Living words; or, Unwritten sermons

Preface

The author of these discourses, Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D., was an eminent minister of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was very rich in natural endowments. His beneficent Creator gave to him a capacious, symmetrical, and active mind, a gentle and philanthropic spirit, a social and sympathetic nature. These qualified him eminently for friendship. They made him loving and lovely.

Earnest in his general life, John M'Clintock was especially so in reference to its supreme pursuit — the proclaiming of "the kingdom of God, and his righteousness." Converted in his youth, immediately thereafter impressed by the Holy Ghost that he was chosen of Jesus to be one of his embassadors, coveting earnestly the best gifts, and seeking diligently, by searching the Scriptures, meditation, prayer, and the use of the means of grace, to become a workman that needed not to be ashamed, he obtained a profound knowledge of the things of God and a deep experience of his saving mercy. By grace he rose up into the fellowship of the spiritual, the Divine, the Infinite. He walked with God.

In his early youth he had a thirst for knowledge.

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His conversion to God only intensified this desire. He was the more earnest in the cultivation of his mental powers because he had a higher service to which to devote them. He therefore, through great embarrassments, courageously, energetically, and persistently sought a thorough collegiate education until he attained it. His student-life lasted until his death. He consequently became a man of varied, accurate, and profound scholarship. In the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, of experimental and practical theology, of Christian ethics and Church history, he was excelled by but few.

Dr. M'Clintock's studious and devoted life did not lead him into seclusion. He mingled with society, traveled and resided in foreign lands. With all these advantages he studied human nature most carefully and philosophically. He understood well the character and condition of our race. He knew what is in man : his religious instincts, the longings of his heart after God and spiritual and eternal verities : how these aspirations are depressed by the flesh, by the world, and by the powers of darkness : how hope and fear alternate in the heart : how light and shade pass over the mind : how men struggle to be good, and are borne away by their passions : how they reach out after something pure, and noble, and saving, and satisfying, but do not lay hold of it. He felt how much they need a pastor's sympathy and assistance. By his personal experience, and the study of the Holy Scriptures, and his converse with the disciples of Christ, he was well versed in the warfare of be-

Preface. 5

lievers. He understood how their natural weakness lessened their spiritual strength ; how the world tempts them and Satan assaults them ; how keen are their conflicts, and how sore are their trials ; how they oftentimes yearn for sympathy and need a word of cheer.

We have drawn this brief and imperfect sketch of the author of these sermons that the reader may see how well he was qualified by natural endowments, by religious experience, by literary attainments, by theological knowledge, by his understanding of human nature, and his acquaintance with religious warfare, to preach Christ, to rightly divide the word of truth, " to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood " — to be a Christian Pastor.

These sermons were preached by Dr. M'Clintock when he was Pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, New York, in his ordinary Sabbath ministrations. They were delivered extemporaneously and reported by a stenographer. The reports were preserved by Dr. M'Clintock, but were not revised by him. They are very well reported. Still they are not exact reproductions of the sermons throughout. Stenography is a great and useful art, and has reached a good degree of perfection, but is not yet capable of giving to us the original discourse or an exact copy. Photography is a wonderful art, and produces wonderful likenesses, but it cannot duplicate our persons. We are greatly indebted to the artist for these photographs of Dr. M'Clintock's sermons. In them we see him as an

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embassador of Christ, praying men to be reconciled to God. We see him watching for souls as one that must give account ; with all plainness instructing, reproving, and exhorting believers, and urging them to go on to perfection. We see him as a wise masterbuilder polishing the lively stones, and working them into right positions in the spiritual temple.

The sermons are eminently practical, yet they treat of the cardinal doctrines of the Gospel, and of some of the sublimest truths of Christianity. But as the author had both learning and good sense, the style is so clear and simple that the common mind will be edified by their perusal. Indeed, the book would be invaluable in our Sunday-school libraries. It is a rich addition to the evangelical literature of the Church. Its circulation will not be limited to the denomination of which he was so beloved a minister, but the volume will be sought and read by the spiritually-minded and liberal-hearted of other Churches. So he, being dead, will continue to speak to living multitudes. E. S. Janes.

Contents

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I. The Visit of the M agians . 9

II. The Song of the Angels 30

I. The Visit Of The Magians

We have seen His Star in the East, and are come to worship Him.

Matthew ii, 2.

The season of Advent, the time just before and just after Christmas, including Christmas itself, is observed throughout almost all parts of the Christian Church. In the farthest East, the earlier home of Christianity, you will find it observed ; in the Roman Church, throughout all its vast dominions, you will find it observed ; and in the Protestant Churches generally, except in those which, by perhaps a natural reaction, not so much from Romanism as from Romanizing Protestantism in England, in the time of Archbishop Laud and of Charles II., were driven into the other •extreme of Puritanism. But even among these the Church is coming back again to the observance of those times observed of old, which are founded in the Scripture.

The Methodist Church has always, when she has come up to the usage of her founders, observed io Living Words.

the blessed Christmas time. Luther made this distinction between the festivals established by the Church of Rome in honor of men, and those which had their roots in the Gospel narrative itself; that the one should go away with Rome and Popery, and the other — those which had their roots in the Gospel — should and ought to be retained in the Church. See how it works. In this season of Christmas and Advent, in the Churches which observe it, the minds of children, and even of the middle aged and the old, are turned of necessity to think upon the birth of Christ, and the circumstances which preceded, accompanied, and followed it. Gifts are given, and observances made of various kinds, all tending to bring up these things in the mind and inspire the imagination, especially of children, if we always, as we should do, teach children the use of these things : that we give our gifts on Christmas-day because on Christmas-day God gave his greatest gift to the world, and that, by a very beautiful association throughout Christendom, the day is appropriated for kindly gifts from a father to his children, from brother to sister, from friend to friend ; and every gift given in a Christian way, and with a true Christian remembrance, brings the mind to think of that great gift which embraces all others, for if he freely gave us his only Son, " how shall he not with him also freely give us all things."

The text which I have chosen is one of the most beautiful which refer to this Advent season. It is the festival of the incarnation, of God manifest in the flesh. Our text speaks of the visit of the Magians, the wise men from the East, and their declaration when they arrived at Jerusalem, " We have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him." This text is appropriated, by those Churches which carry festivals further than we are inclined to do, to the Feast of the Epiphany. In the earlier ages the Epiphany was observed at Christmas by the Western Church, and in the Eastern Church on the 6th of January, and both united in fixing the latter date for the Feast of the Epiphany — the manifestation of God through Christ to the Gentiles. The text is beautifully appropriate to the time of Christmas. This star, which appeared to the wise men in the East, appeared to them at the time of the birth of the Lord Jesus ; and we cannot more appropriately remember the birth of Christ, nor can we get from the history of that birth its full lessons more beautifully, than we can in connection with this visit of the wise men from the East.

The narrative itself is an exquisitely beautiful one. It is one which seizes upon the heart of the world by a natural sympathy ; and you cannot speak of any thing that will attract little children's minds, or inflame youthful imaginations more quickly, in all the Gospel story, than to tell them of the star ai the East. And so throughout all Christian poetry, this theme has been taken up in song by some of the most quick and vivid imaginations in the Church. And in the realms of profane poetry, in art, in legends, in sculpture and painting, for age after age, the visit of the wise men has been one of those themes of which the worlcf never tires, and never will. All the elements of beauty are contained in this simple narrative. Let us contemplate it this morning, and not alone that our eyes may be charmed by its beauty — that we may gather up what poetry has clustered about it — but that we may get at its deep and spiritual significance.

Let us first see what is meant, and then gather from that meaning what lessons we can of practical duty and privilege for ourselves. And these are the points of the sermon.

What did this visit of the wise men mean ? What does it signify especially in the scheme of salvation ? Its great significance is — what the Church makes it to be in the festival of the Epiphany — the revelation of God to the Gentiles. Look at the persons to whom this manifestation was made. Who were they ? Wise men from the East. They were not Jews, remember that ; they were not Jews, but Gentiles. The word here translated wise men, is the same as that in other places translated magician ; so that the word has two meanings, a good one and a bad one. The magicians formed a sacred caste, or college, under the Medo-Persian Kings and under the Chaldeans. Their position was a high one ; they were the teachers and priests of the people, and the leading philosophers for many ages. It was considered a necessary part of a princely education among the Median Kings, and afterward among the Medo-Persians, that the young prince should be instructed in the peculiar wisdom of the Magians, and none but the scions of royal houses were permitted to know all the mysterious learning they had acquired. This learning embraced every thing in the higher culture of those ages, and was known in its development as the law or laws of the Medes and Persians, which changed not. The laws of these Eastern nations were the fruit and outgrowth, and at the same time the criterion, of the culture and civilization of the people, and its very highest culture and highest civilization. Daniel did not hesitate to become the chief of the Magians when, at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, who had called him to the head of their college, he undertook the office and filled it nobly. In later ages the influence of these people declined ; but still, at the coming of Christ, I think there can be no question that these oriental philosophers represented the very highest culture of the land in which they lived. Their studies included astronomy, connecting with it astrology ; for then men almost invariably believed that the stars had a specific influence on the course of human life, and were indices and exponents of human life, and might be used to prognosticate the future. The stars were believed to foretell or accompany great political changes, the rise and fall of empires, and the birth of great princes who should be of vast importance in the history of civilization. These were the men of whom our text speaks in the simple words, " There came wise men from the East unto Jerusalem."

I have told you triat the substance of this text is the revelation of God to the Gentiles. These men came as embassadors from the heathen world. They brought with them not only myrrh and frankincense and gold, but the long-treasured anticipations of ages, the unconscious yearning of the Gentile nations, going on from year to year, and century after century, first under the impulse of the earlier prophecies recorded in the Bible, and then under the combined influence of all science and learning and art — all bringing up men to the great consciousness that there must and should be some day a great Deliverer to raise up the human race from the depth of its degradation. They came, the embodiment of heathendom, to see the new light that was to dawn upon the nations in the day of their deepest darkness ; since for them this star, that they saw in the far East, as they were watching the courses of the planets in the study of astronomy, this star was the voice of God as spoken by his prophet, " Arise, shine ; for thy light is come ; and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." And so, brethren, these men came the representatives and embassadors of all heathendom, and came at the bidding of God. They did not come as volunteers, as philosophers to search out a mystery, or add to the stores of their learning. No ; they came because they saw the star — they came because they were drawn by the grace of God. O how beautifully, here in the very opening of the history, before any of those who surrounded the cradle of the infant, no matter what thoughts they had of his Messiahship, had dreamed at all of the unfolding of the vast purpose of God for the conversion of the Gentiles and the bringing in of the "isles of the sea," — how beautifully is here illustrated that infinite grace which was to reach all mankind ! ^

The sign itself, and its peculiar fitness, deserve a moment's consideration. You remember I said they were astronomers .watching the stars. Here is a beautiful passage in Donne (who, in the midst of so much quaintness, has so much expressive fullness) bearing upon this point : " God speaks in such forms and phrases as may best work upon those to whom he speaks. David, who was a shepherd before,

God took to feed his people. To the Magians, given to study the stars, God gave a star to be their guide to Christ at Bethlehem. To those who followed him to Capernaum for meat, Christ speaks of spiritual ' food.' To the Samaritan woman at the well, he preached of the ' water of salvation.' Christ makes heaven all things to all men that he may gain all."

The fitness of this star as a representation is still more apparent when we come to consider prophecy, and history corresponding to prophecy — "I am the bright and morning star " — and the prophecies of the Old Testament which had their fulfillment in him, and that wonderful prophecy, which came out of that dumb prophet Balaam, who had so little apprehension of the great part he had to play in the development of God's Church : " I shall see him, but not now : I shall behold him, but not nigh : there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel." This idea runs throughout the whole current of prophecy. Let us listen to it in that grand sixtieth chapter of Isaiah : " For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people : but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising : all they from Sheba shall come : they shall bring gold and incense ; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord." And again in the forty-fifth chapter : " The labor of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine : they shall come after thee ; they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee ; and there is none else, there is no God." And again in the Psalms : " They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him ; and his enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents : the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him : all nations shall serve him."

And so the current of these prophecies mingled with the current thought, not merely of the Jews, but of all nations. These wise men of the East had doubtless been imbued with the spirit of these predictions, and they carried along with them, age after age, these promises that there should come a king, to whom all other kings should bow ; that there should come a wise man, before whom Solomon's wisdom should " pale its ineffectual fires ; " a Redeemer, who should bring not merely the chosen people, but the ends of the earth, to' fear him.

And so they came ; but their visit was not appreciated or understood by those who surrounded the cradle of the infant Jesus, who received this visit as in the natural order of things, and by no means appreciated its force and meaning. Even the disciples had to be taught afterward by very hard lessons that the Gentiles were to come in ; that the scepter had departed from Judah, and the Jews were no longer God's elect ; that the elect had become reprobate, and the reprobate elect ; that the Gentiles were to be grafted on the living vine. As Paul writes, in the second chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians : " Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past ; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." The breadth and length, then, of this visit of the Magians we find was, that it was the type of the great glory of Christendom that Christianity was to be for all the nations, with no limit of place or of race ; that the religion founded by this infant lying in the cradle was to be the religion of all classes of men in all times until time should be no more.

When on their journey they, at each sunset, saw the star in the East they followed it nightly, watching where it would lead them, and it led them on and on, perhaps for two or three months, until they reached Jerusalem. They expected that it would lead them to Jerusalem, because they had heard that out of

Judea the King of the world should come, and was to be a King of the Jews. What did they naturally do ? As soon as they came to Jerusalem they went to the royal palace, supposing this new monarch was to be born there. You have heard how Herod was troubled and disturbed when they came there, though they came not to trouble or disturb him, but to ask for this new prince in the most natural way, and in the most natural place — in the palace of the King, on Mount Zion, surrounded by the mountains. But how was it ? Not there was Christ born. No, no ; for Jerusalem there was to be no such glory as that the Saviour should be born there, but only the shame of being the place where he should die. Jerusalem, which had covered herself with so many idolatries, and was at last to cover herself with so vast a crime, was not to be honored with being the birthplace of the Saviour. So they followed the star again, and found that it led them to Bethlehem, a little village not known in history, but mentioned in prophecy. " And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah : for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel." And again : " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." And now the glory of Jerusalem was ended forever. There was no hope of a king, in the sense of the Jewish idea of a king, ever again to live in Jerusalem. The palace stood, to be sure ; but palace and temple alike were soon to be whelmed in ruin, which should know no resurrection. The glory had departed, and departed evermore. And so the wise men went not to Jerusalem, but to Bethlehem, and came there, bringing their gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

In this narrative we find the manifestation of God to the Gentiles most beautifully typified. Now let us gather the fitting lessons from this great truth. The first is, that as at that time the highest culture and highest learning were brought by the Magians humbly to the cradle where the Lord Jesus lay, so in all times of the Church, and more and more as the Church advances to her universal dominion, will all science and learning remain tributary to the progress of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are told that kings used to come, and queens, from north and south, and east and west, to listen to the,wisdom of Solomon. In that cradle, in the humble home at Bethlehem of Judea, there lay a wiser than Solomon, and, under the guidance of the star, the wise men from the East recognized their Master. Could it be without an idea of this typical meaning that these wise men were brought to humble themselves there ? You will find, throughout all the history of the Lord Jesus, some element to indicate his

The Visit of the Magiaus. 21

glory in every act of his humiliation. So in this birth of his in the stable at Bethlehem, amid the humble surroundings that showed his humiliation, here was this gleam to show that all science and art, all learning, all taste and culture and wealth, were to be made submissive to that infant child. The wise men came, the type of all wise men : they brought their gifts, the type of all the world's riches ; their frankincense, the highest offering that could be made before the temple of any god ; the myrrh, which embalms and preserves the remains of those we cherish ; the gold, the embodiment of all value, the highest representation of value then as it is now, and as it always will be. They brought all these and offered them before the cradle of the infant Jesus. Do we not find here the lesson for the Church, that all learning and culture and art, all growth in civilization and advancement in taste, should be made tributary to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus ? that they have no beauty otherwise ? And again we find, conversely, that all art and civilization and advancement in modern ages has been due to this very Christianity of which this cradle in Bethlehem was the beginning. All that distinguishes us from the heathen and uncivilized nations has its roots in Christianity. If our laws are better than those of the Hindoos, it is because we have the laws of Moses and the life of Christ ; if our art is purer than the art of the Chinese, it is because the roots of this purity are to be found in the histories of this Gospel, just such histories as the visit of the Magians ; if the painters of modern Christendom, of a century or two ago, excelled the painters of past periods and ancient glory, it was because the Christian idea permeated art at that time more than at any time before or since ; and, just in proportion as the Christian idea itself permeates the art and learning of an age, will the art and learning of that age be a permanent and abiding culture.

I am not speaking in riddles, or making mere assertions. The more you study art and learning, the more you will find that the Christian idea is the centre of them all, and as the Christian idea fades away these will fade. Painters do not paint now as painters did a century or two ago, and architects do not build as architects built centuries ago ; and there are no structures of modern date equal to those grand edifices which grew up three, or four, or five hundred years ago under the hands of men whose names are now for the most part buried in oblivion, edifices of imperial magnificence, and wondrous and almost celestial beauty. And why ? Because painters did not say, " How shall I make money by this art of mine ?" Architects did not ask, " How shall I get fame by this art of mine ? " Even though they did aspire to fame, their names are forgotten ; but you will find, if you go into the deep cellars of some of these vast and mighty structures, in the corner a foundationstone, and on it perhaps the architect's name, and perhaps not ; but you will find carved on it a Latin sentence, which says, " This building is for the greater glory of God." And just in proportion as that idea filled the mind of the artist as, in his midnight musings, he endeavored to bring out from his rich imagination and clear thought a structure that should last forever, just as his mind was exalted and his taste purified by this grand conception, do we find his conception itself to be elevated, and the execution of it to be a thing of beauty — beauty to last for evermore.

Let us learn on this Christmas-day to take all our learning, art, and cultivation, as God gives us opportunities to get it, and bring it all to the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus our blessed Redeemer. And then, when any man comes to you with any proposition which shall divorce Christianity from art or from learning, a proposition for a school that shall be without a Bible, a college without a prayer, a university which shall separate secular studies from sacred, and in which n\en shall be taught the learning of the Greeks and Romans, but not the word of God, tell him the wise men came from the East to Jerusalem with their gold and frankincense and myrrh, and laid all before the cradle of the infant Jesus. O how grandly does our duty as Christian men come up before us in the presence of such thoughts as these ! that to us is given the culture of the nation, and intrusted the education of the future by the hand of God : to say what this great America shall be. What it shall be, depends upon the Churches of the time ; what it shall be, depends upon the schools ; what it shall be, depends upon the colleges and universities of the time ; what it shall be, depends upon the newspapers ; and what these shall be, that is for you to say. God help you to say it with a just sense of your responsibilities ! God help you to do as these wise men did when they came from the East ! humbly, and with what frankincense you have, with what myrrh you may possess, with what gold he has given, with what lustre of intellect you may be endowed, to come with it all to the cradle of the child Jesus, and say, " Here, Lord, they are thine ; take them to advance thy Church and glorify thy name."

Observe that the shepherds, who were Jews, received a revelation of a quite different kind from this revelation which the Magians received, who were Gentiles and philosophers. The shepherds were watching their flocks at night, and they had been accustomed for thousands of years to revelations by prophets, by angelic ministries, by dreams and visions ; so when the news was to come to the shepherds as the type of the Jewish people— for we have both