Sermons on Special Occasions

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

II

But, secondly, of all the thoughts or principles which agitafce and revolutionize society, the mightiest are those which partake of a moral or spiritual nature. They are then based on all that is most profound and central in human nature, and draw to themselves the whole depth and mass of our being.

A spiritual truth is greater than a throne, and subverts thrones. It has a throne of its own in the spirit and souls of men. "There is no power on earth" — ^said one of the greatest of men — " that setteth up a throne or chair of state in the spirits or souls of men, but this only." It has then a throne of its own — God Himself deigns to sit ill it, and to suspend His sceptre over it. From that lofty and guarded seat, where none can return the blow, truth strikes and assails as from heaven. And as it enlists in its cause the spiritual and unwearied part of humanity — that part of our nature which cannot be fatigued— it needs no pause, allows no truce, entails its quarrel from generation to generation. Better for its foes to encoimter an army than a truth ; that they might annihilate, but this is immortal — this gathers strength from conflict, authority from suffering, final victory from present defeat. Hence the fierce, the unforgiving, the undying hatred they have poured out on the person, the ashes, the memory of its champions— especially of its Jlrst champions — ^not merely killing them piecemeal, but hunting for their bones years after to reduce them to ashes, and blackening their memory with the most concentrated venom of infernal malica

But what to Truth was this ? At the stake she becomes an oracle — ogives to her martyrs joys stronger than fire — ^and speaks to tlie sympathies of the multitude in tones of authority which drown the logic of the schools. At the moment of her supposed defeat — ^like her Lord, " the Truth" — ^she is in the sepulchre putting on her panoply for the final fight The car of persecution rolls on, fancying that she is dead — when, lo, at the moment she was supposed to be festering in her sliroud, she speaks to it from heaven, out of the midst of a light brighter than that of the midday sun — arrests its progress, disarms its waniors, and enlists them as champions in her 'own service.

A glorious thing is a great spiritual truth — and an eventful moment is that in which it makes its advent among a people; and mighty is he to whom it first comes, or by whom it first speaks to them — ^mightier, not than ten men merely that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than aU men that have it not. Such a man was Luther ; he uttered a truth — a simple truth — and the Papal throne has never since ceased to tremble with the vibration. Such a man was Huss. And such a man, more pre-eminent than all, was our own Wicklifife, whose opinions still gather strength, and go on smiting and shivering to pieces more than one image of iron and brass. And such a man is the Cliristian minister or missionary who first takes the Gospel into a heathen land. He who first brought the Gospel to Britain did more than Csesar ; the Eoman power soon passed away from amongst us : but the power of the Truth remains ; and our history ever since it came has in feet been nothing but the history of that truth, struggling for its right place and power among us.

IIL

Now, this reminds us, thirdly, that, of all moral or spiritual truth. Christian truth is the most powerful. Examine its history, and you will find that even where Christianity has, for obvious reasons, produced but slender spiHtual results, the inferior benefits which it has scattered have rendered its progress through the nations as traceable as the overflowing of the Nile is by the rich deposit and the consequent fertility which it leaves behind. This is a well-known subject of devout exultation in many of the inspired epistles. The apologies of the fathers prove it, and the records of profane history unintentionally but abundantly confirm it. Virtue went out of it in every age, and wherever it came. TheEoman empire was rushing to ruin; Christianity arrested its descent, and broke its fall Nearly all the tribes of Europe were sitting at a feast on human flesh, or immolating human victims to their gods. It called them away from the horrid repast, and extinguished their unholy fires. The northern invasion jwured a new world of barbarism over Christian lands. The spirit of Christianity brooded over the chaotic mass, and gradually gave to it the forms of civilized life. Where it could not sheathe the sword of war, it at least humanized the dreadful art It found the servant a slave, and broke his chaina It found the poor — the mass of mankind — trampled under foot, and it taught them to stand erect by addressing whatever is divine in their degraded nature. It found woman — one-half of the species — in the dust, and it extended its protecting arm to her weakness, and raised and placed her by the side of man. Sickly infancy and infirm old age were cast out to perish; it passed by and bade them live, preparing for each a home, and becoming the tender nurse of botk Yes, Christianity found the heathen world without a single house of mercy. Go, search the Byzantine chronicles and the pages of Publius Victor, and though the one describes all the public edifices of ancient Constantinople, and the other of ancient Rome, not a word is to be found in either of a purely charitable institution. Go, search the ancient marbles in your museums, question the many travellers who have visited the ruined cities of Greece and Home, and descend and ransack the graves of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and say, if, amidst all the splendid remains of statues and amphitheatres — temples, aqueducts, and palaces — mausoleums, columns, and triumphal arches — a single fragment or inscription has been found telling us that it belonged to a refuge for human want, or for the alleviation of human misery. The first voluntary and public collection ever known to have been made in the heathen world for a charitable object was made by the churches of Macedonia for the poor saints in Jerusalem. The first individual who built an hosi)ital for the poor was a Christian widow. Go, search the lexicons for interpreting the ancient

Greek authors, and you will not find even the names which divine Christianity wanted by which to designate her houses of charity: she had to invent them. Language had never been called on to embody such conceptions of mercy. All the asylums of the earth belong to her.

And be it remembered that Christianity has accomplished much of this under circumstances the most unfriendly to success. As yet it has had but a very limited influence, even in what are denominated Christian countries. But yet, while bleeding herself at a thousand pores, she has saved whole tribes from extermination, and comparatively stanched the flow of human blood Though a prisoner herself, and walking in chains, she has yet gone through the nations, proclaiming liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Even when Popery had converted her creed into a libel on her name, that creed yet contained truths which eclipsed the wisdom of Greece, and which consigned the mythology of Rome to the amusement and ridicule of childhood. Even theret where her character was most misunderstood, so high had she raised the standard of morals, that Socrates, the boast of Greece, would have been deemed impure, and Titus, the darling of Rome and of mankind, would have been denounced as a monster of cruelty. When disfigured to a degree which would have made it diflScult for her great apostle to have recognised her, yet, like him, she went about "as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." Herself the victim of universal selfishness, she yet left on every shore which she visited everlasting monuments that she had been there, in the hospitals and edifices of charity which lifted up their heads, and in the softening and healing influences which stole over the heart of society.

2. But why do we speak of other lands? Britain itself owes eveiything, under God, to the influence of the Gospel The cruelties of Rome did not humanize, nor the northern superstitions enlighten us. The missionary who first trod our shores found himself standing in the very temple of Dmidism; and wherever he turned, he heard the din of its noisy festivals, saw the obscenity of its lascivious rites, and beheld its animal and human victims. But Christianity had marked the island for its own. And although its lofty purposes are yet far from being worked out on us, from that eventful moment to the present the various parts of our social system have been rising tofjether. Even when most at rest, its influence has been silently penetrating the heart of society. When most enfeebled and corrupted itself, its morality has been checking the progress of our social corruption, rendering power more protective and law more righteous. When most disguised and repressed, its wisdom has been modifying our philosophy and teaching a loftier system of its own. A Howard, sounding and circumnavigating the ocean of human misery, is only an obedient agent of its philanthropy. A Clarkson and a Wilberforce have only given utterance to its tender and righteous appeals for the slave. A Eaikes, a Bell, and a Lancaster have simply remembered its long-neglected injunction, " Suffer little children to come unto me;" while all its Sabbaths, Bibles, and direct evangelical ministrations are only the appropriate instrumentality by which it has ever been seeking to become the power of Grod to our salvation, and preparing us for the office to which Providence is now distinctly calling us — to be the Christian ministers and missionaries of mankind.

3. But why speak we of what the Gospel has done? At this moment it is doing for other lands what it has done for us. Repair to the distant missionary field, and we can point out to you happy homes and peaceful villages rising amidst wastes where lately man roamed, restless and ferocious as the beasts with which he contended for supremacy; to multitudes, whose hands were but yesterday red with the blood of their fellows, now diligently busied in the arts of civilized life ; to thousands of children and adults, trooping to their respective schools, where, a short time ago, all the visible signs of a language were utterly unknown; to organized societies and the reign of law, where, but recently, to be lawless was reckoned essential to enjoyment, and to kill at pleasure the highest prerogative; to sober, honest, highly moralized countries, where lately rage and intemperance revelled at will ; to tribes which, till lately, never met but for mutual destruction, but whose intercourse now consists entirely in the reciprocation of benefits and tokens of love; to the animalized savage acting the man; to the debased slave now walking at large as an heir of freedom; to degi^aded woman raised from the dust and restored to be the partner of man; to hundreds of thousands rescued from the curse of the darkest idolatry, brought into the light of truth, and surrounded with the means of social improvement and unending happiness ! What vast tracts has it rescued from barbarism, and with what creations of benevolence has it clothed them!

How many thousands, whom ignorance and selfishness ,had branded as the leavings and refuse of the species, if not actually akin to the beasts that perish, are at this moment rising imder its fostering care, ascribing their enfranchisement, under God, to its benign interposition, taking encouragement firom its smiles to assume the port and bearing of men, and by their acts and aspirations retrieving the character and dignity of the slandered human form ! When did literature accomplish so much for nations destitute of a written language? or education pierce and light up so large and dense a mass of human ignorance? When did humanity save so many lives, or cause so many sanguinary "wars to cease"? How many a sorrow has it soothed — how many an injury arrested — ^and how many an asylum has it reared, amidst scenes of wretchedness and oppression, for the orphan, the outcast, and the sufferer ! When did liberty ever rejoice in a greater triumph than that which Christian instrumentality has been the means of achieving? or civilisation find so many sons of the wilderness learning her arts, and agriculture, and commerce? or law receive so much voluntary homage from those who but yesterday were strangers to the name? By erecting a standard of morality, how vast the amount of crime which it has been the means of preventing ! By asserting the claims of degraded woman, how powerful an instrument of social regeneration is it preparing for the future ! And by doing all this by the principle and power of all moral order and excellence — the Gospel of Christ — ^how large a portion of the world's chaos has that instrumentality restored to light, and harmony, and peace!

IV

But aU this, you will say, only proves that the Gospel is the power of God to the civilization — to the social improvement — ^to the temporal salvation of man, whereas the text contemplates the salvation of the souL We admit it And what, we ask — what must the fruit of that tree be, the very leaves of which are so efficacious for the healing of the nations ? What must be tlie full might of that benevolent principle, of which all this is only, in a sense, the accidental effect ? And what must be the nature of that doctrine, the result of which when truly believed throws all these temporal results into the shade ? Now, this reminds us, fourthly, that of all the truths to be found in the Gospel, the doctrine of the Cross — or of justification by faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ — Ls the mightiest. As we have just seen, its benevolent morality may be mighty — may check unnumbered evils, unveil the deformity of vice, restore the lost influence of shame, and thus gradually diminish crime, and raise the moral tone of society. But man wants more than this. He may be moralized, without being converted; and he needs convergion — salvation. The text both implies this, and provides for it. For, in saying that " the (Jospel is the power of Gkxl unto salvation," what is it but implying that there is an antagonist power at work in the world — the power of Satan to destruction ? reminding us of the terrible might of that power, since nothing less than the power of God is regarded as a match for it. So that if the Gospel be so potent as to deserve to be called nothing less than the power of God to salvation, it is just because sin is so mighty as the power of Satan to destruction.

And here be it carefully remarked that the doctrine of the Cross triumphs, not in the same way as other kinds of truth produce their results — ^by its mere fitness to convince the judgment, and approve itself to the mind. We believe, indeed, that the Gospel has this fitness — that light is not more suited to the eye than the entire system of evangelical truth is exquisitely adapted to the original principles of human nature ; and we believe that, owing to this inherent adaptation alone, the Gospel can produce the mightiest moral results — all that temporal and social improvement of which we have been speaking — ^without the aid of any special supernatural influence ; and we believe that because of this inherent adaptation it is that God employs it to produce the great spiritual result of salvation. But then, we believe that, in the production of this result, its mere adaptation alone would leave it quite impotent ; that here it encounters a kind and a degree of resistance which renders a Divine agency indispensable ; that here the influence of the Spirit comes into operation ; and that on tlus account it is called the power of God, because God alone renders it powerful to salvation.

But before we proceed to shew that the Gospel is thus mighty, the text suggests two or three previous inquiries : —

1. Whxit is the secret of its saving influence? In other words, what is that adaptation by which it operates in the hand of the Spirit on the mind of the sinner, so as to restore him to holiness ? The apostle replies by saying, that " therein is the doctrine of justification by faith revealed to faith.''

Now, in attempting to shew how this doctrine 'produces this result, it is somewhat disheartening to reflect that we are speaking to those to whom the subject has necessarily become comparatively trite, and every mode of presenting it perfectly familiar. The very facility with which the understanding apprehends our meaning, and the readiness with which the judgment admits it, allows no time for the sublime truth to settle down upoii the heart In order, therefore, to do anything like justice to the subject, it is necessary that the individual supposed to be subjected to the influence in question should be taken, not from among ourselves, but from a region where the power, and even the name of the Gospel is unknown. Christianity is the only successful antagonist which sin has ever encountered. In order, therefore, to exhibit its influence fully, he should be taken from the darkness and distance of nature, where sin had operated on him unchecked, working out all its deadly effects, and reducing him to its dreadful purposes ; and he should be brought with all his depravity and guilt upon him into the full light and under the direct power of the Gospel

Now, in this state he is chiefly assailable at three pointSL Entrenched and fortified in evil as he may appear to be, there are yet three sides, so to speak, on which he may be approached with irresistible effect, — ^his imTnorUdity, his guilt, and his infinite danger. These are subjects relating to parts and principles of his nature which an unthinking world overlooks, — ^it has little or nothing by which it could appeal to them if it would, — and yet they lie at the very foundation of his constitution. So that whoever shall succeed in making him sensible of his immortality, in alarming his conscience to the danger to which all that immortality is exposed by sin, and then in delivering him from the whole, will necessarily acquire a master influence over his whole nature for ever. Now, the Gospel does this. It does not affect a part of his nature merely. It does not operate superficially on the senses ; nor convince his judgment, and leave his heart uninterested ; nor move his passions merely, to the neglect of his judgment nnd his will. It goes in and down to the depths of his nature. It goes directly to move that which moves the whole man.

The world hides, a man from himself, — conceals from hiTn the most important part of his nature. By shutting out the prospect of eternity, he loses sight of his immortality ; and by constantly appealing to his senses, and thus keeping in exercise only the inferior part of his nature, he tends to settle down into a mere creature of time. But the first effect, perhaps, which the Gospel produces is to reveal him to himself By coming to him as a message from another world, he starts into a consciousness of his relation to that world ; and by addressing itself to the spiritual part of his nature, he becomes sensible, however vaguely at first, that he is in some way related to the spiritual, the infinite, and the eternal Now, it is obvious how this very first impression, by throwing open, if I may so say, a part of the temple of his nature, which had been hitherto shut up — the very sanctuary containing the symbol of Divinity — ^prepares him to receive with deep effect every other communication which may come to him from the same quarter.

Not only does the world conceal from a man his spiritual and immortal nature, by allowing it to fall into disuse, — it tends, also, to merge the fact of his individual accountableness — ^his distinct person^ responsibility. From living in society, and finding his interests and relations inseparably complicated with those of others, he comes to think of himself only as an undistinguishable part of a great whole. He loses himself in the crowd. But the. Gospel individualizes and detaches. It tells him of a law by which all the laws of society are themselves to be judged, but of which his life has been an unceasing violation — of a hook in which his personal history is recorded moment by moment —of a Being who can disentangle and detach him from all his complicated relations, and assign to his every thought and word its precise character — and of a place and a punishment so exactly ai^d necessarily resulting from his guilt, and proportioned to it, that he is the only being in the tiniverse to whom they could be assigned. The only way.

therefore, in which it can treat with him is in person. It lays its awakening and arresting hand on his personal conscience. It demands a personal interview — a conference in the centre of his nature. It brings forward his guilt into the strong light of distinct consciousness. Even if the Gospel allowed him to act by another, his own conscience is now too deeply interested to permit it. All his faculties and powers seem collected into a point — the entire soul becomes conscience ; and all that conscience is against him — accuser, witness, and judge. As if the judgment had been set, and the books opened ; as if his personal case were already adjudged, his doom pronounced, and he himself suspended over the bottomless gulf — he feels that he is lost. His nature is now stirred to its depths, and his soul is one region of alarm. Mere sympathy now will receive his deep, deep gratitude — deliverance woidd secure his heart for ever. The being who shall now arrive to his rescue will infallibly acquire an influence over the whole man, and may calculate on his allegiance for ever.

To ask if the world, or any person or power belonging to it, can extend the aid which the crisis demands, would be sheer impertinence. That is the very power which has brought on the crisis, and from which he requires to be ixjscued. So completely is he now detached from it in heart and hope, that he turns round, and looks back on it, with wonder at its infatuation, aversion for its sins, and yearning pity for its state. The cloud which threatens him with its bolt impends also over it What must he do to be saved ?

In the absence of all the objects he has been accustomed to confide in — in the clear and open space which their withdrawment has left around him, behold the Cross ! All the forms of terror and ministers of justice which his sins had armed against him, blend and melt into a form of love dying for his rescue ! The Cross has received the liG:htnin5:s of the impending cloud, and has painted upon it the bow of hopa

GOD TJNTO SALVATION. 15

To his anxious inquiry, what he must do to be saved — ^the Cross echoes back, Be saved ; and every object around him joyfully repeats, saved ! Then God is love, and the Cross is the stupendous expedient by which He harmonizes that love with the rectitude of His government ! Then the sinner need not perish — and the Cross is the amazing means of his salvation. Had it ever been his lot to gaze on the appalling spectacle of an ordinary crucifixion, the sight would probably have left an image on his mind never to be efiaced. Is it possible, then, that he can behold " Jesus Christ, evidently set forth crucified before his eyes" — that he can know the dignity of the suJQTerer, as God manifest in the flesh — can believe that He hates the sin as deeply as He loves the sinner — can reflect that the efiect.of His death is to be his own deliverance — and can look into the heart of this great mystery and find it to be love, without experiencing a change ? If every word which he hears spoken, even by a fellow-man, leaves some impression on his mind, can he hear that he is saved, and believe that the voice which assures him of salvation is the voice of Gcd, without feeling it thrill through every faculty of his soul ? If every object and event he may witness produces some eff'ect on his character, is it possible that the event which is to affect his whole being for ever — which, for him, shuts for ever the gate of hell, and throws open and fills with visions of glory the ample spaces of eternity — should produce only a transient and slender impression? Must he not, by necessity of nature, love Him, without whom he would soon have had nothing in the universe to love — but have been eternally hateful, even to himself? Must he not render obedience to Him, without whom the chains of his slavery would soon have been riveted for ever ? He waits not for a reply — ^he needs not a command. He is under the mastery of a principle which is its own law — a principle of boundless gratitude and lova The power of the Cross has moved the primary forces of his nature — the springs of hope and fear^ of adoration and love. The world has lost him,

His heart is at the feet of Christ. He dates life and happiness from the transition. Henceforth he moves in a region of which the Cross is the central object, and where the benig- • nant and attractive influences which stream from it in all directions hold him in willing and delighted allegianca

Here, then, is the secret of that supreme influence which the Gospel exercises over the man whom the world had debased, and sin had ruined ; and this, if I may say so, is the line of truth along which the Spirit of God delights to operate. By acquainting him with his immortality, it in efiect gives him a soul, and gives it on the threshold of a new, an eternal world. By acquainting him with his responsibility and guilt, it calls his conscience from the dead. And then, by unveiling to him the mystery of the Cross, by which that guilt is cancelled, and that immortality entitled to heaven, one overpowering sentiment subjects his whole nature to the anthority of Christ.

2. Now, this representation of the manner in which the Gospel becomes the power of God unto salvation, answers, in effect, another question suggested by the text — To whom does it prove thus divinely efficdcious ? — " To every one that believeth."-^But is there not a feeling in the heart of the imrenewed sinner which often revolts at this arrangement — a feeling of displeasure, as if faith might have been dispensed with — as if it were an unnecessary requirement, made only in the exercise of an arbitrary authority — ^as if salvation would have been quite possible, and much easier and better, without it — ^and a feeling which, if put into words, would amount to this. It is very hard that we cannot be saved without this believing, this faiths

A feeling, indeed, very much akin to this, though much less virulent and violent, will be found existing in the human heart against every arrangement of Providence in which an exercise of thought and will is required. " It is very hard," says the human heart, " that we cannot be rich witliout industry" — ^and hence the origin of alchemy and gambling.

"It is very hard that we cannot purchase foresight without experience, knowledge, and reflection" — and hence arose astrology, and all the pretended methods of foretelling the futura " And it is very hard that we cannot be happy hereafter without faith and holiness here" — hence idolatry, superstition, popery, penances, and the substitution of all kinds of ceremonies in religion. But in opposition to all these, the Gospel holds on its way through the world, demanding faith — and replying to the important inquiry, " Who will be saved ?" — " Every one that believeth."