Sermons ...

III. Essentiality of Dependence on God, .... 25 IV

"Jesus Christ and Hem Crucified," 39

VI

vn.

vm.

The Mysteries of the Future State, .... 88 IX.

A Vindication of the Divine Justice, .... 102 X.

The "Grace of Jesus" and the "Love of God," . 122 XL

Inftmteness of the Divine Affection, .... 133 iv CONTENTS.

XII.

PAGE

XIII.

The Splendid Triumphs of Redemption, . . . 160 XIV.

XV.

Reward of Consecration in Tesie and Eternity, . . 207 XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

God's Goodness and Man's Ungratefulness, . . .264 XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

11 LOYE OF THE TRUTH " NECESSARY TO SALVATION, . 323

XXIV.

SEKMCHsTS.

i.

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11 Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart." — Psalm xcvii. 11.

These words appear to be the vehicles of a vast weight of solemn and instructive thought. The eyes of the Seer seem to sweep, in the text, over an infinite range of being, duty, and destiny. First, an unlimited field is spread out before him ; then, the garners of an immortal seed are opened to his inspection ; next, the sower goes forth to sow ; and last of all, the tremendous harvest is reaped and possessed.

The field comprises all the events of subordinate and created existence. These are necessary, fortuitous,, or contingent. Necessary events are those between which there subsists a known infallible connection of causes and effects. In the material universe, such are the relations of the planetary system, and its effects upon our seasons ; the law of gravitation, which draws all ponderous bodies toward a common centre of attraction ; the laws of light, with all the effects of reflection and refracl

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tion ; the laws of heat, its action in radiation and its effects in expansion, contraction, and combustion ; and what is now known as the science of acoustics, by which vocal effects and the atmospheric vibrations produced by all sonorous bodies, may be directed, governed, and economized. In all these things, given the cause, and we know that an infallible connection binds to it a consequent effect.

The social world is still more fruitful in illustrations. In business, capacity, integrity, industry, and economy have a known infallible connection with success. The dullest as well as the most gifted understands the law, and uses these qualities with all confidence and with more or less of efficiency, as reliable factors in the product of his own pecuniary support or splendid fortune. So, all professions, arts, and industries have their rules of success and failure ; which rules are simply the expression of known infallible connections between cause and effect. Such also are the operation, in the social world, of many kindred and congenial sympathies, prejudices, passions, antipathies, and even enmities. Every one understands that it is in his option to adopt such a course of conduct as shall arm the whole community against him ; or, on the other hand, he may as freely pursue such a course as shall win him many friends, or even render him universally popular.

Such again are the laws of organic life, as displayed in the physical functions of humanity. The rules of hygiene, the operations of disease and

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violence, the effects of medicines, physical pains, and sensual pleasures, constitute a class of events, between which and their causes there subsists, as every one understands, a known infallible connection.

And the same is true, to a limited extent, hi the world of mind. The aesthetic and emotional susceptibilities of our common nature are the capital of the artist and the orator. By their appeals to our natural love of the subhme, the beautiful, and the pathetic, they touch and wake — according to the measure of their artist power — all the thrilling tones of feeling. We laugh, we weep, or we are rapt in an ecstasy of admiration, because these sons of genius know how to move us as they will. The intellect, like a fruitful soil, nurses and develops infallibly all the germs of thought sown there by the wild wind of Chance, or the hand of patient Culture. Even the godlike Conscience and the fierce, unfettered Will may yet blind and manacle themselves. Between evil, and its effects in depravity — if once received into the soul and made welcome, — there is a known infallible connection.

These all are necessary events, in a strict and philosophical sense, and comprise the first part of that vast field over which the eye of the Prophet Psalmist seems to glance in the text.

The second great class of events are those which we term fortuitous or accidental. This class comprises all those events between which there subsists an equally infallible, but unknown, connection of cause and effect. Such, for example, in the mate-

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rial world, are the fall of meteoric bodies, the deadly or destructive strokes of lightning, hurricanes upon the sea and tornadoes on the shore, earthquakes and avalanches, the fall of trees and edifices, tidal waves, fires, mechanical and chemical explosions, as some of those from steam, gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, and illuminating oils. In these cases, the connection between cause and effect is certain, but unknown, in the sense pf unforeseen ; inasmuch as we never think of the cause till we witness the effect ; or the cause is first published to us by the presence of the effect.

The social world may furnish us again with a thousand illustrations of the power of accident or chance. In business, great gains and disastrous losses, and not unfrequently ultimate success or failure, are the effects of unforeseen causes. Some wild and sentient Energy — despite our skill and providence, as despite our negligence and incapacity — seems to seize, all at once, the helm of our affairs, and indicate the harbor of success, or dash us upon the rocks of failure. Under the operation of the same occult law, professional Merit shall lie long unnoticed and forgotten until it despairs of the prizes which it has fairly earned ; while Mediocrity or Unworth shall win and wear the rewards of Power and Virtue. Governments are aggrandized or overthrown, and dynasties perpetuated or destroyed by the same means. Some of our rarest and dearest personal friendships, and our deadliest enmities, even, are the effects of unexpected and inexplicable causes.

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So — exceptionally, it is true, but still occasionally and really — health and sickness, infection, contagion, violence, and death, or unhoped for preservation and safety, come to us through the mysterious door of Chance.

The same weird Influence often makes wild work with our sensibilities, quenches the kindling flames of resentment and affection, or fans both to a deadly and consuming intensity. The intellect, I believe, of most men owes more to chance than to voluntary culture. Like a shrub among shifting rocks, shaken ever and anon by volcanic forces, it is warped, and pressed and prejudiced and prepossessed, until it loses all the symmetry and beauty which are the product of natural and regular laws. Even the domain of the moral sense — the purely spiritual faculties — is invaded and subjugated, not unfrequently, by this strange Force. How many spiritual natures work out their own salvation, in accordance with God's revealed laws, and aided by the celestial forces within them, — compared with the number of souls that float as neutral material, idly down the stream of years, the sport of every eddy, and soiled by every foul thing which is drifted by the current of Chance within their reach, — it would be hard, it would be impossible to say.

These fortuitous events — including all those between which there subsists an infallible but unknown connection of cause and effect — comprise another portion of that vast field of circumstance which the prophet seems to contemplate in the text.

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The remaining and final division of this field embraces all contingent events. These are known by the absence from among them of any real or settled connection of cause and effect. On these, we are to observe that mind is the only real agent or power in the universe. Even those dynamic forces, in the mechanical world, which we term powers, are so called only in a tropical and never in an accurate or philosophic sense. Now all those events which are the actions or motions of the Supreme Mind, are of course purely contingent ; because perfect independency and freedom are of the essence of the Deity. Every one understands that the pure, unmixed, spiritual, and' infinite Mind, which we term God, is the source of all power, in the form, or substance and manifestations, of subordinate minds. Every one understands, also, that the Supreme Mind is the natural controller and regulator of those subordinate minds, or powers, which He creates or puts in motion ; and that all this control and regulation — being, in effect, the action of the infinite Mind — is purely contingent. Subordinate minds are simply limited agencies, communicated powers, miniature likenesses of the infinite Mind.

We understand of the angels and of the devils, that they are superhuman, intelligent, and spiritual beings. Each has individuality, a limited independency, separate and self-governed powers, peculiar and personal designs, and a sphere of free and untrammeled action. Now all these motions of superhuman minds, being free, are consequently purely contingent.

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We. understand, again, that human beings are of a mixed nature — partly animal and partly spiritual ; that the animal part is subject to decay and death, while the spiritual part is immortal, indiyidual, personal, independent, free, and responsible, — in short, in the image and likeness of God ; that this spiritual and divine part of man is the natural sovereign of his physical and material nature, and dominates it, always, with an absoluteness proportioned to its self-assertion, or the voluntary exercise of its native force ; that it is lord of the intellect, and endues it with riches or abandons it to poverty and neglect ; that all the wild forces of passion are subject to its sway, and submit, however reluctantly, to its enforced restraints ; and finally, that it is lord of itself, the conservator of its own forces, or their wasteful and suicidal destroyer.

Thus all the motions of mind — supreme, superhuman, or human — are free, original, and uncaused ; and are in consequence properly and purely contingent ; and these constitute the final portion of that vast field of events, in which " light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart."

The seed appropriated to this field is, apparently, of two distinct kinds : " light and gladness." But light, in the text, is evidently but a symbol of truth. Now truth, in man, is the relation of sameness between things and his notion of them ; or it is the relation of sameness between his own notions, or thoughts, and his affirmations. The

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former is the matter of Divine revelation, in all its forms ; the latter is of the very essence of the character of the righteous ; and has had, certainly, since the world began, but one perfect representation in humanity ; and that was in the person and character of the man, Jesus. The matter of revelation, or the relation of sameness between things and our notion of them, is sown, as seed, in the wide field of all events. In other terms, God condescends to correct our natural misapprehensions, by representations of the truth as it really is. Thus are formed correct apprehensions of God, nature, and man ; sound judgments of Providence and Redemption, and right opinions concerning knowledge, wisdom, and power. In a word, the universe, as it is, is revealed ; but the revelation is in the form of seed, or germ-life, to be deposited in the field of events, there to quicken, expand, grow, and multiply until the harvest time.

Gladness is simply the sentiment of complacency in exercise ; it is the substratum of all satisfaction : it is the earliest and most pervasive form of the feeling of pleasure. Under the stimuli of fortunate circumstances, gladness naturally rises into pleasure. Gladness is the easy effect of the harmony of all our powers. "We are glad, sitting alone, at home ; but the unexpected presence of a dear friend, or the clear perception of a difficult truth, or the manifestation of Divine approbation, produces each its separate phase of pleasure. The first we term pathematic, the second intellectual, and the last spiritual.

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This feeling of pleasure prolonged, becomes, in its turn, happiness ; as in the case of the continued presence of dear friends, the progressive motion of the mind in the apprehension of a long series of abstruse truths, or continuous Divine communications.

From happiness, again, under more powerful stimuli, we rise to joy ; and joy prolonged becomes bliss. The transient ebullition changes to a sweet repose. The bubbles of joy, instead of bursting and disappearing, unite to form a radiant and beautiful hemisphere of enduring bliss.

From bliss, once more, under still more powerful stimuli, we rise to rapture. The soul is uplifted,' as by an angel's wing, and dares, for a moment, the infinite of gladness. And this rapture, prolonged, becomes finally ecstasy ; the very heaven of truth, love, and worship.

This mingled seed of truth and gladness is sown on the broad field of events, for the righteous. But as to all doing there must be a doer, so to all sowing there must be a sower. This tremendous Husbandman is God. The whole vast enterprise of subordinate spiritual existence is his. He owns the field. He built it : the innumerable mountainous worlds, the golden chain which supports the universe of being ; the seas of space in which they lie and float, and turn from darkness unto day, and drift through the seasons varied round ; the fertile plains of angelhood and humanity ; all are the product of his creative hand. He fenced it with the impassable barriers of Omnipotence —

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with the strong chains of destiny — against all the " Dwellers of the Threshold." He prepared it ; enriched it with the precious blood of the God-man ; broke it with the ploughshare of the ages, and harrowed it with the stormy years. The field is his.

And the seed is his as well. He took it from the diamond granary of the skies, measured it in the infinite bushel of love, and committed it to the soil with his own hand. Behold Him ! From the chambers of eternal silence and mystery, where He dwelt in the vast forever of the past, He comes, laden with the diamonds of truth and the rubies of gladness, that, sown broadcast on all the fields of creation, they may produce in the end a harvest of immortal knowledge and felicity.

The seasons are his : the wintry eons of the eternal past, the spring-time of angelic life, the human summer solstice, and the autumn judgment, are all his.

Subordinate agents move by his direction, obedient to his will or limited by his power. Angels are the first and chief tenants of this infinite Landlord. They farm vast tracts of the material and spiritual universe : to each hierarch a world, to each subordinate a soul. Men are under-tenants ; having, each, for his portion of the field, his own spiritual nature and as much of the social world around him as he is willing and able to cultivate. And Hell is the prison of all bankrupt debtors ; the Marshalsea of the universe ; the wretched home of the suicides of fate and the

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spendthrifts of opportunity. But all — the angelic farmers, the human under-tenants, and the spiritual wrecks of perdition — all are his, and He holds them in his hand till the last day.

For there must be a harvest, alike to complete the scene and to perfect the season. This implies a return in kind for the seed sown. The law is uniform and universal — through all forms of vegetable, animal, and spiritual lif e, — like produces like ; like tree from tree ; like brute from brute ; from man, humanity ; from Satan, error and evil ; from God, purity and goodness ; so, ever, like from like.

Truth, sown, reproduces truth ; as gladness, sown, reproduces gladness. Thus in that harvest, the return will be in kind, — substantial truth and real gladness.

There will be also an appropriate return in quantity. The harvest will present as a reward for labor, " some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold."

The condition of periodicity will also be fulfilled in that harvest. " The season's close " takes on a meaning here commensurate with the rank and sphere of the husbandman. The human season will have one grand period, the angelic another, and the Divine must comprehend all.

But some sheaves will be early ripe, — some return always coming in to the laborer. The Supreme and the subordinate agents, as they are always sowing, so are they, also, in one sense, and in some good degree, always reaping. Men on

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earth, and angels in heaven, and God over all, are always receiving some substantial returns for all the truth and gladness which they scatter abroad.

But the dawn of eternity closes the season of this world. Then conies the harvest-home ; when the loaded wain of earth shall be drawn by steeds of fire, upon the threshing floor of judgment ; when the sheaves will be cast down and pounded with the flail of Omnipotence, till the pure grains of truth and gladness are separated from the straw and chaff of error and suffering ; and then they shall be fanned by the breath of God, till they are pure from all evil, and heaped in the everlasting garners of the skies.

And all this " for the righteous, for the upright in heart ; " that is, truth for the true, gladness for the glad, a harvest of truth and gladness for those who sowed the seed, and look for, and can appreciate the return. For the human righteous, shall the harvest be ; for those who receive all the truth and gladness God has given them in this world as a sacred trust — a deposit of seed — to be scattered abroad, sown as they have power and opportunity ; these shall receive a full and glorious and indefinitely multiplied return for all that they have done for their own spiritual culture, and for the help and comfort of their fellow-creatures. , For the angelic righteous, shall the harvest be ; for those who have kept their first estate, and are able still to thrust their hands into the granary of God, and take thence all the seed of truth and gladness that their celestial strength will enable them

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to bear to the fields of their toil and endeavor ; for these there shall be a harvest commensurate, in its glorious products, with the capacity and fidelity of each.

Finally, for the Divine Righteous, shall the harvest be ; for God, the Everlasting Father, — who " so loved the world that He gave his only -begotten Son," in whom met infinite truth and gladness, — " that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life," — for Him shall the harvest of the redeemed be gathered from all the worlds of universal being. And for God, the Eternal Son, " Who hath loved us and redeemed us with his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God," — lavishing for this purpose his whole Divine and human life to enrich the barren field of humanity, — for Him shall the harvest be. And for God, the Holy Ghost, who begot us again, unto the life spiritual and immortal, and who " maketh intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered," — for Him shall the harvest be ; for " Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart."

n.

RATIONALE OF SALVATION.

"Repent ye, and believe the gospel." — Mark i. 15. " Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." — Acts xx. 21.

Let it be supposed that, to an individual in the prime of life and maturity of mental power and culture, there were presented for the first time the doctrines of Repentance and Faith, as they are set forth in the Bible ; that it had been previously explained to him that the race was fallen, sinful, condemned, and altogether destitute of hope and help in itself ; that he had carefully read and deeply pondered the history of its divine redemption by Jesus Christ, the only Son of God ; that he perfectly understood that this atonement was conditional, and that its chief and ultimate benefits depended upon human and individual volition ; and that now, when he came to inquire of the name and character of the condition upon which he might be saved, he were divinely assured that it consisted, to him as to all other men, of " re- , pentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."

He would naturally next inquire of the nature of repentance ; and he would be again assured, if he believed the Bible, that it consisted in turning

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honestly from sin to righteousness ; from evil to good ; from the world to God ; in seeking God with all the heart ; in the formation of a single and pure intention, always, and in all things, to work his will ; in proposing to himself this, as the great and only end of life, and resolutely bending to its accomplishment all his powers ; in purity of intention, producing purity of conduct as a constant and ever-growing effect ; in a word, that true " repentance toward God " consisted of entire consecration to God.

With this condition, let it be supposed that he professes himself satisfied, — as reasonable in itself, honorable to God, and beneficent to man ; but ere he starts on this path, he would be further informed of the nature of that faith which is expected — nay, exacted — from him as essential to justification.

Inquiring yet again at the mouth of God, — for he will and ought to have no less solvent assurance, — he is told that saving faith is the complete trust of the heart in Jesus Christ, for present, continual, and ultimate salvation ; that by faith Christ, in all his offices, is taken to the heart, — personally claimed, embraced, appropriated ; that, briefly, as repentance is essentially consecration, so faith is essentially appropriation.

Now then he is ready to act. The case is before him. He knows himself undone : experience, reason, and consciousness corroborate the Divine assurance of his ruin. Salvation is offered to him conditionally. He understands the condition, —

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approves it. There is no motive for delay. His present mihappiness, his fleeting life, the uncertainty of its continuance, the possibility that the present gracious offer may shortly be withdrawn, — every consideration of reason, safety, duty, urges him to haste. If there be good in the plan, if there be happiness and heaven in it, he needs its balm, he aspires to its glory. And if, on the other hand, it be a false and specious delusion, he should be in haste to find it out, and seek elsewhere for salvation.

He resolves to accept the terms. He repents of all his sins. He pledges his soul's allegiance to Heaven. He renounces the world, and sin, and self. He intrusts all his interests to the hands of God. For liimself, he will labor earnestly and only for God's glory, and submit meekly and always to his will. He binds himself, as the second party, to an eternal covenant of consecration. Thus emptied of self and the world, he is ready to be 44 filled with all the fullness of God ; " to claim, appropriate, Christ.

And, like a lightning-heralded revelation from Heaven, He bursts into the void chambers of his soul ! Sorrow and sin and gloom and despondency flee from his Divine Presence ; pardon and regeneration and adoption and the witnessing Spirit, and peace and joy and love attend Him, and abide with Him, in the new-born Christian's heart.

And now, to this man, repentance and faith assume a new and more distinct, and altogether a

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different aspect. They are no longer what they had seemed to him before, — cold, hard, dry, difficult, dead conditions of good, — reasonable but painful, full of anguish but necessary ; to which, as a prudent man, regardful of his own safety and happiness, he felt bound to submit, albeit he submitted with fear and trembling : he has found them warm and vital, easy and precious, instinct with Divine life and power ; living graces, wearing the hues of Heaven, and bringing to his tired heart a foretaste of its rest and joy.

Neither are they separate and independent, as he had thought. He discovers in them an essential harmony, a substantial agreement, common elements, a vital connection.

Better instructed, — instructed out of his own heart's experience, as well as divinely taught, — he learns that an essential element, in all true repentance, is courage. To give one's self away, wholly and forever ; to renounce all right and title to temporal and spiritual possession ; to surrender the complete direction and government of one's destiny into the hands of another, though that other be Almighty ; to devote one's all of life and powers to his service, — a service involving, necessarily and professedly, spiritual poverty, conflict, self-denial, hardship, and danger : this, he sees, requires no small degree of that manly quality known as courage. How vast the risk ! Only not infinite.

And this same quality, he discovers, in larger measure and more elevated tone, is a constituent

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of that faith which has brought him salvation. It was a brave thing to give himself away ; but it is a braver thing to appropriate, even so far as mortal may, the eternal God I To say of the everlasting Father, " He is mine ; " of the uncreated Son, " He is my Saviour, Brother, Friend ; " of the omnipotent Spirit of the universe, " He is my Comforter, and dwells within my heart as in a temple ; " to reach out the hands of a human and finite faith, and grasp the Divine and hold it ! Though encouraged by every possible condescension on the part of God, this, he sees, is an act of boundless spiritual daring, — the highest and boldest emprise of which humanity is capable in this world.

Looking more deeply into the essential nature of repentance, he finds, underlying this high courage, — this fearful risk, which has moved to such a degree his wonder and admiration, — the strongest and sublimest confidence in God. He, a creature of clay, an organ of sense, has risen so far above the sensual and earthly, as to commit the possession of his all, and the final arbitrament of his destiny, into the hands of a purely spiritual Being ! As he thinks of how this act of consecration has brought the Invisible in sight, of how wonderfully to his appreciation it has magnified and glorified his goodness, how grand the light which it sheds alike upon his providence and grace, — he almost fancies that he has caught a glimpse of the infinite Reason which determined, and still upholds, the changeless conditions of salvation !

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And this same confidence in God, tremendously increased and reaching the height of the true sublime, he finds again in faith. By this act, he has partaken of the divine excellency ; brought home to his heart something of the divine purity; claimed and received a title to everlasting felicity. He, the guilty rebel, has had audience with the King of kings, and has brought home a free pardon for all his offenses, and an assurance of royal favor and friendship ! Standing upon the brink of the real, and catching but a glimpse of the Spirit of the void, he has dared to leap out into that dread abysmal Unknown ; and lo ! the " Everlasting Arms " have encircled him ! and he has lain upon the breast of boundless and ineffable Love ! and his heart has caught its glow, and his eye is lighted with its fires, and his hands shall be henceforth consecrated to its labors !

Underlying, still, this essential harmony in the elements of repentance and faith, he discerns between them a vital comiection ; that they are interdependent, the one upon the other ; that they have no separate life ; that neither can exist apart from the other ; that while repentance may be first in the order of thinking, there is no appreciable interval of time between the moment of its ascendency in the heart and the moment of the exercise of saving faith; that immediately the grace of repentance is improved, God always gives the grace of faith ; that, pressing hard upon the retiring forces of sin, driven out by the act of entire consecration, come the new and heavenly occupants

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of his soul, brought in by the act of complete appropriation ; in a word, that where repentance is not, faith is not ; and where faith is not, repentance cannot be.