The marriage of the King's son, and, The guilt of unbelief: two sermons

Prefatory Note

PHE two sermons here given represent the quality of the preaching of the late Rev. William James. Rev. Henry Neill, for a long time his intimate friend, was requested to furnish his recollections of Mr. James, which he has done in the Letter herewith published. Rev. W. B. Sprague has also consented to the republication here, of the narrative portions of his funeral discourse. Besides these, the present volume contains two Letters ; one of which gives an extended statement respecting his faith and hope, written in the prospect of approaching death.

The volume is published for the sake of his friends, and in the hope also that a wider circle may find in it strength for the spiritual life.

Contents

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Prefatory Note 7

Outline of Mr. James's Life. By Rev. Wm, B.

II

" 1VF Y DEAR — ■ ° n Sunda y> the 9 th > 1 g ave

-*-*-*- up truly and perfectly all my hope for earth. The old symptoms of disease came back upon me with such power, that there was no resisting the conviction that the premonitory tokens of the great change were upon me.

" Since God uses instruments to accomplish His gracious purposes, I write now with the strong hope that He will once more employ my humble instrumentality to still further strengthen your faith, and revive the spirit of the contrite one. I have a doctrine to proclaim to you, which you know, which we have both known, which, more than any other, lies at the foundation of all true Christian experience, but which has been brought home to me, recently, with a power of which I never had any experience before.

" It is only for the sake of setting the doctrine in the clearest light, that I must ask you to let me give you an outline of my spiritual history for some time past. In a weak, a dreadfully weak, manner, I have been always contending with the selfishness of my heart, never conquering, but never yielding ; that is, never giving up the hope of a conquest at last. To come down to the last six months (though what I say of this period has been true, in a great degree, for a much longer time), my sense of the hatefulness of this moral leprosy, and yet of my helplessness to get rid of it, has been so acute, that I have rejoiced in suffering which would give a deliverance from this deep-rooted malady. Some occurrences in Providence, of a very small kind in themselves, were the occasion of opening my eyes to a more humiliating view of my character and life, than I had ever had, and, at the same time, awakening the profoundest grief and repentance. I was not rebellious, but gave my cheek to the smiter. Together with the repentance, I had what I may say was the first clear, unclouded, unmixed view of the character and relation to me of God, as a Father, that I ever had in my life ; the first really natural view, every other view being a compromise of the simple declaration of the Scriptures with the reasonings and results of speculative theology. From that time until my great trouble came upon me, I was rejoicing in God as pure love, — as full of love as the sun is of light. During that time, I wrote on the subject, and preached, as all testify, as I never did before. But there was one subject on which I was yet dark and felt my darkness, and prayed continually that it might be removed ; that was the exact relation of the atonement to the reconciliation which seemed

LETTERS.

so perfect. I had, as I have always had, the common dogmatic views which are held by the Church on this subject. But those views had never had any such effect upon my heart as the simple view of the love of God now had. About this I was troubled : I could not doubt, somehow, that the late speculations on the subject of the atonement were wrong. I could not reconcile them with the Scriptures, and yet all my experience, as well as my reflection, was pushing me in that direction. I never could settle in those views, and yet I knew not how to escape them. I prayed continually that God, by His Spirit, would make this matter plain to me. This was my state of mind when I went to New York for medical advice.

" But about my bodily malady while there, I had very little concern. Another concern, infinitely more terrible, took possession of me in the hours of my deep retirement. As by a flash of lightning from the judgmentseat, I was at once prostrated by a clear apprehension of sin. My whole spiritual fabric, which I have all my life been building, — and which just before had seemed so beautifully illuminated by the love of God, — fell into a shapeless ruin. Conscience was stirred to its lowest depths. The one sin which first attracted my attention, hardly even seriously thought of before, but now made so clear, was merely the entering wedge ; my whole heart was laid open, and it seemed to be nothing but a nest of vipers ; my whole life seemed nothing but one tissue of corruption. I saw all the good there was about it as clearly as ever ; my perpetual struggle with evil, the many manifestations I have had of God's favor, my successes over particular temptations, — all these stood in my mind just as they had stood before. But I saw that all these were very superficial and comparatively external, as evidences of a justified or sanctified state. They were overshadowed by one vast sin, which filled my whole vision, and overwhelmed me with shame and humiliation. How shall I give you an idea of the nature of the sin ? It may be expressed in a single word, — unbelief, or the non-appreciation of Christ. At once I saw, almost as by a new sense (though it was simply the old sense intensely acuminated), the man Christ Jesus, — the sent-of-God to save a sinful, self-destroyed race.

No vision of the senses could be more real, or hardly more distinct ; it was just as impressive as if He had come to save me alone. I saw Him in all His searching pureness, and in all His inexpressible love ; the gift of the Father (like the sun in the heavens) to illuminate a dark world ; the Light of man to point out, by His example eminently, and by His precepts, what man may be and ought to be ; and with this, the Friend of man, nearer than any brother, full of love to him, and with all power to help him, — a love which carried Him to a death of ignominy, from which He was raised, by the power of the Father, still in His exalted state, to be the friend and brother of man, — to be not merely present to him outwardly, but by His Spirit to be in him ; a union not moral merely, depending on man's good behavior, — however that might affect the sense of it, — but spiritual and everlasting, depending on His mysterious love. This is the gospel, in the light of which I have been walking all my life ; and how has my life corresponded to it? What influence has it had upon my character? Such has been His devotion to me, what has been mine to Him ? If I had had a real faith in this Man, — this gift of the Father's love, and Himself the Father's love, in its liveliest possible exemplification, how could it have been that my whole life, in all its inward breathings and outward expressions, would have been any thing else but one continuous act of love and devotion to Him ? How I should have felt Him ever with me, before me as my guide, within me as my comforter, behind me as the rock of my support, enabling me to look down with simple pity upon the world, whose vain opinion I have so much courted, and to avoid whose censure I have so constantly refrained from every thing like a bold, aggressive profession !

How plain it became to me that I had never really or thoroughly believed on Him ! This is what I mean by sin : not accepting this light of the world, and constantly walking in it, just as I accept and walk in the light of the noonday sun. ' Of sin, because they believe not in me;' believing in Him, or rather in certain doctrines about Him, only with the view of preserving peace of conscience, but not giving my whole heart and every action of my life to Him. I now saw clearly what is meant by a personal union with Christ, by a being in Him, as the branch is in the vine ; and I was as clearly conscious that this had never been the nature of my union with Him, for that had been compulsory, an external thing. In view of all this, I found myself a sinner ; and a sinner, considering my peculiar advantages, of the most aggravated character. My condemnation was certain ; all past experiences I utterly renounced. I did not want to be saved in virtue of any such miserable stuff. I wanted a real salvation, — a salvation direct from God, in perfect harmony with His perfections, given not merely because I was a miserable perishing creature, the proper object of compassion (though I made much use of this plea), but because he could give it justly and holily, without a shadow of loss to His own honor. And, observe farther, the salvation I wanted was simply forgiveness ; nothing else had any sort of congruity with my case. The sword of offended Justice was impending over me. Regeneration could not save me, even if it were possible to have it. I felt that I had repentance, and that was a great comfort to me ; though still, as I apprehended my sin, I could not build any confidence upon my repentance. I wanted forgiveness, not_ merely deliverance from wrath, but some sign of the love of the Father and the grace of the Saviour, whom I had so deeply offended, and whose frown was eternal sorrow, grief without remedy. God appeared to me not at all as an angry despot, but as a most loving Father ; and Christ as my loving Saviour. The dread which was upon my spirit, was not of some mysterious penalty in another world, an infliction of evil, but of separation from the source of all love, — from the bosom of a Father, and particularly from that blessed Being who had given His life for man. The forgiveness, of which I felt such a need, implied the return of those affections to me ; that was what I wanted, — that was salvation.

" The only particle of light that gave me any hope here w r as Christ's sacrificial suffering. Whether or not I should ever receive the benefit of the atonement, it was now just as clear as that Christ came into the world, that He came specially, eminently, above every other part of His mission, for the purpose of dying for sin, for the purpose of taking the sinner's place in the eye of the law and justice, so that the sinner could feel that there was no moral necessity for his punishment ; and that God could be just, and yet forgive him boundlessly. I could no longer doubt that this is just what all those scriptural expressions, about Christ's dying for us, mean. I could not avoid seeing that if that is not the gospel, it would be no more suited to one in my condition, which is, at some time or other, the universal condition, than a code of morals. I knew that God was good, loving, merciful, &c. ; but I just as well knew, and at present far more impressively, that He was just also. Of the possibility of forgiveness in a way of righteousness, then

I entertained not the slightest misgiving. It was all my comfort, while my own individual case was doubtful ; but that was still doubtful. I saw that I was quite as properly a subject for justice as for mercy ; that nothing could be more exactly righteous, than that I should be excepted, if any one, and there certainly are many, from the provisions of grace. Though the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice saved me from despair, I had not the faith which could assure me of a deliverance from the penalty, — the penalty of abusing grace. It seemed most righteous that grace so abused should vindicate itself in turning a deaf ear to my supplications. I saw plainly that Christ's work merely put it in God's power to save me, if He chose to do so ; and that if I, so properly a subject for justice, were saved through the great sacrifice, it must be only of God's good pleasure. Though I dwelt then continually upon the Saviour's death, as the only thing that made salvation possible, I felt after all, that, as an individual, I depended on God's sovereign determination. Oh, how I bowed before His sovereignty ! how I acknowledged from my heart His right to do as He pleased with me ! how I humbled myself, and cut myself loose from every thing but His sovereign pleasure ! But here came in for my relief all that I knew, and all that the Scriptures testify, of His nature, as inclined to mercy, as full of love, as not willing that any should perish, &c. Oh, the sweetness of those innumerable passages, which give this account of

Him. I preferred, therefore, lying in His sovereign hands, to putting in any plea or claim founded even on the great sacrifice. I rather asked that He would embolden me to make that claim ; that, having given His Son to die for me, He would now, of the same free goodness, give His Spirit to inspire me with faith, and make the work of Christ effectual in me. Here is where I stand, or rather lie, at present.

" I have no dependence but upon God's forgiveness of my sin through the atonement. But my peace is without interruption. My sufferings increase, but so does the strength by which I am supported, which I am sure is exhaustless. ' Whom He loveth He chasteneth,' satisfies every doubt, and gives a kind of pleasure to the pain. I love to endure what His loving hand lays upon me. My sky seems more cloudless as I advance. The everlasting love illumines alike both worlds. In our Father's house are many mansions."

SERMONS.

I.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.

" The kingdom of Heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son.'" — Matt. xxii. 2.

TN Oriental poetry, a specimen of which we have in the 45th Psalm, the union of a ruler with his subjects is sometimes treated as if it were a marriage union, the nation being the bride and the prince the bridegroom. Whatever might have been the origin of this conception, in the actual relations and intercourse of such parties there is generally but little correspondence with the figure. But in the Kingdom, the advent of which was announced by the Messiah, particularly in its final consummation, this conception shall be fully realized. It is no mere figure or fiction, that the King of heaven has made a marriage for his Son. What is the gospel but a Divine solicitation for the hand of humanity?

Every individual soul, which truly responds to this solicitation, becomes thereby a member of that holy community which, in the winding-up of the affairs of Time, shall be presented to the universe as the bride, the Lamb's wife, the object of his chief affection and the partner of his royal honors. Then it is that the marriage shall be celebrated, for which the preaching of the gospel through all the intervening ages has been the grand preparation. Then, when the number of the elect shall be finished, when the redeemed from the earth out of every kindred and tribe and nation shall be fully gathered, then shall be heard in heaven the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters and of mighty thunderings. saying, w Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him ; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His Bride hath made herself ready." In making ready the Bride, in preparing for this scene of unimaginable bliss, the gospel, as we have already intimated, is the great instrumentality. The gospel declares the terms of this union on the part of God, and furnishes the motive to their acceptance on the part of man. The subject, then, to which I shall ask your attention, is the instrumentality of the gospel in effecting a heart reconciliation between God and man. As reconciliation supposes a previous but broken union, to explain the nature of that union, the union originally existing between the soul and God shall be our first object.

The original relation of the soul to God was not the relation of a subject to a governor, nor of a servant to a master. It was not what w r e call a law relation, but wholly a love relation, the distinction between which consists in this, — that, in the latter, the first, last, and only aim of the Higher party is to promote the happiness of the object loved. In a law relation, on the contrary, His supreme and most manifest regard is to His own rights, honor, and authority. In a purely love relation, obedience is never sought to be secured by an exhibition of authority, exciting, in the inferior party, an apprehension of penalty. That was the curse which sin brought with it. The obedience of the soul was prompted purely by love, or by a sense of God's infinite affection. And in this consisted its original integrity : it w r as the reign of legitimate love. And that is what is meant by the kingdom of heaven, or the rule of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is not any visible social organization : it is the reign of purity ; that is, of legitimate love in the individual soul. The force of the word "legitimate" will be better understood when we consider, secondly, the manner and circumstances of the fall.

To this purpose we observe, that, as the soul was made to find her happiness in loving, and her highest happiness in loving God, she was so made, also, in His wondrous beneficence, as to be capable of an inferior but yet a most heart-felt enjoyment in the communications of creatures* In giving Himself to her, God gave her, also, a magnificent endowment out of Himself.

"The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's : but the earth hath He given to the children of men." — "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels ; thou crownedest, him with glory and honor; thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." Such was the condition of the soul on the day of its creation ; endowed with a terrestrial paradise, — that is, with every means of worldly gratification, — and this was the occasion of its fall. You may wonder, indeed, how this gross, material world could tempt this son and heir of the Eternal ; how the soul, born with the high capacity for union with the Divine, and actually standing in the Divine fellowship, could yield to so base a competitor. But consider how the temptation prevailed. Was it through the mere violence of natural desire, overbearing all regard to the commands of the Creator? Was the fall the effect of a bold, deliberate act of transgression? Why, sin, even in our fallen state, does not begin in that way, though that is the end of it. It begins in this way : God is too good to inflict so great a penalty for so small a deviation. Can He consign me to death for desiring, only a little too eagerly, a gratification, for which the nature He has given me was evidently made? Can He mean that my life should be a bondage, — a perpetual struggle between inclination and duty? Rather let me believe that, in my simplicity, I have misunderstood the nature of the prohibition ; and very certainly He does not mean that an action in itself of so little consequence should be followed by such evil results as those which I have apprehended. How, in fact, can I so well manifest my confidence in His goodness, my gratitude for the many prerogatives with which His royal munificence has endowed me ; how so well my contentment with His authority, — as by shaking off the bondage of a fearful spirit, and indulging that desire for an earth-born happiness, which is a part of my nature, not according to any statute of limitations, but in the exercise of a free intelligence?

Let the catastrophe, in that case, be our warning. Yielding to the tempter, the presence of God immediately departed from the soul. Fallen into a law relation, God has become the subject of her settled distrust. But still true to the original law of finding her happiness in loving, nothing remains now but for the soul to make the most of that which is offered, in a love relation, or, properly speaking, a lust relation, with that inferior and transitory good by which she was seduced from her pristine purity.

This is the condition of the soul at present. Once the joy of the Creator's bosom, and the image of His perfection, she is now led captive by the arts of the great seducer. Her affections, so ennobled originally by their conscious alliance with the All-Good and the All-Fair, and so happy in the prospect of an interminable bloom, are now reduced to the necessity of ever pursuing an illusion, — a known illusion, for the most part, — or at once yielding to despair. In a word, if we may credit the statements of inspiration, and be allowed to draw an illustration from some of its various imagery, the difference between the actual condition of the soul, and that in which it stood when it first came from the hand of its Creator, — or rather from His bosom, for are we not His offspring? — is just the difference between a perfectly filial youth, to whom his father might have said, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine ; " and that same youth, when, at another period of his history, he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat ; or, to go a degree lower, between the woman, crowned with the honors and exulting in the joys of the newmade bride, and the same woman lost to the glory and the peace of innocence.

The gospel is the instrumentality by which this condition is reversed ; by which the whole evil of the fall is repaired ; by which the power of a seducing world is entirely broken, and the soul reunited in its ancient bonds to her true husband.

And what is the gospel ? When the new Jerusalem shall come down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and it shall be asked, *Who are these that are arrayed in white robes, and whence come they?" the response shall be, "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Though a multitude which no man can number, with one voice they ascribe the purity which fits them for the heavenly bridal, to the Lamb that was slain. In the symphony which bursts from the full communion of the blessed, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain," we have the answer to the question, What is the gospel? It is simply the doctrine of expiation and of sanctification by the blood of Jesus. To describe the inward process by which this doctrine restores the soul to purity and to heaven, shall be the object of our further remarks.

The first thing that is done on the part of God, in the execution of His gracious purpose, is to send a message to the soul, announcing that the breach is not past healing ; that a reconciliation is possible, the first condition of which is, that she must forsake the world immediately, and return to her true husband. So sincere, so anxious, we may say, is His desire for the soul's return, that, not content with despatching a single message, He sends her line upon line, servant after servant, rising up early and sending them, saying, Return from your evil ways. Some of these servants, in fact, He has organized into a standing ministry, — well called a ministry of reconciliation, — whose whole business it is to wait upon the soul through all the period of her probation, to argue with her, endeavoring to convince her what a folly she has committed, what a delusion to make a God of this poor world ; to remind her of the happy and honorable state from which she has fallen, and which

TEE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 97

she may yet recover, — for they are directed always to conclude with the assurance that, notwithstanding all her folly and all her guilt, the door to a reunion is yet open, and will be until a certain hour : an hour, the date of which not being precisely fixed, the soul is at liberty to consider as either near or distant. But, to give the greater force to the language of entreaty, she is distinctly forewarned that there is an hour which fixes the limit of her Lord's forbearance, and of her probation, — an hour beyond which the world can no longer hold her, nor she the world, when at midnight a cry shall be heard, Behold, the bridegroom cometh ! Of the manner in which this message is received by the many who are called, it is not our business, at present, to speak. Only to observe, in passing, that they make light of it, and go their ways, — one to his farm, another to his merchandise. For no great pleasure here upon the earth, — for the enjoyment of a landed estate, a property already attained, or in the hope of acquiring such a property by success in merchandise, — they despise the joy of an everlasting bridal, and the glory of an eternal crown. The man who, for such a dream as a title in heaven, would sacrifice, or even hazard, any worldly possession, whilst retaining ever so little capacity for holding and enjoying it, by the general voice is pronounced a fool. He who, in his zeal for such a faith, dares to encounter the world's persecution, makes for himself the reputation of a fanatic. The general effect of the message upon the wanton soul is to increase her wantonness. The whole comfort which she takes from it, is that which is contained in the intimation that her lord delayeth his coming. How active is her fancy in stretching that period to its utmost conceivable limit ! how exuberant in filling it with images of worldly bliss, with scenes which derive all their enchantment from the absence of her Lord, and want nothing to make it a perfect heaven but the assurance that He will never come to interrupt her pleasure ! But of these it is not our business, at present, to speak.

It is of those whose better sensibilities have been awakened ; of those in whom the doctrine of the message, corresponding with a soul-felt want, becomes an inward call which they cannot resist, which they would fain obey.

What is that want? It begins in a sense of the unsatisfying nature of worldly good ; in a dim apprehension that the soul, in seeking it, is but wandering more and more from its highest sphere, and that substantial happiness can only be obtained by turning back and seeking first, reconciliation with God. Under this conviction she turns back. But soon she meets an invincible difficulty in the law relation, under which she has fallen ; a difficulty of which she has but little consciousness, while still blinded bv the attractions of the world, and deceived by its fair promises. But let the world become dark, entirely dark; let that be fulfilled in the soul which is described by the prophets : " She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks : among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her : all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies," — then shall she say, "I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better w T ith me than now;" that is, her vital union with the world being broken, let her seek a similar union with the God she has forsaken, and in that law relation, which had hitherto been only a little irksome, by no means very painful or burthensome, she will find the root of all her misery.