Sermons

Contents

SERMON I.

PA OK

THE SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH, 1

Part First

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." — John, i. 18.

VI

CONTENTS.

SERMON IY.

Part Second. J" Age

THE MANIFESTATION OF THE INVISIBLE GOD, . 100

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Eim. " — John, i. 18.

SERMON V.

THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS, 111 " I have trodden the wine-press alone." — Isaiah, briii. 3.

SERMON VI.

" Rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." —1 Peter, iv. 13.

SERMON VII.

" Return unto thy rest, O my soul l"—*Psalm cxvi. 7.

SERMON VIII.

"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." — 3 John, 2.

SERMON IX.

THE CHRISTIANS HERITAGE, . . .205

" All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's. " —1 Corinthians, iii. 21, 22, 23.

CONTENTS.

vii

SERMON X.

PAGE

"Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service." — Hebrews, ix. 1,

THE COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER AND

DOCTRINE, 250

"Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in - them : for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee."—l Timothy, iv. 16.

SERMON XII.

" Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord." — Romans, xii. 11.

SERMON I.

THE SELF -EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH.

" By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."— 2 Corinthians, iv. 2.

The truth we receive from trie lips of another may either derive its authority from the teacher, or reflect on him the authority it contains. As the receiver of money may argue, either that the money is good because it is an honest man who pays it, or that the man is honest because he pays good money ; so in the communication and reception of truth, it may be a valid inference, either that the doctrine is true because it is a trustworthy man who teaches it, or that the man who teaches is veracious or trustworthy because his doctrine is true. It is the latter mode of inference which is employed in the text. The apostle appeals to the doctrine he taught as in itself a sufficient attestation of his character and credibility. The message he had spoken was so completely in accordance with reason and conscience — it so reflected the profoundest convictions of the human intellect, and responded to

A

SERMON I.

the deepest longings of the human heart, that he needed no other credentials in proclaiming it : it became at once its own witness and his. The fragrance of the heavenly deposit clung to the garments of him to whom it was intrusted, and rendered him " a sweet savour of life unto them " who received it. The lamp of truth was not only seen by its own light, but shed back its brightness on the face of him who bore it. By the simple " manifestation of the truth, he commended himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God.' 9

That there is an order of truth, such as that to which the apostle refers, every thoughtful mind must be aware. As there are some truths which we reach inferentially, by a process, longer or shorter, of argument, deduction, demonstration ; so there are other truths which are perceived immediately and intuitively whenever the mind is brought into contact with them. All science is based on truths which constitute their own evidence. At the root of all knowledge there are first principles which are independent of proof, which to state is to prove to every mind that apprehends them. Follow the links in every chain of reasoning far enough back, and you will come to a first reason which hangs on no other, but is self-existent and self-sufficient. Examine the contents of your knowledge, and sooner or later you will penetrate to the primary strata, which, unsupported, support all besides. Of innumerable objects of thought you may be able to say why you conceive them to be true, or right, or beautiful ; but there are some with respect to which you can give no such reason, of which you can only say, I believe them to be true, or good, or fair, because I believe them to be true, or good, or fair; my mind is so constituted that I cannot otherwise regard them ; they commend themselves at once to my consciousness in the sight of God.

Now to this class belong many of the truths of revelation. Of much that is contained in Scripture the mind of man is so constituted, as, immediately and intuitively, when brought face to face with it, to recognise the truthfulness or reality. As it needs no outward attestation to prove to the tasteful eye the beauty of fair scenes, as sweet sounds need no authentication of their harmony to the sensitive ear ; so, between the spirit of man, and that infinite world of moral beauty and harmony which revelation discloses, there is a correspondence so deep and real that the inner eye and ear, if undiseased, discern at once in divine things their own best witness and authority. In the original structure of the soul, there is an unwritten revelation which accords with the external revelation of Scripture. Within the depths of the heart there is a silent oracle, which needs only to be rightly questioned to elicit from it a response in accordance with that voice which issues from the lively oracles of God. In one word, the appeal of Scripture to the unbiassed conscience or consciousness of man is, in great part, direct, immediate, irresistible. It is this doctrine which I now propose to explain and illustrate. As, however, it is a doctrine which, if unguardedly stated, is extremely liable to misconstruction, I shall endeavour to

SERMON I.

show, in the first place, what is not, before going on, secondly, to explain what is, its true import.

I. By the statement that the truths of revelation commend themselves to the conscience or consciousness of man, it is not implied, that man, by the unaidedexercise of his consciousness, could have discovered them. In claiming for man's spirit a power of recognising and responding to the truth of God, we do not arrogate for it a capacity, of itself, to originate that truth.

If there be an internal revelation already imprinted on the human spirit, what need, it might be asked, for any other ? If the truths of Scripture be so congenial to man's mind, in such exact correspondence with the principles of reason and conscience, might not reason and conscience work out those truths independently of any external aid] What necessity for an outward authority to announce to me that which, by the fundamental laws of my being, I cannot help believing 1 If the doctrines of religion accord with man's conscience as the principles of arithmetic or geometry accord with man's reason, what need for an oracle to reveal the former any more than the latter? In asserting that divine revelation is self-evidencing, do we not virtually assert that it is uncalled-for or superfluous ?

Now, to all such questions the obvious answer is, that the power to recognise truth, when presented to us, does not by any means imply the power to find out or originate the same truth. The range of intellect which enables a man to perceive and appreciate thought, falls far short of that which is necessary to excogitate or create thought. We may apprehend what we could not invent. To discover, for instance, some great law of nature, to evolve some grand principle of science, implies in the discoverer the possession of mental powers of the very rarest order ; but when that law or principle has once been pointed out, multitudes who could never have discovered it for themselves may be quite able to verify it. The law of gravitation was unknown to man for ages, till one great mind arose, of grasp sufficient to penetrate into the arcana of nature, and bring to light this great secret of her order ; but, now that the discovery has been achieved, all men of ordinary intellectual capacity can apprehend its evidence, and satisfy themselves of its truth. Viewed merely as what is knowable — involved in the laws of human thought— all Euclid is in the mind of a savage ; but whilst minds of the rudest cast may easily be educated into the capacity to verify Euclid, how very few of the whole human race could have struck out his discoveries for themselves ! All abstract science or philosophy, in fact, is but the evolving of the latent contents of our consciousness- — the bringing to light by observation, reflection, analysis, of those truths which implicitly are possessed by all ; but though, virtually, these truths would never become really ours, they would never be known at all by common thinkers, but for the aid which the discoveries of high and philosophic minds afford them. So again, to what is it that the great poet owes the power to charm and thrill the minds of men — what is the secret of the spell which his genius exerts over multitudes, but this, that he

SERMON 1.

gives expression to their own indistinct and unuttered thoughts and feelings — to thoughts and feelings which, though none but men of rarest genius could articulate them, the common heart and soul of humanity recognises as its own ? Millions can perceive and appreciate the power, the reality, the trueness to nature, of the great writer's productions, who could never themselves have produced them. There are multitudes of " mute inglorious Miltons," though there never lived but one who could write the i Paradise Lost/ Dim, indistinct, nebulous, the thoughts of beauty and truth lurk in many a mind, but it is only the creative voice of genius from without that condenses and shapes them into visible beauty — gives to them local habitation and name — and so, by interpreting ourselves to ourselves, commends its utterances to every man's consciousness in the sight of God.

Now, to apply this principle to the case before us : — It is obvious that the appeal of Scripture to man's reason and conscience does not by any means imply in man's reason and conscience a capacity to discover divine truth by their own unaided exercise. Here, too, is a case in which it is possible for the human mind to recognise and identify that which, of itself, it could not have found out. There may be, and we shall in the sequel attempt to show that there are, in the soul, latent beliefs, dim inarticulate yearnings, unexplained hopes and aspirations, which are to itself unrealised and unintelligible, till the outward shining of divine truth pours light and meaning upon them. There may be, and we maintain that there are, inscribed on the mind and'conscience of man, the characters of an unknown language, to which revelation alone supplies the key, and which, read by its aid, become the truestverification of that which interprets them. Bring " one that believeth not, or one unlearned," face to face with him who speaks the Word of inspiration, and, as he listens, there will be roused within him a something that claims in that Word a strange affinity with itself; " he will be convinced of all, he will be judged of all ; the secrets of his heart will be made manifest, and so he will worship God, and report that God is here of a truth." In that world of eternal and invisible realities to which, as spiritual beings, we belong, there are heights too vast for human soaring, mysteries too profound for fallen humanity, of itself, to penetrate. But though by no unaided " searching " could we " find out God;" though, again, the conception of a pure and holy moral law, or yet again, the vision of a glorious immortality, be unattainable by any spontaneous effort of human reason, yet there is wrought into the very structure of man's nature so much of a divine element, there is a moral standard so ineffaceably inscribed on the conscience, there slumbers in the universal heart a desire and yearning after immortality so deep and strong, that that Bible, which contains in it the revelation of God and Holiness and Heaven, finds in the awakened soul an instant response and authentication of its teachings. Divine truth, therefore, undiscoverable by human reason, is yet so in harmony with it ; inaccessible to the human mind, yet so accords with all its half-acknowledged principles and aspirations ;

SERMON I.

inexpressible by human lip, yet so expresses for man things which he thought but could not utter for himself, — that it "commends itself to every man's consciousness in the sight of God."

2. Again, in averring that the truths of revelation commend themselves to the consciousness of man, not only do we not ascribe to the consciousness a power to discover those truths, but we do not even imply that the consciousness in its unrenewed and imperfect state is qualified fully to recognise and verify them when discovered to it.

It might be admitted that the mind of man, in its unimpaired and perfect state, is so in harmony with the mind of God, as at once to echo and respond to the utterance of that mind in His revealed Word. But the mind of man is not perfect and unimpaired. The moral reason has become dimmed and distorted, so that, instead of affording a perfect, unerring reflection, it breaks and refracts the light of truth into a thousand unreal forms and phantasms. It might be possible for the inner eye and ear, if endowed with all the soundness and delicate susceptibility of health, at once to recognise the beauty and harmony of divine things ; but the vision of the soul is blurred, the spiritual ear has lost its sensitiveness to heaven's music. How then any longer can the soul be regarded as the criterion of truth — how can it be asserted that the truth commends itself to every man's consciousness 1 Is not such a statement at variance with that other doctrine of Scripture, that " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned ] " And if, in answer to this, it be said that there is a restorative operation of the Spirit of God on the minds of those who receive the truth, still it may be rejoined, that it is by the truth, apprehended and believed, that the Holy Spirit works in restoring or renewing the mind, and that therefore the apprehension or recognition of the truth must be, in some sort, prior to the restoration of the mind to purity and goodness. How then, again, may it be asked, can the truth be said to commend itself to an impaired, imperfect conscience ? How can light be perceived by blind eyes, harmony by dull or deaf ears ?

The solution of this difficulty will perhaps be found in the consideration that divine truth exerts on the mind of man at once a restorative and a self-manifesting power. It creates in the mind the capacity by which it is discerned. As light opens the close-shut flower-bud to receive light, or as the sunbeam, playing on a sleeper's eyes, by its gentle irritation opens them to see its own brightness ; so the truth of God, shining on the soul, quickens and stirs into activity the faculty by which that very truth is perceived. It matters little which of the two operations, in logical or in natural order, be first ; practically they may be regarded as simultaneous. The perception rouses the faculty, and yet the faculty is implied in the perception. The truth awakens the mind, and yet the mind must be in activity ere the truth can reach it. And the same twofold process is carried on in the whole subsequent progress of the soul. Light and the Organ

SER3ION I.

of Vision, Knowledge and the Understanding, Divine Truth and the Spiritual Reason, grow and expand together. They act and react. They are reciprocally helpful. They are, each by turn, cause and effect. It is in this case as in secular studies and contemplations, each advance in knowledge disciplines the knowing faculty, and the discipline of the faculty renders it capable of still further advances in knowledge. With each new problem mastered, each difficult step in science or philosophy overcome, the powers of observation, comparison, analysis, are invigorated, the mental habits of attention and application are strengthened, and thus a wider range of knowledge, a larger, clearer, more comprehensive view of truth, becomes possible to the mind. So, again, the observation of Nature both presupposes and cultivates the sense of beauty. The sight of her material glory rouses the dormant imagination into action; but it needs long familiarity with her presence, long and reverent study and contemplation of her manifold forms and aspects, till her full splendour breaks upon the chastened eye. In the very act of contemplation, the contemplative powers are expanded, the perceptions quickened, the elements of feeling and of thought purified and enriched ; and so the whole mind and spirit of the observer of Nature becomes qualified for the more perfect apprehension of her loveliness. In like manner the powers of spiritual discernment, incapable at first of recognising the full glory and beauty of divine truth, become, by daily converse with it, more and more qualified to know it. In each act of earnest study of God's word a reflex process of refinement is going on ; something of the mind's dulness and insensibility is thrown off, and some new touch of spiritual acuteness communicated. The spiritual appetite, growing by what it feeds upon, becomes capable of assimilating more and more of its divine nutriment. The inner eye and ear acquire by exercise a more and more delicate acuteness and accuracy of perception ; until at last, as the result of its long converse with truth, the soul learns to recognise it with an almost instinctive sureness, and with a sensitiveness on which not the slightest shade of its beauty, not the most evanescent tone of its heavenly harmony, is lost. Thus, impaired and defective though our nature be, inasmuch as the truth restores and refines the very powers by which it is recognised, it may still be maintained that it " commends itself to our consciousness in the sight of God."

II. Such, then, being some of the limitations under which the doctrine of the text is to be understood, I now proceed more directly to explain its true import. In what way may we conceive of divine truth as commending itself to the consciousness of man 1 It does so, I answer, first, by revealing to man the Lost Ideal of his Nature.

The Gospel is, in one view of it, the disclosure to man of the true ideal of humanity, the discovery of the perfect type of our being, lost by sin, and yet recoverable in Christ. And whilst man, fallen and degraded as his nature has become, could never have found out that ideal for himself, yet when it is presented to him

SERMON I.

in Scripture, there is that within him which is capable of recognising it as his own. For the recognition of a lost ideal is a mental act, the possibility of which, to a moral and spiritual being, it is not difficult to conceive. The degenerate plant has no consciousness of its own degradation, nor could it, when reduced to the character of a weed or a wild-flower, recognise in the fair and delicate garden-plant the type of its former self. The tamed and domesticated animal, stunted in size, and subjugated in spirit, could not feel any sense of humiliation when confronted with its wild brother of the desert, fierce, strong, and free, as if discerning in that spectacle the noble type from which itself had fallen. But it is different with a conscious, moral being. Eeduce such an one ever so low, yet you cannot obliterate in his inner nature the consciousness of falling beneath himself ; you cannot blot out from his mind the latent reminiscence of a nobler and better self which he might have been, and which to have lost is guilt and wretchedness. So that, should there ever be brought before a fallen moral nature, in outward form and reality, a Being the noble realisation of its own lost spiritual excellence — the full, perfect, beautiful reproduction in actual existence of that splendour of moral loveliness which once was its own — it is conceivable that the latent instincts of the soul would be roused to recognise and identify therein its lost original. Confront the fallen moral intelligence with its own perfect type, and in the instinctive shame and humiliation that would arise within it, as at the spectacle of a glory it had lost, a native nobleness from which it

SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. IS

had degenerated, there would be elicited an involuntary recognition of the truthfulness of the portraiture.

Now, such is the response which the spirit of man, in the hour of contrition, renders to the perfect type of moral excellence which the Gospel brings before it. For it is to be considered that the sorrow and self-abasement which the " manifestation of the truth" calls forth in the awakened and penitent heart, derive their peculiar poignancy from the fact, that it is a sorrow not so much of discovery as of reminiscence. In the contemplation of God's holy law, and especially of that perfect reflection of it which is presented in the person and life of Jesus, the attitude of the penitent mind is that, not simply of observation, but of painful and humiliating recollection. The mental process that takes place may be described as analogous to one with which we are all familiar — that in which the mind goes in search of some word, or name, or thought, which we cannot at once recall, yet of which we have the certainty that once we knew it ; \ so that, when at last, after laborious groping, it flashes on the memory, we recognise it not as a new word or thought, but as one the familiar form and aspect of which at once commend it to our consciousness. Or the recognition of the truth as it is in Jesus by the awakened soul, may be represented as still more closely parallel to the feeling of one who revisits, in reverse of fortune, and after long years of absence, a spot with which, in other and happier days, he was familiar. It is conceivable that such an one might move for a while amidst old scenes and objects, unconscious of any past and personal con-

SERMON I.

nection with theni ; until at last something occurs to touch the spring of association, when instantly, with a rush of recollection, old sights, impressions, incidents, come thick and crowding on the spirit, and the outward scene becomes clothed with a new vividness, and is perceived with a new sense of identity. The contemplation is no longer sight but recognition; and as every object which the eye surveys recalls to the saddened spectator a bright and better past — brings up, in contrast with what he now is, the joyous, healthy happy being which once he was — it is a keener and deeper anguish far, a sorrow sharpened by the whet of reminiscence, which now pierces his soul. Now 7 , analogous to this is the process which is involved in the manifestation of the truth to the awakened mind. In the Scripture ideal of holiness, and in that sublime embodiment of it which is presented in the character and history of Jesus Christ, the soul when brought face to face with it recognises a something which comes home to its inner consciousness with all the painful reality of a lost and abandoned good. If the life of Christ were an ideal of excellence altogether foreign to us, the shame of the convicted conscience would lose half its bitterness. Did we perceive in it only a vague grandeur, which, out of the sphere of our consciousness, could be only half understood by it, we should feel no more shame in falling short of that ideal than the worm in that it cannot cope with the eagle's flight, or the stammering child in that he possesses not the wisdom and eloquence of the sage.

But the latent element that lends sharpness to the stings of self-accusation in the mind aroused by the manifestation of the truth, is the involuntary recognition in Christ of a dignity we have lost, an inheritance we have wasted, a perfection for which the spirit of man was formed, but which it has basely disowned. Eepentance is the recognition by the fallen self of its true self in Christ. As the touched and troubled heart listens to the story of that beauteous life ; as there rises before the spirit's quickened eye the vision of a Perfect Innocence in human form — of a sublime purity with which no alloy of sternness mingles, a mental and moral elevation in which no trace of self-consciousness can be detected, a piety rapt as an angel's combined with the unassuming simplicity of a child — as we ponder the narrative of a life of holiest fellowship with God, maintained amidst incessant toil and intercourse with men, a life of persistent self-sacrifice, undimmed by one thought of personal ease, or one act of selfish indulgence — a life in which love, tender as a mother's, grew more fervent amidst ingratitude, waxed stronger and deeper amidst insults and wrongs received at the very hands of its objects 5 — in one word, as inspiration summons up to the awakened mind, the spectacle of a perfectly holy human life, the deepest instincts of our nature are stirred to discern herein its own lost ideal — the type of excellence after which it may have vaguely groped, but which it never realised till now. " Here " — is the soul's involuntary conviction — " Here is that conception which haunted me ever in my sinfulness, yet which I never fully discerned till now; here is that Light to which my darkened conscience was vainly

SERMON I.

struggling, that standard to which my dim sense of a Eight I was abusing, a Purity I was sullying, a home of my spirit's peace and innocence I was forsaking, ever unconsciously pointed. And in this my vague and shadowy Ideal now become the Eeal, in this which gives to the fantasy of my weak and wavering imagination correctness, condensation, reality — in this truth of life in Christ Jesus there is that which ' commends itself to my conscience in the sight of God/ "

2. Again; the truth as it is in Jesus commends itself to our consciousness, not only in revealing to man the Lost Ideal of his nature, but also in discovering to Mm the mode of regaining it. The Scriptures appeal to man's nature for a verification of their account, not only of the ruin that affects it, but also of the mode of recovery ; they claim from the conscience not only a response to their description of the disease, but also a recognition of the suitability and sufficiency of the remedy they prescribe. The Gospel awakens in man's breast an echo to its teaching, first, in the mournful acknowledgment, " this is the purity and peace I have lost," and then in the joyful recognition, "this, and none but this, is the mode of regaining it."

Uo state of mind can be conceived more distressing than that of the man who, voluntarily or involuntarily, is falling below his own ideal. To have within me the conception of a high and noble standard with which my own performances are in miserable contrast, the vision of a beauty and excellence which I admire and honour, but which, in all that I am, and all that I do, I practically disown ; this is a condition the painfulness of which, no mind can long endure. For a man's own comfort, he must either forget his ideal, or strive to realise it ; banish from his mind the thought of his lost purity and happiness, or set himself to regain it.

It would be mistaken kindness to take a child, whose destined lot in life is a lowly and penurious one, and let him live in a home of wealth and refinement long enough to familiarise him with the tastes, habits, feelings of a high social sphere j for by so doing you would only awaken in his mind unsatisfied desires, and render him wretched in his humble condition by the consciousness of a standard far above its resources. Or take the poor member of some rude and savage race, and permit him to reside in a civilised country till his mind has become in some measure receptive of the ideas, and accustomed to the amenities, of civilisation, and then send him back to his former haunts and companionships. Would not the result of such a discipline, in all probability, be that which has sometimes been witnessed in the contact of barbarism with civilisation — profound melancholy in the remembrance of a lost social elevation, or recklessness in the attempt to forget it? But such illustrations fall far short of the misery of a mind on which has dawned the true conception of the nobleness of human life, the lofty ideal of moral greatness in Christ Jesus, whilst yet its own life is one of selfishness and sin. To such a mind there are but two ways in which it can attempt to regain its lost tranquillity — viz., either the miserable and ineffectual way of reckless self-forgetfulness, or the true and Christian way of earnest aspira-