to come, while you so recklessly linger away from Jesus. (Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D.)The soldier’ s duty Our warfare is against powers and dominions. This line of thought is that of the text, and it is of this that I shall speak. Everyone who grows to man’ s estate is called to incessant warfare with himself. We are made up, not of irreconcilable materials, but of materials that are not reconcilable except as the result of great training and discipline. We are born first to the flesh; and our predominant strength lies in the direction of our animal appetites and passions. But we come, after a little, to a higher realm--that of the affections; and every child needs to be taught how to make conflict against selfishness, against avaricious snatching, against combativeness, and against injurious usage from those around him. And while there is an apparent conflict outside of the child in society, the real conflict of the child is that which is within him--namely, that which is to determine the question whether reason or passion shall predominate in him; the question whether generosity or selfishness shall inspire his conduct; the question whether greediness or benevolence towards others shall rule in him. Each one of us is conscious that at every step of our way within ourselves and within our own sphere the necessity is laid upon us of perpetual watchfulness. We are overcome by our inferior nature, by reason of carelessness, or indolence, or indulgence, or undue enthusiasm, or over-eager desire; and we find ourselves perpetually recalling, with shame and contrition, the victory of the flesh over the spirit, of the animal man over the spiritual man, and of selfishness over generosity. Not only is there this individual conflict in every man, but at every step of ambition, in every line of aspiration, there comes to us precisely the same element of conflict. No man grows easily into manhood. No man stands in approved and vindicated virtue, in any direction, which he has not been obliged to hew out with personal endeavour. Every man who is built up of skill, and experience, and integrity, and accomplishing power, has built himself up by repeated blow upon blow, training upon training, endeavour upon endeavour, with many surprises, and overthrows, and intermediate defeats, and all the time with a varied experience of warfare within. As soon as in some degree we have trained ourselves within ourselves, we enter upon a corresponding struggle with all the conditions of life around us. And in a larger sphere we are called to a conflict as citizens and members of the great body politic. Now, in waging this multiform conflict, all the methods known to actual gladiation and to real external military proceedings are reproduced in the invisible conflict which goes on in men. Nothing is more frequent in war than the attempt of one side to deceive the other, and so overcome, as it were by sleight of hand, or by the craftiness of a better understanding, those that are opposed to them--saving force, or economising it; and surely nothing is more certain than that the great enemy that wages war against us spiritually overthrows us by deceit, as it were breathing it upon us, blowing it through us, half blinding our eyes, and taking us at unawares. Nothing is more common in warfare than surprises; for in many instances a fort is taken by an onward and unexpected rush which could not be taken by a prolonged, gradual approach. So in spiritual warfare; how many of us are unaware of danger until it has sprung upon us! How many times has that burning adversary of ours, an uncontrolled temper, broken out upon us, and carried us away before we were aware of its presence! How often have we been lured by insidious pleasures till we waked up in the midst of captivities! How often have our best feelings been overthrown by the assaults of our evil inclinations! So, too, it is a part of military warfare to draw the enemy into ambush, giving him the hope of victory while he is being overtaken by defeat. And how often are we led into ambush by our spiritual adversaries! How often are we enticed from the path of virtue by some seeming good! We flatter ourselves that we occupy an advantageous position, and that we are going on to success, until, in the midst of the intoxication of our vaunted triumph, we find the toils closing about us, and we are captives instead of victors. (H. W. Beecher.)Steadfastness in trouble If you divide men into two classes, there is one that wants to be stimulated. The danger of these is from lassitude, or, to use a more Saxon phrase, laziness. The other class, being aroused and nervously developed, are intense, energetic, and active. Now, to undertake to apply to both of these classes the same passages of Scripture would be a fatal mistake. To say to one large portion of men, “ Stand,” would be just the thing that they would like. Standing suits them exactly. On the other hand, to stir up and stimulate some men is like putting fuel on a fire that is already too hot. In the case of men who are wrought up into a state of intense activity, whose errors lie in a lack of peace and of rest, stimulation or excitement is just what is not needed. Paul puts them both together here, and gives only one kind of men leave to stand--those who have done all. The figure is a military one. It refers to men who have made preparation for a campaign, who have gone as far as circumstances will permit, who have provided themselves with armament, and who have armed themselves at every point. There comes a crisis where they can do no more; and the apostle says, “ When you have your armour on from head to foot, and are energetic, and ready for the conflict, then stand and wait” ; for waiting is as productive even as working--especially where working is not productive at all. Now, it is not to those who are indolent, it is not to the self-indulgent, that I speak this morning, but to the large class of willing workers who are caught in the exigencies of life, and whose very trouble is that they cannot work; that they cannot go forward; that they cannot succeed in executing useful and honourable purposes. I speak this morning to those who are forced to stand. Ye that are living in earnest, with immense scope, with fruitfulness, and with rightly directed energy! I desire to call your attention to the fact that, morally considered, there is a vast harvest to be reaped by non-energy; that energetic men, doing nothing, may be more useful to themselves and to society them they otherwise could be; and that the greatest misfortune which can befall a man is not necessarily his being brought into conditions where he cannot stir: for when a man is willing, yea, anxious, burning to go forward, but cannot, then he is in a position where he may attain to certain virtues and certain fruits of goodness which he scarcely could be expected to attain to at any other time. There are rare treasures for men who, in the providence of God, whether with or without their thought, are brought to a pass in which the only thing that is left for them is to stand, girt about in full armour, ready and willing to do, but unable. The withholding of a man’ s force may be even as noble, in the sight of God, as the most illustrious exhibitions of energy. When you have had success, and prosperity, and social consideration, if your success is turned into defeat, and your prosperity departs, and your social relationships are broken off, learn how to stand sufficient in yourself without these things. Learn first how to be a man by sympathy; and then learn how to be a man without sympathy. Learn first how to be a man by bold, executive, and effective troubles; and then learn how to be a man without the ability to strike, or without the ability, if you strike, to accomplish anything. Learn, with Moses, to smite the rock, and see the water flow out; then learn to smite the rock and see no water flow out; and then learn one thing further--to have the rock smite you, and to have no tears flow from your eyes. Let there be this double-edgedness in your power of using yourselves. Learn how to go, and how to stop; how to achieve, and how to fail; how to enterprise, and how to remain inactive. Learn how to have, and be a man, and how to be equally manful when you have not. Learn, like the apostle, how to abound and how to suffer lack. He said he could do all things, Christ strengthening him. He rounded up his manhood so that he was at home in the palace, or in the prison; so that he was at home in the city as much as among barbarians in the wilderness; so that he was at home when he spoke his own language in Judaea, as well as when he preached on Mars’ Hill and in the palaces of the Caesars in Rome. In this large spirit of Christ Jesus he felt that he could do all things, whether they were pleasant or unpleasant--going and withholding; accomplishing and defeating--neither feeling himself lowered, nor in any sense discouraged, nor made unhappy, but taking all things in that largest disposition of true manhood. This is the New Testament conception, and is it not a doctrine that we need to have preached? A man should live on earth so as to hear the waves beat on the other shore. A man should live here, so that, although he cannot understand the words, he shall hear the murmur of the voices of the just made perfect. A man should so live in this world, that, although he cannot now enter the kingdom, yet when it is open he sees through, and has a sense of the power of the unseen and eternal which makes him the monarch and master of the visible and present. In the first place, then, as to the uses of this, let me say, briefly, that there is nothing which ripens a man’ s nature so much as long continued self-restraint; and that there is nothing that deteriorates a man more and sooner than self-indulgence. Now, a man who can stand up in poverty with great sweetness and content; who does not think it needful to say to everybody, “ I was once in better circumstances” ; who assumes that he is what he is by reason of what there is in himself; who offers no apology for poverty, and who stands, after the loss of all things, poised, large, free, with radiant faith, saying, “ Lord, I stand today and tomorrow, and to the end, by the faith that is in me” --that man is a living gospel in the community, though he may think to himself, “ I am plucked, and hedged in on every side; and no man cares any more for me.” I have passed by walled gardens; I have passed by gardens surrounded by hedges that were so thick that I could not see through them; but I knew what was growing on the other side by the fragrance that was in the air, though I could not see it. A man may be cramped, confined, and obscure; and yet he may fill the air with the sweetest and divinest fragrance of a noble manhood. Men that are in trouble, women that are in exquisite sorrow, ye of a divided affection, ye of a crucified heart, ye whom time and the world have spoiled, ye on whom Christ has put His mark, and who feel your crowned heads pierced with thorns--having done all, stand. Can you not watch with Him one hour? Since the Sufferer is your lover, will you not be His by suffering as well as by joy? Stand, therefore, and to the end. (H. W. Beecher.)Waking and waiting There is a world of Christian life in simple patient waiting--in simple Christian endurance; and if I were to call your attention, with various enumeration, to those within the range of your own observation and knowledge; and if you were to go about and take an inventory of them, family by family, I think you would be surprised, and that the surprise would grow upon you, to see how large a number there are in every community who need, not the gospel of activity, but the gospel of patient waiting--who need to look upon their religious sphere, not as a sphere of enterprise and accomplishment, but simply as a sphere of endurance and conquering by standing. First, there are a great many who are called, in the providence of God, to bear things which are irremediable for physical reasons. There are troubles that never get into the newspapers (and therefore they are peculiar!); as when one is born with a mark upon the face, being otherwise comely. That mark is to be carried all through life. No surgeon’ s knife, nothing, can remove it. Wherever he goes, man, woman, and child, looking upon him, look to pity. You that are comely, you that are plain, you that can pass, attracting only admiration, or attracting no notice (which is still better)--you know nothing of what it is to be obliged to say to yourself, at the beginning: “ Well, I am to stand apart from all my fellows. I am a marked man. No person shall come near me, and not stop and look, and say, ‘ Who is that? What is that?’ All my life long it is to be so.” Byron was born clubfooted, or was early made so; and it wrought through his whole life upon his disposition. It made his pride bitter; it made him envious; it made him angry; but his bitterness, his envy, his anger, did no good; he had to carry that querled ankle all his life long. It worked on him. I know not how I should take it, now that I am old--they say; but I know that if, in the beginning, I had had that to deal with, it would have been no small matter. To be sure, if a man comes home from the war with only a shoulder, there is honour in that--such as it is. Everybody respects you, and permits you to go to poverty; and yet there may be a sense of honour that will be some sort of equivalent even for this misfortune. But, to have it congenital; to have it a mere accident, without any patriotism; to be lopped of one leg or arm; to be marked in any way that sets you aside from your fellows, and makes you a hermit in the world--an individual without cohesion in those respects which unite you to others--this is a matter for which there is no remedy. What can you do? Nothing. Bear it--bear it. And you shall find how easy it is to bear it, because everybody will say to you, “ My dear friend, you must be patient, and bear it.” Nevertheless, here is a gospel for such--Stand! Stand! Why? Because it is the will of God. And every man who looks upon you, seeing that you have this great affliction which no striving against can remove, shall say, “ Behold how he stands, Christ-like!” Look at another very large class of men--larger than that of which I have been speaking--who come into life, with a laudable ambition, willing and meaning to spend and be spent for the good of their country, of their kind, of their age, and, it may be, of their God. It is for them through scholarship to acquit themselves, and with great attainments and constantly augmenting progress they are already noted, and their unfolding powers show them to be no insignificant heirs of the future; but some feebleness or gradual disease of the eye not only closes to them all books, but shuts out nature, and they grow blind. And now in the hour when the word is spoken, “ You must content yourself, my young friend; no surgeon can help you; you are blind; you must be blind” --in that hour, what an instantaneous revolution there is of life! What a change there is in every expectation! What a waste! And yet it is irremediable. And shall this man now go kicking against the pricks and repining? Shall he yield to despondency? This is a case where the gospel of standing comes in; and in all the plenitude of Divine authority Christ says to every such one, “ My son, I that wore the crown, and yielded life itself for thee, have need of someone in the very flush of youth and expectancy, to show the world how Christian character evolves under such circumstances. Having done all, having acquired the power to use your sight with great efficiency, now that it is gone from you, stand and be contented.” Sickness comes in afterlife. Men enter upon their professions. The plough is put into the furrow, and the strong will, like well-broken oxen, draws their purpose bravely on; and, just as they have come to that opening where honour and universally acknowledged success is about to crown their legitimate endeavour, they break down in health. They become invalids. Learn how, having done all, to stand still, and be patient and wait to the end. It is a noble thing for a man, with a chastened ambition, restrained within due bounds by a wise reason, to aspire to achievements; and, when the potency to achieve is demonstrated, it is still more heroic for such a man, if it be the will of God, to fold his wings and stand still, and let those achievements go by. When you think how many, by commercial revulsions and infelicities of business, have been stopped in mid-career, and forbidden to go forward, not only, but thrown back to the bottom, is it a matter of no sorrow? And yet, I think that, under such circumstances as these, some of the noblest manifestations of Christianity have been exhibited and beheld. Men have contentedly taken poverty and obscurity, that they might inherit themselves; and if they were to speak their innermost thoughts, what a revelation it would be! And there are many men who, lying low in human notice--failures, as the world looks upon them--are nevertheless the highest in the wisdom of God, having learned the gospel, first of activity, and then of passivity. Having done all, they have learned how to stand. As in the outward, so in the multitudes of the inward, relations of life. It is often the case that children are obliged to patiently wait for their parents. I do not mean that the father is a drunkard, and that the child waits long and patiently for him--though that is noble; but the boys are all gone, and the old Vermont farm is hard of soil and full of rocks; and the youngest son at home is evidently a child of genius, more than any of them. One has grown rich in Illinois; another rules in a county in Missouri; another has gone to India, and is reaping a fortune there; and the last son, although in him are the movements of genius, says, “ I cannot leave the old people. My father and mother have no one else to lean on.” And so, without words, without inscription, in the silence of his own heroic soul, he says, “ I will stand here. Whatever is in me that I can use here, I will use for my father’ s sake, and for my mother’ s sake.” Yet how many silent waiters there are! How many there are that have cried in the closet, night and day, “ How long? O Lord, how long?” And yet there came no cheer, and no command, except, “ Having done all, stand,” and they stand till God calls them. What,. then, are those considerations or motives that help us to do these things which are so hard in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ? We are His servants, not by a profession, but because we do, and bear, and suffer, as He did that bore and suffered. Listen then--“ Be obedient.” To whom was this said? To slaves, the most accursed class of men on earth; subordinated, made the mere pleasure of their masters, denied at every single outlet the full expression of growing manhood. Whatsoever you do, do it heartily. Be glorious men, if you are slaves. But what is the motive? Says the servant, “ My master will not understand it. It will not put me forward in the world. Whatever I gain, he will reap.” But the apostle says that you are servants of God. “ With goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men; knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, he shall receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” Take the fulness of that thought of God with you, that you are consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ, following in His providence, following in His personal knowledge of and love for yourself, believing that from your childhood you have been an object of the paternal thought and care of Christ, in comparison with which ordinary parental care is poor and pale. (H. W. Beecher.)The Christian’ s conflict I. Men fight with that which opposes their real or fancied interests. We can ill brook anything which interferes with what we believe to be our advantage or our good. There is ever a disposition to contend with such a thing, and subdue it or remove it. This is seen in daily life. How varied are the supposed interests of men; some of them noble, and some of them ignoble; some of them meritorious, and some of them worthless. One seems to believe that his chief good consists in the acquisition of worldly riches; and what efforts he makes--what conflicts he goes through with external difficulties, trials, and disappointments in order to secure them. He fights with circumstances, struggles with hindrances, until, perhaps, he conquers and gains his end. Another has his soul bent on pleasure, the mere sensual or sensuous enjoyment of his being, and thinks the interest of his manhood lies there. What shifts he will make, what measures he will adopt, what sacrifices he will endure to reach his desires, and to steep his soul in his delights. He contends with the barriers of time and place, until he overcomes. Another is fired with the nobler enthusiasm for knowledge, and how often have we heard of its pursuit under difficulty, so that he who finds his enjoyment or interest lie in that direction, will contend with outward hindrances and obstacles, and even fight with the laws which should rule his own physical system, that he may climb the steeps of literature, or repose in the bowers of science. Another still bends his mind to business, and prostrates his manhood at the shrine of commerce. And if health is lost, what efforts and means are used to regain this highest temporal blessing. There will be a fight with climate, locality, and all the circumstances of abode, in order to subdue disease, and reach convalescence. It is, then, natural for men thus to fight with whatever appears to interfere with their advantage, or to stand in the way of their interests; and in proportion to the estimated value and importance of the interest or advantage involved, will be the keenness of the conflict, the eagerness of resistance or aggression, and the strength of the desire to overcome the difficulty of the position. It is not in human nature for a man to be stoical and passive when his prospect is darkened, his interest assailed, or his happiness at stake. This general truth will aid us in advancing to consider the highest conflict in which we can engage. II. Man’ s highest interests are assailed and endangered and therefore he ought to fight. These highest interests do not lie in the acquisition of worldly wealth, nor in the attainment of human wisdom. They consist in his relation to God, to moral law, and to a future state. And these interests are constantly assailed. Our relation to the Divine Being is assailed by the devil. Such is his hostility to God, that his highest aim is to secure our disobedience, disloyalty, and rebellion, in order that Jehovah may be dishonoured and defied, and that we may be spiritually destroyed. Our relation to moral law is assailed by the flesh--exciting us to transgression, moral disorder, and slavish obedience--thus deadening our spiritual sensibility, debasing our spiritual affections, and degrading our moral nature. Our relation to the future state is assailed by the world--blinding us by its fashions and its follies, its pomps and its pageantry, to the glories of the heavenly and the grand realities of the life to come. Its tendency is to lead us to forget the future in the present, to forget the eternal in the temporal and the transient, to forget the spiritual in the carnal and the material. Thus, I say, we are beset, thus our true interests are endangered, and our safety demands a conflict. It is true that Satan is our chief foe, and that he’ uses the world and the flesh in his assaults upon our manhood; but it is well to look at them separately that we may see our danger, and gird ourselves to fight. Yet, alas! how many are on the devil’ s side--on the side of the world and of the flesh--carried away by the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. They do not see where their true interests lie, and they do not fight. Anxious, it may he, to overcome hindrances to material success and temporal prosperity, yet they mistake the true “ battle of life.” III. The Christian alone realizes the true interests of manhood and hence he only fights. This, in fact, my brethren, is the great distinction between him and the unbeliever, or the mere man of the world. He cannot be a Christian who does not fight. He cannot be safe who does not fight. He cannot yet have realized or apprehended the highest interests of his being who does not see his danger and fight. He cannot be on the Lord’ s side who does not resist the devil and fight against sin. IV. This conflict is spiritual and must be fought in the soul. It is manifestly spiritual, for it arises from the nature and necessities of our spiritual and moral being. It is not a struggle with mere outward difficulties and physical circumstances, but with that which has introduced all suffering and wretchedness into the world, which makes man’ s life a pilgrimage of sorrow to the grave. The conflict is with sin, whether it comes in the shape of satanic temptation, worldly influence, or fleshly lust. Hence the soul is the arena, and the battle must be fought within. V. The issue of this conflict is certain and will be glorious. Of its issue there is no doubt; victory is sure to all who persevere.1. There is a glorious Commander and Captain. Christ is not only wise and skilful, able to cope with the cunning, and to meet the might of our fees; but He has Himself conquered, and in conquering them has destroyed their power. “ The prince of this world is cast out.” “ Be of good cheer,” says the Saviour, “ I have overcome the world.” 2. There are sufficient spiritual weapons; armour which God has provided, adapted to the various aspects of the conflict, and the various stratagems of our foes. 3. And there is promised victory--“ The God of peace shall bruise Satan under our feet” (Romans 16:20). The flesh may be “ crucified,” and the world may be “ overcome.” Christ has conquered for all the soldiers of the Cross serving under Him, and thus through Him that loved us we shall be more than conquerors. (James Spence, M. A.)Standing in the evil day There are, however, seasons of special trial occurring all along the march of the pilgrim soldier which he may peculiarly regard as to him the “ evil day.”1. Amongst these you will doubtless recognize times of spiritual despondency. All believers are subject to more or less of fluctuation in their religious experience. Constitutional differences give tone to religious character. 2. A time of spiritual declension and worldliness in the Church may also be regarded as an “ evil day.” The spirit of piety in the Church is always far below the proper standard, but there are times when it sinks even much lower than the ordinary level. How often did the God of Israel chide and chasten His ancient people for their rebellion, disobedience, idolatry, and ingratitude; and the Church now, unhappily, too much resembles that of the former and the darker dispensation. There is a winter season in Zion as well as in the natural world, and these winters are sometimes long and dreary. Few flowers and fruits are seen, few days of sunshine; a universal torpor prevails, and under the chilling blasts even the soldiers of the Cross are found sleeping at their posts; the army of salvation seems almost frozen in its onward march. 3. More evil still than this, however, is the day when the believer actually backslides, and falls into open sin, 4. A time of absence from your home, or of changing your place of abode, may also prove an “ evil day.” We are much more the creatures of circumstances, even in our religion, than most of us are wont to believe. 5. Turn next to the survey of the “ evil day” when false doctrine prevails. 6. We must not omit to turn our attention also to the evil day of rebuke and persecution. 7. Last of all, may we not regard the day of death as in some aspects an evil day? (J. Leyburn, D. D.)Standing still It is a noble thing for a man, with a chastened ambition, restrained within due bounds by a wise reason, to aspire to achievements, and, when the potency to achieve is demonstrated, it is still more heroic for such a man, if it be the will of God, to fold his wings and stand still, and let those achievements go by. I wonder that some of the old music has been suffered to die out. I have always wondered why that song, “ The Captive Knight,” should have gone into disuse. A returning crusader, in crossing a hostile territory, was seized by some nobleman, and thrown into a castle prison. After a time, on some bright morning, he hears the sound of distant music, which comes nearer and nearer; and soon the flash of the spears is seen; and by and by the banners appear; and at last he sees men approaching whom he recognizes as his old companions, with whom he has breasted the war in a thousand battles. As they draw still nearer and nearer, he can distinguish their countenances; and he calls out from his tower to them, again and again; but the music covers the sound of his voice, and they pass on and on, and finally the last one disappears, the banners gleam no more, and the music dies in his ear, and he is left alone to perish in his prison! There are thousands of captive knights in this world who see their companions passing by with the glories and honours of life, while they are in prison and cannot stir; and to them comes the message of our text, “ Having done all, stand.” Stand still, and be patient, and be as manly and as noble, in standing still, as you fain would have been in attainment and achievement. (J. Leyburn, D. D.)The damager of reaction For as long as we find it true that danger and defeat may be nearest just in the hour when victory seems completest, as long as we see it the ease that men who have conquered in the greatest temptations may live to fall a prey to the meanest--so long there is room for the message, “ Having done all, brethren, take heed that ye stand.” I. First, then, let us take the class of cases which the admonition suits.1. I think, then, in the first p]ace, you may look at the text in connection with religious profession, that is, the public acknowledgment which a soul makes of Christ, its openly-expressed resolution to wear His name, to carry His Cross, and to support His cause. But everything is not won, though this be won, and “ having done all,” in this matter, see that ye “ stand.” 2. So again, we might apply the text to the case of religious attainment. It would be pleasant to believe that the Christian life is always a life of progress, ever unfolding, as the years go on, from good to what is better, and from what is better to what is best, till the Master says to each at the close of it, “ Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful unto death.” But there is no such necessary or infallible development as this. The mystery lies here, that even where sanctification has actually taken place, there are instances permitted in which the power and achievements of grace seem rather to diminish than increase with time. The life seems to taper off and deteriorate as it nears the close. Laden with the traditions of a good fight that has been foughten well, and won right valiantly, rich in the memories of service that has been bravely rendered and signally owned, such a life has after all been permitted to end in insignificance, selfishness, peevishness, or worse. 3. Or, again, take the case of religious privileges. And there is no better illustration at this point than the illustration afforded by Communion seasons; for the right use and enjoyment of these imply that temptations have been withstood, surrenders accomplished, and victories won. Thus, in preparing for the service contemplated, you settled down to examine yourselves and your life; and in so doing you won a victory over self. In taking part in the service itself, you found your perplexities removed, your faith confirmed, and your love elicited, till you felt you could clasp the truth, and lean on a truth-keeping Christ, and in so doing you won a victory over doubt. Life’ s business was hushed, life’ s cares were shut out, life’ s temptation were withdrawn, as you cast your care on Him who careth for you; and, in the very experience, you won the victory over the world. I take such a season as this at its purest and highest, and suppose that the heart has fetched from it the very best its enjoyments and lessons can yield, in elevation of feeling, in sanctification of life. And here we may say, as before, the soul in a sense has “ done all.” “ Be it so,” is the message of the text to you, “ now take heed to yourself, that having done all, you may stand.’’ II. And now let us pass from the cases which the admonition suits, to the reasons on which the admonition is based. And let us ask for a little why it is specially necessary that those who have thus done all, in the way of religious profession, religious attainment, and religious privilege, should be warned, “ Take heed that ye stand.” Brethren, the hour of triumph has its dangers by the operation of a very natural law. There is the peril of reaction in grace, as there is the peril of reaction in most other spheres.1. For one thing, it is so easy to presume on the extent of our victory, and hence the tendency to security. 2. It is also easy to presume on the permanency of what has been done, and hence the tendency to sloth. III. And now, let us mark some of the practical counsels with which the admonition may be accompanied.1. Watch; that is one safeguard--“ Happy is he who feareth always!” Fear, lest in the thrill of success the head begins to reel and the feet begin to slip, and it prove true of a spiritual victory, as it continually holds true of temporal successes, that the prosperity of the unwary shall slay them. And fear, not only in the day when a past conflict has elated you, but in the day when, as is sometimes the case, a past conflict has depressed you. 2. And work, as well as watch. Because you have engaged in one kind of Christian activity, and completed it with success, earning the thanks of your fellows in the Church, the approval of your conscience, the “ well done” of your God--do not consider yourself absolved, but straightway set your face to another--whatsoever is nearest you in Providence; and if nothing is near, then go in diligent search for it. 3. And, lastly, pray. Let no task be done, let no temptation be vanquished, let no grace be attained, without their result in an increase of prayer. (W. A. Gray.)The Christian warrior I. First, we are to consider the Christian resisting--“ That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day.” “ In the evil day.” This expression may be understood of the whole course of our life militant here upon earth; as if the entire term of our continuance here might be described as one long and cloudy day. Such an estimate of life we find the patriarch Jacob formed, when he says--“ Few and evil have the days of my life been.” In the present passage, however, it is better, perhaps, to take the apostle’ s meaning in a more restricted sense. He lived in troublous times. This very letter was dated from a prison; and in the fifth chapter we find him exhorting his Ephesian converts to walk circumspectly, assigning as a reason, that they must redeem the time, “ because the days are evil.”1. But let us note more particularly some of those passages of our life which, unless we be well fortified with our Christian armour, will prove an evil day to us. Thus there is the day of sickness. In one sense this is always an evil day. It may not be so ultimately, but it must be so in our first experience of it. 2. Again, the day of adversity is an evil day. This, too, is a day which will try the temper of every part of our spiritual armour. 3. So also the day of temptation is an evil day. Temptation is a sore evil in itself; but it is more so from the evil which it developes and brings to light. There are evils in the hearts of all of us which we know not of until temptation discovers them to us. 4. Once more: among the evil days against which we should provide this spiritual armour, we may well suppose the apostle to mean the day of our death. II. But we come to the second part of our text, which sets before us the Christian conquering--“ Having done all, to stand.” This shows us, first, that religion is not a thing of speculation, not a mere matter of creeds and doctrines, but a system of principles to be acted upon, a set work to be done. “ To stand.” This expression may be interpreted in two or three ways. First, it may be taken, that by this armour we shall be enabled to stand fast in our Christian profession to the end of our days; that as soldiers of the Cross we shall stand by our colours to the last, resisting Christians, conquering Christians, even on the last field of temptation, and on the bed of death itself. In this attitude we find Paul representing himself to Timothy, when seeing the hour of his departure was at hand. Again, by the expression, “ stand,” the apostle no doubt means that the conquering Christian shall be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man. In this sense he writes to the Colossians: “ That ye stand perfect and complete in the will of God.” Now, without having endured the hardness, and done the work, and put on the armour of the Christian soldier, it is certain that in the great judgment we never can stand. Once more: the apostle’ s expression may be interpreted of our standing as glorified spirits in the presence of God. He who stands fast in the conflict, and stands acquitted in the judgment, shall have, as the recompense of his toils, and as the reward of victory, to stand eternally in glory. “ Go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” (D. Moore, M. A.) Ephesians 6:14 Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.The duty of Christian soldiers 1. We must be of a valorous courageous mind against all our enemies. (1) The Lord is with us, and will not fail us.(2) We fight in His name and power, whereas our enemies fight in their own.(3) Our battle is most just, and we fight in a just cause.(4) We fight with enemies spoiled, whose weapons are blunted, whose power is limited. 2. We must be careful to abide in our place, where our Lord has set us. (1) God has appointed to everyone his distinct place.(2) Everyone shall be called to account for those duties which belong to his particular calling.(3) The order wherein everyone is set, is the very beauty of the Church, and of the body of Christ; as the several places of several members are the grace of a natural body.(4) The graces which God bestows on us (faith, love, obedience, patience, wisdom, etc.) ere best exercised and manifested in our particular callings.(5) In our proper distinct places we have the Lord’ s promise of protection, but not out of them. 3. We must be watchful, and stand upon our defence against our enemy. 4. We must persevere. (W. Gouge.)The Christian standing upon the watch How must the Christian stand upon his watch? I. Constantly. The lamp of God in the tabernacle was to “ burn always” (Exodus 27:20; Exodus 30:8); that is, always in the night, which sense is favoured by several other places. And I pray, what is our life in this world but a dark night of temptation? Take heed, Christian, that thy watch candle go not out in any part of this darksome time, lest thy enemy come upon thee in that hour. He can find thee, but not thou resist him in the dark; if once thy eye be shut in a spiritual slumber thou art a fair mark for his wrath; and know, thou canst not be long off thy watch, but the devil will hear of it. II. Universally.1. Watch thy whole man. The honest watchman walks the rounds, and compasseth the whole town. He doth not limit his care to this house or that. So do thou watch over thy whole man. A pore in thy body is a door wide enough to let in a disease, if God command; and any one faculty of thy soul, or member of thy body, to let in an enemy that may endanger thy spiritual welfare. Alas, how few set the watch round! some one faculty is not guarded, or member of the body not regarded. He that is scrupulous in one, you shall find him secure in other; may be thou settest a watch at the door of thy lips, that no impure communication offends the ears of men; but how is the “ Lord’ s watch” kept at the temple door of thy heart? (2 Chronicles 23:6.) Is not that defiled with lust? Thou perhaps keepest thy hand out of thy neighbour’ s purse, and foot from going on a thievish errand to thy neighbour’ s house; but does not thy envious heart grudge him what God allows him? 2. Watch in everything. Let there be no word or work of thine over which thou art not watchful. Thou shalt be judged by them, even to thy idle words and thoughts; and wilt thou not have care of them? III. Wisely.1. Begin at the right end of your work, Christian, by placing your chief care about those main duties to God and man, in His law and gospel, in His worship, and in thy daily course, which when thou hast done, neglect not the circumstantials. Should a master, before he goes forth, charge a servant to look to his child, and trim his house up handsomely against he comes home, when he returns will he thank his servant for sweeping his house and making it trim, as he bid him, if he find his child, through his negligence, fallen into the fire, and by it killed or crippled? No, sure, he left his child with him as his chief charge, to which the other should have yielded, if both could not be done. There hath been a great zeal of late among us, about some circumstantials of worship; but who looks to the little child, the main duties of Christianity, I mean. Was there ever less love, charity, self-denial, heavenly-mindedness, or the power of holiness in any of its several walks, than in this sad age of ours? Alas! these, like the child, are in great danger of perishing in the fire of contention and division, which a perverse zeal in less things hath kindled among us. 2. Be sure thou art watchful more than ordinary over thyself in those things where thou findest thyself weakest, and hast been oftenest foiled. The weakest part of the city needs the strongest guard, and in our bodies the tenderest part is most observed and kept warmest. And I should think it were strange, if thy fabric of grace stands so strong and even that thou shouldst not soon perceive which side needs the shore most, by some inclination of it one way more than another. Thy body is not so firm, but thou findest this humour over-abound, and that part craze faster than another; and so mayest thou in thy soul. Well, take counsel in the thing, and what thou findest weakest, watch most carefully. (W. Gurnall, M. A.)Stand firm At the critical moment in the battle of Waterloo, when everything depended on the steadiness of the soldiery, courier after courier kept dashing into the presence of the Duke of Wellington, announcing that, unless the troops at an important point were immediately relieved or withdrawn, they must yield before the impetuous onsets of the French. By all of these the Duke sent back the same spirit stirring message, “ Stand firm!” “ But we shall perish!” remonstrated the officer. “ Stand firm!” again answered the iron-hearted chieftain. “ You’ ll find us there!” rejoined the other, as he fiercely galloped away. The result proved the truth of his reply, for every man of that doomed brigade fell, bravely fighting at his post. Girt about with truth. The girdle of truth 1.Different kinds of truth. (1) Truth of judgment. When a man’ s judgment agrees with God’ s Word which is the touchstone of truth. (2) Truth of heart. When a man seeks to approve himself to God, the searcher of all hearts, and to be accepted of Him. (3) Truth of speech. Agreement of the word of a man’ s mouth, both with his mind and also with what he utters. (4) Truth of action. Plain, faithful, and honest dealing in all things. 2. The kind of truth here mentioned embraces each and all of these branches. 3. The fitness of the comparison of truth to a girdle. (1) Truth is the best ornament to religion. (2) The greatest strength. 4. Reasons for desiring truth. (1) Its excellence. (a) It makes us like God. (b) It is a kind of perfection in all Christian graces. (2) Its necessity. Without it, no other grace can be of any use. (3) The benefit of truth. The least measure of grace, seasoned with it, is acceptable to God and so profitable to us. 5. The devil will try to wrest truth from us. 6. The more truth is opposed, the faster we should cling to it. Let us do with this and other pieces of spiritual armour, as men do with their cloaks, which cover their bodies; if the wind blow hard against them, they will so much the faster and closer hold their cloaks. Even so, the more Satan strives to deprive us of our spiritual robes, the more careful and steadfast ought we to be in keeping them. In particular, for this girdle of verity, it is so much the more highly to be accounted of by us, who are the Lord’ s faithful soldiers, by how much the less reckoning is made thereof by the greater number of people. (William Gouge.)The girdle The girdle seems to have been intended for three purposes.1. To bind the garments, which were of a loose and flowing description, and which would have hindered the warrior. 2. To give support to the loins, amid the fatigues of war or toil. 3. To defend the heart, etc. Toe military girdle was especially designed for this. I. The nature and importance of the girdle. Now observe, it is “ truth” which is recommended.1. There must be doctrinal truth in the understanding and judgment, in opposition to error. 2. There is the experimental truth of the gospel, in opposition to mere formality in religion. 3. There is the truth of profession in opposition to temporizing neutrality. 4. There is the truth of sincerity, in opposition to guile and dissimulation. II. Let us consider the means necessary to be employed in carrying out the recommendation of the text. If we would have our loins girt, etc.--1. Let us take care to be enriched with the truths of God’ s holy Word. 2. Let us keep prominently before us the Divine model of truth. 3. We must pray for the constant aid of the Spirit of truth. (J. Burns, D. D.)Stand, girt about with truth “ Stand.” Being repeated from Ephesians 6:13, it demands attention. It is put in opposition--1. To turning the back as a coward.2. To breaking, as a disorderly soldier.3. To rash impetuosity.4. To an indolent lying down. “ Girt about.” Warriors had broad girdles, in which plates of iron, brass, or silver, were put for defence. “ With truth.” I. Of doctrine. II. Of sincerity. I. Show how the doctrines of truth strengthen the minds of believers against their enemies.1. Sin is the worst of evils. This doctrine in the heart has led men--To abstain from the most alluring pleasures. Joseph. To refuse the greatest honours. Moses. To face the greatest dangers. The martyrs. To give up the most profitable pursuits. Zaccheus. To submit to the greatest trials (Micah 7:8-9). 2. Justification is freely by grace, through the redemption of Christ. 3. Christ has conquered all the enemies of His people. 4. God has promised to be with His people in, to carry them through all their trials, and to make them more than conquerors. 5. There is a state of eternal rest, happiness, and glory, prepared for God’ s elect. II. Show how the truth of sincerity strengthens the mind against enemies. As to our mistakes in life. “ I did wrong, but not designedly.” As to our hypocrisy. “ I have hypocrisy, but I hate it.” As to our love of Christ, though we have sinned against Him. “ Thou knowest that I love Thee.” As to the slanders of our enemies. “ I bless God they are not true.” Remarks:1. God’ s true doctrines are not indifferent, or merely speculative. Is it indifferent? Is it speculation, whether so and so? 2. An hypocritical formalist is the mere carcase of a Christian. 3. The benefit of hearing, like that of eating, is to be seen in our respective callings. (H. J. Foster.)Christian truthfulness The place thus assigned by the apostle to truth in the spiritual armour is one well deserving our notice. As the whole dress of the actual warrior, however well fitted for the fight, would be useless, nay, would but encumber him and lead to defeat, without the girdle which is to keep all together, so will it be with the spiritual warrior, if he be not girt about with truth. This one quality is necessary, in order for his Christian character to hold together and to be of any service in the work which it has to do. Let us to day mediate on this fact, and apply it to our own times and duties. It is obvious that the word truth, as here used, does not mean truth in the object, i.e., the truth of the gospel, the verities of redemption; but truth in the subject, i.e., that which we as commonly call truthfulness; a quality within the man himself. And this “ truthfulness,” or “ being true,” is predicated of him not in ordinary things only, but as he is a Christian--in those things which constitute him a Christian warrior. The girdle of the warrior’ s panoply would naturally be a girdle fitted for warfare; of the strength, and material, and pattern, of the rest of his armour. We should not perhaps be far wrong, were we to call the whole system of many men’ s thoughts, an elaborate and skilful concealment of truth. The saying of the cunning diplomatist, that “ words were given us to conceal our thoughts,” might be carried even further; we might add, “ and thoughts to conceal ourselves.” There is within many a man a deep gulf down which he dares not look steadily; a chasm between his present and his future, over which he too often weaves a web of self-flatteries and conventionalities, false, and known to be false; and this continues for days and years, till like him who repeats another’ s jest till he fancies it his own, the soul cheats itself into a kind of half-belief that the wretched fiction is true; he has firmly shut his eyes so long, that they refuse to open; and the man sits down self-deceived, with weaknesses ignored, sins forgotten, dangers unguarded against. And so time flits away, and the awful form of eternity grows nearer and larger, while the wretched man is playing with truth--priding himself on virtues he never possessed, congratulating himself on safety from faults into which he falls every day--an accomplished actor in a life, which at last God proves to him to be no stage, but a stern reality--no place for dressing up of images, but a discipline in the service of truth. O what shall such an one do, when first it is said to him by God, “ The world is no longer for thee, nor thou for the world; hitherto thou hast veiled thyself admirably--now thou must see thyself, and be seen, as thou art” ? Where shall he carry for propitiation the elaborate uselessness of a life--where the studied blindness of years of light--where the self-sought condemnation of misused providences and opportunities of amendment scorned? How shall he, racked with pain, or paralyzed with dread, or confused with the importunity of this world’ s matters, call back that sweet Spirit of truth, which it has been the effort of his life to drive away? O my friends, let us be true, let us be true to ourselves! And in the endeavour, let us not forget how subtle a thing is self-deceit. Let me conclude by reminding you of the great motive to truth, which should be ever before us as Christians. We serve Him who is “ the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Before Him all things are naked and open. No falsehood, be it ever so elaborately and skilfully devised, can escape Him; all such are not only seen through by Him now, but will be one day unsparingly laid bare at His tribunal, and forever put to shame. And further, “ Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth.” It was the searching, probing Word of His truth which first laid open to us ourselves, and began our new life in the Spirit. In harmony with the word of that truth must our whole spiritual life be led. Our blessed Lord, whose we are by purchase of His blood, came into the world to bear witness to the truth; and every one of us is here for the same purpose. (Dean Alford.)The girdle of truth I. Now, here, the first thing which calls for our notice is the posture of the militant Christian--“ stand.” We have the same word in the last verse, you will remember, but evidently not used in the same sense or in the same connection; for in that case the reference was evidently to the final perseverance of the Christian, standing victorious on the last field of temptation, standing unblameable amid the spotless purities of the heavenly state, standing in his lot of glory, honour, and immortality at the end of the days. But here the word is referred, not to a warfare finished, but to a warfare just beginning; and the apostle wants to show us how the soldier is to bear himself when he goes forth to “ fight under Christ’ s banner against sin, the world, and the devil,” and he begins by telling him “ to stand.”1. The expression is to be taken first, no doubt, as opposed to cowardice, to fainting, to a dishonourable and inglorious retreat. “ Whom resist, steadfast in the faith.” 2. Again: this exhortation to “ stand,” is opposed to all irregularity and disorder, and unwarranted license on the part of the Christian Soldier. “ If any man strive for the mastery, he will not be crowned unless he strive lawfully.” There are fixed rules for this great conflict, and by them we must abide. Here, then, we have another rule for our Christian warfare. We must not only stand firm, but we must stand in our place, stand faithfully to the duties of that place. “ Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called.” It always betrays an impatience of soldierly discipline when we would rather be doing anybody else’ s work than our own. 3. And then, once more, we may interpret the meaning of the word “ stand” as opposed to sloth, and negligence, and carnal security. Standing is the attitude of a man awake, watching, prepared for the coming of the enemy at even, at morning, or at cock crow, or at noonday. Every Christian soldier is a sentinel. II. But I pass on to the second part of this military posture, in which we have also an important part of the soldier’ s defensive armour. “ Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.” The term, perhaps, is rather to be taken in reference to a deportment of undissembled uprightness and sincerity, an honest walk before God and rain, a nourishing of our souls daily with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. But here it is necessary to define what kind of sincerity the apostle is speaking of; for it must not be forgotten that there is a natural truthfulness and sincerity of character which may be put on by a man who never wore a piece of the Christian armour in his life, an open-hearted, noble frankness of disposition which would scorn the meanness of falsehood, and loathe the very semblance of deception. And, brethren, let me not be thought to speak disparagingly of this quality. As a natural quality, there is none more beautiful. But still it is a natural quality, and nothing more. If a spiritual direction be given to it, or if a spiritual principle be engrafted upon it, it may bring forth the fruit of evangelical sincerity. But at present it is a mere accident of the natural man; having neither the grace of God for its source, nor the glory of God for its aim. It is a girdle of ornament for the world, but not a belt of strength for the battle. What, then, is the girdle with which the apostle would have us bind up our loins? Why, it is the girdle of gospel integrity and uprightness; the simplicity of an eye single and a heart one for God; that Nathanael-like truthfulness of spirit, which will neither make excuse, nor seek excuse, but which bids us make a hearty, entire, unreserved surrender of ourselves to God and His service--our wills to obey, our hands to work, our life to glorify, our hearts to love, our lips to praise. “ Our rejoicing is this,” says the apostle, “ that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.” But the analogy of the Oriental girdle would make us look for some special use in this part of the Christian attire. The girdle was used for strength, and by means of it the loins were stayed, invigorated, and the soldier fitted either for fight or march. So, also, with the grace of Christian sincerity; it establishes, strengthens, settles the Christian in his whole course. It keeps the loose and vagrant arms of the soul fixed on one uniform and unvarying object, binding up the affections with unity of purpose and with a bond of strength. Brethren, a divided heart, like a divided kingdom, hath no strength in it. “ A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” But then I have said that the girdle was a comely and graceful part of Oriental attire; and this would suggest the idea of Christian sincerity as having a place among the more attractive parts of the Christian character. And the Scripture supports this view. There is, perhaps, no spiritual grace upon which Heaven looks more approvingly; none to which more comprehensive promises are attached. Why was Caleb singled out for the honourable distinction of entering the promised land, but because he followed the Lord fully and with a perfect heart? Why has the name of Nathanael come down to us with such marked commendation, but that “ he was an Israelite indeed, in whose spirit there was no guile” ? And now, having seen the great importance of this part of the Christian armour, whenever through grace we have been enabled to put it on, let us endeavour to ascertain our own possession of this grace, by looking at some of its practical characteristics. Thus, if our loins be girt about with truth, there will be something of uniformity in our religious life. The conduct of a Christian man is one in all its parts. His life is a great unity. Another characteristic of this evangelical truth will be a great searching of heart in the ordering of our religious exercises; and will be seen in the honesty with which we search out what our own desires are, and endeavour to prove their conformity to the will of God. Too many of us, it is to be feared, speak to God with an untruthful, double heart. And, lastly, it will be a certain characteristic of our possessing this evangelical girdle, that we are really in earnest about the matter of our salvation. A sincere man must be an earnest man; earnest with God, earnest with himself. (D. Moore, M. A.)The girdle of truth Brace yourselves up with “ truth” --for the energy and power of religion lies there. The word “ truth” appears to me, here, to have three meanings. Reality--that is, sincerity of character; soundness and correctness of doctrine; and veracity of tongue and uprightness of life. Let me begin with reality. The real in everything is “ the true” in everything. You must have great views of “ truth” ; you must have practical views of “ truth” ; you must have personal views of “ truth.” The texture of “ the girdle” must be of the whole “ truth” of God. And what is “ the whole truth of God” ? Now, a that “ truth” lies within the Godhead--in the Holy and Blessed Trinity--it is thus: “ God the Father, loving with an everlasting love, and electing by His grace, gives sinners to Jesus. Jesus, in equal love, dies to reconcile them to God, and purchases for them everlasting life. Then, ascending to heaven, Jesus gives them to the Holy Ghost, that He, sanctifying them, may make them fit for the heaven which Jesus has already given them. So “ truth” lies encircled in the provinces and attributes of the Trinity. This, then, is God’ s “ truth.” Now, a very few words remain for man’ s “ truth” to grow out of God’ s “ truth.” For this is the great argument of “ truth” --“ truth” in thought--“ truth” in word--“ truth” in act--that God is “ truth.” For if you are not “ true,” you are not like God. And if you are not like God, you will never dwell with God. Now, you must begin by being true to yourselves. You must neither affect what you do not feel, nor hide what you do. Neither stimulating nor dissimulating your love and your happiness. You must be a man who acts out a conviction on the spot. And you must keep the solemn engagements you have made--between God and your own heart--very sacredly. You must deal with your own conscience tenderly. And you must not hide from yourself, but confess the real state of your feelings. You must continually remind yourself “ whose you are” --what you are--where you are going! And you must cherish the little sparks of Divine feeling--thoughts that come like threads from heaven; and purify your desires; and be always watching and tending She inner life. And to man the believer must be one who can afford to be a transparent man. Nothing concealed; nothing hollow; nothing false; nothing surface. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The Christian’ s girdle An allusion is here made to the military belt, or girdle. It answered two ends. First, it prevented the other garments from being in the way; secondly, it braced and strengthened the loins, around which it was girt. In a word, it rendered all compact and firm. A sincere and hearty attachment to truth has a like effect upon the mind. The man possessed of it is at once decided in his choice, and in his measures. He knows what he has to do, and readily sets about it, without let or hindrance. A double-minded man, who is guided sometimes by principle, and sometimes by interest, is unstable and dilatory in all his ways. He has so many doubts and difficulties, and hopes, and fears, that he can no more move and act with spirit and alertness, than one encumbered with a long flowing vestment, in the folds of which the arms and feet are every moment entangled. The resolutions formed by such a one are weak and feeble, presently shaken and dissolved by every fresh consideration which comes across him. He does nothing, or what is worse than nothing, being generally, in the end, for want of strength and steadiness, carried away to do what he ought not to do. If he knows the truth, he is easily prevailed upon to forsake it for something else. The soldier of this cast will make but a despicable figure in the Christian camp. Above all things, therefore, keep the truth close to you, adhere immovably to it, and “ the truth shall make you free” ; free to speak, free to act, free--should there be occasion--to suffer. (Bishop Horne.)Power and beauty of truthfulness I have noticed in travelling, that when one with a face wrinkled and worn walks into the car, there is not a seat to spare for her; and I have noticed that if one comes in who is young and blooming, of radiant eye and most comely face, there is not one in the car who has not a seat for her. Beauty wins its way. And if it be so in the outward life, which is but a mere shadow of the inward, how much more is it so in the inward! And nothing is more beautiful than duty performed under adverse circumstances. Once let a person be known for that, and men will not willingly lay their hands on him to harm him. If, under all the circumstances of oppression which stir up turbulent streams of strife in our midst, men rendered good for evil, and were humble and benevolent, and did their work sincerely and beautifully and truthfully, they would win against the world, they would win against all hell. Having on the breastplate of righteousness.-- The breastplate of righteousness 1.The righteousness which is here meant. A powerful work of God’ s Spirit in the regenerate, whereby they endeavour to approve themselves unto God and man, by performing what God’ s law requires. 2. The fit resemblance of righteousness to a breastplate. It guards the vital parts, and preserves a man from being mortally wounded or killed outright. 3. How righteousness is put on. By the right practice of true repentance. 4. The benefits of righteousness. (1) It keeps us from being mortally wounded; for so long as we retain a true purpose and faithful endeavour answerable thereto, we shall never give ourselves over to commit sin. (2) It brings great assurance of our effectual calling, and spiritual union with Christ, yea, even of our eternal election and salvation. Application:1. Learn we what is true righteousness, that we trust not to a counterfeit breastplate and be pierced through while we think ourselves safe. 2. Acquaint we ourselves with the use, end, beauty, benefit, and necessity of righteousness, that we may be the more desirous to get it if we have it not; or, if we have it, the more careful in keeping it fast on, and close to us. 3. Let a daily examination be made of our life past, that of all our former unrighteousness we may truly and soundly repent; and with the true evidences of our former righteousness, our conscience may be comforted in the day of trial. 4. Let there be a holy resolution for the time to come, to walk on in the way of righteousness, without turning to the right hand or to the left. For the better performance of this holy resolution-- (1) Put on righteousness with all the parts thereof.(2) Remove all impediments at the first, and give no place to the devil.(3) Wax not weary, but be constant. (William Gouge.)The breastplate I. The nature of the Christian warrior’ s breastplate--“ Righteousness.” Now that righteousness which is vital and saving, may be considered in three respects; there must be--1. Relative righteousness.2. Righteousness of principle.3. The fruits of righteousness. (1) There must be the yielding supreme homage, veneration, love, and obedience to God.(2) There must be obedience to the law of equity, as it respects our fellow men. II. The protection it affords. This righteousness is of essential and vital importance--1. When exposed to the accusations of Satan.2. This breastplate yields peace to the mind, by removing the condemnations of conscience.3. This will preserve in the fiery trial of the last day. III. How this breastplate of righteousness is to be obtained. Now, this is to be obtained by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (J. Burns, D. D.)The Christian’ s breastplate I. The figure employed. The skins of beasts were probably the earliest material used to protect the soldier’ s body These were soon abandoned for the coat-of-mail, of which there were various kinds. There was the Egyptian cuirass, or coat-of-mail, made of horizontal rows of metal plates, each about one inch in breadth, and fastened together by brass pins. There was the Hebrew “ Shiryon,” or coat-of-mail, made of brass, fashioned with scales, or of leather covered with brazen scales. And there was the Greek and Roman cuirass, composed at first of pieces of horn, fastened like feathers upon linen shirts, but afterwards of metallic scales. Sometimes, too, the cuirass was composed of rings hooked into each other: and sometimes of two solid plates, one for the breast and the other for the back, and joined by bands over the shoulders. On the right side of the body the plates were united by hinges; and on the left they were fastened by means of buckles. Such was the ancient cuirass or coat-of-mail. It covered and protected the entire body of the warrior, from the neck to the thigh, and sometimes even to the knees. Thus it is a fit emblem of that which protects the Christian from all the attacks of his foes, whenever and from whatever quarter they may come. II. The thing signified--“ Righteousness.” Holy Scripture speaks of two kinds of righteousness.1. A righteousness which is of the law. (1) The laws of God must be perfectly obeyed, both in the letter and in the spirit.(2) This obedience must be personally rendered by the man who would have the righteousness.(3) This perfect personal obedience must be constant and life-long. 2. A righteousness which is by faith in Jesus Christ. (1) Imputed.(2) Inwrought. Imputed righteousness is the basis of inwrought righteousness. Where the one is not the other cannot be. Until we have come to Christ, and are found in Him, holiness is impossible for us. Holiness of heart and life is the Christian’ s breastplate. III. How, or in what sense, righteousness is a breastplate to the Christian.1. It is an evidence of his sonship, giving the Christian soldier confidence in his fight with all his spiritual foes. 2. It is a defence against the attacks of foes. (A. C. Price, B. A.)The breastplate of righteousness I. Now, first, what is the righteousness of which the apostle speaks? Certainly, it is not the righteousness of the law. Not but that this would be a very good covering, if we could obtain it. Neither, again, is the righteousness of which the apostle here speaks to be identified with evangelical righteousness, or that which is of God by faith, that which is the justifying cause of a sinner’ s acceptance, and his title deed to a part in the Christian covenant. Observe, then, that the righteousness which constitutes the believer’ s breastplate is the fruit of the Spirit, a principle of the renewed mind, one of those good and perfect gifts which come down from the Father of lights. This, indeed, would follow from the fact, that the armour of which it forms a part is the armour of God, and, therefore, could not be of human acquisition or contrivance. Still, that which only God can give we may improve when it is given; and that part of our defensive weapon which consists in the implanting of right dispositions in the heart, may, if kept bright by daily use, and strengthened by daily prayer, cause the light of our good works to shine before men, and to cast a spiritual radiance over the whole armour of God.1. Now, in this view, we say, first, that the outward duties of religion form a part of the Christian breastplate. 2. But, further, this breastplate of righteousness is a breastplate of holy principles in the general conduct of life. “ As He that hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner of conversation.” Most conspicuously, however, should this righteousness of the Christian shine forth among those of his own household. 3. Once more, by the breastplate of righteousness the apostle means a breastplate of holy affections. In this sense we have, in using the word in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, the “ putting on the breastplate of faith and love.” II. But I proceed to the second thing proposed, which was to show the necessity of the breastplate as a part of the Christian’ s defensive covering. Thus, it is necessary as a protection to the more vital and endangered parts. The breastplate in the military equipment covered the immediate seat of life. It was not for an arm or an inferior member where a wound might be healed, but for a part of the body where a wound would be attended with fatal consequences. So, the righteousness which is here recommended to us by the apostle is to protect a vital part. It is to guard those entrances out of which proceed the issues of life. Observe, then, ye put on this breastplate, because the assaults of Satan are always directed against that which is the very life of the soul. Satan has no war with mere forms of godliness, no contest with those who are satisfied with a name to live, no care to disturb the peace of those who rest in the exemplariness of their conduct, and the rectitude of their lives. His war is with practical holiness. Again, the putting on of this breastplate is necessary as an acknowledged mark of our Christian profession; as something by which we are distinguished from the men of the world. Further, this breastplate is necessary to give us confidence in the hour of distress and danger. Such, brethren, may serve for a description of the Christian’ s breastplate. The reason, perhaps, for its entering thus early into the apostle’ s account of our spiritual armour, is, that every Christian soldier should be warned at the outset of the uncompromising strictness and holy nature of that service upon which he has entered; that he should be taught that no dexterity he might display, no wielding other weapons, no zeal he might discover in fighting the battles of the living God, would ever compensate for the want of that holiness both in heart and life, without which none shall behold the face of God. Brethren, God can pardon sin, but God cannot look upon sin--cannot look upon a man negligent of holy duties, uninfluenced by holy principles, an utter stranger to holy affections, and yet calling himself by the name of Christian. (D. Moore, M. A.)The Christian’ s breastplate The breastplate, as its name imports, was a plate of iron, or brass, to secure the breast, and, consequently the heart, and other vital parts, contained within it. As an attachment to truth was denominated a girdle, so by a breastplate is represented a love of righteousness, a consciousness of integrity, in short, what we call a good conscience--“ a conscience void of offence,” as the apostle elsewhere speaks, “ toward God and toward man.” A good conscience, then, we say, is a breastplate; it gives a holy confidence in God, which breaks the force of such temptations as arise from the fears and terrors of the world, the malice, pride, and envy of mankind. It preserves the heart whole and sound, whatever of this kind may assail it. It is like a warm, comfortable house, into which a man retreats; where he finds good provision, and good company; and hears the storm without, beating upon it in vain. (Bishop Horne.)The breastplate The Grecian breastplate was a half-corslet, originally made of hemp twisted into small cords and closely woven together, but in the improvements of art was constructed of iron, brass, and other metals, rendered so hard as absolutely to defy any of the weapons of offensive warfare then known. Plutarch says “ that Zoilus an artificer, having made a present of two iron brigandines (breastplates) to Demetrius Poliorcetes, for an experiment of their hardness, caused an arrow to be shot out of an engine called a catapulta, placed about twenty-six paces off, which was so far from piercing the iron that it scarcely razed or made the least impression on it.” The metal was usually highly polished, too, so as to reflect the light, and thus dazzle the eyes and strike terror to the heart of an enemy. Hence a classic writer, speaking of one arrayed in complete panoply, says, that - “ Dressed in his glittering breastplate he appeared, Frightful with scales of brass.” You perceive how fitly such a piece of armour illustrates the formidable and protective portion of the panoply with which the believer is here arrayed. Righteousness is the breastplate of the Christian soldier, and a sure defence is it against “ the wiles of the devil.” (J. Leyburn, D. D.) Ephesians 6:15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.Shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace 1.The particular grace which is here meant. The grace itself is comprised under the word “ preparation.” It implies a furniture which the gospel of peace procures and prepares; or a heart settled, resolved, and prepared by the gospel of peace, to go on to God through all difficulties. Now, the very grace itself, which thus settles the soul, I take to be patience; for it is, without doubt, the drift and scope of the apostle to arm the Christian soldier against trouble and affliction by this particular piece of spiritual armour here meant: but what grace so fit thereunto as patience? 2. The fitness of the metaphor. The piece of harness whereunto patience is here resembled, is that whereby a soldier’ s feet or legs are covered; for feet are here expressed, and the metaphor of being shod implies as much. By “ feet” he means legs also: the pieces of armour proper to this purpose are called greaves or leg harness; they are also called soldier’ s shoes and boots. The metaphor may either be generally taken of all shoes, or particularly of greaves. We all know the use of shoes is to keep our feet from sharp stones, hard clods, etc.; for our feet are naturally tender, insomuch that if we go abroad barefoot, every hard stone hurts them, every sharp stick and pricking thorn pierces them; therefore we are accustomed not to venture abroad barefoot. If any be so foolhardy as to venture, soon will he wax weary, and either sit down and go no further, or else turn back again. But if we have good boots or shoes on, then we think ourselves well fenced, and so with boldness and courage go on, whatsoever the way be. To apply this: Stones, sticks, thorns, and the like, are not more grievous to our bare feet, than troubles, crosses, and afflictions are to our naked heart and soul. Now then, this world, through which we must pass to heaven, being a very hard and rough way, stony and thorny, full of all sorts of afflictions, if our souls be naked and bare, not fenced with patience, and so fitted and prepared well to endure all crosses, we shall either never venture to enter into this hard way, or at least not endure to hold out therein. But if our souls be thoroughly possessed with sound and true patience, then shall we with undaunted courage pass through all the troubles of this world. 3. How patience is procured. By “ the gospel of peace.” The gospel prepares our hearts by declaring (1) That nothing shall hurt us.(2) That all things shall turn to our good. (William Gouge.)Feet shod The safety of a mountain climber depends upon being well shod. Therefore the Swiss guides wear heavy shoes, with sharp spikes in the soles. On a bright July morning [says Theo. L. Cuyler], a famous scientist of England started with two gentlemen to ascend the Piz Morteratsch, a steep and lofty snow mountain in Switzerland. Though experienced mountaineers, they took with them Jenni, the boldest guide in that district. After reaching the summit of the Morteratsch, they started back, and soon arrived at a steep slope covered with thin snow. They were lashed together with a strong rope, which was tied to each man’ s waist. “ Keep carefully in my steps, gentlemen,” said Jenni; “ for a false step here might start the snow, and send us down in an avalanche.” He had scarcely spoken when the whole field of snow began to slide down the icy mountain side, carrying the unfortunate climbers with it at a terrible pace. A steeper slope was before them, and at the end of it a precipice. The three foremost men were almost buried in the whirling snow. Below them were the jaws of death. Everything depended upon getting a foothold. Jenni shouted loudly, “ Halt, halt!” and with desperate energy drove his iron-nailed boots into the firm ice beneath the moving snow. Within a few rods of the precipice, Jenni got a hold with his feet, and was able to bring the party up all standing, when a few seconds more would have swept them into the chasm. This hairbreadth escape shows the value of being well shod when in dangerous places, especially for the young. No boy is prepared for rough climbing unless he is well shod with Christian principles. Heavenly shoes Christians are meant to be steadfast, active, moving, progressing, ascending; hence their feet are carefully provided for. They are feeble in themselves, and need protection; their road also is rough; hence they need the shoe which grace provides. I. Let us examine the shoes.1. They come from a blessed Maker. One who is skilful in all arts, and knows by experience what is wanted, since He has Himself journeyed through life’ s roughest ways. 2. They are made of excellent material--“ the preparation of the gospel of peace.” Well seasoned, soft in wear, lasting long. (1) Peace with God as to the past, the future, the present.(2) Peace of full submission to the Divine mind and will.(3) Peace with the Word and all its teachings(4) Peace with one’ s inner self, conscience, fears, desires, etc.(5) Peace with brethren in the Church and the family.(6) Peace with all man, kind (Romans 12:18). 3. They are such as none can make except the Lord, who both sends the gospel and prepares the peace. 4. They are such shoes as Jesus wore, and all the saints. 5. They are such as will never wear out; they are old, yet ever new; we may wear them at all ages and in all places. II. Let us try them on. Observe with delight--1. Their perfect fitness. They are made to suit each one of us. 2. Their excellent foothold: we can tread with holy boldness upon our high places with these shoes. 3. Their marching powers for daily duty. No one grows weary or footsore when he is thus shod. 4. Their wonderful protection against trials by the way (Psalms 91:13). 5. Their pleasantness of wear, giving rest to the whole man. 6. Their adaptation for hard work. 7. Their endurance of fire and water (Isaiah 43:2). 8. Their fighting qualities. III. Let us look at the barefooted around us.1. The sinner is unshod. Yet he kicks against the pricks. How can he hope to fulfil the heavenly pilgrimage? 2. The professor is slipshod, or else he wears tight shoes. His fine slippers will soon be worn out. He loves not the gospel, knows not its peace, seeks not its preparation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The gospel shoe None can make a shoe to the creature’ s foot, so that he shall go easy on a hard way, but Christ; He can do it to the creature’ s full content. And how doth He do it? Truly, no other way than by underlaying it; or, if you will, lining it with the peace of the gospel. What though the way be set with sharp stones? if this shoe go between the Christian’ s foot and them, they cannot much be felt. It is the soldier’ s shoe that is meant, which, if right, is to be of the strongest make, being not so much intended for finery as for defence. The gospel shoe will not come on thy foot so long as that foot is swelled with any sinful humour (I mean any unrighteous or unholy practice). This evil must be purged out by repentance, or thou canst not wear the shoe of peace. The Jews were to eat their passover with their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, and their staff in their hand, and all in haste (Exodus 12:11). When God is feasting the Christian with present comforts, he must have this gospel shoe on; he must not sit down as if he were feasting at home, but stand and eat even as he takes a running meal in an inn on his way, willing to be gone as soon as ever he is a little refreshed for his journey. The conceited professor, who hath a high opinion of himself, is a man shod and prepared, he thinks; but not with the right gospel shoe. He that cannot take the length of his foot, how can he of himself fit a shoe to it? Is not thy shoe, Christian, yet on? art thou not yet ready to march? If thou hast it, what hast thou to dread? Canst fear that any stone can hurt thy foot through so thick a sole? (William Gurnall.)Paul’ s shoeing Paul was thus shod: “ I am persuaded, nothing shall separate me from the love of God” (Romans 8:38). “ All things, I know, work together for the good of them that are beloved of God” (Romans 8:28). And this furniture made him go such hard ways cheerfully, in which showers of afflictions did fall as thick as hailstones. This doth make God’ s children, though not in the letter, yet in some sort, tread upon the adder and the basilisk; yea, to defy vipers, and receive no hurt; whereas, if the feet be bared a little with the absence of this peace, anything causeth us sore smart. (Paul Bayne.)The shoes of peace 1.The first is, that you must always have “ peace” --a “ prepared peace” --under your feet, like the “ shoes” you tread in--carrying it with you, as the base upon which yon stand. This is what we want--to have God’ s “ peace” as a foundation--a sure, firm thing under us. Not something which we are to reach by and by; but a fact, a resting point. “ Christ is mine! The enmity is gone! I am forgiven!” How strong will be your step! how quiet your journey! how calm your bearing--with this feeling--“ I walk in my holy confidence.” “ My feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” 2. The next thing in the illustration is, you must “ go” --not only “ in peace” --but as a peacemaker. 3. But you may come nearer to Him still. As a servant of the Cross, you are appointed the high work to bring souls to Christ. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)The sandals of the Christian soldier I. First, with regard to the portion of armour spoken of. The covering for the legs, in military equipment, would be most familiarly understood by the name of “ greaves,” and the most apt representative to our own minds would be that of a high military boot, made of jointed steel or brass.1. Having thus glanced at the scope of the apostle’ s metaphor, let us look at the word he employs in his illustration. Thus, you will observe, he says it is “ the preparation of the gospel.” The gospel--glad tidings, cheering and long looked for intelligence from the court of heaven. “ Now,” says the apostle, “ here is a preparation for you. Christian traveller, you are going on a trying pilgrimage; Christian soldier, you are about to enter upon an arduous warfare; comfort ye one another with these words--take with you as the companion and solace of all your trials the glorious gospel of the blessed God these tidings from the great Father of your spirits, tidings of mercy, tidings of reconciliation, tidings of assured sympathy and support through all your trials, until through grace you are more than conquerors.” This is to be your preparation, this your stay and stand. 2. But the suitableness of this part of the apostle’ s reference will appear further when we look at the next expression--“ The gospel of peace.” First, of peace with God. This is all-important to the Christian warrior. Were we about to enter on some long journey, or were we quitting our native shores to enter upon some foreign expedition, how heavy would the thought lie at the heart, that all was not right and happy at home. A man of God, visiting the bedsides of the wounded and dying at the hospital of Scutari, was asked by one, who felt that his hours were numbered, to write a letter to his father. The visitor complied; and having concluded, asked the dying man in what words he should subscribe it--“ Your dutiful and affectionate son?” “ No, no,” said the dying man, “ not dutiful; I never have been a dutiful son; the thought which most agonises my soul at this moment is, that my disobedience and unkindness have well nigh broken my father’ s heart.” I quote it to show how essential to the happiness of the Christian soldier it is, that he should go forth with a sense of reconciliation upon his spirit that he should feel his heavenly Father was looking upon him with a pleasant countenance, that his heart should be comforted with the answer of peace. The apostle knew that no soldier could fight happily, or fight well, while there was this load of unpardoned sin lying at his door. 3. But the expression may be taken in reference to another part of gospel preparation equally necessary for the Christian soldier, namely, that we should have peace one with another. “ See that ye fall not out by the way,” was the advice of Joseph to his brethren. II. Let us proceed to our second inquiry: for what is this part of the soldier’ s equipment especially designed to prepare us?--this “ preparation of the gospel of peace.”1. Well, first, it is designed to prepare us for active and persevering service. The Israelites had to be well shod, because they had before them a journey of forty years in the wilderness; and yet at the end of that time, we are told, “ their shoes waxed not old, neither did their foot swell.” 2. Again: this part of our Christian covering may be designed to prepare us for hidden and unsuspected dangers. The refined cruelty of ancient warfare, as I have said, was to hide traps a little beneath the surface of the earth. We have some remarkable allusions to these things in the Psalms. “ In the way I have walked they have privily laid snares for me.” “ The proud have hid a snare for me, and have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me.” “ In the way where they have laid snares for me is their own foot taken.” 3. Once more: a designed part of this gospel preparation is to prepare us to endure sharp afflictions. The ancient soldier was preserved by his greaves from any fatal injury; but this did not prevent him often encountering those concealed snares, and in encountering them, from enduring much of suffering and pain. (D. Moore, M. A.)Ready, aye ready We have here a full-length picture of a Roman soldier, from head to foot. The offensive weapons are mostly omitted, with the exception of the sword; the defensive armour is elaborately and minutely described. And the feet are not to be left out; a soldier’ s boots are one of the most important parts of his equipment, as all generals well know, and a Roman soldier’ s military shoe was a heavy one, with great hobnails in it, like the spikes in an Alpine climber’ s boots, with which he might gain a good grip of the ground, and stand in dogged resistance against any force that might be brought against him. So says Paul, “ Let your feet be shod with the preparation,” as our Bible has it, or rather the “ preparedness” which would suggest the true meaning better. Preparation is an act, but what is meant here is a state, not an act. “ Preparedness,” or readiness, or alacrity, or some such word as that would give the meaning. And this “ preparedness,” this condition of being ready for any strain and stress of antagonism that may come upon a man all of a sudden, is to be drawn from “ the gospel of peace.” Of course, there is running in the apostle’ s mind, though perhaps he did not remember it himself, Isaiah’ s words: “ How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.” But he binds the two ideas of “ gospel” and “ peace” together, without regard to their location in the original passage. And his thought is just this: Whosoever has got his whole spiritual being based upon the gospel which brings peace, by its message and its gifts, will thereby be ready for any sudden alarm and assault, ready for any duty, and any circumstance that may be sprung upon him unexpectedly, like lightning out of a clear sky. The Christian then is to stand, being made ready in the very basis of his being, because he possesses the gospel in his heart, that brings peace there. I. Now, the first thing that strikes me about these words as being very beautiful and significant is the combination of the two antagonistic ideas of warfare and peace. It is the soldier’ s equipment that comes from this gospel of peace. The apostle evidently thinks that the possession in our souls of that inward peace which comes from the great message and work of Jesus Christ is the best preparation for the fight. “ If you want peace prepare for war,” says the heathenish and wicked old motto. If you want war and victory, secure peace in your hearts, is the Christian article of belief. The two things are not compatible, a central repose and a ruffled surface. The frost of a winter’ s night goes an inch or two into the ground, but the heart of the globe is a fire. And there may be, all round about us, touching and affecting the surface of our being, distractions enough, distractions of circumstances, of sorrows, of difficulties, many things that are at enmity with joy and with tranquillity, and yet away down in the depths, which are the real man, there may be a stillness as of some land-locked valley that “ heareth not the loud winds when they call.” Your feet may be shod for all the warfare, with the readiness that comes from the possession of a general peace. The foes may storm round the little castle, but in the centre of the keep there may be a quiet room, with thick walls and curtains, where no sound of warfare ever reaches. II. And, then, look at the other thought of how this possession of a heart made tranquil because it is quite sure of its harmonious friendship with God, and because it is not suffering from the dreary emotions of passions and lusts, makes a man ready for anything, beady for the march, ready for the fight. Ready for the march. What is it that hinders us from being prepared for any new duties that may come to us, or any new circumstances that may call for our endurance, but one thing--that our wills have not been submitted to His; and another thing--that we have not “ learned to sit loose to this world,” as the old Puritans used to say. Now, whoever has, deep in his heart, the repose that comes from the possession of the gospel of peace, will have these two things also. He will have a will that is bent and bowed to God’ s, and he will not hold with such a desperate grip by the things of this present. And so, when new tasks come he will be ready for them, and when the new circumstances emerge out of the darkness they will not take him by surprise, and he will be ready, according to the motto of the old Scotch family, “ Ready! aye ready!” His feet will be shod with the alacrity, the quickness to apprehend, and apprehending, to accept any new circumstances that may come to him. III. How can this preparedness be increased and made habitual? Do not forget, dear brethren, that these words, as they stand in the original, are a commandment We are bidden to put on these marching shoes. It is ours to determine the extent which we shall have the peace that makes ready, and the gospel that brings peace. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Preparedness What this preparation is, will best appear by considering the part it is designed for; and that is the foot, the only member in the body to be shod; and the piece of armour it is compared to, and that is the soldier’ s shoe, which, if right, is to be of the strongest make, being not so much intended for finery as defence; and that so necessary, that for want of it alone, the soldier, in some cases, is disabled for service; as when he is called to march far on hard ways, and those may be, strewed with sharp stones; how long will ye go, if not shod, without wounding or foundering? or if the way be good, but the weather bad, and his feet not fenced from the wet and cold, they are not so far from the head, but the cold got in them may strike up to that; yea, bring a disease of the whole body which will keep him on his bed when he should be in the field; as many almost are surfeited as slain in armies. Now what the foot is to the body, that the will is to the soul. The foot carries the whole body, and the will the soul; yea, the whole man, body and soul also. Voluntas est locomotiva facultas; we go whither our will sends us. And what the shoe is to the foot, that preparation, or if you please a readiness and alacrity, is to the will. The man whose feet are well shod fears no road, but goes through thick and thin; foul or fair, stones or straws, are all alike to him that is well shod; while the bare-footed man, or slenderly shod, shrinks when he feels the wet, and shrieks when he lights on a sharp stone. Thus, when the will and heart of a man are prompt, and ready to do any work, the man is as it were shod and armed against all trouble and difficulty which he is to go over in the doing of it. They say the Irish tread so light on the ground, that they will ran over some bogs, wherein any other almost would stick or sink. A prepared, ready heart I am sure will do this in a spiritual sense; none can walk where he can run: he makes nothing of afflictions, yea, persecutions, but goes singing over them. David never so merry as in the cave (Psalms 57:1-11); and how came he so? “ My heart is prepared, my heart is prepared (saith he), I will sing and give praise.” If David’ s heart had not been shod with this preparation, he would not have liked the way so well he was in; you would have had him sing to another tune, and heard him quarrel with his destiny, or fall out with his profession, that had put him to so much trouble, and driven him from the pleasures of a prince’ s court, to hide himself underground in a cave from those that hunted for his precious life. He would have spent his breath rather in pitying and bemoaning himself, than in praising of God. An unprepared heart, that is not well satisfied with its work or condition, hangs back; and though it may be brought to submit to it with much ado, yet it is but as a foundered horse on a stony way, who goes in pain every step, and would oft be turning out of the path if bit and whip did not keep him in. But why is it called the “ preparation of the gospel of peace” ? Because the gospel of peace is the great instrument by which God works the will and heart of man into this readiness and preparation to do or suffer what He calls to. It is the business we are set about, when preaching the gospel, to make a “ willing people” (Psalms 110:1-7). “ To make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:1-80). As the captain is sent to beat up his drum in a city, to call in a company that will voluntarily list themselves to follow the prince’ s wars, and be in a readiness to take the field, and march at an hour’ s warning; thus the gospel comes to call over the hearts of men to the foot of God, to stand ready for His service, whatever it costs them; now this it doth as it is a “ gospel of peace.” It brings the joyful tidings of peace concluded betwixt God and man by the blood of Jesus; and this is so welcome to the trembling conscience of poor sinners, who before melted away their sorrowful days in a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation from the Lord to devour them as His adversaries, that no sooner the report of a peace concluded betwixt God and them sounds in their ears by the preaching of the gospel, and is certainly confirmed to be true in their own consciences by the Spirit, who is sent from heaven to seal it to them, and give them some sweet gust of it, by shedding abroad the sense of it in their souls; but instantly there appears a new life in them, that they who before were so fearful and shy of every petty trouble, as to start at the thought of it (knowing it could bring no good news to them), are now shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, able to go out smilingly to meet the greatest sufferings that are, or can be on the way towards them, and say undauntingly to them, as once Christ did to those that came with swords and staves to attack Him, “ Whom seek ye?” “ Being justified by faith we have peace with God,” saith the apostle (Romans 5:1). And this, how mightily doth it work!--even “ to make them glory in tribulations.” The words opened afford these two points.1. It is our duty to be always prepared, and ready to meet with any trial and endure any hardship which God may lay out for us in our Christian warfare. 2. The peace which the gospel brings and speaks to the heart will make the creature ready to wade through any trial or trouble that meets him in his Christian course. (W. Gurnall, M. A.)Christian promptitude The Christian warrior must march, for his career is but a battle and a march, and a march and a battle; he is ever to keep himself in marching order, and ever to be ready to march at a moment’ s notice, for his feet are to be strapped in shoes of swiftness. And whence is this promptitude to be derived? From “ the gospel of peace,” --or peace the substance of the gospel. For the possession of peace with God creates blessed security of heart, and confers upon the mind peculiar and continuous celerity of action and movement. There is nothing to disconcert or perplex it, or divide and retard its energies. (J. Eadie, D. D.) Ephesians 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith with which ye shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked.Faith, the parent grace “ Above all,” that is, over all other graces, because faith is the first grace, and the foundation of all other true graces. Yet the apostle, in this passage, assigns a particular office to faith, namely, that in the exercise thereof, the believer must quench the fiery darts of the wicked.1. By fears raised up in the mind of the believer, Satan endeavours to annoy him; and he is very busy at his work, and often too successful. 2. Another of Satan’ s fiery darts is doubt or suspicion. 3. Again, by the fiery darts of profane thoughts Satan tempts the servants of Christ. (S. Walker, M. A.)The preeminence of faith That piece of the panoply now brought to view is of special importance, as the apostle’ s language would seem to designate. “ Above all” the shield must be secured, whatever other part might be neglected. Not that the apostle means in any manner to disparage other portions of the panoply. Each piece of armour is not only possessed of peculiar qualities for its own appropriate place, but all are necessary in order to the completeness of the whole. Still, though the girdle, the breastplate, the sandals, the helmet, and the sword, may neither be dispensed with entirely, nor their places supplied by any substitute whatever, some one piece of the panoply may be endowed with a preeminence over the rest, because of its peculiar relations to all of them, and to the entire Christian man. Now, it is this position we understand the apostle as assigning to the shield of faith. There are special reasons for its preeminence, which lead him to enjoin it upon the soldier of the Cross, “ above all,” to put on this piece of armour. For, first, faith may be called an elementary grace of the Christian character. It is that act of the mind by which we are enlisted into the army of salvation. “ He that believeth shall be saved.” Wanting this we cannot be accepted, “ for without faith it is impossible to please God.” “ He that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” The sonship in the spiritual family is also bestowed upon them that believe. Now, if by faith we are saved, we please God, we approach Him with acceptance, we are adopted as His children, we need not wonder at the language of the apostle when he says, “ Above all, taking the shield of faith.” Faith, also, must be taken “ above all,” because it affords nutriment and strength to all other graces. It is the connecting link between the soldier and his Divine Master; it is the bond of union between the vine and the branches, through which is supplied that vital influence by which fruit is produced and matured. Faith is also a grace which, “ above all,” greatly honours God. It is that which leads the soul to forsake every other reliance, and rest solely upon the Divine arm as its helper. The shield is an implement without which no ancient soldier would have been regarded as properly arrayed for battle. The ancient shields were usually made of wood, covered with brass or some other metal. In rare instances they were entirely of brass, or even of gold, as were those of Solomon. Of the shield there were two varieties; one a smaller and lighter article which could be easily handled, so as to protect any part of the person. This description was commonly used by cavalry. The other was so large as effectually to conceal the soldier. It formed a complete protection, was generally in use amongst foot soldiers, and from this the imagery of the apostle is undoubtedly derived. This metallic shield could defy the “ fiery darts,” or arrows, which, taking fire in their flight, would pierce and consume a mere wooden fabric. A material incombustible and indestructible by such darts was indispensable to safety. The warrior whose shield was of brass could stand where the blazing storm was falling thickest, and advance to the assault fearless of harm. Be assured, reader, that in the provisions of grace there is offered to you a shield impenetrable and imperishable, one which can be borne everywhere in your march, which will cover all your panoply and yourself, affording complete protection against the showers of fiery darts hurled at you either from this or the unseen world. This implement is furnished in that grace to which the apostle assigns a position “ above all “ others; it is the shield of faith. A fundamental office of faith, therefore, is to transfer to the Christian soldier the meritorious work which the Captain of his salvation has performed in his behalf, and to make this to him for a shield. How simple, and yet how suitable and glorious a piece of armour, then, have we here! Sinai may flash its lightnings and roll its deep thunders, the gates of hell may vent their rage; Satan and his allies may hurl their storms of fiery darts; but the humble soldier of the Cross shall still hold on his heavenward way unharmed, because by Divine grace he has taken to himself the shield of faith, wherewith he is able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.2. Faith performs another of its important orifices as a shield, by presenting to its possessor both temporal and eternal things in something of their real and relative value. 3. This shield of the Christian warrior also performs its office by protecting the soldier against the direct power of temptation. 4. The shield of faith also subserves a most important purpose by making ready the spiritual soldier for great enterprises. (J. Leyburn, D. D.)The shield of faith Bishop Wilson (of Calcutta) describing his introduction to the Lords of Jeypore, says, “ They were in most splendid dresses, each with his round shield, sword, and dagger. I begged to look at one of their shields; they made me a present of it instantly. I replied that I was a minister of peace; and taking out my Greek Testament, and handing it to them, said, ‘ That is my shield.’” The shield of faith Like the Spartans, every Christian is born a warrior. It is his destiny to be assaulted; it is his duty to attack. I. Expound the metaphor.1. Faith, like a shield, protects us against attack. Different kinds of shields were used by the ancients, but there is a special reference in our text to the large shield which was sometimes employed. I believe the word which is translated “ shield” sometimes signifies a door, because their shields were as large as a door. They covered the man entirely. You remember that verse in the Psalms which exactly hits the idea, “ Thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous, with favour wilt Thou compass him as with a shield.” As the shield enveloped the entire man, so, we think faith envelopes the entire man, and protects him from all missiles wherever they may be aimed against him. You will remember the cry of the Spartan mother to her son when he went out to battle. She said, “ Take care that you return with your shield, or upon it.” Now, as she meant that he could return upon his shield dead, it shows that they often employed shields which were large enough to be a bier for a dead man, and consequently quite large enough to cover the body of a live man. Such a shield as that is meant in the text. That is the illustration before us. Faith prelects the whole man. Let the assault of Satan be against the head, let him try to deceive us with unsettled notions in theology, let him tempt us to doubt those things which are verily received among us; a full faith in Christ preserves us against dangerous heresies, and enables us to hold fast those things which we have received, which we have been taught, and have learned, and have made our own by experience. Unsettledness in notion generally springs from a weakness of faith. A man that has strong faith in Christ, has got a hand that gets such a grip of the doctrines of grace, that you could not unclasp it, do what you would. He knows what he has believed. He understands what he has received. He could not and would not give up what he knows to be the truth of God, though all the schemes that men devise should assail him with their most treacherous art. While faith will guard the head, it will also guard the heart. When temptation to love the world comes in, then faith holds up thoughts of the future and confidence of the reward that awaits the people of God, and enables the Christian to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and so the heart is protected. Then when the enemy makes his cut at the sword arm of a Christian, to disable him, if possible, from future service, faith protects the arm like a shield, and he is able to do exploits for his Master, and go forth, still conquering, and to conquer, in the name of Him that hath loved us. Suppose the arrow is aimed at his feet, and the enemy attempts to make him trip in his daily life--endeavours to mislead him in the uprightness of his walk and conversation. Faith protects his feet, and he stands fast in slippery places. 2. Faith, like a shield, receives the blows which are meant for the man himself. Blows must be expected; the conflict must not be shirked; but let the shield of faith bear the cut and the thrust. 3. Faith is like a shield, because it hath good need to be strong. A man who has some pasteboard shield may lift it up against his foe, the sword will go through it and reach his heart. Or perhaps in the moment when the lance is in rest, and his foe is dashing upon him, he thinks that his shield may preserve him, and lo it is dashed to shivers, and the blood gushes from the fountain and he is slain. He that would use a shield must take care that it be a shield of proof. He that hath true faith, the faith of God’ s elect, hath such a shield that he will see the scimitars of his enemies go to a thousand shivers over it every time they smite the bosses thereof. And as for their spears, if they but once come in contact with this shield, they will break into a thousand splinters, or bend like reeds when pressed against the wall--they cannot pierce it, but they shall themselves be quenched or broken in pieces. You will say, how then are we to know whether our faith is a right faith, and our shield a strong one? One test of it is, it must be all of a piece. A shield that is made of three or four pieces in this case will be of no use. So your faith must be all of a piece; it must be faith in the finished work of Christ; you must have no confidence in yourself or in any man, but rest wholly and entirely upon Christ, else your shield will be of no use. Then your faith must be of heaven’ s forging or your shield will certainly fail you; you must have the faith of God’ s elect which is of the operation of the Holy Spirit who worketh it in the soul of man. Then you must see to it that your faith is that which rests only upon truth, for if there be any error or false notion in the fashioning of it, that shall be a joint in it which the spear can pierce. You must take care that your faith is agreeable to God’ s Word, that you depend upon true and real promises, upon the sure word of testimony and not upon the fictions and fancies and dreams of men. And above all, you must mind that your faith is fixed in the person of Christ, for nothing but a faith in Christ’ s Divine person as “ God over all, blessed forever,” and in His proper manhood when as the Lamb of God’ s passover He was sacrificed for us--no other faith will be able to stand against the tremendous shocks and the innumerable attacks which you must receive in the great battle of spiritual life. Look to your shield, man. 4. But to pass on--for we must not pause long on anyone particular--faith is like a shield because it is of no use except it be well handled. A shield needs handling, and so does faith. He was a silly soldier who, when he went into the battle, said he had a shield but it was at home. So there be some silly professors who have a faith, but they have not got it with them when they need it. They have it with them when there are no enemies. When all goeth well with them, then they can believe; but just when the pinch comes then their faith fails. Now there is a sacred art in being able to handle the shield of faith. Let me explain to you how that can be. (1) You will handle it well if you are able to quote the promises of God against the attacks of your enemy. The devil said, “ One day you shall be poor and starve.” “ No,” said the believer, handling his shield well, “ He hath said, ‘ I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee’ ; ‘ bread shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure.’” “ Ay,” said Satan, “ but thou wilt one day fall by the hand of the enemy.” “ No,” said faith, “ for I am persuaded that He that hath begun a good work in me will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” “ Ay,” said Satan, “ but the slander of the enemy will overturn you.” “ No,” said faith, “ He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him; the remainder of wrath doth He restrain.” “ Ay,” said Satan, as he shot another arrow, “ you are weak.” “ Yes,” said faith, handling his shield, “ but ‘ my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” “ Ay,” said Satan, “ but thy sin is great.” “ Yes,” said faith, handling the promise, “ but He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him.” “ But,” said the enemy again, drawing his sword and making a tremendous thrust, “ God hath cast thee off.” “ No,” said faith, “ He hateth putting away; He doth not cast off His people, neither doth He forsake His heritage.” “ But I will have thee, after all,” said Satan. “ No,” said faith, dashing the bosses in the enemy’ s jaws, “ He hath said, ‘ I give unto My sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My hand.’“ This is what I call handling the shield. (2) But there is another way of handling it, not merely with the promises, but with the doctrines. “ Ah,” says Satan, “ what is there in thee that thou shouldest be saved? Thou art poor, and weak, and mean, and foolish!” Up came faith, handling the shield doctrinally, this time, and said, “‘ God hath chosen the base things of this world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought the things that are’ ; for ‘ not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.’ ‘ Hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him’ ?” “ Ay,” said he, “ if God should have chosen you, yet after all you may certainly perish!” And then, Christian handling his shield of faith doctrinally again, said, “ No, I believe in the final perseverance of the saints, for is it not written, ‘ the righteous shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger’ ?” “ Those that thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost,” and so forth. So by well understanding the doctrines of grace, there is not a single doctrine which may not in its way minister to our defence against the fiery darts of the wicked. Then, the Christian soldier ought to know how to handle the shield of faith according to the rules of observation. “ Ay,” saith the enemy, “ thy confidence is vain, and thy hope shall soon be cut off.” “ No,” said faith, “ I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.” “ Yes, but thou hast fallen into sin, and God will leave thee.” “ No,” saith faith, “ for I saw David, and he stumbled, but yet the Lord surely brought him out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay.” To use this shield in the way of observation is very profitable when you mark the way whereby God has dealt with the rest of His people; for as He deals with one, so He will deal with the rest, and you can throw this in the teeth of your enemy. “ I remember the ways of God. I call to remembrance His deeds of old. I say hath God cast off His people, hath He forsaken one of His chosen? And since He has never done so, I bold up my shield with great courage, and say He never will; He changes not; as He has not forsaken any, He will not forsake me.” (3) Then there is another blessed way of handling this shield, and that is experimentally. When you can look back, like the Psalmist, to the land of Jordan and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar; when you can return to those days of old, and call to remembrance your song in the night, when your spirit can say, “ Why art thou cast down, O my soul, why art thou disquieted within me. Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him.” Why, brethren, some of us can talk of deliverances so many, that we know not where to end; scarcely do we know where to begin. Oh! what wonders has God done for us as a Church and people! He has brought us through fire and through water. Men did ride over our heads, but hitherto all things have worked together for our good. His glory has appeared amidst all the villanies and slanders of men to which we have been exposed. Let us handle our shield then, according to the rules of past experience, and when Satan tells us that God will fail us at the last, let us reply, “ Now thou liest, and I tell it to thee to thy face, for what our God was in the past, He will be in the present, and in the future, and so on even to the end.” Young soldiers of Christ, learn well the art of handling your shield. 5. Lastly, for the matter of the figure. The shield in olden times was an emblem of the warrior’ s honour, and more especially in later days than those of Paul. In the age of chivalry, the warrior carried his escutcheon upon his shield. Now, faith is like a shield, because it carries the Christian’ s glory, the Christian’ s coat of arms, the Christian’ s escutcheon--the cross of his Saviour. II. Enforce the exhortation. If you sent a servant upon an errand, and you said to him, “ Get so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, but above all now see to such-and-such a thing,” he would not understand that he ought to neglect any, but he would perceive that there was some extra importance attached to one part of his mission. So let it be with us. We are not to neglect our sincerity, our righteousness, or our peace, but above all, as the most important, we are to see to it that our faith is right, that it be true faith, and that it covers all our virtues from attack. There is no respect in which faith is not useful to us, therefore, whatever you leave out, see to your faith; if you forget all besides, be careful above all that ye take the shield of faith. And then, again, we are told above all to take the shield of faith, because faith preserves from all sorts of enemies. The fiery darts of the wicked! Does that refer to Satan? Faith answers him. Does it refer to wicked men? Faith resists them. Does it refer to one’ s own wicked self? Faith can overcome that. Does it refer to the whole world? “ This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” It matters not who the enemy may be; let the earth be all in arms abroad, this faith can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Above all, then, take the shield of faith. III. Lastly, I have a word or two to say by way of conclusion to some poor sinner who is coming to Christ, but who is greatly vexed with the fiery darts of the wicked one. You remember how John Bunyan in his “ Pilgrim’ s Progress” represents Christiana and Mercy, and the children coming to knock at the gate. When they knocked, the enemy, who lived in a castle hard by, sent out a big dog, which barked at them at such a rate that Mercy fainted, and Christiana only dared to knock again, and when she obtained entrance, she was all in a tremble. At the same time hard by in the castle there were men who shot fiery darts at all who would enter; and poor Mercy was exceedingly afraid because of the darts and the dog. Now, it generally happens that when a soul is coming to Christ the devil will dog him. As sure as ever he feels his need of a Saviour, and is ready to put his trust in Christ, it will be true of him as of the poor demoniac child: as he was a coming, the devil threw him down and tear him. Now, poor tempted sinner, there is nothing that can bring joy and peace into your heart but faith. Oh, that you may have grace this morning to begin to use this shield. (C. H. Spurgeon.)The shield of faith 1.What faith is. A believing of a thing to be true. The faith here spoken of is a belief of the truth of God. (1) Every faithful soul, every true believer, gives a full assent in his mind to the truth of the gospel.(2) With the assent of the mind there goes a consent of the will. 2. The resemblance between faith and a shield. A shield is a general fence for the whole body, especially for the principal parts, the head and heart. The use of it is to avoid blows of all kinds. So faith defends the whole man from all sorts of temptations cast against him by any of his spiritual enemies, the flesh, world, or devil. 3. How faith is wrought. (1) Outward means: the word, and sacraments.(2) Inward means: the sanctifying Spirit of God. 4. How faith must be proved. By its causes, and by its effects. (1) Causes. (a) Illumination. (b) Compunction and grief of heart. (2) Effects. (a) Shame for evil that has been done. (b) A true and thorough resolution to enter into a new course. (c) A renewing of grief, as often as occasion is offered. 5. How faith is to be preserved. (1) By a conscionable and constant use of the means which God has appointed.(2) By faithful and hearty prayer for God’ s blessing on those means. 6. How faith may be well used. By resting on God’ s promises. (William Gouge.)The shield of faith I. We are first to consider faith in its nature. “ Above all.” Our first impression would be, that the apostle intended to give faith the preeminence over all the other graces of the Christian character; that he meant, in fact, to set it forth as the grace of all graces, the excellence of all excellences, that which, if retained, would compensate for the loss of all the other parts of our spiritual preparation. The shield is that which in ancient warfare the soldier prided himself upon retaining to the last. “ Come home dead upon thy shield,” said the Spartan mother to her son, “ rather than come home alive without it.”1. And now, in considering the nature of this faith, observe, first, that it is the faith of the heart, as distinguished from any purely intellectual faith. 2. Again, this faith is a faith of appropriation--that is, it is a faculty by which we make all the promises our own. Faith is the sustaining power of our regenerate life. 3. Therefore we say further, that in describing the nature of this faith, we must consider it as a faith or union and communion with Christ. II. But we come next to consider faith in its exercise, or the spiritual uses of this shield of faith. Thus, its chief use is to defend the soul at all points. The great advantage of the shield to the ancient warrior consisted in the fact that it was a movable defence; that it was fixed neither to the head nor to the feet, neither to the shoulders nor to the waist, but was held upon the arm, so as to interpose resistance to any part which might happen to be exposed to danger. In ancient warfare this shield was made so large as nearly to cover one side of the person. Hence that expression in the Psalms, “ The Lord will bless the righteous: with favour wilt Thou compass: him as with a shield.” Faith, then, is that weapon of the soul which moves at will, and, as occasion calls, defends all the parts and powers of the tried and tempted spirit. Thus, is the reasoning faculty the object of Satan’ s attack? Is the believer tempted with hard thoughts of God, with difficulties in the ways of His providence, with things hard to understand in Scripture, or with some mysterious dealings, it may be, in regard to his own soul? Faith offers the shield, reminds him that at present we know but in part; that when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Or does the adversary address himself to the conscience of the child of God? Is the burden of sin too intolerable for him to bear, or its grievousness too great for the mercy of Heaven to forgive? Faith can interpose the shield, and on its polished surface we see the bright superscription written, “ Christ is able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by Him.” Or, once more, is it the perverse and wayward will that is assaulted of Satan, so that in the spirit of that rebellion which is “ as the sin of witchcraft” we seem almost resolved to throw off the yoke of Christ altogether, or cannot cut off the right hand, or pluck out the right eye, or raise the sacrificial knife to slay what seemed to us the dear child of promise? The shield of faith again comes to the rescue, and round it, all over it, are blessed testimonies written: “ His commandments are not grievous” ; “ Wisdom’ s ways are ways of pleasantness” ; “ My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”3. Another use of the Christian shield is to preserve the strength of the other graces of the soul. The shield was not only to defend different parts of the soldier’ s person, but, as I have said, it was designed to guard other portions of the armour itself. Many a breastplate would have been pierced, and many a helmet shivered in pieces, but for the additional interposition of the shield. In like manner in our spiritual warfare all the other graces of Christian character are maintained in their integrity and exercise by the power of faith. III. And then we come, in the last place, to consider faith in its victorious results--“ Wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” “ Fiery darts” --the allusion is to small firebrands, which in ancient warfare were twisted into the form of arrows or darts, and in this way shot out of the bow into the midst of the ranks of the enemy. It is not difficult to see why temptation should be described under such an image as this. A dart wounds suddenly; so does temptation. A dart is thrown by some invisible hand; so for the most part are, temptations. A dart may pierce through the very smallest aperture, may penetrate even between the joints of the harness; so also will temptation. The eye, the ear, the smallest inlet or avenue to the soul, may admit a death wound by admitting one of these fiery darts of the wicked. How, then, does faith enable us to quench these darts? Why, first, by teaching us to keep a watchful eye against the first approach of temptation, to guard against the beginning of sin, to be on the look out for its stealthy advances, to preserve with unslumbering vigilance all those sources of thought and feeling out of which are the issues of life.2. Another way by which faith enables us to quench these darts of the adversary is by preparing the heart to resist them. A fiery dart would be dangerous according to the surface upon which it should chance to fall. 3. Again, faith makes us victorious over temptations by setting before us the gain and loss of yielding to them. And now, brethren, in conclusion, let me direct your attention to the one practical inquiry, How is your possession of this victorious faith to be ascertained? I answer, by the same law which ascertains all other realities, and which declares, “ By their fruits ye shall know them.” (D. Moore, M. A.)The shield I. The danger specified.1. The author of this danger. “ The wicked.” 2. The means he employs. He is represented as an archer. His temptations come upon the Christian. (1) As suddenly as darts and arrows.(2) As silent and invisible as darts.(3) Dangerous as darts.(4) Numerous, and various as darts. II. The piece or defensive armour recommended. Now, faith is a shield--1. To the Christian’ s spiritual life. “ We live by faith in the Son of God.” 2. It is a shield to all the graces of the soul. As our faith is, so will our hope, and love, and humility, and courage, be. The graces can exist only as they are defended and supported by faith. 3. It is the Christian’ s shield in suffering and death. III. The efficiency of this shield is asserted. “ Wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery,” etc. By faith, all Satan’ s temptations are successfully resisted and overcome.1. Faith in the Divine veracity and faithfulness is successful against all temptations to distrust, etc. 2. Faith in the Divine promises is successful against temptations to despondency. 3. Faith in the Divine justice and holiness is successful against all temptations to presumption. 4. Faith in the Divine Mediator is successful against all the insinuations and charges of the wicked one. (J. Burns, D. D.)The Christian shield I. The shield, as most of you are aware, is a movable piece of armour: it may be in one place at one moment, and in another at another: in short, the object of it is to defend the whole man. We will take first of all the head. The man lifts up the shield upon his arm to defend his head. And why should this be necessary for a Christian warrior? What can be those “ fiery darts” which can touch the Christian’ s head? There has been no time in the history of the Christian camp in which, I believe, this part has been more frequently attacked than it is at the present day. At all times the head has been made the subject of attack by Satan’ s tampering with our reasoning faculties, and inducing men to give up revelation, and to accept only that which reason can suggest; so that, instead of realizing the truth that God’ s mind is infinite, and our mind is limited, men would like to bring down God, and make Him such an one as themselves. Thus a variety of objections are brought forward, all tending to make man reject His Bible. Then take another part--the heart of man. This is attacked when our consciences are assailed. You are probably all aware of the two-fold nature of the attacks which Satan makes upon us to lead us into sin. First of all, as with Eve, he will lead us to think that sin will not be punished; then having succeeded in having drawn persons into the commission of sin, he follows it up almost invariably with another attack, which is to make men believe that their sin is so bad that it cannot be pardoned. Now this is what I mean by the conscience being attacked. Then take the breast. And here I should explain myself by saying, that I am referring to such circumstances as these--when Satan would suggest to us wicked thoughts; not the actual commission of evil deeds; when within our breast there are thoughts of an unclean character, thoughts of an infidel character, such, for instance, as the idea flitting across the mind, that the Bible is not true. Then we may pass on and take the feet. Here is a great temptation to us, brethren. These things recur to his mind: “ If I make a bold profession of Christ, what may I not endure from it?” but the real Christian “ walks by faith” ; his feet are protected by the shield; “ he walks by faith, and not by sight.” There is one part more I will refer to--I mean the arms. This will bear upon the condition of the man who is tempted to labour only or chiefly for the meat which perisheth. The poor man especially is very much tried in this way. II. Now we are to inquire, in the next place, what will be the result of the use of this part of our armour. In one word, it is confidence--greater, increased confidence in the Christian’ s warfare. III. Now, having advanced thus far as to the nature of this piece of armour; having shown you what will be the result of its use--increased confidence in our Christian conflict; and having asked the question, whether you have it, or have it not--and I am quite sure there are some amongst us who have not this shield, but I hope we are all desirous of obtaining it--let us ask, in the next place, where we may procure it and how we may procure it? (H. M. Villiers, M. A.)Protection against the devil’ s darts The words are an exhortation by argument. “ Darts.” Temptations are thus called As they come suddenly. As they are many. As they strike us in different parts. As the enemy is often invisible. “ Fiery.” As they inflame and disorder the soul. All of them. One unquenched is fatal. “ Of the wicked one.” This denotes--1. That the nature and aim of Satan is wickedness.2. That all instruments are under one direction. Take the shield of faith--“ Above all” --Show how faith has an aptness to quench, etc. I. As it sees their malignant nature. II. As it applies to the blood of sprinkling III. As it sees the interceding Saviour. “ And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you,” etc. (Luke 22:31-32). IV. As it realizes future glory. “ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,” etc. (Hebrews 11:1). V. As it lays hold of the strength and victories of Christ. (H. J. Foster.)The devil’ s darts The darts appear to be Satanic assaults sudden and terrible--such suggestions to evil, such unaccountable impulses to doubt or blaspheme, such horrid insinuations about the Divine character and one’ s own state, as often distract persons, especially of a nervous temperament. The biography of Luther and Bunyan affords apposite examples. But the shield of faith must be used to repel such darts, and if brought to bear upon them, it preserves the Christian warrior intact. His confidence in God keeps him from being wounded, or from falling a prisoner into the hands of his ruthless enemies. Whatever happens moves him not; his faith saves him from despondency and defeat. (J. Eadie, D. D.) Ephesians 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation.The helmet I. Describe the warrior’ s helmet.1. The object of hope. Salvation.2. The origin and source of this hope. It is a grace of the Spirit, and the effect of a renewed heart.3. The basis and ground of hope. (1) The promises of the Father.(2) The work of the Son.(3) The influences of the Spirit. II. The advantages he derives from it.1. It animates for the warfare.2. It supports in sufferings.3. It will put us in possession of the victory and reward. Application:1. Cultivate and preserve this hope of salvation.2. As your hope is, so will be your comfort and joy.3. Address those who have not a good hope. (J. Burns, D. D.)The hope of salvation He (Knox) had a sore fight for an existence, wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley slave, wandering in exile. A sore fight; but he won it. “ Have you hope?” they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, pointed upwards with his finger, and so died. (T. Carlyle.)The helmet of hope No suit of armour could be complete without a protection for the head. This great ruling member, the very citadel of intelligence and vital energy, is too important to be left unguarded. Hence, from the remotest ages, the helmet has been in use amongst all martial nations. The champion of the Philistines had a helmet of brass upon his head, as had also the king of Israel who commanded the armies of the living God. The Persians and Ethiopians also wore this martial cap in the day of battle, as did likewise the warlike Greeks. The helmet of the latter was usually made of skins, rendered hard and impervious to the weapons then in use; but the glittering brass or iron helmet of the Jewish warrior seems the most fit type of that piece of panoply which the apostle places in the armour of the Christian soldier. With this brazen or iron casque upon his head, the Jewish warrior could stand unhurt under the strokes of the brandished sword, or come out uninjured from amidst the storm of arrows. With its “ dazzling brightness, its horrific devices of gorgons and chimeras, and its nodding plumes which overlooked the dreadful cone,” his helmet struck terror into the hearts of his enemies. Hence the apostle very properly, when pointing out to us the panoply, designates the helmet as a piece of armour the Christian soldier must put on. In the letter to the Thessalonians, the nature of this helmet is more specially revealed, where we are exhorted to take for a helmet “ the hope of salvation.” Hope, then, is the helmet of the Christian soldier; and as there was usually graven upon the ancient helmet some single word or sentence as a motto, so must the soldier of the cross have graven on his crest, as emblematic and descriptive of the spirit of his warfare, the word “ Hope.” How aptly does this brief motto set forth his belief as to the ultimate result of his conflicts! This good hope of salvation is the helmet of the gospel panoply. Hope! how beautiful that word! how expressive and suggestive! How hope paints the future in bright and joyous colours! how it speaks in the hour of sorrow and trial, of the breaking away of the storm, and the sunshine to come after! Let me warn you, however, to be on your guard against availing yourself of false hopes in your onward march to eternity. See that you bind not on your brows such a helmet as the enemy’ s sword may cleave in twain, or through which his arrows may enter to lay waste life’ s citadel. You will beware, for instance, of taking for a helmet the hope of future repentance. A common refuge is this for the gospel-taught worldling. You must also be guarded against wearing for a helmet the hope of being saved by the mere general mercy of God. Nor must we pass from this part of the subject without warning you against wearing for a helmet the hope of being saved because you are in connection with the visible Church … The hope of the Christian has to do with better things than those which are confined within the bounds of time, or which derive their value solely from the estimate put upon them by a mere grovelling, earthly mind. But the hope of the believer stands on a firmer basis, rises higher, takes hold of better comforts, and speeds on the footsteps of the pilgrim soldier with the prospect of far brighter joys to come, than that mere common principle which cheers universal humanity on its march from the cradle to the grave. The hope of the believer has been well defined to be that grace “ whereby, through Christ, he expects and waits for all those good things of the promise he has not yet received.” The helmet of hope and the shield of faith are intimately connected. The two pieces of armour are joined together, and serve a purpose to each other, much as their position would seem to separate them. Hope and faith are sister graces of the Spirit. Faith is in some sense the minister of hope. Had we no faith in things to come, how could we hope for them? Hope has not to do with things present, “ for what a man seeth, why does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” Now, “ faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Faith sits at home receiving the promise, whilst hope looks from the lattice for the approach of the blessing. Faith tells us the story of good things in reserve, and then hope quietly and peacefully expects them. Let us examine the qualities of the helmet of salvation. The believer’ s hope is well-founded; unlike those refuges of lies to which your attention has been called. The hope of the Christian soldier is also reasonable. “ Be ready always,” says the apostle, “ to give to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” The spiritual warrior is supposed to be a social being; he is joined with others in the march from the city of destruction to the New Jerusalem; and it is to be presumed that these wayfaring warriors, in the midst of their long journeyings, and their night watches, will sometimes question each other as to their views and motives in joining the service. The hope of the Christian soldier has also a good object in view. How vain are oftentimes those objects which call out the hopes of the worldling. The difference between the hope of the Christian and that of the sinner, is worldwide in this, that the Christian has in his view objects which are always real, which never disappoint, and which are of immortal value. Then, once more, the hope of the Christian soldier is steadfast. “ Which hope,” says Paul, “ we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.” We freely admit that, practically, the Christian’ s hope is not always as steadfast as it should be, or as it might be. The hopes of most believers are extremely fluctuating. The infirmities of our physical nature have much to do with shutting out the light of hope from the soul. We are beings of a two-fold organization, and the physical and spiritual man have an intimate relation. A diseased or wearied body may make a dull and beclouded mind. But these temporary fluctuations of the believer’ s hope do not destroy it. We need only observe further, that the helmet of hope is strengthened and brightened by experience. “ We glory in tribulation also,” says the apostle, “ knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed.” It is the nature of successful experience to impart confidence. (J. Leyburn, D. D.)The helmet of salvation The helmet was necessary to the completion of the apostle’ s military picture; and the grace to be symbolized by it we should suppose to be one vital to the soul’ s prosperity. And such a grace is Hope. For it guards the vital parts; it enables us to exhibit a fearless front in the day of battle; it forbids the entrance of any unworthy and coward fears; saying to us in the thick of the spiritual encounter, “ Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” And now we may proceed to take some other views of the Christian’ s hope. For example, let us consider it in its source, as having God for its Author. And then, consider next, the strength of hope, as having Christ for its foundation. We must have something to hang such a hope upon, and this hope can come to us only through a Mediator, But take up another view, the victories of hope over all spiritual difficulties and impediments. Thus it is hope which makes us victorious over outward trials. And so, in like manner, hope makes us victorious over all difficulties and discouragements. “ Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” Again, Scripture notices as an especial attribute of hope, that it should enable us to overcome shame, that it should take away all foolish regrets, all ungrateful misgivings as to whether in entering upon the Christian course we may have made a right choice or not. “ O Lord, let me not be ashamed of my hope,” said David. “ They shall not be ashamed that wait for Me,” said the Lord by His prophet. “ Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost which He hath given unto us.” But consider, lastly, the blessedness of hope, as having life and immortality for its end. “ Take the helmet of salvation,” says the apostle. Now, salvation takes in the whole circle of the Divine promise, the entire aggregate of blessings promised for both the life that now is, and for that which is to come. It includes salvation from the curse of the law, salvation from the guilt of sin, salvation from the power of the grave, salvation from the tyranny of spiritual and eternal death. (D. Moore, M. A.)The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.--The sword of the Spirit I. Why the word is called the sword, etc.1. The Spirit of God is the Author of the Word.2. It is the agency of the Spirit that makes the Word effectual. II. This sword is to be used.1. For repelling Satan’ s temptations.2. For actually destroying Satan’ s works. (1) We are to aim, first, at the destruction of these works in ourselves.(2) The works of the devil, wherever they appear, are to be the object of our opposition and enmity. 3. In opposing error.4. In seeking the conversion of sinners. (W. R. Taylor, M. A.)The Christian’ s weapon of offence I. The aptitude of the similitude which likens the Bible to a sword.1. The sword is useless so long as it is confined to the scabbard; and the Bible is useless if it rest idle in the intellect. 2. This sword is that by which the Christian defends himself, and that by which he cuts down all his foes. II. The propriety of the description which designates the Bible the sword of the Spirit.1. The Spirit dictated its composition.2. The Spirit alone can unfold its meaning. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The sword I. The sword recommended. Observe--1. The sword itself. Is “ the Word of God.” 2. The description given of this sword--“ Sword of the Spirit.” (1) It is the production of the Spirit--“ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16. See also 2 Peter 1:19-21).(2) It is the instrument which the Holy Spirit makes use of in effecting His purposes.(3) It is by the Spirit’ s influence believers can profitably use the Word of God. II. When the sword of the Spirit may be employed.1. Satan’ s assaults are to be resisted by it.2. The world’ s attacks are to be overcome by it.3. When our own hearts would deceive us. (1) By distrust and despondency.(2) When in danger of self-complacency.(3) When inclined to indolence. III. Some directions for effectually wielding it.1. Cultivate an intimate acquaintance with it.2. Keep this sword polished and bright. This is only to be done by constant exercise.3. Seek, by constant prayer, a renewal of spiritual strength. Application:1. Learn from this not to wage war with unhallowed weapons; such as human reason--such as human passion.2. The weapon provided is all-sufficient.3. Use it for all spiritual purposes. (J. Burns, D. D.)The Word of God I. The word of God. This denotes--1. The importance of its contents (Psalms 119:18; Matthew 13:11).2. The attention and reverence due to it (Isaiah 1:2).3. The full credit which it demands (John 20:31). II. The sword of the spirit.1. As He is its Author (2 Peter 1:21).2. As it is His instrument in saving sinners.3. As it has no power without His agency. III. Take this. Learn to use it more and more. Show how God’ s Word becomes victorious over all enemies.1. It penetrates the most seared conscience (Acts 2:37).2. It lays open the evils and enemies concealed within (Hebrews 4:12).3. It demolishes the walls of unbelief (2 Corinthians 10:4).4. It cuts the sinews of error.5. It repels Satan’ s temptations (Matthew 4:1, etc.).6. It penetrates the storms of affliction (Psalms 119:92).7. It disarms death. This sword has four peculiarities--1. It decays not with use.2. It cannot be broken.3. It is suited to the strength and capacities of all. “ For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again,” etc. (Hebrews 5:12-13).4. Thousands may use it at the same time. A Christian soldier is a terror to the powers of darkness. The destruction of those who neglect or reject this sword is inevitable. (H. J. Foster.)The sword of the Spirit I. Scripture is here represented as the Word of God. And is it not so in the strictest sense? Does it not throughout bear evident marks that God is its Author? There have appeared, indeed, in the world men who have denied this, and endeavoured to prove it false. But the Bible has survived all their assaults. And to this day it continues to be received as the unpolluted fountain of Divine truth. Indeed, its own internal evidences, independently of every other consideration, must ever convince every candid and unprejudiced mind that its pretensions to be the Word of God are just and amply substantiated. Among these evidences, we may notice--1. The great antiquity of its history. 2. The prophecies of the Old Testament, and their exact accomplishment in the New, what a strong argument have we that the Bible is the Word of God! For who can foretell future things but God Himself? 3. We find many doctrines revealed in the Bible, to the knowledge of which we could never have attained by the mere light of nature or reason. 4. The same truth is confirmed to us by a consideration of the laws which are published in the Bible. Never yet was it in the power of men to frame and enact laws which could bind the whole family of man, or be equally suitable to them all. But in the Scriptures we find laws given to all mankind, equally suitable to them all, wheresoever they live, and howsoever they may be circumstanced. And they are not only suitable to them, but also binding upon them. 5. The Scripture appears to be the Word of God from the concurrence of its testimony, or its unity with itself. Whatever is laid down as truth in one place, is neither contradicted nor overturned in another. II. The Scripture is represented in the text as “the sword of the Spirit.” Now, a sword, we know, is an instrument of war, by which the warrior not only defends himself, but also repels and overcomes his enemies. When, therefore, the Christian is exhorted to take such an instrument in his hand, it is implied that he is here in a state of warfare.1. But why is the Scripture called the sword of the Spirit? One reason why it is called so may be, that it was given by inspiration of the Spirit. Indeed, it is this circumstance which makes it so sharp and powerful. 2. Another reason why the Scripture is called the sword of the Spirit is that it is the instrument which the Holy Spirit employs to wound the conscience and destroy the false peace of a sinner. (D. Rees.)The Bible the sword of the Spirit Edward the Sixth had a high esteem for the Scriptures. When, therefore, at his coronation, the swords were delivered to him, as King of England, France, and Ireland, having received them, he said, “ There is yet another sword to be delivered to me” ; at which the lords wondering, “ I mean,” said he, “ the sacred Bible, which is the sword of the Spirit, and without which we are nothing, neither can we do anything.” The power of the Bible This remarkable name of the Bible, “ sword of the Spirit,” teaches us much of the way and wisdom of God in His dealings with the children of men. What gave the Jews their valour, their compact unity, their wonderful tenacity and fortitude as God’ s witnesses both in grace and in apostasy? The sword of the Spirit alone. What was it in the hand of the apostolic Church which overturned the temples of Paganism, smote to the dust the gorgeous systems of superstition, consecrated by time, and cemented by wealth, interest, and victory; and finally planted the cross on the palace of the Caesars? Nothing but the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. See these men! They seem poor, and despised, and forsaken, but they are the heroes of the faith and the chosen instruments of God! (W. Graham, D. D.)The Word of God likened to a sword I. It has many of the properties of a sword.1. It has the brightness of the sword. It is like the flaming falchion at Eden’ s gate, which turned every way to preserve the garden from the unhallowed intrusion of fallen man. Even so the Bible blazes before the everlasting doors of the celestial paradise, so that “ there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.” 2. It has also the keenness of a sword. “ For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. When John saw the Son of man in vision, he tells us that “ out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword.” This is a symbol of the penetrating power of the cutting reproofs and denunciations which issued from His lips. 3. The Word of God is like a sword because it is pointed. Common weapons can only smite the body, but this of the Spirit pierces far deeper, even to the inmost soul. 4. It may be added that a good sword will not easily break. It is even so, and more, with the Lord’ s good sword. Oft has it been rudely struck by those who would parry its thrust or ward off its stroke. Oft has it crime down with cleaving force on hearts harder than flint. But it has never been shattered, nor can it be. It thus resembles a sword in the qualities of brightness of blade, sharpness of edge, keenness of point, and power of endurance. II. It also resembles a sword in many of its uses.1. It is a terror to evil-doers. How many have been deterred from sin, by seeing it sweeping in threatening circles over the path of transgression. How readily they would have run in the ways of iniquity but for the salutary restraints of the Book of God. It has flashed conviction like lightning, and struck the soul into submission like a bolt from heaven. 2. The Word of God is also like a sword in its cleaving energy. “ It divideth asunder the soul and spirit.” It is “ a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” It cuts right and left, with double edge, among all the false hopes of the self-deceived, and lays them in the dust. 3. The sword of the Spirit demolishes the defences under which the sinner shields himself. The spiritual weapons of our warfare is “ mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strongholds.” 4. Moreover, the sword of the Spirit defeats the enemies of God. Every time the Spirit strikes with it, Satan’ s empire totters, and the dark coasts of hell tremble at the blow. Wherever this burnished blade is guided by the hand of Omnipotence, it scatters light over the dark places of the earth. 5. The Word of God is used as a sword in defending His kingdom on earth. Concluding reflections:1. We learn how ministers of the gospel should arm themselves. 2. We learn that Christians are ever to act on the aggressive. 3. We learn that the Word of God is no mortal weapon, but the sword of the Spirit. 4. We learn from our subject that God has enemies in the world. Would you know, my hearers, where that enmity to God is found, against which He will fight with the sword of His mouth? Alas! you will find it strongly fortifying itself in that revolted and disobedient heart of yours. Your soul is opposed to God. Your only safety is in instant submission. 5. The impenitent must again meet the sword of the Spirit in the day of doom. It will be the sword of justice at the judgment of the great day. Then will its slightest warnings come up in remembrance against you. Its testimony will convict you of having despised its reproofs, and your awful doom is already pronounced in its threatenings. Ah! is there no shield? Yes, one; and only one. See it on the Saviour’ s arm! Let Him hold it over thy head. Then the uplifted sword will lose its terrors. Thou mayest cry aloud with confidence, “ Behold, O God, our Shield; and look upon the face of Thine Anointed!” (A. W. McClure.)God’ s Word a sword One of Cromwell’ s knights, a man zealously attached to his party, was sued by the minister of the parish for his tithes. While the dispute was pending Sir John fancied that the parson preached at him, as he called it, every Sunday; whereupon he made complaint to the Protector, who summoned the minister to appear before him. The poor man denied the charge, saying he had done nothing but his duty, and had only preached in general terms against vice and immorality, against drunkards, liars, thieves, and robbers, and defied Sir John to instance any particular allusion to himself. After Cromwell had attentively heard both parties he dismissed the knight, with this memorable reprimand, “ Sir John, go home, and hereafter live in friendship with your minister; the Word of the Lord is a searching word, and I am afraid it has now found you out.” (Paxton Hood.)Power of God’ s Word “ What is the meaning of this?” said a minister, coming into a house and taking up a tattered copy of part of the Scriptures. “ I don’ t like to see God’ s Word used so,” for, indeed, the book had been torn right in two. “ Oh, sir,” said the owner of the half Bible, “ don’ t scold till you hear how it came to be thus. This was my mother’ s Bible; and when she died I couldn’ t part with it; and my brother could not part with it; and we just cut it in two; and his half has been the power of God unto salvation to his soul; and my half the power of God unto salvation to mine.” What a change came over the good man’ s countenance after this more than satisfactory explanation! And he left more than ever convinced that there is a mighty transforming power in God’ s Word. The sword of the Spirit It is to be supposed that all true Christians admit the truth of that military maxim--the best defence is a swift attack. When our Lord was tempted in the wilderness, He did nothing more than just quote Scripture. He pressed Satan so vigorously that he began to quote Scripture too. Three texts of Deuteronomy--a book which sceptics are trying their best nowadays to get rid of--defeated the adversary finally. Jesus might have used any other form of deliverance, but He chose that in order that we who were to come after might know the devil could be certainly defeated with that. Apollos was an experienced and adroit swordsman; he was “ mighty in the Scriptures.” To have a weapon in one’ s band that is certain to pierce the scales of Apollyon every thrust, is of itself enough to make everyone valiant. Most of us have been told the child’ s story about a mysterious sword which had in its construction a kind of life of its own. It was put in the hand of a coward in order to work his cure. When he tried to run away, it kept him right up to the front of the battle. Whenever he attempted to fling it from him, it clung to his grasp. Whenever he sought to slink out of sight and hide the bright blade in the folds of his uniform, of itself it would leap from the scabbard, and begin smiting the first foe it could touch. By and by, he learned to put confidence in it; for he perceived he never could be beaten so long as that invincible hilt was in his hand. Such a weapon is this “ sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” It will of itself fight, it will of itself conquer, and in the end it will defend and deliver every brave man who trusts it. “ I will fight you,” said a hard-fisted man once to the saintly Hewitson. “ Very well,” replied he, quietly, taking his Testament from his pocket; “ just wait till I get out my sword.” It seems to me that this is what so interests us in the private Bibles of experienced and old veterans of the Cross. Marked and worn, bearing tokens of use, they fall into our hands; how reverently we look upon them! Anybody would touch Whitefield’ s Bible gently, and turn over its pages with tenderness. Then there is the old family Bible, and our mother’ s Bible. All these make us think of those days when Scandinavian heroes hung up their historic swords as symbols of prowess among the statues of the demi-gods in the halls of the Walhalla. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)The sword of the Spirit What if it were possible to gather together the swords of all the great and famous princes and generals that have ever lived; what if we had found the sword of Julius Caesar, or Alexander, or the great and mighty heroes of ancient and modern times? And what if, taking them up in our hands, we could recount the mighty battles that have been fought, and think of the plains of Marathon, and other famous places where distinguished heroes have fought, and where soldiers have bled? Yet here is a sword for you, Christian people, that would make all other swords look little: it is “ the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” You ask, What has it done? Ask among the enemy; and they will tell you what it has done. Go to the chief enemy, the devil; if he could be honest enough to answer the question, and tell you what it has done in his dominions in putting to the rout his forces, he would have to tell of mighty battles, and deeds of valour and of blood, and of success beyond description. What are the three principal features of the character of Satan? I answer, pride, malignity, and deceit: his kingdom and his cause in the world have been maintained by pride, malignity, and deceit. But the sword of the Spirit has been drawn to oppose them. How many a proud, stout-hearted sinner has become humbled and abased: how have the malignant passions of man been put to the rout and the flight by it. Why it has given a clear evidence, that “ the fruit of the Spirit was love, and joy, and peace” ; all that was fair, all that was peaceful, all that was true, all that was sacred, heavenly, and blessed. Ask again among those enemies of the Christian, the world and the flesh. Well has it been said, that “ the world, the flesh, and the devil, are the devil’ s triumvirate” ; and so they are; but they cannot stand against “ the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” (T. Mortimer, B. D.)The Bible a sword There are many things in which the Bible is like a sword.1. The Bible was not made by one man, and one man cannot make a sword. Moses, we may say, made the handle; Joshua, Samuel, David, the prophets, etc., made the blade; and the evangelists and apostles made the sharp edge and point, without which, the rest would not be of much use. 2. The Bible is like a sword because it took a long time to make it complete and fit for use. It was intended to last. 3. As a sword is used by a soldier in battle to kill his enemies, so the Bible is able to kill sin, which is everybody’ s greatest enemy. How does the Bible kill sin? By telling about God’ s love to us. 4. Why does St. Paul here call the Bible the sword of the Spirit? (1) Because the Holy Spirit taught men to write it. If you were a sword merchant, and knew how to prepare the iron and make it into steel fit for a sword, you would not make the swords with your own hands, but you would tell the workmen what to do, and they would make the swords. But when the swords were made, they would be called after your name. (2) Because the Holy Spirit must teach us how to use it rightly. Concluding lessons:1. Remember that God has given you this sword to use. The Bible is a fighting sword. It is given to you that you may kill sin with it. Otherwise sin will kill you. 2. If this sword of the Spirit was used by everybody there would be no need to have other swords. The more the Bible is used to kill sin, the less fighting there will be. (W. Harris.)The Christian warrior’ s sword The Bible is the sword of the Christian warrior. The very fact that you have the Bible today is an irrefutable argument to its divinity. Despised, and spoken against, assailed by more than a legion of powerful foes in every generation, it has still survived the attacks of malignity, the wreck of successive empires, and the ruin of every other production contemporaneous with itself. In the Word of God as the sword of your warfare, you are provided with an implement of heavenly workmanship. This weapon, as you may also perceive, is called “ the sword of the Spirit.” In the great scheme for conquering the powers of darkness, all the persons of the Godhead are united. Christ, the Captain of Salvation, purchased the efficacious cooperation of the Holy Ghost, whose agency is indispensable to the triumphs of the Cross. The communication of the will of God to man was a most important work of this Person of the Trinity. The Spirit takes “ the things which are God’ s, and shows them unto us.” “ The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” The Word of God was indited by the Spirit. This appellation appears still more appropriate, too, when you remember that the agency of the Spirit alone can give such efficacy to the Word as to render it an available weapon. Of itself, the Word of God would remain a dead letter. Unless moved by the Holy Ghost, none would be disposed to use it; and if so disposed, it would not be effectual in putting to flight the armies of the adversary. “‘ The natural mind discerneth not the things of the Spirit, because they are spiritually discerned.” How many are there, who have possessed the Bible all their lives long, had it in their houses, and been taught it from their childhood, in whose hearts the enemy is still unsubdued, and who are still led captive by the devil at his will! To such this sword has always been a sheathed weapon. Hence the Holy Ghost must accompany the truth, to give it power and energy. He must open the eyes of the spiritually blind to behold the excellence and utility of this weapon, and incline the affections to take pleasure in using it for vanquishing the powers of darkness in the soul and in the world without; he must bend the will to determination and perseverance in using it to push forward the aggressions of the armies of light. Without this agency, none would ever be disposed to enlist as soldiers of the Cross, and when enlisted, their puny efforts would be fruitless. A most important weapon is the sword of the Christian soldier, in promoting the great ends of his warfare. It is the chief instrument by which the work of extending the kingdom is accomplished. Some of its offices in this regard, we may examine in the present chapter. The Word of God is the primary instrument, as we have just seen, by which recruits are won to the armies of salvation. Other instrumentalities the Master does indeed use for making conquests to His cause from the ranks of the enemy, but these are all subordinate to that of the Word. The Captain of Salvation sends out the Word, thundering the curses of Sinai, holding up the wrath of an angry God, uncovering the evil and loathsomeness of sin, displaying the peace-speaking, blood-stained banner of the Cross, until, under the power of the Spirit, the hostility of those who have been His enemies is subdued, and they are brought to His feet as willing trophies of His grace. Thus, by the truth are recruits won from the kingdom of darkness to that of God’ s dear Son; and thus also does the Word of God prove to be “ the sword of the Spirit.” The ‘ Word of God is also the great agent in the sanctification of the Christian soldier. “ Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth,” was the prayer of the Saviour for such as had believed on His name, and whom He was about to leave in this world; and the prayer also for as many as should afterwards believe on His name. (J. Leyburn, D. D.)The arm that wields the sword It is reported of a great person, that being desirous to see the sword wherewith Scanderbeg had done so great exploits, when he saw it, replied, he saw no such great matter in that sword more than any other sword. “ It is truth,” quoth one, standing by; “ you see the sword, but not the arm that wielded it.” So, when we look upon the Scriptures, the bare Word, whether printed in our Bibles or audible in the pulpit, we shall find no such business in it more than in other writings; but when we consider the arm of God’ s power that joins with it, when we look upon the operation of His Holy Spirit working therein, then we shall change our thoughts and say, “Nec vox hominem sonat, O Deus certe!” or as Jacob did of Bethel, “ Surely, of a certain, God is in this Word!” (Spencer.)The sword unsheathed by the Spirit The Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. It is the instrument by which the Spirit worketh. He does not tell us anything that is out of the record; but all that is within it He sends home with clearness and effect upon the mind. He does not make us wise above that which is written, but He makes us wise up to that which is written. When a telescope is directed to some distant landscape, it enables us to see what we could not otherwise have seen; but it does not enable us to see anything which has not a real existence in the prospect before us. It does not present to the eye any delusive imagery--neither is that a fanciful and fictitious scene which it throws open to our contemplation. The natural eye saw nothing but blue land stretching along the distant horizon. By the aid of the glass there bursts upon it a charming variety of fields, and woods, and spires, and villages. Yet who would say that the glass added one feature to this assemblage? It discovers nothing to us which is not there; nor out of that portion of the book of nature, which we are employed in cultivating, does it bring into view a single character which is not really and previously inscribed upon it. And so of the Spirit. He does not add a single truth or a single character to the book of revelation. He enables the spiritual man to see what the natural man cannot see; but the spectacle which He lays open is uniform and immutable. It is the Word of God which is ever the same; and he whom the Spirit of God has enabled to look to the Bible with a clear and affecting discernment sees no phantom passing before him; but, amid all the visionary extravagance with which he is charged, can, for every one article of his faith, and every one duty of his practice, make his triumphant appeal to the law and to the testimony. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)The sword a chief weapon The sword was ever esteemed a most necessary part of the soldier’ s furniture, and therefore hath obtained a more general use in all ages and among all nations than any other weapon. Most nations have some particular weapons proper to themselves; but few or none come into the field without a sword. A pilot without his chart, a scholar without his book, and a soldier without his sword, are alike ridiculous. But above all these, absurd is it for one to think of being a Christian, without knowledge of the Word of God, and some skill to use this weapon. The usual name in Scripture for war, is the sword, “ I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth,” i.e., I will send war. And this because the sword is the weapon of most universal rise in war, and also that whereby the greatest execution is done in the battle. Now such a weapon is the Word of God in the Christian’ s hand. By the edge of this his enemies fall, and his great exploits are done--“ They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.” (W. Gurnall, M. A.)The sword of the Spirit We now come to the last part of the Christian’ s armour, or “ the sword of the Spirit.” Let us, first, observe on the fitness of the metaphor here employed by the apostle. Thus, the sword is a weapon common to all soldiers, of whatever rank, or however employed. In a battle, there may be some without the helmet, and some without the greaves; but there are to be none without the sword. So, likewise, the Word of God is to be put into the hands of every Christian, soldier. The Captain of our salvation wielded it first, and He would have it used by the meanest subaltern that fights under His banner. In no position, and under no circumstances, can the Christian be saved without his sword. Again, the sword is a sharp, piercing weapon: with one thrust it may enter into the seat of life. So also “ the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow, of the soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” See what effect this sword wrought on the day of Pentecost, when Peter was addressing himself to the crucifiers of the Lord of glory: “ Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart.” And now, for the further illustration of the apostle’ s meaning, let us direct our attention to two points: first, our experience of the power of the sword; and, secondly, the enemies whom we are to slay by the sword. I. First, with regard to our experience of the power of this sword. I put this down as an indispensable prerequisite to a compliance with the apostolical injunction. For the apostle is not supposed to be addressing a company of undisciplined recruits. He is speaking to soldiers, to believers, to veterans, who have had some experience of the use and power of the weapons they are to employ. I cannot see how a man can use the sword of the Spirit to resist the assaults of sin, who has not felt the power of that sword to awaken in himself a sense of sin. II. But I come to our second point, or, the enemies to be slain by the sword. Of course, the great enemy is Satan himself, the father of lies, who therefore must be opposed by the Word of Truth. But, then, Satan has under him a large army of deceivers and impostors, who are ever on the watch to beguile unstable souls; and it is only by the power of God’ s Truth that we shall be able to dissipate the illusions which these gather around us. Again, by the edge of this sword we are to slay false fears. Every Christian knows on entering the service of his Master that great trials are appointed for him; that the rightful and only entrance into the kingdom of heaven is through the gate of tribulation; and that, though his Master has given him armour enough to protect him against sin, He has given him no armour to ensure him against suffering. Again, it is to the sword of the Spirit we must look to preserve us from all false guides, false influence, false dependence, whether the example of the world, the persuasion of friends, the fear of men, or the dominant tendencies and desires of our own heart. (D. Moore, M. A.) Ephesians 6:18-20 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.Prayer and panoply Christians have a battle to fight, an enemy to overcome. The enemy is so strong and wily that no human power can resist him. The Christian must be clad in God’ s armour. Moreover, he must be armed at every point. Nothing less than the whole armour of God will avail. Not only so: the armour itself is valuable only as it is entire. It is of little consequence where the soldier is struck, if only he falls. Moreover, the Christian qualities figured in this picture of complete armour can exist and thrive only in company. Hope is nothing without faith; readiness is nothing without hope; righteousness is of faith only, and is nothing without truth; while truth finds its highest expression in righteousness. Then, as the soldier, however well protected, is useless without his sword; so Christian hope and truth and faith and righteousness get their highest sanction, and are taught their appropriate uses, by the Word of God alone--the sword of the Spirit. The Word of God and the armour of God are as necessary to each other as the captain’ s orders are to the armed soldier; in short, this passage of Holy Scripture will be of little use to us unless we study it entire, and possess ourselves of the unity of all its parts. Consequently, we cannot understand these words in the text about prayer unless we see how they are related to what goes before. Prayer is the divinely ordained means of intercourse with God. In all that precedes we get no intimation of the personal contact of the Christian warrior with his Divine Leader. This is given us in prayer. We have the Word of God to the soldier; but in prayer we have the soldier’ s word with God, the contact and communion of soldier and general; and it is not without a purpose that the Word of God and prayer are brought together here. The Word of God gathers up into itself, expounds and interprets Christian truth, hope, faith, righteousness, readiness; but the Word of God becomes a living power, something to strike and to slay with, only through the living contact of the Christian with Christ, and this contact is afforded by prayer only. Now, in our text, the apostle describes some of the laws and characteristics of prayer; and these we will touch upon in the order in which he places them. I. The variety of prayer. All prayer is the same in essence, but it takes on different modes, just as your intercourse with a friend does. It is not all asking. Sometimes it is only interchange, without any petition at all--talking to God for the pleasure of communion; sometimes a sharp, short cry for help, like Peter’ s “ Lord, save me!” when he felt himself sinking; sometimes merely the aspiration of the heart to God without a word; sometimes a half-conscious sympathy of thought with God; sometimes a formal, public petition; sometimes a struggle to climb over self to God. We are to pray with every prayer, with all kinds of prayer. He is not always the most prayerful man who prays most regularly or most formally, or most publicly. Sometimes more prayer is condensed into a sentence than is to be found in a whole series of prayer meetings. I never can read without emotion the story of the good old German professor, who sat studying until far into the night, and then, pushing his books wearily aside, was heard by the occupant of the next room to say, ere he lay down to rest, “ Lord Jesus, we are upon the same old terms.” II. The seasonableness of prayer. “ Praying in every season” ; this includes the habitual contact of the life with God everywhere. Life is full of occasions and suggestions of contact with God, and the Christian is to avail himself of them. You want God everywhere; you want His counsel in everything; your joy is incomplete, yea, empty, without His sanction and sympathy; your sorrow is unbearable without His comfort; your business lacks its one great element of success if God is left out of it; you will as surely fall under temptation as you are human, if God does not help you. Pray, therefore, with every kind of prayer, at every season. III. The element and atmosphere of prayer--‘‘ In the Spirit.” What we are, comes very largely out of our surroundings; just as a taper gets much of the material for combustion out of the atmosphere. A light goes out in a vacuum. A swan cannot do his best in the air, nor an eagle in the water. So the power of prayer depends largely on the element in which it works. The only effective prayer is “ in the Spirit,” i.e., under the impulse and direction of the Spirit of God (Romans 8:26). Otherwise, prayer is only an evidence of infirmity, like the dim burning of a candle in foul air.1. The Spirit creates a prayerful heart (Romans 8:16). We never can truly pray at all until we can pray “ Our Father!” 2. The Spirit suggests the substance of our prayers. 3. The Spirit reveals the love and helpfulness of God, and so encourages us to present our many and deep needs to Him. 4. The Spirit communicates Divine love to our hearts, and this love communicates warmth and enthusiasm to prayers. 5. The Spirit so identifies Himself with our case that He makes intercession for us. In other words, God’ s own heart pleads for us; and our mightiest plea is there. IV. Alertness in prayer. “ Being awake thereunto.”1. Keep watch over prayer. Cut that great main which leads the water from the reservoir into yonder city, and how long wilt it be ere the city is in distress? Prayer is the medium of communion with God, and without that communion there is no Christian living. No life without God, and no contact with God without prayer; so that, if Satan can cut that main, the life is in his power; and the danger is linked with the treasure, as always. Hence prayer is a thing to be watched--watched as a habit to be encouraged by practice, as a pleasure with which the Christian is to grow into a sweet familiarity by frequent communings with Him in whose presence is fulness of joy; as a duty which he neglects at the peril of his spiritual life. 2. And we must watch after prayer, to see what becomes of our prayers. He would be a strange archer who did not look to see where his arrow struck, a strange merchant who did not care whether his richly freighted ship arrived at her port or not. 3. This watching must be persistent. The conflict with temptation is lifelong; the necessity for prayer never ceases; there is always, therefore, need to watch. V. The objects of prayer. Prayer must not be selfish. It is the language of the kingdom of God; and the kingdom of God is a community, a brotherhood. Prayer is the expression of the life of God’ s kingdom, and that life is social. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)Pastor and people I. The duty of the people.1. Constant prayer. (1) Private.(2) Family.(3) Public. 2. Habitual watchfulness. (1) Spirit.(2) Language.(3) Actions. 3. Steady perseverance. This is opposed to-- (1) Indecision.(2). Lukewarmness.(3) Despondency. 4. Christian affection. (1) Sincere.(2) Ardent.(3) Comprehensive. II. The office of the pastor--“ An ambassador” : one who has received a commission, and has a delegated authority. As a minister my duty is--1. To instruct you with plainness. 2. To entreat you affectionately. (1) By exhibiting Christ in all the loveliness of His character.(2) By the exhibition of His work in all its suitableness and sufficiency.(3) By dwelling on the work of the Holy Spirit, the energy by which the soul is renewed and sanctified, and made ripe for felicity.(4) By making known the boundless love of God. 3. To warn you with faithfulness. (1) Against erroneous doctrines.(2) Against wicked practices.(3) Of imminent danger. 4. To watch over you with care. III. The text also affords me an opportunity to solicit your prayers.1. Pray that I may preach fluently.2. Pray that I may preach with boldness.3. Pray that I may preach correctly.4. Pray that I may preach successfully. Concluding observations: From what has been said we cannot but observe--1. The connection which subsists between a successful ministry and a praying people. 2. The importance of exemplifying all the graces of the Holy Spirit. Here is prayer, watchfulness, perseverance, comprehensive love; all these are required, and how important are they all. (W. S. Palmer.)Subjects of intercession I. Proper subjects of prayer.1. Our own personal needs.2. The needs of all our brethren in Christ--“ for all saints.”3. The needs of ambassadors of Christ--“ for me.” II. Proper method of prayer.1. Variety in the method--“ all prayer,” public and private, secret and social, with confession, petition, and thanksgiving.2. Frequency--“ at all seasons” (R.V.).3. Seeking the help of God’ s Spirit--“ in the Spirit” (Romans 8:15; Romans 8:26).4. Watchfulness, lest weariness overtake us.5. Perseverance (Luke 18:1). (Family Churchman.)Intercession Intercession is the characteristic of Christian worship, the privilege of the heavenly adoption, the exercise of the perfect and spiritual mind. This is the subject to which I shall now direct your attention.1. First, let us turn to the express injunctions of Scripture. For instance, the text itself: “ Praying in every season with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and abstaining from sleep for the purpose, with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.” Observe the earnestness of the intercession here inculcated; “ in every season, with all supplication,” and “ to the loss of sleep” (see also Colossians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:25; 1 Timothy 2:1-2; 1 Timothy 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 3:1; 1 Corinthians 14:3). Next consider St. Paul’ s own example, which is quite in accordance with his exhortations (Ephesians 1:16-17; Philippians 1:3-4; Colossians 1:3; 1 Thessalonians 1:2). The instances of prayer, recorded in the book of Acts, are of the same kind, being almost entirely of an intercessory nature, as offered at ordinations, confirmations, cures, missions, and the like (Acts 13:2-3; Acts 9:4). 2. Such is the lesson taught us by the words and deeds of the apostles and their brethren. Nor could it be otherwise, if Christianity be a social religion, as it is preeminently. If Christians are to live together, they will pray together; and united prayer is necessarily of an intercessory character, as being offered for each other and for the whole, and for self as one of the whole. 3. But the instance of St. Paul opens upon us a second reason for this distinction. Intercession is the especial observance of the Christian, because he alone is in a condition to offer it. It is the function of the justified and obedient, of the sons of God, “ who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit” ; not of the carnal and unregenerate. “ God heareth not sinners” ; nature tells us this; but none but God Himself could tell us that He will hear and answer those who are not sinners; for “ when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants, and can claim no reward for our services.” But He has graciously promised us this mercy, in Scripture, as the following texts will show: James 5:16; 1 John 3:22; John 15:7-15. 4. The history of God’ s dealings with Abraham will afford us an additional lesson, which must be ever borne in mind in speaking of the privilege of the saints on earth as intercessors between God and man (see also Exodus 20:12; Jeremiah 35:18-19; Daniel 10:2-14; Mark 9:29). 5. Why should we be unwilling to admit what is is so great a consolation to know? Why should we refuse to credit the transforming power and efficacy of our Lord’ s sacrifice? Surely He did not die for any common end, but in order to exalt man, who was of the dust of the field, into “ heavenly places.” He died to bestow upon him that privilege which implies or involves all others, and brings him into nearest resemblance to Himself, the privilege of intercession. This, I say, is the Christian’ s especial prerogative; and if he does not exercise it, certainly he has not risen to the conception of his real place among created beings. He is made after the pattern and in the fulness of Christ--he is what Christ is. Christ intercedes above, and he intercedes below. Why should he linger in the doorway, praying for pardon, who has been allowed to share in the grace of the Lord’ s passion, to die with Him and rise again? He is already in a capacity for higher things. His prayer thenceforth takes a higher range, and contemplates not himself merely, but others also. To conclude. If anyone asks, “ How am I to know whether I am advanced enough in holiness to intercede?” he has plainly mistaken the doctrine under consideration. The privilege of intercession is a trust committed to all Christians who have a clear conscience and are in full communion with the Church. We leave secret things to God--what each man’ s real advancement is in holy things, and what his real power in the unseen world. Two things alone concern us, to exercise our gift and make ourselves more and more worthy of it. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)Prayer 1.The apostle here supposes our obligation to prayer to be so plain, that every rational mind will see it, and so important, that every pious heart will feel it. Therefore, instead of adducing arguments to prove the duty, he rather points out the manner in which it should be performed. 2. Prayer is of several kinds: social and secret, public and domestic, stated and occasional; and it consists of several parts: confession, supplication, intercession, thanksgiving. 3. The apostle next instructs us concerning the manner in which our prayers should be offered. (1) The first thing necessary in prayer is faith, or a believing view of God’ s providential government, and of the wisdom and goodness with which it is administered. (2) Our desires must be good and reasonable. (3) Attention of mind, collection of thought, and warmth of affection, are qualifications required in prayer. (4) That our prayers may be acceptable to God, they must be accompanied with justice to men. (5) Charity is an essential qualification in prayer. (6) We must bring before the throne of God a meek and peaceable spirit. (7) Our prayers must be accompanied with a sense of, and sorrow for, sin. (8) We must persevere in prayer. 4. The apostle here teaches us the duty of intercession for others. The goodness of God is the foundation of prayer. If God is good to others, as well as to us, there is the same ground on which to offer our social intercessions, as our personal petitions. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)The necessity of prayer Whatever may be the character of other military men, the Christian soldier must be a man of prayer. This will appear both from his own wants, and from the character of the Captain of his salvation. Among your wants we may point to your weakness. You have a great battle to wage against a great enemy. The serried hosts of Marathon or Waterloo, drawn out in long and splendid array, might well have appalled even an experienced soldier whose office called him to draw his sword for that desperate battle strife; but the hosts of Marathon and Waterloo were trifles compared With the principalities and powers with which you must contend. And what are you against such a gigantic enemy? an enemy whose legions are almost countless, whose adroitness and long experience are unequalled amongst all God’ s creatures, and whose long marches have been signalized with such numberless victories? What are you in yourself but dust and ashes, but a poor, weak, helpless worm? in your natural state fitly described by inspiration as “ without strength,” and even when introduced into the kingdom of God’ s dear Son, still constrained to say, “ In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” : “ when I would do good, evil is present with me.” Utterly imbecile as to the conquest of your own evil passions, how can you in your own strength stand against the principalities and powers, and wiles of the devil? The necessity for prayer to the Christian soldier appears also from his ignorance. However much he may have known and sadly felt of the wiles of the devil, he has not yet learned the whole of his devices. Satan’ s empire is a deep abyss; it is a school in which, however large your experience, you will still be a learner to your dying day. As regards many of the wiles of Saran, and many of the purposes of God’ s providence and grace, we are the veriest babes. These considerations are further enforced by the character of the Captain of your salvation. He is, first of all, able to understand perfectly your wants. As God, He is omniscient. Consider, also, that the Captain of your salvation is possessed of infinite power. The strength and ability to carry out their purposes with all creatures is limited. Some possess this attribute in larger measure than others, but with all it has its bounds. But your Leader is Divine, and with Him all things are possible. We are further encouraged to call on God our Saviour in the midst of our spiritual march, by the fact that He has a heart of the most tender sensibilities and sympathies. Are you tempted, desponding, sorrowing, suffering in mind, body, or estate? Are you wrestling hard against the principalities and powers of Satan, or against the cravings of flesh and blood? Does the battle seem long, the odds much against you, the result uncertain, and your helpers far away? Soldier of the Cross, thy conflicts are not unseen nor unpitied; thy Helper is not far away; thy sorrows will not be greater than thou canst bear, nor thy foes prove too much for thee. Although unseen by mortal eyes, He who called you from darkness to light is very near you; He has a feeling for your infirmities, and declares He will never leave nor forsake you. (J. Leyburn, D. D.)Praying always We consider that the word “ always” in the text is not satisfied by a man’ s having stated times for prayer--by his offering up prayer every morning and night, but that it requires a prayerful mind--a mind at all times apt for prayer. He prays “ always” who feels the duty and the privilege of communing with God at all times and under all circumstances; not only when God is chastening him, but when He is crowning him with loving kindness; not only in adversity, but in prosperity; who has wants to express when to the eye of the world every want seems satisfied; who has desires to breathe as well when his “ cup runneth over” as when, “ hungry and thirsty, his soul fainteth in him.” He prays “ always,” not, indeed, who is always on his knees, or always engaged with specific acts of devotion, for this were impossible, and if possible, inconsistent with the appointed duties of life; but he who carries a prayerful spirit into every occupation and every condition; who never feels as if it would be a violent transition, in any company or under any Circumstances, to address himself to God, so truly has he “ God in all his thoughts,” so pervaded is the whole train and current of his being with the consciousness that “ of Him, and through Him, and by Him, are all things.” But there must be true religion, the religion of the heart, before there can be this “ praying always.” Let it be observed, that all prayer supposes a sense of want to be supplied, and a consciousness that the supply can come only from God. In this way you may readily see how it comes to be a test of depth and sincerity in religion, that there should be perseverance in prayer. Judge yourselves, your religion, by such a test as this. A really godly man carries with him a prayerful mind into every scene and every occupation. Be not content till you have--what as fallen and ruined creatures in a state of peril you ought to have--an abiding sense of abiding want; so that at no moment are you at a loss what to ask for, and at none at a loss whom to ask it from. Till you have this--this which will lead you to pray in the crowd as well as in solitude--this which will keep the heart ever sitting at God’ s gate, the spirit ever bent on intercourse with heaven--your religion is at best that of the hypocrite or the formalist. You do not live in an atmosphere of prayer, the atmosphere which a genuine Christian weaves around him, and carries with him. You are still at a distance from conformity such as that of our text, “ Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.” And here we would desire to point out to you that such constant and intimate communion as is indicated by our text can only take place where there is delight in God, and a feeling that His service is indeed “ perfect freedom.” This is the secret of a Christian being always ready for prayer. He delights in God; he draws his happiness from God. We have yet to throw rapidly together certain reasons for that inconstancy in prayer, which is one great sign of a defective religion. You are not now, it may be, regular in prayer; but you have had your times of prayer--times when you performed that great duty with considerable care, though you have gradually relaxed, and then perhaps omitted it altogether. Now, how came this to pass? How was it that you did not arrive at the “ praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” ? Probably you left off praying because you were not willing to leave off sinning. Habitual prayer and habitual sin cannot exist long together. Sin will make you uneasy in prayer, or prayer will make you uneasy in sin. It was a good saying of some of the old divines--“ Praying will make a man leave off sinning, or sinning will make a man leave off praying.” May not this be the explanation of your not “ praying always unto God” ? There was some favourite passion which you persisted in indulging, even whilst you persisted in praying. Perhaps--for this is possible, this is even common--perhaps you indulged the very passion against which you were praying: the prayer serving as a sort of sop to the conscience--a make-believe, that whilst you did the wrong thing, you had the wish, though not the power, to do the right. No wonder, if before long you left off praying. Be more honest another time. If you are secretly determined on continuing in sin, if you are not sincerely desirous of overcoming that sin, do not mock God by praying against that sin. And take it as a general rule, that prayer will be only by fits and starts; that there will never be such a habit of prayer, such a prayerfulness of spirit, as to justify the expression, “ praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,” unless you are at war with sin; unless you strive with all diligence to keep under those evil propensities, the indulgence of which, as it grieves God’ s Spirit, will necessarily hinder, and at last silence, supplication. For here you are to observe another great reason why, where there is no depth in religion, there will be no perseverance in prayer. You should mark the expression in the text, “ supplication in the Spirit.” Fervent, effectual, importunate prayer is the utterance of God’ s Spirit, making intercession within us. It is not our own voice, “ for we know not what we should pray for as we ought” ; we have to be taught how to pray, and our constant prayer should be for the spirit of prayer. But this is what the hypocrite and the formalist are either ignorant or unmindful of. They pray in their own strength; they have no consciousness of their inability for the very act in which it is their duty to engage; not an inability which exonerates them from the duty, but an inability which should make them seek Divine help for its discharge. Praying not in dependence on the Holy Spirit is but swimming in the wide sea, where there is nothing to lay hold on--a few desperate struggles, and then a sinking down in death. If, then, you would learn to “ pray always unto God,” keep much in mind that the Spirit must help your infirmities. When you kneel down for prayer, pray that you may pray; do not proceed at once to the remembering and expressing other wants; confine yourselves to the one great want of “ the Spirit of grace and supplication.” That obtained, you will pray “ the effectual fervent prayer,” even though, as the apostle saith, it may be “ with groanings that cannot be uttered” ; that withheld, your prayer will bring down no blessing from above, however fluent it may have been in expression. (H. Melvill, B. D.)The triumphs of the praying life I stood lately in St Paul’ s Cathedral, and saw many monuments raised to English heroes, on which were written a list of their victories. But what monument could hold the list of triumphs won by prayer; triumphs gained in drawing room and garret, in palace and hovel, in prison cell and workhouse ward, in noisy barracks and tossing ships, or hospital couches wet with tears of agony, by empty cradles, and by new made graves? These are the victories won on battlefields of sorrow, of trial, of loss, of temptation, where the fighting was harder than at Marathon, or Austerlitz, or Waterloo; victories of faith, victories won by prayer. The history of the Church of Christ is the history of these triumphs. And take heed how you pray.1. Then, pray faithfully, believing that God can and will answer you, though not, perhaps, just as you expect. Many prayers are wasted because they are without faith; those who utter them are just trying an experiment to see whether God will hear and answer or not. 2. Next, pray persistently; don’ t be disheartened because God does not answer at once. 3. Next, pray submissively, striving to give up your will to God’ s will. 4. Next, pray simply. Some people pick out the longest and hardest words when they speak to God. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)The power of prayer Prayer, which is of supreme necessity both for our own defence and for the destruction of the kingdom of darkness, cannot be properly described as part of the defensive armour which we are to wear, or as one of the weapons which we are to wield. It, is an appeal to the Divine strength and to Divine grace. To speak of the “ power of prayer,” as though prayer itself were a spiritual force, is misleading. In prayer, human weakness invokes Divine protection and Divine support. We pray because our position in relation to God is a position of absolute dependence. Apart from Him we can do nothing. And in the spiritual life no system of secondary laws comes between Him and us. In the inferior provinces of our activity we are environed by the unchanging order of the physical universe; the Divine energy is voluntarily limited by natural laws; without any direct appeal to God we can command physical forces by a knowledge of the fixed methods of their action. But the higher life is a perpetual miracle. In the spiritual universe the Divine will works freely, and we have to do, not with forces which act under the restraint of fixed laws, but with a personal Will. God is the Fountain of our life and of our strength; but the streams flow, not under the compulsion of necessity, but according to His free volitions. We therefore pray that the life and the strength may he ours. Our dependence upon God is constant, and therefore our prayers should be constant. With the chances and changes of life our necessities are infinitely varied, and our prayers should be equally varied. Our opportunities for prayer are not always the same; sometimes we must pray alone, sometimes we can pray with others; sometimes our prayers must be brief, sometimes they may be prolonged. At all times, to pray aright, we must have the illumination and gracious aid of the Divine Spirit. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Prayer acts upon God Habitual intercession for others is one of the surest correctives of the tendency to regard prayer as deriving its chief value and importance--not from the fact that God listens to us when we pray, and gives us what we ask for--but from the influence which devotional thought, the confession of sin and of weakness, the grateful acknowledgment of God’ s goodness, and the contemplation of God’ s eternal majesty and glory, exert on our own spiritual life. None of us can escape altogether from the prevailing temper of our time. Those of us who think that we are least affected by the currents of contemporary thought feel their power. The tendency to eliminate the supernatural element from the spiritual as well as the physical universe is affecting the whole life of the Church. Christian people can understand that when they pray their devotional acts exert a reflex influence on their own minds and hearts; but to expect a direct answer from God requires a vigorous faith; and to this faith I fear that many of us are unequal. If Christian men are in trouble they are conscious that their hearts are lighter after they have spoken to God about it, just as their hearts are lighter when they have spoken about it to a friend; and they suppose that this kind of relief is all that they have a right to look for. They pray for stronger faith, and they suppose that it is by their own thoughts about God and His great goodness, thoughts which are made more vivid by the act of prayer, that their faith is to be Strengthened. Or if they pray that their love for God may become more ardent, they imagine that it is by the very excitement of praying for it that the result is to be obtained. They think that their prayer will be ineffective if, while they pray, their hearts are not flooded with emotion; they are satisfied if the emotion comes, and if, to use their own words, they “ feel better” when the prayer is over. It is no doubt true that religious thought and communion with God purify, invigorate, and ennoble the soul; but if when we pray we think only or chiefly of the effect of prayer upon ourselves, instead of thinking of its effect in inducing God to grant us what we pray for, we misapprehend the nature of the act. When your child comes to you hungry or thirsty, and asks for food or drink, the child expects you to do something in answer to its request. It does not suppose that the mere act of asking will satisfy its hunger or quench its thirst; and so when we ask God for spiritual wisdom and strength we are not to imagine that the mere asking will make us wiser and stronger. God teaches us and God strengthens us, in answer to our prayer. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Prayer for others The duty of praying for others is frequently inculcated in the New Testament. It is one of the obligations arising from the great law which makes it impossible for any of us to live an independent and an isolated life. We are members of one body; if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is strong and healthy, all the members share the health and strength. We are not fighting a solitary battle. We belong to a great army, and the fortunes of a regiment in a remote part of the field may give us an easy victory, or increase the chances of our defeat. We are to offer supplication for “ all the saints.” (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)A share in others’ moral victories through prayer There are Christian people whose life is so far removed from excitement, agitation, and peril, that they seem to have no opportunities for winning great moral victories; their powers are very limited, and they are not appointed to tasks of great difficulty and honour. Let them resolve to have their part in the righteousness of their comrades who face the fiercest dangers, and in the fame of the very chiefs and heroes of the great army of God. Let them pray for “ all the saints,” and their prayers will give courage, endurance, and invincible fidelity to those who are struggling with incessant temptations. Some Christian brother, who under the stress of bad trade and unexpected losses is almost driven to dishonesty, will preserve his integrity. Some young man, who is no longer sheltered by the kindly defence of a religious home, and who is surrounded by companions that are trying to drug his conscience, to excite his passions, and to drag him down into vice, will stand firm in his fidelity to Christ. Some poor woman, harassed by anxiety, worn down by unkindness, will receive strength to bear her sorrows with patience, and will rise to a lofty faith in the righteousness and love of God. The feverish passion for wealth will be cooled in some Christian merchant, and he will obey the words of Christ charging him to seek first God’ s kingdom and God’ s righteousness. Some Christian statesman will have a clearer vision of Divine and eternal things, and the vision will enable him to master the impulses of personal ambition and to care only for serving Christ by serving the State. Saintly souls will become more saintly. New fervour will kindle in many a heart already glowing with apostolic zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of men. New gifts of wisdom and of utterance will be conferred on some who are already conspicuous for their spiritual power and their spiritual achievements. By constant and earnest intercession for “ all the saints,” those who are living in quiet and obscure places may share the honours and victories of all their comrades, may have some part in the praise of their holiness, and some part in their final reward. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Christian watchfulness None are so likely to maintain watchful guard over their hearts and lives as those who know the comfort of living in near communion with God. They feel their privilege, and will fear losing it. They will dread falling from their high estate, and marring their own comforts by bringing clouds between themselves and Christ. He that goes on a journey with a little money about him takes little thought of danger, and cares little how late he travels. He, on the contrary, that carries gold and jewels, will be a cautious traveller; he will look well to his roads, his horses, and his company, and run no risks. The fixed stars are those that tremble most. The man that most fully enjoys the light of God’ s countenance will be a man tremblingly afraid of losing its blessed consolations, and jealously fearful of doing anything to grieve the Holy Ghost. (Bishop Ryle.)Watching unto prayer A mother sends a letter to her much-loved son in India; and how she watches for the return of an answer! A merchant invests an amount of money in some speculation, and how he watches for the success of the scheme, and the repayment of his money with satisfactory interest. A farmer for the first time sows his land with grain, and how he watches for the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear, and the ripened corn to be gathered into the barn; so should Christians, after they have sent up their prayers to heaven, wait and watch for the return of answers. (John Bate.)Praying always Prayer, then, though not a specific part of the Christian armour, is a necessary preparative to the battle. It is the tongue of war which is to summon the scattered forces together, to marshal them in their appointed order,. animating by its spirit stirring voice all the faculties and powers of the soul; and, in times of danger and fainting, sound an alarm in the ears of heaven. The true Christian soldier will love prayer even as the absent patriot loves the anthems of his native home. I. Let us, first, consider what is meant by this expression, “ praying always.” How can the Christian be always in prayer?1. Well, first, the expression means, that there should be a holy regularity in our habits of prayer. 2. Again, by “ praying always” is meant, that you should pray in every condition and circumstance of life; that is, in sickness you should pray for patience, and in health you should pray for a thankful heart; in prosperity you should pray that you should not forget God, and in adversity you should pray that God may not forget you. It is not enough to seek God in times of our tribulation only, we must seek Him in times of our wealth. 3. Further: by “ praying always,” no doubt, is meant, that we should make everything a matter of prayer. 4. Once more. By “ praying always,” the apostle means, that prayer should be the pervading habit of the Christian’ s life--that it should be as a leaven fermenting the whole substance of our moral being; a sentinel continually keeping watch over our unguarded moments; a sanctified enclosure fencing us round by the protection and presence of God. Prayer, like Him to whom it is addressed, knows nothing of our finite magnitude and relations. They are all lost sight of in their relation to the Infinite and the Eternal--to their bearing on our preparation for a state of everlasting existence. II. But let us consider, secondly, the comprehensive form of the precept which is here given--“ With all prayer and supplication.” The two words here chosen by the apostle are, without doubt, sometimes used interchangeably in Scripture. But there is an etymological difference between them, suggesting that we consider prayer as having reference to petitions for some good to be desired, whilst supplication be referred to petitions for evils to be avoided. Acting upon this definition, we are first taught to “ pray with all prayer” --that is, with prayer for all good things. And this rule should be extended even to those blessings which at first sight we might think it lawful to ask of God without limitation and without reserve--I mean those which relate to our spiritual happiness. “ With all prayer and supplication” --that is, as we have supposed, with all deprecation of evil--with prayer, that things really hurtful to us may be kept away. But here, as in the other case, God alone must be the judge of what the evil is. III. But note, in the last place, the internal assistance we are taught to look for in the performance of this duty--“ Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.” The expression is obviously the same as that which we have in the Epistle of Jude--“ Praying in the Holy Ghost” ; and it refers to the promised assistance of that Divine Agent when “ we know not what to pray for as we ought.” Praying in the Spirit, therefore, is to pray in that spirit of grace and supplication which the Holy Ghost alone can bestow--to pray in that “ spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!” And further, by praying in the Spirit is meant, that we should pray in a right mind--that we should pray fervently--that we should pray with a consciousness that there is an assisting Power to help us. For the Spirit of God not only originates holy desires, but it actuates, it maintains, it cherishes, it keeps alive all praying influences in the heart. Such, brethren, is the great duty with which the apostle shuts up his description of our spiritual warfare. He does not, indeed, make prayer a part of the spiritual equipment, because it is the life, and strength, and safeguard of the whole. You must gird on your sword, and pray; you must bind on your sandals, and pray; you must buckle on your breastplate, and pray. In all things there must be a simultaneous outgoing of that which is to give effect to all the weapons you employ in your spiritual encounter. No prayer, no victory. (D. Moore, M. A.) Ephesians 6:19 And for me, that utterance may be given unto me.Ministers dependent on the people’ s prayers You come to listen to me on Sunday, and I have nothing to say that adds vigour to faith, or fervour to love, or that enlarges your knowledge of duty or of God. It is plain that during the week I have had no clear vision of spiritual truth, or that, if I have, the vision has faded away. You are naturally disappointed, perhaps discontented. It is partly my fault. But is it not possible that the fault is as much yours as mine? If you had prayed for me with earnestness and faith, might not the vision of God bare come to me, and the revelation of spiritual truth and the baptism of fire? In the absence of your intercessions, God may have given me truth for myself, but not for you. Suppose that in the course of a few weeks after the Ephesian Christians received this Epistle Paul had been called to appear before the Roman emperor, and that his courage had failed, or that, if his courage had not failed, no wise and vigorous and penetrating words had occurred to him in defence of the honour of Christ and in illustration of the glory of the Christian redemption. The Ephesian Christians, when they heard of his failure, would have wondered how it could have happened that the great apostle had even momentarily lost his fearlessness and his power. But if they had forgotten to pray that “ utterance” might be given to him “ to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,” the apostle’ s failure might have been the result of their neglect. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) Ephesians 6:20I may speak boldly, Bold preaching 1. A bold preaching of the gospel is needed, because of what the gospel is in itself. It is nothing short of this: “ Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.” Now, such a message cannot be, and should not be, delivered with doubt and hesitation. The preacher who stands up to preach the gospel timidly and apologetically, we often feel almost it were better he did not preach it at all. 2. Bold preaching of the gospel is needed, because of the tendency of the times. From all quarters the cry comes, “ Speak to us smooth things, and prophesy deceit.” 3. Boldness is needed, because of the opposition that is offered. In proportion to the zeal and earnestness with which the gospel is proclaimed, we may conclude that the virulence of the opposition will increase. The whole world wilt soon be divided into two camps. It will be manifested in which of the two God is. (J. B. Forrest.)Boldness of faithful preachers I. Faithful ministers feel that they ought to preach the gospel boldly.1. This will appear, if we consider that they really believe the gospel is true. 2. Their knowledge, as well as belief of the gospel, carries conviction to their minds that they ought to preach it boldly. 3. Faithful ministers feel the sacred obligation of their sacred office, to preach the gospel boldly. II. Why they desire Christians to pray for them that they may preach the gospel boldly as they feel in conscience bound to preach it.1. Here the first reason that occurs is, because they are sensible of their own insufficiency to surmount the difficulties that they expect to find in their way of preaching the gospel with Christian freedom and confidence. 2. They desire Christians to pray for them because they feel their own insufficiency to preach the gospel successfully. Though they should preach the truth plainly and boldly as they ought to preach it, yet they cannot command success. They can only speak to the ear; they cannot speak to the conscience or to the heart. (1) Though the success of the apostles was partly owing to their preaching boldly, yet their preaching boldly must be ascribed partly to the Christians who perpetually prayed for them, that a Divine blessing might accompany their bold and faithful exertions. (2) This subject teaches Christians that they may do a great deal to assist their ministers in their laborious and arduous work. (3) Since faithful ministers need as well as desire the prayers of their fellow Christians, it is their privilege as well as duty to pray for them. (4) Since faithful ministers desire and request the professors of religion to pray for them, they must be extremely ungrateful and inconsistent if, instead of complying with such a reasonable desire and request, they complain of them for preaching boldly as they ought to preach. (N. Emmons, D. D.)Ministerial boldness A minister, without boldness, is like a smooth file, a knife without an edge, a sentinel that is afraid to let off his gun. If men will be bold in sin, ministers must be bold to reprove. (W. Gurnall, M. A.)Zeal in preaching Christ When liberty was offered to John Bunyan, then in prison, on condition of abstaining from preaching, he constantly replied, “ If you let me out today I shall preach again tomorrow.” Zeal in rebuke While Augustine acted as a presbyter at Hippo, under Valerius, his bishop, he was appointed by him to preach to the people, in order to reclaim them from riotous feasting on solemn days. He opened the Scriptures, and read to them the most vehement rebukes. He besought them, by the ignominy and sorrow which they brought upon themselves, and by the blood of Christ, not to destroy themselves, to pity him who spake to them with so much affection, and to show some regard to their venerable old bishop, who, out of tenderness to them, had charged him to instruct them in the truth. “ I did not make them weep,” says he, “ by first weeping over them, but while I was preaching their tears prevented mine. Then I own I could not restrain myself. After we had wept together I began to entertain great hope of their amendment.” He now varied from the discourse he had prepared, because the present softness of their minds seemed to require something different. In fine, he had the satisfaction to find the evil redressed from that very day. (Milner.)Bold preaching On one occasion the Rev. Frederick Robertson had been asked to preach at a church where the congregation was chiefly composed of those whom Pope describes as passing from “ a youth of frolics” to “ an old age of cards.” His text was, “ Love not the world, nor the things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” The sermon was most impressive and eloquent, and bold in its denunciation. Returning home, he asked a gentleman if he thought he was right in preaching it. The gentleman replied, “ It was very truthful, but, considering the character of the clergyman whose pulpit you occupied by courtesy, and the character of the congregation, not a discreet sermon. It might have been as truthful without apparently setting both minister and people at defiance.” “ You are quite right,” he answered; but the truth was this: I took two sermons with me into the pulpit, uncertain which to preach; but just as I had fixed upon the other, something seemed to say to me, ‘ Robertson, you are a craven, you dare not speak here what you believe’ ; and I immediately pulled out the sermon that you heard, and preached it as you heard it.” Ambassador John Basilowitz, the Czar of Russia, perceiving Sir Jeremy Bowes, the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, with his hat on in his presence, thus rebuked him: “ Have you not heard, sir, of the person I have punished for such an insult?” He had, in fact, punished him very savagely, by causing his hat to be nailed to his head. Sir Jeremy answered, “ Yes, sir; but I am the Queen of England’ s ambassador, who never yet stood bareheaded to any prince whatever. Her I represent, and on her justice I depend to do me right if I am insulted.” “ A brave fellow this,” replied the Czar, to his nobles, “ a brave fellow this, who dares thus to act and talk for his sovereign’ s honour. Which of you would do so for me?” (G. Ramsay.)A courageous missionary Some of the Indian chiefs having become the open enemies of the gospel, Mr. Elliot, sometimes called the Apostle of the American Indians, when in the wilderness, without the company of any other Englishman, was at various times treated in a threatening and barbarous manner by some of those men; yet his Almighty Protector inspired him with such resolution that he said, “ I am about the work of the Great God, and my God is with me; so that I fear neither you nor all the Sachims (or chiefs) in the country. I will go on, and do you touch me if you dare.” They heard him, and shrank away. (Baxendale’s Anecdotes.) Ephesians 6:23 Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith.Peace, love, and faith There is no better test of a man than the things that he wishes for the people that he loves most. He desires for them, of course, his own ideal of happiness. What do you desire most for those that are dearest to you? You parents, do you train up your children, for instance, so as to secure, or to do your best to secure, not outward prosperity, but these loftier gifts; and for yourselves, when you are forming your wishes, are these the things that you want most? “ Set your affections on things above,” and remember that whoso has that trinity of graces--peace, love, faith--is rich and blessed, whatsoever else he has or needs. And whoso has them not is miserable and poor. The Christian life in its higher vigour and excellence is rooted in faith. That faith associates to itself, and is inseparably connected with love, and the faith and love together issue in a deep restful tranquillity which nothing can break. Now let us look at these three things as the three greatest blessings that any can bear in their hearts, and wring out of time, sorrow, and change. I. First, the root of everything is a continuous and growing trust. Remember, that this prayer or wish of my text was spoken in reference to brethren; that is to say, to those who, by the hypothesis, already possessed Christian faith. And Paul wishes for them, and can wish for them, nothing better and more than the increase and continuousness of that which they already possess. The highest blessing that the brethren can receive is the enlargement and the strengthening of their faith. Now we talk so much in Christian teaching about this “ faith” that, I fancy, like a worn sixpence in a man’ s pocket, its very circulation from hand to hand has worn off the lettering. And many of us, from the very familiarity of the word, have only a dim conception of what it means. It may not be profitless, then, to remind you, first of all, that this faith is neither more nor less than a very familiar thing which you are constantly exercising in reference to one another, that is to say, simple confidence. There is nothing mysterious in it, it is simply the exercise of confidence, the familiar cement that binds all human relationship together, and makes men brotherly and kindred with their kind. Faith is trust, and trust saves a man’ s soul. Then, remember further, that the faith which is the foundation of everything is essentially the personal trust reposing upon a person, upon Jesus Christ. When you grasp Christ, the living Christ, and not merely the doctrine, for yours, then you have faith. Then, remember still further, that this personal outgoing of confidence, which is the action both of a man’ s will and of a man’ s intellect, to the person revealed to us in the great doctrines of the gospel--that this faith, if it is to be worth anything, must be continuous. And, still further, this faith ought to be progressive. Brethren, is it so with us? Let us ask ourselves that; and let us ask very solemnly this other question--If my faith has no growth, how do I know that it has got any life? And so let me remind you, further, that this faith, the personal outgoing of a man’ s intellect and will to the personal Saviour revealed in the Scriptures as the sacrifice for our sins, and the life of our spirits, which ought to be continuous and progressive, is the foundation of all strength, blessedness, goodness, in a human character; and if we have it we have the germ of all possible excellence and growth, not because of what it is in itself, for in itself it is nothing more than the opening of the heart to the reception of the celestial influences of grace and righteousness that He pours down. And, therefore, this is the thing that a wise man will most desire for himself, and for those that are dearest to him. II. And now, next, notice how inseparably associated with a true faith is love. The one is effect that never is found without its cause; the other is cause which never but produces its effect. These two are braided together by the apostle, as inseparable in reality and inseparable in thought. And that it is so is plain enough, and there follow from it some practical lessons that I desire to lay upon your hearts and my own. There are, then, here, two principles, or rather two sides of one thought; no faith without love, no love without faith. III. And now, lastly, these two inseparably associated graces of faith and love bring with them, and lead to, the third--peace. It seems to be but a very modest, sober-tinted wish which the apostle here has for his brethren, that the highest and best thing he can ask for them is only quiet. Very modest by the side of joy and excitement, in their coats of many colours; and yet the deepest and truest blessing that any of us can have--peace. It comes to us by one path, and that is by the path of faith and love. These two bring peace with God, peace in our inmost spirits, the peace of self-annihilation and submission, the peace of obedience, the peace of ceasing from your own works, and entering, therefore, into the rest of God. Trust is peace. There is no tranquillity like that of feeling “ I am not responsible for this; He is; and I rest myself on Him.” Love is peace. There is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of someone that is dear to us, and in whom we can confide. But ah! brother, every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. Self-surrender is peace. It is our wills that trouble us. Disturbance comes, not from without, but from within. When the will bows, when I say, “ Be it then as Thou wilt,” when in faith and love I cease to strive, to murmur, to rebel, to repine, and enter into His loving purposes, then there is peace. Obedience is peace. To recognize a great will that is sovereign, and to bow myself to it, not because it is sovereign, but because it is sweet, and sweet because I love it, and love Him whose it is. That is peace. And then, whatever may be outward circumstances, there shall be “ peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation” ; and deep in my soul I may be tranquil, though all about me may be the hurly-burly of the storm. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)Christian peace There are depths in the ocean which no tempest ever stirs; they are beyond the reach of all storms which sweep and agitate the surface of the sea. There are heights in the blue sky to which no cloud ever ascends, where no tempest ever rages, where all is perpetual sunshine. Each of these is an emblem of the soul which Jesus visits; to whom He speaks His peace, whose fear He dispels, and whose lamp of hope He trims. Love and faith Faith and love are like a pair of compasses. Faith, like one point, fastens on Christ as the centre; and love, like the other, goes the round in all the works of holiness and righteousness. Ephesians 6:24 Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.Grace and love Everything you need to make you good, wise, humble, lovely, useful, and happy, is comprehended in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you care for yourself and your immediate friends only, and not for others also, is it not that you have too little of the grace of Jesus Christ? Or if you show a self-loving partiality for your own Church, and a prejudice against other Churches, would not more of the grace of the Lord Jesus enlarge your heart, and correct the one-sidedness of your character? If you carry yourself haughtily towards anyone, is not that a sign that your own spirit is strong, and the grace of Christ weak in you? Do not your impatience, irritability, and anger, give evidence of your deficiency in grace? If you are fretful or downcast under suffering, would not more of the grace of Jesus produce in you an exactly contrary condition? If you surrender your tongue to foolish talking, does it not argue an absence of the dignity and wisdom which are in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? If you fall into any vice or sin whatsoever, would not a greater measure of His grace restrain you? It is clear, therefore, that the grace of Christ is precisely what you want, to make you everything that you should be. It is everything that can relate you happily to God and advantageously to man. One word expresses the whole circle of your wants. For that one word, Grace, stands for “ the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” It is the virtue of His all-perfect humanity operating within you, the one thing that roots, grows, and opens in us every excellence and charm of spirit and character. (J. Pulsford.)Love for Christ 1.Love for Christ is the common life of all true Christians. In whatever else they differ from each other, in their creeds, in their modes of worship, in some of their conceptions of how the Divine life in man is originated, how it should be disciplined, and how it is manifested, they are alike in this: they all love the Lord Jesus Christ. The controversies and divisions of Christendom have gone a long way towards destroying the unity of the Church; but in love for Christ all Christians are one. 2. And love for Christ is immortal. The religious passion which is created by sensuous excitements, whether these excitements are addressed to the eye or to the ear, whether they heat the blood or intoxicate the imagination, is transitory. It has in it the elements of corruption. But true love for Christ is rooted in all that is deepest and divinest in human nature. It is immortal, for it belongs to that immortal life which comes to us by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. It will not decay with the decay of physical vigour. It will triumph over death; and will reveal the fulness of its strength, and the intensity of its fervour in those endless ages which we hope to spend with Christ in glory. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)Benediction to those who love Jesus I. Consider on what accounts Christ is entitled to our love.1. He is a Divine Person. 2. His mediatorial offices entitle Him to our love. A sense of our wants adds worth to an object suited to relieve them. Jesus is such a Saviour as we need. 3. Christ is an object of our love on account of His kindness to us. II. Sincerity is an essential qualification of our love to Christ.1. Our love to Christ must be real, not pretended. 2. Our love to Christ must be universal; it must respect His whole character. 3. Sincere love to Christ is supreme. 4. Sincere love is persevering. 5. True love to Christ is active. Not a cold and indolent opinion of Him; but such a sensible regard to Him as interests the heart, and influences the life. III. How sincere love to Christ will discover itself.1. It will make us careful to please Him. 2. This holy principle will be accompanied with humility. 3. If we love Christ, we will follow His steps, and walk as He walked. 4. Our love to Him will animate us to promote His interest, and oppose His enemies. 5. This principle will express itself in a devout attendance on His ordinances, especially the Holy Communion, the Sacrament of His love. 6. Love to Christ will make us long for His reappearing. IV. The benediction connected with this temper. It is called “ grace” --a term of large and glorious import. It comprehends all the blessings which the gospel reveals to the sons of men, and promises to the faithful in Christ.1. One great privilege contained in this grace is justification before God. 2. Another privilege is the presence of the Divine Spirit. 3. They who love Christ have free access to the throne of grace, and a promise that they shall be heard and accepted there. 4. They who love Christ in sincerity will receive the gift of a happy immortality. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)Christian catholicity I. The characters described.1. The object of their love “ The Lord Jesus Christ.” (1) Lord, Said to be “ Lord of all.”(2) Jesus. This signifies “ Saviour,” and it was given to Him on account of His mission and work.(3) Christ. Signifies “ Anointed.” The anointed Saviour. The Christ predicted, promised, expected, at length revealed. 2. The nature of their love--“ Love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.” Here is the affection and the kind of affection. Now, love to Christ-- (1) Is always the result of faith in His love to us.(2) Love to Christ is always an evident emotion.(3) Is sincere. It may be rendered “ uncorrupted,” without alloy. It means real, in opposition to pretended love--intense, in opposition to languid--constant, in opposition to vacillating. II. The affectionate prayer expressed.1. All the saints of the Lord Jesus require this grace. None independent of it. 2. The grace is provided for all the disciples of Jesus. “ Out of His fulness have we all,” etc. 3. We should seek sincerely in prayer that all may possess it. And that for the following reasons:-- (1) All who love, etc., are loved of God and chosen of Him.(2) They are all our brethren and sisters in Christ.(3) We are in circumstances of common need and dependence.(4) We have all one Spirit.(5) We are destined to one common inheritance. Application:1. We see the true nature of apostolical Christianity. A religion of love.2. We perceive the unhappy influences of sectarianism. (J. Burns, D. D.)The power of love This is the climax of a most noble Epistle; and there is no letter of Paul that came from the very centre of Divine love with more richness, power, and brilliancy, and in which he deduces more clearly and more numerously the evidences and fruits of a truly Christian life, than in this one to the Ephesians. The conception of a Christ-like life, its fruitions, its trials and victories, is not more grandly set forth anywhere. The last note of this symphony is, “ Grace be upon all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity” --as if loving the Lord Jesus Christ was at once the consummation which all duties lead toward, and the source or inspiration from which all duties spring, so that it comprehended all the details which he had been passing through; and as if it were a resumption or resume of the whole of what he had said before.1. This love to Christ, as a great soul-force, accomplishes that which is indispensable to the whole ripening of the human soul--namely, whatever unites it in vital sympathy to God. The human soul, without personal union with God, is sunless and summerless, and can never blossom nor ripen. To bring this lower order in creation up to a Divine union, so that it shall make the leap from the animal to the spiritual sphere, from the lower to the higher condition, is the one problem of history. It cannot be done by reason, although reason is largely subordinated, and is auxiliary. But the reason, dominant, can never bring the soul into vital union with God. Neither can this be done by conscience. Conscience has power: but not the power to create sympathy. No man will be joined to God by conscience; contrariwise, men will, more likely, by mere conscience, which excites fear, be driven away from God. It cannot, either, be done by awe and reverence, which are adjuncts, but which, while they give toning and shadow to the higher feelings, give them no solar heat. They tend to lower and humble the soul; not to inspire and elevate it. They have their place among other feelings. Neither have they found God, nor have they ever led a soul to find Him--still less to join Him. Love, as a disposition, as a constant mood, has a welding power which can bring the soul to God, and fix it there. Finding Him, it can bring the soul into communion with Him, so that there shall be a personal connection between the Divine nature and the human nature. Love, then, is the one interpreter between God and man. 2. Love, also, is the one facile harmonizer of the internal discords of the human soul. It induces an atmosphere in us in which all feelings find their summer and so their ripeness. 3. Love is the only experience which keeps the soul always in a relation of sympathy and of harmony with one’ s fellows; and so it is the truest principle of society. If society ever rises out of its lower passions and entanglements into a pure and joyous condition, it will be by the inspiration of a Divine love. This alone will enable it to convert knowledge to benefit. 4. Love is almost the only prophetic power of the soul. It is the chief principle that inspires hope of immortality. No man ever loved his wife, and buried her, saying, with any composure, “ There is no immortality for her.” No man ever bore his child to the grave, though it were one that he could carry in the palm of his hand, that everything in his nature did not rise up, and say, “ Let me find it again.” No man ever proudly loved a heroic father, and consented that that father should go to extinction. The flame of love, once shining, no one can endure to believe will ever go out. Love, therefore, teaches the soul to long for, and to believe in, a better land. If you think that in this diverse but brief exposition of the power of love, I have transcended good reason, listen and see whether I have equalled the declarations of Scripture on the same subject. If you think I have been extravagant, is not the apostle more extravagant? (1 Corinthians 13:1-13.) Upon all, then, who have learned this sacred secret; upon all who have been scholars to Christianity and to the Lord Jesus Christ, and have learned to love Christ in perpetuity, permanently--upon all these, “ grace,” from God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and grace from all Christian men, in godly fellowship. “ Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity!” Grace be upon all theologians that tend to create love; upon all services that tend to inspire love; upon all organizations that tend to promote love. No grace upon anything else. That which does not touch love does not touch anything religious which is worth our consideration--certainly not worth our suffering for. Violent attacks are made on men, in order to change them; but that is not the best way to change them, nor to bring them into a redeeming spirit of love. Little wilt be done in this world to change men by controversy. We must make that chief in us, and in the Church, which we believe to be chief in Christianity--namely, the spirit of love. We must intensify this feeling. If we would return toward it, we must reform by it. We must produce an atmosphere, we must create a public sentiment, such that churches will feel the superiority of love over organization, and ordinance, and doctrine. (H. W. Beecher.)Love to Christ Test your love to Christ by the love you have to some dear friend, and you will find the proofs of it--if ye “ love Him in sincerity.”1. If a man be very dear to me, I love to be with him. It is not enough that I behold the window where he sometimes appears; I want to see him. What are ordinances but the lattices--the windows through which Christ makes Himself known, and is seen by His saints and disciples? You read the Word of God; it is God’ s appointed way of finding Him. You hear the Word of God; it is God’ s appointed medium for seeing Him. You bend the knee in prayer; it is God’ s appointed medium for meeting Him. Then I would say, you “ love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity,” because nothing short of Himself will ever satisfy your souls. 2. If by any unkindness to a dear friend we have caused him to withdraw from us, so that we see his face no more for a time, we search after him, and we cannot rest till we have found him. My dear hearers, see the Church of God, as discovered in the fifth chapter of that precious book--the Song of Solomon of Solomon. “ I opened to my Beloved; but my Beloved had withdrawn Himself, and was gone; my soul failed when He spake; I sought Him, but I could not find Him; I called Him, but He gave me no answer.” But she went on seeking Him till she found Him. She did not give over her search, till she was enabled to say, in the third verse of the next chapter--“ My Beloved is mine: He feedeth among the lilies.” True love cannot rest till it has found. We go to our family devotions, we seek the Lord in secret prayer, we mingle with the saints of God, but we cannot find rest till we have found Him. 3. Observe again: if I have a dear and beloved friend, I love his likeness. Although it maybe but a poor and feeble likeness, with many failures in it, yet there may be something about it which reminds me of him; and I love it because I love him. So do I love the saints of God. It is but a poor likeness--a faint resemblance; yet I see Christ in it. I see something of His meekness, tenderness, and love in it: and though it be but a poor picture, it reminds me of Him; and I love it for His sake. It is the true principle of brotherly love. 4. I am conscious of this principle too; that if I have a dear and beloved friend, I am concerned that others shall love him, and speak and think well of him; and that their hearts should be drawn out towards him. And so it is with the children of God. Observe in the first of John, that no sooner had Andrew heard the mighty call, than he searched after Simon; and no sooner had Philip heard it, than he searched after Nathanael. It marks out a principle, and exhibits the truth of what I am now speaking of. Ye parents that hear me, could ye but see in your dear child the breaking down of its proud heart, the humiliation of spirit, and withdrawment to prayer; could ye but see that beloved friend bow before God, it would be more to you than a thousand worlds. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)An apostolic conclusion This apostolic conclusion is a reminder of-- I. That peace which comes down from God’ s heaven alone upon our earth, into our hearts. II. That love, which is pure, holy, Divine. III. That faith, which, inseparable from love, living and active through it, born of God, alone is pleasing to God, alone gives to God His glory, alone exalts the soul to Him. IV. That grace, through which, first and alone, there comes to us all true, eternal, blessed good, continuing ours out of pure mercy and unto eternity. (Passavant.)Sincerity defined In the palmy days of Roman prosperity, when her merchants lived in their marble palaces on the banks of the Tiber, there was a sort of emulation in the grandeur and artistic adornment of their dwellings. Good sculptors were eagerly sought after and employed. But tricks were sometimes practised then as now; thus, if the sculptor came upon a flaw in the marble, or chipped a piece out by accident, he had a carefully prepared wax with which he filled in the chink, and so carefully fixed it as to be imperceptible. In process of time, however, heat or damp would affect the wax, and reveal its presence there. The consequence was, that when new contracts were made for commissioned works of art, a clause was added to the effect that they were to be sine cera, or without cement. Hence we have here a word picture of great moral significance. (J. Tesseyman.)Devotion with selfishness God is in the hypocrite’ s mouth, but the world is in his heart, which he expects to gain through his good reputation. I have read of one that offered his Prince a great sum of money to have leave once or twice a day to come into his presence and only say, “ God save your majesty!” The prince, wondering at this large offer for so small a favour, asked him what advantage this would afford him. “ O sire,” saith he, “ this, though I have nothing else at your hands, will get me a name in the country for one who is a great favourite at court, and such an opinion will help me to more at the year’ s end than it costs me for the purchase.” Thus some, by the name they get for great saints, advance their worldly interests, which lie at the bottom of all their profession. (W. Gurnall, M. A.)A service of love A century ago, in the north of Europe, stood an old cathedral, upon one of the arches of which was a sculptured face of wondrous beauty. It was long hidden, until one day the sun’ s light striking through a slanted window revealed its matchless features. And ever after, year by year, upon the days when for a brief hour it was thus illuminated, crowds came and waited, eager to catch but a glimpse of that face. It had a strange history. When the cathedral was being built an old man, broken with the weight of years and care, came and besought the architect to let him work upon it. Out of pity for his age, but fearfullest his failing sight and trembling touch might mar some fair design, the master set him to work in the shadows of the vaulted roof. One day they found the old man asleep in death, the tools of his craft laid in order beside him, the cunning of his right hand gone, the face upturned to this other marvellous face which he had wrought--the face of one whom he had loved and lost in early manhood. And when the artists and sculptors and workmen from all parts of the cathedral came and looked upon that face, they said, “ This is the grandest work of all; love wrought this!” (St. Louis Christian Advocate.)