Church reader for Lent

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CHURCH READER for lent

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I. True Conversion Cross . . i

II. Benedicite Grimley . 8

II. Second ©ag of 3Lent

BENEDICITE.

REV. H. N. GRIMLEY, A.M.

O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. — Song of The Three Children,

These, my friends, are the opening words of the Song of the Three Children, or of the Three Youths, which, at this season of the Church's year, it is customary for us to sing instead of the Te Deum. The three youths, or the three children as they are called in old English style, are the three who are spoken of in the Book of Daniel as

BENEDICITE.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and in the Song itself as x\nanias, Azarias, and Misael. You are familiar with their story, — how they refused to be unfaithful to the one true God, refused to worship the gods of the King Nebuchadnezzar, and to bow down to the golden image he had set up \ how, therefore, they were cast into the fiery furnace ; how they were wondrously preserved from death \ how they sang the song which is now called after them, as a thanksgiving song to the Lord who had delivered them from the fiery peril.

Note, first of all, that they were thrown into the fiery furnace for a sublime act of disobedience to an earthly king. He had bidden them worship gods which they knew were but the created things of the great God of heaven. He had bidden them worship things which they knew were not to be bowed down to : they were but the works of the Lord. They refused, therefore, to bend the knee in worship either to the golden image, the work of men's hands, or to the created things in earth, or sky, or sea, which the Babylonian king bade them revere as gods. But while they so refused to worship the things which were but the works of the Lord, the very first thought which found utterance upon their lips, when they gave thanks to God for so marvellously delivering them from the torture and deadly peril of fire, was an acknowledgment that the things they were bidden to worship did in truth themselves utter a strain of joy, did themselves offer up a worship of praise to the Lord, — " O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord."

It must be admitted that these words, and words of

IO CHURCH READER FOR LENT,

like import abounding in the Psalms and other poetical writings of the Bible, are looked upon by many as difficult words to make use of. The poetical form into which the thought is thrown is overlooked. In reading and in interpreting all poetry, the mind must be in a state receptive of exalted thoughts ; it must rise above prosaic literality. Under the influence of an enkindled imagination, — and remember that imagination is the power of picturing within us things invisible to the bodily eyes, — under the influence of an enkindled imagination, language takes a form different from that in which we give expression to our common needs, or to the statement of the results of our ordinary observation. The form taken is very frequently that of invocation of inanimate objects, invocation of abstract ideas, invocation of departed heroes. For any one to suppose that the speaker entertains the thought that the rocks he calls upon can hear his voice, or do other than send back the echo of his spoken words ; or that truth when solemnly appealed to is thought of as listening with an attentive ear; or that every one who invokes the shade of a departed worthy, believes that the words will reach the dweller in spirit-land, — for any one thus to bring ordinary prosaic thoughts into juxtaposition with the thoughts of a mind touched to its inmost depths and roused to noble longings, would be deemed to be linking the sublime to the ludicrous, to be giving a mock dignity to the mean by raising it to a level with the noble.

Mistakes of this sort are often made by well-meaning objectors to the use of poetical language in our religious

BENEDICITE. 1 1 worship. Many there are who have their misgivings as to the use of the Bent fdi 'cite, — misgivings which arise from failing to look upon the glorious song as expressed in the language of religious poetry. To allay such misgivings, it is as well that we who use the words — and who rejoice in them as we use them — should not shrink from declaring that in addressing the clouds, and the seas and floods, and the frost and cold, we do so without any consciousness that there is any listening spirit in the clouds, or in the waters, or in the frosty air, by whom our words are accepted as words of adoration and reverence ; but that we use them in the sense in which the Psalmist of old used many kindred expressions, — that we use them to express our overwhelming conviction, or to impress more deeply upon our minds the thought, that the heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and the firmament shows forth his handiwork; that all things praise the Lord by fulfilling the purposes for which they were designed by him, and by revealing to us his wisdom and love.

Another objection to language such as the Psalmist so often uses, and which is repeated so exultantly by the three youths in their song of praise, is based upon the idea of the natural yileness of all created things ; upon the idea that a withering curse was uttered by God over all his handiwork, and that no swelling chorus of praise can be upraised, or conceived of as being upraised, from that which in God's sight teems with corruption. Such an idea had its birth in the morbid imagination of ascetic men who fancied they read in the Bible confirmation of

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their own degraded estimate of the vileness of all material things. The idea still finds a home in the thoughts of men, more particularly of those who have an overstrained notion of the innate vileness of human nature, — a vileness so peculiar that they conceive of it as being capable of being dispelled, not by any organic inward change resulting from the silent growing into union with the Divine Spirit, but by having ascribed to it a righteousness to which it has ever been a stranger. The old devisers of the idea of the utter vileness of matter, and the modern exaggerators of the vileness of human nature, have both agreed in shutting their ears to the voice of praise proceeding from every thing that hath breath, and to the proclamation of the divine glory from all created things. Both have failed to read, in the story of the fall of man, the lesson that the only thing in the world which can destroy the beauty of God's works is sin ; that to the sin-dimmed eyes of men, the fairest garden is a wilderness ; that when sin is cherished in the heart, and practised in the life, the world which discloses only revelations of beauty and grandeur to pure and loving souls, has its glory veiled, and seems to have thrown across it the dark shadow of death.

The great verity which all who are so reluctant to take upon their lips the words of the Benedicite are struggling to grasp, and of which they have such imperfect hold, is this : that the strain of joy and praise to the Lord of all, from his works, cannot be heard in hearts where sin has gained a complete mastery ; cannot be heard where there is no moral harmony in the life, where there are no

BENEDICITE. 13 thoughts already vibrating tunefully with the melody of a redeemed and thankful soul.

In stating the errors into which it may seem to us that our brethren in past or present times have fallen, we should always endeavor to recognize how the errors themselves are but imperfect presentations of truths.

But the whole subject which this wonderful song brings before our consideration is one of deep mystery ; is one which we cannot fully fathom ; is one concerning which, we may ourselves easily err, and as to which we must be content to patiently wait for fuller light to dawn upon us. There is one utterance of the Apostle Paul, which, if we allow it to fasten itself upon our memory, — if we quietly ponder over it, and think of it in connection with that fuller revelation of knowledge which the hopes of immortality within us assure us will be granted to us in the spiritual home which this our earthly home is a preparation for, — may yield us some insight into the mystery which in all its fulness surpasses our understanding. The words are these : " The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." So that, when we look upon the outward world, we are really beholding what God has designed to be for us a representation of the inner world of spirit. He has constituted the visible to be to us the silent teacher of the invisible, to declare to us his divine glory. The things we see are so designed as to prepare the human heart for the contemplation of the things unseen, to which they in mystic manner correspond. There is not a created thing on earth which has not its archetype in the heavens. Nothing we see in valley or on mountain, in the blue vault above, among the moving clouds, in storm or in sunshine, or on the great and wide sea, but has its divine pattern in the heavenly mount. The whole round world is all aglow with the teaching impressed upon it by the word of the Lord. A consecration rests upon it. The human spirit, reverently beholding the works of the Lord, sees in them all a sacramental token of a Divine Presence within them and around them. The very grass which withereth, the very flower which fadeth, have, in their fleeting existence, an outflow from, and a revelation of, the word of the Lord which endureth forever. And so to us the natural world around us has a ministerial mission. All things fulfil the Lord's word. All are servants of .his, which do his pleasure. He himself in his own divine teaching, as he lived on earth, used them as such. The grass of the field, the birds of the air, the signs of the sky, — to all these he referred to illustrate the laws of the kingdom of heaven. In this morning's second lesson, we listened to him as he drew lessons regarding the growth of the human soul in divine love and wisdom, from the mysterious growth of seed scattered over the ground by the sower who went forth to do his work. All true knowledge is of slow and silent growth. The eye of man cannot estimate the advances made by any lowly soul striving to do the Lord's will, and opening itself to the Lord's teaching, any more than the most watchful eye can discern the slow changes which are undergone before the unquickened seed becomes the ripened corn; but,

BENEDICITE. 15 just as all such changes are patiently watched over by the unwearied eye of the Lord, so does he also patiently guide the human soul in its upgrowth in knowledge of things divine, in its ripening towards that full fruition which is accomplished only in the unseen world.

As we ourselves most worthily praise the Lord by doing his will, and by opening our hearts to his loving inspiration, so we can understand how the devout servants of the Lord in days that are past, recognizing that his will was done by all created things, spoke of those things as offering up perpetual praise to their great Creator. They praised him by doing his will, by obeying his laws, by fulfilling the end for which they were created. Reverent souls even in Pagan times discerned the same mystic truth, which they embodied in an expression which has been handed down to us, — the music of the spheres ; the music of an unceasing obedience to divine law ; the harmony of working together for good.

But, if we are to be fully conscious of this heavenly harmony among the works of the Lord, there must be harmony within ourselves. We ourselves must be living in obedience to the will of the Lord, to his holy law. The law of self must not reign within us. Our whole life must be consecrated to God.

Oh, let us ever seek God's aid to enable us to live in accordance with his will ! Let us see even in the mystery which environs his works, — those works whose laws we so dimly comprehend, — an assurance of the immortality that awaits us. We cannot here uplift the veil of mystery which surrounds the works of the Lord ; we can at best but listen to their chorus of praise : but one of the joys of the future life will be, we may be very sure, to enter more fully into that knowledge which is only partially revealed to us here, — the knowledge of the mystery of the world, which is but part and parcel of the knowledge of God. Oh, let us ever strive to grow in divine knowledge here, so as to make ourselves sure of growth yonder, and of a union with the Divine which shall know no ending !

III

aCfjtrt Bag of lUnt.

EFFECTUAL REPENTANCE.

' REV. J. CROSS, D.D., LL.D.

Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of. — i Cor. vi. 10.

The genuine penitent is he who renounces all his sins, and would rather die than repeat them. And though all real penitence has not the same degree of intensity nor the same mode of expression, which must vary with natural temperament and circumstances, yet is it not godly sorrow, unless it involve such a sense of guilt, and such a horror and hatred of sin, and such a desire to escape from it into the condition of a better life, as shall work up the spirit of a man to such a pitch of solicitude and

EFFECTUAL REPENTANCE. 17

trouble as perchance may never have been occasioned by any personal affliction, or any domestic bereavement, or any crisis in his earthly fortunes. And these feelings, if not expressed in sighs, and groans, and tears, and loud complaints, and bitter lamentations, will express themselves in watchings and strivings against the hated evil, in humble confession of guilt and ingenuous self-accusation, in earnest supplication for God's merciful forgiveness of all past offences, and grace henceforth to lead a godly, righteous, and sober life to the glory of his holy name. For godly sorrow is rational and practical sorrow ; and however intense our grief and however boisterous its expression, if it bring not forth these fruits, it is far from being that " godly sorrow " which "worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of."

Be it observed, then, that sorrow itself, even godly sorrow, while it worketh repentance, does not constitute repentance. Repentance is the whole volume of duty, of which godly sorrow is only the titlepage or the preface. Godly sorrow is the parent ; repentance is the product. And what is that repentance of which the apostle speaks, but an effectual turning from sin to righteousness, an entire reconstruction of life and character, a putting-off of the old man, and a putting-on of the new ; not the electric flash which vanishes in the very moment of its manifestation, but the morning "light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day; " not the fluctuating mockfire that dances at midnight over the marsh, but the steady flame that burns continually upon the altar before the Lord?

Let no one imagine that the humiliation of an Ash Wednesday, the self-crucifixion of a Good Friday, the penitential discipline of a whole Lenten season, will suffice for the salvation of the soul, unless they are followed up by works meet for repentance, constituting the habit of a new life, and wrought into the very texture of a new character. And what a fatal mistake is it, to suppose that the brief compunctions of the death-bed will obliterate the consciousness of guilt, and prepare the sinful soul to stand before its Maker ! that the confessions and supplications of the last few hours of an ungodly life will atone for the manifold delinquencies of all the past, and avert the just vengeance of Heaven from the everlasting future ! Often, alas 1 the tears of the dying are, like those of Esau, but a fruitless shower ; yea, the very rain of Sodom, the kindling of an unquenchable fire, the beginning of an endless and -immitigable woe. Ahab sorrowed, but did not repent ; and Judas repented, but not to salvation. If mere sorrow were -repentance, then were there hope even in hell ; and if all repentance were to salvation, then were there mercy for the Devil and his angels.

Oh ! let us pray. God to work in us by his Holy Spirit such a sorrow as shall quench the flames of our lust, and dissolve the hills of our pride, and extinguish our thirst of covetousness, and effectually turn the drift of our nature toward righteousness and true holiness. For, as St. Augustine says, " though we may not be worthy so much as to lift up our eyes toward heaven, yet are we worthy to weep ourselves blind for our wickedness." But we must ot imagine that our sorrow for sin is to be estimated by

EFFECTUAL REPENTANCE. 19

the abundance of our tears, or the frequency of our prayers, or the continuance of our fasting, or any other form of self-mortification ; but by our active hatred of sin, our entire renunciation of all evil practices, and the strenuous warfare we constantly wage against every temptation to their repetition. " Godly sorrow" produces " repentance toward God ; " and repentance toward God is the only " repentance to salvation not to be repented of."

The sorrow is not the repentance, but the fountain whence the repentance flows. And the first stream from this fountain, the first act of true repentance, is an ingenuous confession of sin. " He that covereth his sins shall not prosper ; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall find mercy." But let not our confession be like the unlading of a ship to take in a new cargo. Let not the dog return to his own vomit again ; and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire. Let us not come hither day by day to weary the ear of our God with the acknowledgment of iniquities which we never renounce, and afflict our souls with fasting merely to comply with a venerable custom of the Church, and try to dress ourselves up in a formal habit of piety against the approaching Easter festival ; nor imagine for a moment that by such heartless penitence we can ease a burdened conscience, or through such hollow observances obtain forgiveness of our sins. It is the confessing and forsaking that insure the mercy, and no confession will avail without the forsaking. The confession of sin which is not followed by amendment of life, is like the bleating of the calves and the lowing of the oxen that Saul reserved from the spoil, enabling God out of our own mouth to condemn our imperfect services. If our humiliation before the Lord lead not to the abandonment of all our wicked ways, and the extirpation of his enemies within us, there is still no repentance to salvation. Achan must be brought to judgment ; the troubler of Israel must be stoned to death before the congregation. If we regard iniquity in our hearts, the Lord will not hear us. If we spare Agag, our penitence is no better than Ahab's. If we put not away the abominable thing which the Lord hateth, though we fast ourselves into skeletons and weep ourselves into water, we are no nearer our salvation than Esau was to the recovery of his bartered birthright and forfeited blessing, when he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

There is a sorrow for sin — have we not all seen it ? which produces no reformation. So far as it goes, it may be quite sincere : but it is not earnest enough to be practical. Purposes are formed, and promises are made, which are effaced from the mind by the first temptation, as the track of the sea-fowl on the strand is obliterated by the first wave of the returning tide. Resolutions are formally taken and solemnly announced, and covenants with Jehovah are entered into in the presence of all his people, which the cares or the pleasures of the world sweep away as quickly as the breeze sweeps the gossamer from the branch. The seed fell upon the rock, or among the thorns, or by the desert wayside, and so brought forth

EFFECTUAL REPENTANCE. 21

no fruit to perfection. These spasms of piety, even if a man should die in one of them, have no power to save. Of the repentance described by the apostle, they contain not so much as the first genuine element. No real repentance can there be, unless the purpose becomes an action, and the action grows into a habit, and the habit ripens into religious character.

And how discouraging is all this to the hope of a death-bed repentance ! For against what does the dying sinner resolve, but the sins he can never more commit ? and what avails the resolution he has no longer power to put in practice? Can all his tears now obliterate the bitter memory of a long career of crime and folly? Can all his struggles break the chains in which he has been binding himself for so many years? Can he undo in a day or an hour all that he has been doing ever since he left his cradle? Can he so suddenly awake from his sleep of death, and cast away the works of darkness, and put on all the armor of righteousness, and crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts, and effectually abolish the whole body of sin ? Yet this is what he has to do, and nothing less than this is complete repentance. Let him weep as wept the wretched Esau, as wept all Israel in Bochim, as wept the fugitive king in the ascent of Olivet, as wept the broken-hearted disciple for the denial of his Lord ; but what avail his tears against the catalogue of his crimes which conscience now holds up before him ? The offering of a contrite heart, even in the mortal hour, God will no doubt accept ; and we would not limit the exercise of His mercy, who assured the expiring thief of paradise, and died himself to open paradise to every penitent sinner. But where there is no possibility of a practical test, the character of the repentance must be extremely doubtful ; and he who has lived in impenitence may well die in despair.

Fifty years' experience in frequent dealing with the consciences of dying sinners has made me distrustful of death-bed repentances ; and of the many I have witnessed, few were more satisfactory than that of a wretched woman who sent for me to come and pray with her in her last moments ; and when I asked her whether she intended to forsake her sins and lead a better life, she answered — " If I die, I do ; if I recover, I do not." O my friends, hang not your heavenly crowns upon such cobwebs ! Delay your repentance no longer; the hazard is infinite. Repent, for the work will soon be impossible, and your condition hopeless. Repent, for a life of persistent sin must issue in unavailing and everlasting sorrow. Repent, and show the reality of your repentance, by consecrating yourselves, soul and body, to Him who redeemed you by the blood of his cross. During this solemn penitential season, when Heaven is calling upon you so loudly, and the Church in sackcloth and ashes waits to welcome you within the bond of the holy covenant, come and join her children in the exercise of a "godly sorrow" which "worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of."

THE HAUNTING SPECTRE, 23

IV

jfaurtfi Sag of £ent THE HAUNTING SPECTRE.

REV. H. J. WILMOT-BUXTON, A.M. 11 Be sure your sin will find you out." — Num. xxxii. 23.

A great poet describes the last hours of a certain wicked king, on the night before. he went out to his last battle. He pictures him as being haunted by the spectres of those whom he had wronged or slain ; and each accusing spirit says, " Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow ! despair, and die ! "

Every unforgiven sinner leads a haunted life. There are times for the most reckless when the memory of his sin " sits heavy on his soul," and comes to him as an accusing spectre, saying, " Remember me." You know what shuts us out from God, — sin. When we deliberately commit a sin, knowing it to be wrong, then that sin comes between us and God like a curtain, and shuts us out from him. We cannot come to God, God will not come to us. There is, as it were, a great gulf fixed ; there is that unrepented — and therefore unforgiven — sin, between us and God, and our very prayers are hindered. It may be an old sin, something done or said long ago, and forgotten by you. But, if not repented of, that sin remains, and it will be a haunting spectre in your life, and will find you out one day, so that you will be forced to cry, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ?".

It may be a sin of long ago, or a sin of yesterday ; but so long as it remains unrepented of, it remains unforgiven, remains to haunt you. It will stand at your bedside, and, as it were, whisper to you, " Remember me ! " The drunkard who fancies he is leading a gay life, drowning all sorrow in his cups, has his haunting spectre. It will come to him, and say, " Remember me ! Remember what you were, and what you are. Remember your wasted life, your ruined health, your lost character, your mournful family." The impure man or woman has a haunting spectre. They may try to think lightly of their lost purity, and their tarnished name ; but the day comes when the sin finds them out, when the spectre stands before them. It says, " I am the ghost of your old sin. Remember me ! " The dishonest man has his haunting spectre. The secret act of fraud so cleverly executed, never discovered, that comes back, and haunts the man, stands between him and peace, blights his life, and imbitters his pleasure.

My brethren, is there no such haunting spectre in your lives? is there no old sin which you thought dead and buried, which comes back to you, and darkens your way of life ? Look back even while I speak, O young men, and young women : is there no sin which you have never told to your mother, no, not even to your God, and which still remains to haunt } ou ? Remember, if that sin is not repented of, it will haunt you to the grave; yes, and beyond the grave ; it will haunt you on the day of

THE HAUNTING SPECTRE. 25

judgment ; it will stand between you and God, between you and pardon. "Be sure your sin will find you out." A wise man of old time (Seneca) says, "Let wickedness escape the law as it may, it never fails to do itself justice,, for every guilty person is his own hangman." My brethren, if you would have your life free from the haunting spectre, if you would get rid of the hateful presence of a sin, if you would be free men, no longer dragging a chain about with you like slaves, I say to you, repent you truly of your sins : since, as sin shuts us out from God, true repentance brings us back to God through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. What, then, do I mean by true repentance? Do I mean the fact of feeling sorry for our sin? No : sorrow for sin need not be repentance: The drunkard is sorry with a selfish sorrow for the effects of his intemperance. The criminal is sorry for the folly and crime which have brought punishment. The woman who has lost her virtue is sorry that she has forfeited what cannot be regained. But in all these cases it is not godly sorrow, it is not sorrow for having sinned against God. True repentance has three parts, three distinct steps. Firsts there must be conviction of sin, accompanied by sorrow for sin. When once we see our sin, and find out how vile and ugly a thing it is, sorrow will follow as a natural consequence. Secondly, there must be confession of sin to God, — confession not merely of sins generally, but of the special sin or sins of which we desire to repent. Thirdly, there must be a- definite resolution of amendment, — a determination to try, by God's help, to do better for the future. These three -parts -make up true repentance. To stop short at being sorry, to stop short at knowing that we have sinned, to stop short at making a vague resolution to do better, is not to repent.